I’m engaged in a life-long love story but I didn’t realize it until just a few years ago. The story reflects a remarkable thing the Apostle Paul wrote, celebrating the unending impact of God’s glory in my daily life. It’s a powerful idea.
Because you and I are made in the image of God, we are by definition something amazing. From this it logically follows that God could have nothing but good plans for all of us. ‘For we are God’s Masterpiece,’ Paul wrote. ‘He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.’ 1
I answered Christ’s call not for eternal life – ‘go to heaven when I die’ as is often said. No, I wanted a release from pain, a release from bondage. I wanted freedom. I wanted it now! Fortunately, freedom doesn’t wait until we’re dead. Freedom is an immediate reward of grace. Heaven intersects with earth for those of us who believe it will.
But there’s a price to pay to live in the Land of Freedom. It’s the necessity of living in the World of Mystery. One of my mentors, Chuck Parry, teaches this simple equation: Mystery = Freedom.2
What does he mean by this? He means that the mysteries of life open up opportunities to seek God’s ways and have a closer relationship with Him. This relationship underscores the freedom. Relying on Him by embracing the mystery takes the stress off me.
When I’m willing to live with mysteries, instead of striving to make sense of them, I rely on the Lord for answers. When I do, what I need always arrives right on time, even if I don’t understand how it got here. God’s grace must exist because free will exists in a world where sin exists.
Read that again: grace must exist because free will exists in a world where sin exists. If that weren’t so, God wouldn’t a loving God, would He? His nature demands He give us a way to reconcile ourselves to Him after we messed everything up. That is the Christian story. It’s the story of Christ.
In his letter to the Ephesian church Paul tells his readers that each of them is God’s ‘Masterpiece’ – variously translated elsewhere as ‘poem’, ‘workmanship’, ‘creation’, even ‘made out of nothing in the Messiah Jesus for good works.’ The Greek word he uses is poiema, literally ‘that which has been made.’ Poiema comes from the word poieo, which means ‘to perform something that has been promised’. You and I are God’s promise. We are His Masterpiece, promised by God Himself to minister to a world in desperate need.
Despite the choices I made in life, or perhaps because of them, God called me back to Him after decades of sinful self-destruction. Because I was willing, He refined me through many trials and brought me out as something new. Years after the fact, being ‘born again’ now seems less about my circumstances (peace, joy, hope, optimism and a desire to give love) than it does about my identity.
I am now, finally, as I always was made: God’s handiwork, His Masterpiece.
God works through broken people like me. It’s all He has to work with. He’s the master at taking people like me back to their beginnings for a fresh start. All the Bible’s heroes fit that mold: Abram (a fearful liar);3 Jacob (his very name means ‘deceiver’);4 Moses (a murderer 5 and frightened runaway);6 Samson (an egotistical7 blasphemer8 and lawbreaker9); David (an adulterer and murderer10).
I’m in good company: Alan (once a drug abuser, alcoholic, porn addict and fraud), but now living with a glorious future. Now, a Masterpiece. And no matter what you may have done, you too were made for His good purpose. You are His Masterpiece, just as I am. I know. It makes no sense. It’s a mystery. But now you know what that means. It means freedom.
This contains some material originally prepared for my first memoir, Masterpiece: A Love Story (A memoir about sexual abuse)
1. Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
2. Chuck Parry, Director of Bethel Healing Rooms, speaking at a London UK conference 25 July, 2019
3. Genesis 12:12-13
4. Genesis 27:12
5. Exodus 2:12
6. Exodus 2:15
7. Judges 15:16
8. Judges 16:17
9. Judges 16:1
10. 2 Samuel 12:9-10