Sermon Illustrations on Good Works

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Background

A Grand Gesture

A man appears before the pearly gates. “Have you ever done anything of particular merit?” St. Peter asks.

“Well, I can think of one thing….” the man offers. “Once I came upon a gang of high-testosterone bikers who were threatening a young woman. I directed them to leave her alone, but they wouldn’t listen. So I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker. I smacked him on the head, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring and threw it on the ground, and told him, ‘Leave her alone now or you’ll answer to me.’”

St. Peter was impressed. “When did this happen?”

“A couple of minutes ago.”

Source Unknown

An Illustration of Faith as Grace, Not a Good Work

In his book The Mystery of Christ, a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of understanding the nature of God’s salvation, including this helpful parable of how faith is a grace, not a [good] work:

Suppose I were to tell you that I had already buried, under a flat rock on a piece of property you own, $ 1,000,000 in crisp, new $1,000 bills. And suppose I were also to tell you that I have no intention of ever taking this money back: it’s there, and that’s that. On one level, I have given you a piece of sensationally good news: you are the possessor of a million bucks, no conditions attached, no danger of my reneging on the gift.

And if you trust me — that is, if you go to your property and start turning over flat rocks—you will sooner or later actually be able to relate to the million I so kindly gave you. But note something crucial. Your faith (your trust) does not earn you the money, nor does it con me into giving it to you: the money was yours all along just because I was crazy enough to bury it in your backyard. Your faith, you see, is in no way the cause of the gift; the only thing it can possibly have any causal connection with is your own enjoyment of the gift.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Mystery of Christ & Why We Don’t Get It, Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1993.

There’s Nothing He Can’t Ask Me

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: “If I was saved by my good works — then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace — at God’s infinite cost — then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”

Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, Penguin Books, 2011.

Analogies

An Illustration of Faith as Grace, Not a Good Work

In his book The Mystery of Christ, a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of understanding the nature of God’s salvation, including this helpful parable of how faith is a grace, not a [good] work:

Suppose I were to tell you that I had already buried, under a flat rock on a piece of property you own, $ 1,000,000 in crisp, new $1,000 bills. And suppose I were also to tell you that I have no intention of ever taking this money back: it’s there, and that’s that. On one level, I have given you a piece of sensationally good news: you are the possessor of a million bucks, no conditions attached, no danger of my reneging on the gift.

And if you trust me — that is, if you go to your property and start turning over flat rocks—you will sooner or later actually be able to relate to the million I so kindly gave you. But note something crucial. Your faith (your trust) does not earn you the money, nor does it con me into giving it to you: the money was yours all along just because I was crazy enough to bury it in your backyard. Your faith, you see, is in no way the cause of the gift; the only thing it can possibly have any causal connection with is your own enjoyment of the gift.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Mystery of Christ & Why We Don’t Get It, Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1993.

Humor

A Grand Gesture

A man appears before the pearly gates. “Have you ever done anything of particular merit?” St. Peter asks.

“Well, I can think of one thing….” the man offers. “Once I came upon a gang of high-testosterone bikers who were threatening a young woman. I directed them to leave her alone, but they wouldn’t listen. So I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker. I smacked him on the head, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring and threw it on the ground, and told him, ‘Leave her alone now or you’ll answer to me.’”

St. Peter was impressed. “When did this happen?”

“A couple of minutes ago.”

Source Unknown

She Didn’t Want to Go

There is an old cliché from the Boy Scout movement in which three Scouts report that they had helped an old lady across the road. “Why did it take three of you?” asks the Scoutmaster. “Because,” they explain, “she didn’t want to go.”

N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Christ’s Crucifixion (HarperOne, 2017)