We are all the work of your hand.

 

Tuesday, January 2, 2024


Psalms 5; 6

Isaiah 64

Ephesians 2:1-10


Observances: Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and Gregory of Nanzianus (d. 389), bishops and teachers; Eliza Hassall (d. 1917), pioneer of missionary training and CMS (Australia)


We are all the work of your hand.


If you know nothing about statues, you will at least know of Michelangelo's David. It seems strange that a piece could hold public fame for so long, but if we think about it theologically, then it’s endurance makes sense. Consider what the artist intended it to be: a display of pure Renaissance ideology. An era when men began to imagine themselves as artists and engineers, and their own being their life’s work. Anyone could be anything, and this is what Michelangelo is saying with his statue. Behold, the perfect man, formed from rough rock by the hands of a self-driven man.


The irony here is the subject. While Michelangelo may have called his statue David simply to ensure prompt payment by his pietist commissioners, the real David thought of himself as anything but a self-made man. King David, a man after God’s own heart, relied on God for his very existence: for God to save him from his downs, and to raise him to his ups.


But if we think of David in this way, then we come back around full circle, and see that while David began as rough rock, he was (over the course of his life) sculpted into the ideal follower of God. David was not blessed by God because of anything David did, in the same way that the statue that carries his name had anything to do with its construction. Someone made the statue; someone made David into the greatest king of Israel.


In this section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Paul is pointing out that we Christians are who we are because God has made us that way. We have been delivered by God’s grace – grace being the unearned and unmerited favour that God shows us through Jesus Christ. God has raised us up with Jesus, and is fashioning us into the perfect human, so that we can be seen by the rest of creation. God wants to show off His skills as an artist, and we are His artwork. Michelangelo’s David gets no credit – it all goes to Michelangelo. In the same way, we don’t need to worry about showing off, because it is God who gets the glory. We are all the work of God’s hands.

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