Christian productivity is about faithful stewardship. It’s about using your spiritual gifts, talents, and time to glorify God and do good for others. You can’t do something about every issue in the world, but you can be faithful with the opportunities God places in your path right now— and this is when you will be doing the good works God created you to do. “Do all the good you can,” John Wesley says, “by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
Protestant Christians rightly recognize that God’s people are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but that faith — as many have said — is never alone. Good works are not the basis of salvation, but the evidence of it. A major theme of Titus is the correlation between faith and action, and good works are commended repeatedly (Titus 2:1-10; Titus 2:14; Titus 3:1-2, etc.) We are saved by grace but saved to work.
But what are good works?
Good Works: A Simple Definition
When we think of good works, we think of preaching a sermon, going on a missions trip, or feeding the poor. No doubt, these make the cut. But restricting good works to the big spiritual things we do is narrow-minded. Good works are not only for the spiritual elite, but things any Christian can do every day regardless of where you are in your sanctification. If we think too narrowly of good works, we won’t see the spiritual significance of daily mundaneness. Our lives may even start to feel devoid of meaning, despite professing Christ. Sure, we have extraordinary days here and there where we so obviously sense being used by God, but most days aren’t like this. Most days, instead, are dry, mundane, and rather ordinary.
But you can still do good works on these days.
In his book, What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done, Matt Perman argues that doing good works is the essence of Christian productivity.
Perman writes:
“Good works are anything you do in faith” (77).
“What is a good work? Anything that does good and is done in faith”(77).
“Hence, we can redefine productivity this way: to be productive is to be fruitful in good works” (74).
“According to the Scriptures, good works are not simply the rare, special, extraordinary or super-spiritual things we do. Rather, they are anything we do in faith.” (77)
Considering Perman’s thoughts, our definition of good works will be as follows: good works are anything you do in faith to glorify God and serve others.
