We Are His Workmanship

[setfree]

Ephesians 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.

[beloved]

Isaiah 64: 8
But now, O Lord, you art our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

[beloved]

By a step of faith we get into Christ; by a process we are made to "grow up into him in all things." By a step of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Divine Potter; by a gradual process He makes us into a vessel unto His own honor, meet for His use, and prepared to every good work.

To illustrate this, suppose I were to describe to a person who was entirely ignorant of the subject the way in which a lump of clay is made into a beautiful vessel. I tell him first the part of the clay in the matter; and all I can say about this is that the clay is put into the potter's hands, and then lies passive there, submitting itself to all the turnings and over-turnings of the potter's hands upon it.

~The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whital Smith~

Now of course Hannah did not mean that we have no part to play. We must submit and in that we do nothing. But the way we submit is to read, meditate on, dig into the Word of God. It is through His Word that he is able to shape and mold and transform us. So all we have to do is read, think on and meditate about what God's Word says to us and believe the truth therein (thereby submitting ourselves to the potter) and the Potter is able to make us into His image outwardly, just as He already has in our spirits.

If we try to mold and make ourselves through our own rationalization and human wisdom, we will not be submitting ourselves to the Potter or the truth. There is only one truth and can only be one truth because truth by definition makes it so. We place ourselves on the Divines wheel by surrendering our human wisdom to His. But we won't know what that wisdom is if we don't look in the Word.