One of the most provocative and perhaps most provoking passages in scripture is found in Matthew 7:21-23. There Jesus says this:
“22 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.'”

Here you have people doing good things, admirable things, even “religious” things, but Jesus condemns their efforts. The disciples were doing the very same things, yet they were not only accepted, but rewarded by Christ. What was the difference? This is a very important question for today's “religious” person. So many think they are doing God's work when in actuality they are falsely representing Him. The difference lays in the motive...the reason WHY they are engaged in good works. That's what Jesus was pointing out when He said, “21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” It's “the will of the Father” that separates “lawlessness” from genuine works for God. It's an internal desire to bring honor and glory to God through obedience to His leading that results in genuine works of God. Any other motive results in “practicing lawlessness.”

Today's My Utmost for His Highest emphasizes this point:

“The defining characteristic of Christian disciples is not that they do good things; it's that they are good in their motives. Their motives have been made good by the supernatural grace of God.

The only thing that surpasses right doing is right being. Jesus Christ came to put a new heredity into anyone who would let him, a heredity that would surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees. Jesus says, in essence, “If you are my disciple, you must be right not only in how you live but also in your motives and your dreams, in the deepest recesses of your mind. You must be so pure in your motives that God Almighty can see nothing to censure.”

Who can stand in the eternal light of God and have nothing for God to censure? Only the Son of God. Jesus Christ claims that, by the power of his redemption, he can put his own disposition into anyone, making them as pure and simple as a child. The purity God demands is impossible for me unless I can be remade from within—and this is exactly what Jesus Christ has undertaken with his redemption.

None of us can make ourselves pure by obeying laws. Jesus Christ doesn't give us rules and regulations. His teachings are truths which only he can interpret. If we wish to understand them, we must do so through the disposition he puts in us—his own disposition. This is what it means that Jesus Christ alters our heredity: he doesn't alter
human nature; he alters the disposition of sin that lies beneath it. This is the great marvel of his salvation.”

The sin nature we all battle with promotes “self” rather than God. Good works done so that somehow we derive fleshly benefit is “lawlessness” in God's eyes...perhaps the worst kind of “lawlessness” because of the hypocrisy that is at its core...the pretense of doing something to honor God while actually honoring ourselves. God is most interested in our motives not our proclaimed ministries. We have to constantly examine the “WHY” behind we are doing.

1 Peter 4:11 sums it up:
Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking actual words of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Lord, teach us to be true to the motive of glorifying You. Move us by Your Spirit to do good works. This is our prayer today. Amen.

Walk with the King today and be a blessing.