Today, August 22, I went over to the YMCA to pick up my work out bag. They don't let you leave your bag there over night and I usually work out once in the morning before work then again at lunch time and leave my bag there after the morning work out and take it back to the office after my lunch time work out. But today I had a meeting at lunch time and so had to go over and retrieve the work out bag. As you go into the YMCA there is a clerk there who checks your ID and lets you in to the Y. As I walked up to her I said I have just come to pick up my work out bag as I missed my work out today, had a meeting. The clerk said, that's ok, I worked out for you!!!
What is amazing is that as I walked up the steps to the Y I was thinking over the passage about the armor of God and especially the passage about the breastplate of righteousness and how our righteousness, our good works, are just filthy rags before God, polluted as they are with our sin and mixed motives. But I knew Paul was referring to the righteousness of Christ - that He gives us credit for His good works, His perfect good works.
And when this clerk said, when I said I had missed my workout, "That's ok, I have worked out for you." The truth of this passage from Ephesians struck my heart like a bolt out of the blue and warmed my spirit.
2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
The idea that hit my heart was this - He is our righteousness, He lived the perfect life we were suppose to live and gives us credit for that life so that is the breastplate of righteousness before Satan who accuses us of having come far short of that perfection for which we were created in the beginning. Our response to Satan is that He is our righteousness and now He is working on us - not only have we been given credit for His righteousness before our Father in Heaven, but now we are His workmanship and in each day we live there are good works He has before ordained that we should walk in those good works. We do NOT walk in these good works to gain the Father's approval - NO! We walk in these good works that He has before ordained because He is now working that righteousness into us, transforming us and causing us out of the gratitude He creates in us to walk in good works for we are created a new in Christ Jesus and have a new nature that He is perfecting for us - we are His workmanship - we walk forward into the day looking for those good works which He will cause us to do out of gratitude to Him. So even the good we do is caused by His Holy Spirit opening our eyes to these good works and then moving us to do them.
He has worked out for us - He has lived the perfect life He spoke of when He said "Ye Must be Perfect even as your Heavenly Father is Perfect." So now He has lived that perfect life for us - He has worked out for us all the details of our new life in Him, He has not only lived a perfect life on our behalf but now is working on us to bring us to be just like Him. Philippians 1:6 "For I am sure that He who started this good work in you will carry it through until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus."