Dressing Up Our Dead Works In Sheep's Clothing

The scariest reality to consider as someone who claims the Christian faith is that one day I might discover that my faith is disingenuous. Jeremiah 17:9 (NASB1995) says:

The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?
​
Our hearts can deceive us. They can make us think things that are not true. And they can make someone who does not have saving faith, think that they have it. The heart of a goat can make it think it’s actually a sheep. And one of the foremost fuels for this deception, accomplished by the heart of an unsaved person, is something known as a dead work.

Hebrews 6:1-2 (NASB1995) tells us, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.” Here we see encouragement to move beyond the basics of what it means to be Christian. Not that we forget these truths, but that having laid them as our foundation, and having properly understood them and taken them to heart, we grow from them. And one of those foundational truths is to repent from dead works and to move towards faith. The Greek word used in Hebrews 6:1 is μετανοίας (metanoias), which according to Bill Mounce means, “a change of mode of thought and feeling, repentance”; and BDAG (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature) summarizes the definition as a “change of mind”. So understanding what metanoias means is at the foundation of what it means to be Christian, and in this particular context, it means a change of mind in reference to dead works. So we must have a shift in our thinking, where we go away from dead works and we go towards faith.

So the question is this: what are dead works?

Simply put, a dead work is a work that you do before you have faith. The Bible says in Romans 14:23 “…whatever is not from faith is sin.” So anything we do or partake in that does not have at its foundation faith in God, is ultimately sin, and the particular context of Romans 14:23 demonstrates that even eating food with a spirit of doubt is sin. And not just eating food, but all the good works that we do outside of having faith in Christ are dead and spiritually sin ridden. Even though they might be materially profitable, they are spiritually unprofitable and are thus ungodly and condemnable. And in the context of Hebrews, the dead works are specified to be those Levitical religious rituals that were performed by former Jews who became Christians and had now trusted in Christ.[1] These works are dead. They can be done by people who trust in them to make them righteous, rather than trusting in God. But for people in our Christian culture today, though they do not practice Levitical rituals, they still attempt good works before they have faith in Christ, and these are totally spiritually deficient, dead, sinful, and condemnable.

John Colquhoun once wrote in A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel, “With respect to the works of unregenerate persons, they are destitute of every thing which can render an action good and acceptable in the sight of God.” And he goes on to demonstrate that these works lack love, lack a principle of faith, and are done by persons who are not “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6).[2] So how can works be pleasing to God when they are performed in a manner that is completely spiritually deprived, and performed by persons who are dead in their sins?

And since our materially good works (those that appear good from a worldly or religious perspective) are performed by spiritually dead creatures, they are dead works, and since they are not spiritual or faithfully produced, they are not formally good -- they are not truly righteous and pleasing in the sight of God. Colquhoun summarizes these works of unregenerate persons, “…although many of them may be materially good, yet all of them are formally evil; and therefore they are an abomination to Him (Proverbs 15:8 and 21:27).”[2] And in Proverbs 15:8 (NASB1995), we see that “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.” And in Proverbs 21:27 (NASB1995) we read, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination, How much more when he brings it with evil intent!” We see here that those seemingly (even religious) good works and sacrifices of nonbelievers, of those who are spiritually wicked and dead in their sins, are not pleasing to God at all.

This is counterintuitive to the unregenerate mind, that these materially good works of unsaved people are not pleasing to God in any manner. But it is a sharp biblical truth. And not only this, but when we do them -- and especially when we rely on them as a means of justification before God -- rather than somehow meriting justification before God, we are actually paving the way for our condemnation, because we are rejecting the righteous command of our Lord Jesus Christ to believe in Him, and instead, we are choosing to place our trust in our dead, condemnable works. How could we ever think that our works compare to the works of Christ and the grace of God? Through the deception of our hearts, for it is “more deceitful than all else”.

As we see in the garden, sin results from believing lies. Those lies can come from the father of lies, from other people, or even from our own deceitful hearts and minds. And when we believe a lie, sin always follows, either in indulging in sinful fantasies or in outward actions. We do this especially when we believe the lie that our materially good works somehow benefit us in relation to God, or that they make us more deserving recipients of grace. This one fact, that the most materially good person on this earth is no more deserving of a slither of grace than the least materially good person, is precisely why grace is so offensive to the natural man. It makes no sense because the natural man does not see the spiritual realities around him. We want (and we want badly!) when we are dead in our sins, to try and make a case for why we deserve His grace. We hope that if we act right, that He might be more willing to bestow His saving grace on us. But this is immensely contrary to the Gospel. That is why you only find these types of distorted teachings in false prophets, such as when Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, wrote the following in 2nd Nephi 25:23 (my emphasis), “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” While LDS apologists now try to shy away from that last phrase, appealing to arguments about context and what have you, they really cannot avoid its implications and how it works its way into LDS teachings. This is drastically in contrast to the Gospel. Our righteous God, through His Gospel, says to have faith in Him and in His Son’s righteousness, and from that faith in Him we are graced life, and then we can do formally good works because we have been made alive in Him; Satan, on the other hand, says to do materially good works first, then trust in those dead works, and then you will earn a right to grace. He gets it backwards all the way through.

