Be & Do Good All the Time!

Luke 17:7-10

“When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, does his master say, ‘Come in and eat with me’? 8 No, he says, ‘Prepare my meal, put on your apron, and serve me while I eat. Then you can eat later.’ 9 And does the master thank the servant for doing what he was told to do? Of course not. 10 In the same way, when you obey me you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants who have simply done our duty.’”

Food for thought!

After teaching us last Sunday that the relationship between God and good people is everlasting, because it survives death, it goes beyond death, Jesus is teaching us today something we so often forget: we can never put God in our debt and can never have any claim on Him. When we have done our best, we have done only our duty; and a man who has done his duty has done only what, in any event, he is expected to do. What this means is that, God made us not only good but also capable of doing good; being and doing good is human.

And whenever we do or be good, we are only doing what we were made to do and be; we only fulfill our duty. In other words, when we have done our best, we have done only our duty. God made each one of us the best he could make. We are inherently good, very good: "Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! (Gen. 1:31)

This is why God told Cain, when this man was failing in his duty to do and be good to his brother Abel: "If you do well, won't you be accepted? And if you don't do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it's out to get you, you've got to master it." (Gen. 4:7). God was only reminding Cain that he can master evil because he was made to master evil and do well. Doing evil is not inevitable; doing good is.

This is the reason why, a successful life is the life that ends well; a failed life is the life that fails at doing good. When we do good, we only do what God expects us to do. For this reason, when and if we say, "I cannot change, or that, I cannot do better, or that, I cannot stop doing evil," we only insult God, because He made us good and not evil. And if and when we do or be good, we don't deserve a credit as such, because we have simply done our duty. Our duty is to obey the Lord, and do what he tells us to do. To him be praise and glory and honour, both now and forever.