God's workmanship Frank Hall
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."
Ephesians 2 10. There is an infinite difference
between the materials that men employ to construct and compose
their masterpieces, and the materials that God uses to create sinners
anew in Christ Jesus. Men work with the best of materials
to showcase their talents, but God works with the worst to showcase
His power, wisdom, and skill. The most gifted sculptors carve
their creations out of the finest pieces of ivory, marble, and
jade. The best jewelers seek only the
finest gold and silver to form their bracelets and rings They
utilized only the most desirable gems to adorn their jewelry,
rubies of the highest grade, diamonds of the most exquisite
clarity, and emeralds of impeccable luster. Da Vinci painted on a
clean canvas with fresh paint when he painted the Mona Lisa.
Beethoven and Bach chose blank sheets of clean white paper upon
which to compose their symphonies. But God is not like men. His thoughts are not our thoughts,
and His ways are not our ways. God employs not the best, not
the finest, not the most appealing of materials when creating His
masterpieces, but the worst. He uses what no one else wants. He uses the offscouring of humanity
to display His handiwork and magnify His grace. God constructs
His masterpiece not from a perfectly shaped piece of ivory, but from
a deformed, twisted, marred chunk of hard, rough stone that has
no attraction. God has purposed to conform His
redeemed people into the pristine image of His darling Son, While
keeping His eye fixed upon His Son, using the chisel of His
grace, God scopes rebel sinners into the likeness of Christ.
God paints not on a clean white canvas, but on a canvas that
has been stained with sin, spotted with corruption, and be spattered
with the filth of the fall. As a perfect painter, God looks
to Christ His model, and with a brush of omnipotent mercy,
in His ever steady hand of sovereign power, He begins to paint His
children, one by one, into the family portrait, tracing every
line with divine precision, filling in every grace with unfailing
accuracy, accentuating every corner of their character with
a whole array of heavenly hues, Blues of faith and surrender,
violets of honesty and godly fear, greens of tenderness and
gratitude, reds of love and compassion, yellows of patience and perseverance,
painting them all in the similitude of Christ, his beloved Son. God does not compose His symphony
on a blank piece of sheet music. Rather, He blots out the discordant
notes of sin, rebellion, and impurity. And with a permanent
ink of immutable grace, He rewrites the sorrowful sonnet of sin.
transforming it into the song of salvation, inscribing on our
hearts the heavenly notes of free forgiveness, eternal life,
and everlasting righteousness through Christ our Savior. With
heavenly wisdom and unseen skill, God makes the sad song of human
misery into a glorious gospel melody, a tune that sounds best
when played on the broken instruments of contrite hearts. Our God has
done the unthinkable, saved the unsavable, fixed the unfixable. He has created a masterpiece
using a rotting chunk of fallen humanity as His workpiece. What a wonder! By the grace and
power of God, the King's daughter is all glorious within. When
God's work is all done, when His poem is finished, when his
symphony composed and his masterpiece complete, he will present us
to himself holy and without blemish, a glorious church having no spot
or wrinkle or any such thing. God's work of grace in us begins
in regeneration and conversion. It continues until the day when
our salvation is consummated in resurrection glory, when we
will be perfectly conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. For those whom he foreknew, he
also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son. Romans
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