So “His for we are masterpiece, poem” as I’ve translated this ktisthentes “having been created.” And this is what’s so great about Paul’s writing. He doesn’t make it confusing, “Having been created” something that previously wasn’t there. What is it? “In Christ” en Kristo Yesou “in Christ Jesus.” What wasn’t there before. Why? Because if you go back to verse 2 and verse 5 “when we were dead, dead in trespasses and sins, He quickened us, He enlivened us.” Previously this element wasn’t there. And this element got in us by faith, through the implant, by faith, grace and the implant of the Spirit deposited in us. And then we get to this epi ergois agathois, which is the good works. I’m going to leave you dangling with that. I want to tackle this in such a way that when I get to it I will show with multiple scriptures and multiple uses of the word.
Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that do you remember when Dr. Scott described when he was going to do his doctoral dissertation on Paul’s use of the word sarks? How many remember that? He spoke of that. And he has to drop the subject because he found that Paul used the words interchangeably pnuema, sarks. He could not pursue it because there was not a definitive in there. I’m going to show you how these ergois, erga “works,” I’m going to show you how there are works and then there are works. And the works that you might be thinking of are not the works that God’s thinking of because our ways are never God’s ways.