Where do good works come from?
Charles Spurgeon
SUMMARY: Good works cannot come from a depraved human nature, but only from a real conversion produced by the Spirit of God. They also come from a constant spiritual influence and union with Christ. Good works are gifts from God and cannot be produced by an unjust, unsaved, and ungodly person. Therefore, there can be little merit in them.
It is an old maxim that nature cannot overcome itself. The water coming from the top of the hill will only rise as high as its source; but unless some extraordinary pressure is exerted on it, it will never rise higher. The same is true of human nature. Scripture informs us that it is extraordinarily depraved; we cannot expect good works to proceed from a perverted nature. Can sweet waters flow from the bitter well? In the same way that poison does not grow on healthy trees that bear healthy fruit, neither can healthy fruit grow on poisonous trees. Let us not look for good works in depraved nature any more than we should look for them in the vine of Soreco in the vine of Gomorrah. We cannot expect to find good works from the nature of man; indeed it is vain and useless to think that good works can originate in the natural man.
You may wonder: "Where do they come from, then?" Our answer is that good works come from a real conversion, produced by the Spirit of God. Until the moment of our conversion, there is not the slightest shadow of goodness in us. In the eyes of the world we may have a good reputation and be respectable, but in the eyes of God we are none of that. If we could see in our hearts how we sometimes look at other people's faces, we would see many things there that would drive the mere assumption of good works out of our souls, before our hearts are changed. How many things are there in the world that we put on our tables and that we even eat, that if they were put under the microscope, we would be afraid to touch them, because we would see all kinds of repulsive creatures that climb and crawl on them, inconceivable things! And the same is true of human nature. Once the human heart is placed under the microscope of Scripture, and we see it with a spiritual eye, we see it so depraved and filthy, that we are very convinced that as long as we do not have a new heart and a right spirit, it would be so impossible to find good works in unjust and unconverted man, like seeing fire burning in the middle of the ocean. The two things would be equally incongruous.
You may wonder: "Where do they come from, then?" Our answer is that good works come from a real conversion, produced by the Spirit of God. Until the moment of our conversion, there is not the slightest shadow of goodness in us. In the eyes of the world we may have a good reputation and be respectable, but in the eyes of God we are none of that. If we could see in our hearts how we sometimes look at other people's faces, we would see many things there that would drive the mere assumption of good works out of our souls, before our hearts are changed. How many things are there in the world that we put on our tables and that we even eat, that if they were put under the microscope, we would be afraid to touch them, because we would see all kinds of repulsive creatures that climb and crawl on them, inconceivable things! And the same is true of human nature. Once the human heart is placed under the microscope of Scripture, and we see it with a spiritual eye, we see it so depraved and filthy, that we are very convinced that as long as we do not have a new heart and a right spirit, it would be so impossible to find good works in unjust and unconverted man, like seeing fire burning in the middle of the ocean. The two things would be equally incongruous.
