Dear Editors,

Are good works always and only the fruit of salvation? Are there any exceptions? Can they ever be properly explained as ‘not fruit’? If no, why not? If yes, then what are they if they are not fruit? Can good works be a means of grace and at the same time only fruit?

In Christ,

Annette Kuiper

REPLY

Good works are fruits, only fruits. There are no exceptions. They can never be explained as anything other than fruits without corrupting the Reformed biblical revelation concerning good works. This also answers the question, “Can good works be a means of grace and at the same time only fruit?” By means of grace, I understand you to mean an instrument to obtain grace. The sole instrument by which the believer receives grace is faith. Faith keeps us in communion with Christ and all his benefits. In communion with Christ, that is, out of Christ and out of faith, a faith that works by love, the believer surely and inevitably produces good works as a branch of the vine, Jesus Christ.

The Reformed creeds describe good works as fruits.

But doth not this doctrine [of justification by faith alone] make men careless and profane?

By no means; for it is impossible that those who are implanted into Christ by a true faith should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness. (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 64, in Confessions and Church Order, 107)

Since then we are delivered from our misery merely of grace, through Christ, without any merit of ours, why must we still do good works?

Because Christ, having redeemed and delivered us by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image; that so we may testify by the whole of our conduct our gratitude to God for His blessings, and that He may be praised by us; also, that every one may be assured in himself of his faith by the fruits thereof; and that by our godly conversation others may be gained to Christ. (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 86, in Confessions and Church Order, 120)

He opens the closed and softens the hardened heart, and circumcises that which was uncircumcised, infuses new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, He quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, He renders it good, obedient, and pliable; actuates and strengthens it, that like a good tree it may bring forth the fruits of good actions. (Canons of Dordt 3-4.11, in Confessions and Church Order, 168)

Error 7: Who teach that the faith of those who believe for a time does not differ from justifying and saving faith except only in duration.

Rejection: For Christ Himself, in Matt. 13:20, Luke 8:13, and in other places, evidently notes, besides this duration, a threefold difference between those who believe only for a time and true believers, when He declares that the former receive the seed in stony ground, but the latter in the good ground or heart; that the former are without root, but the latter have a firm root; that the former are without fruit, but that the latter bring forth their fruit in various measure with constancy and steadfastness. (Canons of Dordt 5, error and rejection 7, in Confessions and Church Order, 178)

We believe that this true faith, being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Ghost, doth regenerate and make him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin. Therefore it is so far from being true that this justifying faith makes men remiss in a pious and holy life, that on the contrary, without it they would never do anything out of love to God, but only out of self-love or fear of damnation. Therefore it is impossible that this holy faith can be unfruitful in man; for we do not speak of a vain faith, but of such a faith which is called in Scripture a faith that worketh by love, which excites man to the practice of those works which God has commanded in His Word.

These works, as they proceed from the good root of faith, are good and acceptable in the sight of God, forasmuch as they are all sanctified by His grace; howbeit they are of no account towards our justification. For it is by faith in Christ that we are justified, even before we do good works; otherwise they could not be good works, any more than the fruit of a tree can be good before the tree itself is good. (Belgic Confession 24, in Confessions and Church Order, 52–54)

The creeds describe good works as fruits on the basis of scripture’s revelation that good works are fruits.

The entire Old Testament law bears witness to this. Israel’s worship of God was through the fruits of the land. Especially the feast of Pentecost is instructive in this regard. “Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord…And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the Lord, with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest” (Lev. 23:17, 20). The loaves are called “wave loaves” in the King James Version. They were intended to be heaved back and forth before the Lord in the temple. It symbolized the consecration of the whole life given to them in the land and all the fruits to God in worship. The heaving of the wave loaves is typical of New Testament Pentecost. This is the great work of Christ’s Pentecost Spirit. Christ poured out his Spirit on his church and indwells the church and each individual believer, in order that as God’s inheritance the church and believer bring forth fruit in a holy life consecrated wholly unto God.

John the Baptist calls the people to “bring forth fruits meet for repentance” (Matt. 3:8). So repentance is the inward and invisible gift of grace and bears its fruits in a holy life.

Christ teaches in John 15:5: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” That the fruit that Christ is talking about consists of obedience is made clear in verse 10: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” So the sure mark of the believer in Christ is that he brings forth the fruits of keeping Christ’s commands.

The apostle Paul prays that the Philippians will be “filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:11). Righteousness is the tree. Good works the fruits.

So they are truly deceived who say that good works are the cause of righteousness. Good works can only be fruits.

Good works are fruits, only fruits.

Describing good works as fruits does no injury to the reality of good works, but rather magnifies the grace of God by which those fruits are produced in and through the believer. It is an astounding thing and the realization of God’s purpose with man that he brings forth fruits.

God created Adam good and upright and in the image of God. The purpose of this creation was that Adam as king of creation would consecrate the whole earthly creation to God in his heart and produce fruit in his whole life to the glory of God his creator. Adam fell in order that this purpose would be realized in Christ in a far higher way. “Who [Christ] gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14).

The whole purpose of God’s election, Christ’s redemption, forgiveness, and the renewal of the believer is realized in the life of good works. After explaining that salvation is by grace and not of works, lest any man should boast, the apostle Paul states the proper explanation of the origin of works when he says, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). 

Salvation is not of works; salvation is not by works; salvation is not because of works. Salvation is unto good works. There is the proper place of works. 

Man was created a working creature. The natural man works still, but all his works are evil. 

The believer saved by grace works too. He is created by grace unto good works. He is God’s workmanship created unto good works ordained for him from before the foundation of the world.

Besides, describing works as fruits is the only way that the life of holiness can be worship. Every work done for any other reason than the glory of God alone is evil and turns our relationship with God and our worship of God in all our lives into a mercantile or mercenary endeavor.