Below is a list of actions. Please decide which of these actions are good and which ones are bad.

1. Feeding someone who is hungry.

2. Giving someone a flower.

3. Going to church.

4. Offering a ride to a stranded traveler.

5. Smiling.

6. Visiting the sick.

7. Saying “thank you” and “please” and “I beg your pardon.”

8. Taking a loaf of fresh-baked bread to a neighbor.

9. Donating money to the church.

   1. Sharing your faith.

Now let me ask you, Have you ever had some young person approach you at the airport, smile, and hand you a flower? Then he wanted you to give him money, right? And if you gave him money, into whose pocket would that money disappear? It would go to the leaders of the particular cult he represented! So are smiling and giving people flowers good actions, or bad?

Consider this paragraph, found in The Great Controversy, page 509:

“The tempter often works most successfully through those who are least suspected of being under his control…. The opinion prevails with many that all which appears like courtesy or refinement must, in some sense, pertain to Christ. Never was there a greater mistake. These qualities should grace the character of every Christian, for they would exert a powerful influence in favor of true religion; but they must be consecrated to God, or they are also a power for evil. Many a man of cultured intellect and pleasant manners, who would not stoop to what is commonly regarded as an immoral act, is but a polished instrument in the hands of Satan.”

So good manners are not proof in themselves.

Jesus said, in Matthew 7:22, 23:

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

So wonderful works done apart from a relationship with Christ apart from knowing Christ, are called what? Iniquity.

It’s possible for an atheist to bake a good loaf of bread and share it with a neighbor. Worldly people who have no time for God can be concerned about world hunger and work to relieve it. It is possible for the heathen or infidel to visit the sick. Money can be donated to the church that God will not accept. Some who attend church are Satan’s agents, not children of the Lord.

The Pharisees shared their faith and brought in converts who were twice as wicked as themselves. Even a desperate criminal can offer a ride to a stranded traveler and use the opportunity to take advantage of the helpless.

Good works done apart from Christ are bad works. In order for works to be good works, they must be done to the honor and glory of God.

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,”

the Saviour declared. Matthew 5:16. These “good works” will begin to appear when repentance and conversion take place. Not until then can words and works “glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

Romans 14:23 says,

“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”

When God judges, He looks upon the heart, the motives, the hidden agenda of the mind. If we are living apart from Christ, we have no choice but to be operating from a base of selfishness, and therefore our good works are not good works at all.

It is true that if a person is starving and someone gives him a loaf of bread, he will be fed regardless of the motives of the one feeding him. But so far as the individual doing the giving is concerned, any good works that he performs apart from Christ are bad works. Christ living in the heart by faith, and thus willing and doing in us, is the only source of good works.