For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
—Ephesians 2:10
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring... As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
—James 4:13-14a, 16
Paul's letter to the believers in Ephesus instructs the reader in the contrast between walking in the good works that God provided versus boasting in our own achievements. When writing to the Philippian believers, Paul made it abundantly clear that whatever achievements he might have attained in his former, legalistic life were not only empty; he counted them as losses.
If that is the case for past "achievements", how much more would it apply to imagined future achievements that haven't even occurred!
Then the letter of James turns the dial up another notch, as he instructs his readers against hanging onto the values of the surrounding world. He explains the external conflicts among his readers as manifestations of internal conflicts resulting from “friendship with the world”. To borrow Peter's description, if the stones have internal cracks and weaknesses, what will happen to a building constructed of such stones?
Neither the values of the world nor the pride of legalism are uplifting, but only walking in the good works with which the Lord has blessed His children.
Walk in Them
“I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’
and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn;
do not lift up your horn on high,
or speak with haughty neck.’”
For not from the east or from the west
and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,
but it is God who executes judgment,
putting down one and lifting up another.
—Psalm 75:4-7
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
—Ephesians 2:10
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring... As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
—James 4:13-14a, 16
Paul's letter to the believers in Ephesus instructs the reader in the contrast between walking in the good works that God provided versus boasting in our own achievements. When writing to the Philippian believers, Paul made it abundantly clear that whatever achievements he might have attained in his former, legalistic life were not only empty; he counted them as losses.
If that is the case for past "achievements", how much more would it apply to imagined future achievements that haven't even occurred!
Then the letter of James turns the dial up another notch, as he instructs his readers against hanging onto the values of the surrounding world. He explains the external conflicts among his readers as manifestations of internal conflicts resulting from “friendship with the world”. To borrow Peter's description, if the stones have internal cracks and weaknesses, what will happen to a building constructed of such stones?
Neither the values of the world nor the pride of legalism are uplifting, but only walking in the good works with which the Lord has blessed His children.