When we do this, when we start to make the case to God for why we deserve His justification, based on our dead works, we are essentially trying to dress up like a sheep. We are pretending to be something on the outside that we are not on the inside. Doing this results in self-deception. We are merely putting on a costume of sheep's clothing. Unexpectedly, while trying to be good so as to earn righteousness before God, we are actually convincing ourselves that we do not need Christ’s righteousness at all. What a foolish deception we play on ourselves!

It is precisely while we try to be materially good that we act formally evil. Formally evil but materially good works are condemnable and unholy, that is why our good works before we have Christ working is us are truly condemnable; they can never be done from even a 1% spirit of faith, from even 1% of Christ's love, nor will they be performed with 1% of the end goal to be God's glory; because we are yet to have any of these spiritual graces in us. The result of such actions, especially when prolonged and used as a false pretense for meriting grace, we exclude from our heart the vision for what is formally perfect and transformative — that is, Jesus Christ, the holy Son of God and the all satisfying bread of life.

Truly, when we do this, we are trying to circumvent the foundation laid for us by Jesus and the Apostles -- namely, faith in the Son of God. That faith is our starting point, and it is from there that we can do formally good works (those that arise from the work of Christ in our hearts, not from our own false works that actually further harden us to His presence). We see this with the Jews in Luke 5:29-32 (NASB1995):

29 And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

The dead works we do make us think we are righteous, so why would we seek Christ if we think we are already righteous? That is what Christ sees clearly with the Pharisees. That is a scary place to be, since God will only save those who first realize they are sinful, who realize they are dead in their sins, and who change their mind from that foolish deception and fix their gaze on Jesus.

And we see Christ finishes his statement by saying that he has actually called "sinners to repentance.” You have to realize you're a sinner before you can commit to changing your mind about what you are trusting in for your righteousness! Once we have done that, once we have repented of trusting in our dead works and have placed our faith in Jesus, genuine good works will now flow from the work of Christ in our hearts, these are the works that are formally good. The chief end of these Christ-fueled works are the glorification of God, and they are pleasing in His sight, because they are done from a motivation, from a spurring onward, that is acceptable in His sight.

And these formally good works will never be formally perfect works. There will always be a hierarchy of motivations that influence your good works, and some of your motivations will likely be sinful. But there will be in every believer a desire (however small) to perform these works that comes from the desire to give your heavenly Father glory, that flows from the love of Christ, and that flows from a desire to follow after the example set for us by the Son of God. Through sanctification, as we grow in our relationship with God in Christ, these desires for God's glory will grow larger and deeper, and our selfish ambitions, our desire to store up religious capital or personal gain, will gradually fade away.

Now, we have to be careful when we think about our own life, even if we are professing Christians, because the last thing we want to do is live a life of dead works, a death of self-deception, and miss out on the life of Jesus Christ. I don’t want to miss out on life for death disguised as life. I don’t want to dress up like a sheep, I want to actually be one. Rather than trying on my dead works as if they were a robe, I want to actually have the blood of Christ’s righteousness as my robe. I want to be covered by His righteousness, not a deceiving righteousness of my own dead works. All too often, people miss out on heaven because they have a false confidence that comes from materially good (but formally deprived) dead works. May God grant the person reading this, who has trusted for too long in their works, repentance from their dead works, and grace them with faith in the living God.

Now, how can I know if I am the one who needs to repent of my dead works?

John Colquhoun provides us with a profound response, “Can a man perform no good works till after he is justified in the sight of God? Hence it is manifest that they who rely on their own obedience for a title to justification are strangers to good works. Their continued and avowed dependance on their own works for a right to justification is a sure evidence that they have never performed a single good work; it demonstrates them to be totally destitute of that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). To pretend to sanctification, and then to rely on it for justification, is to derive the fountain from the stream, the cause from the effect, and so to invert the order of the blessings of salvation. It is necessary that our sins are forgiven, and our persons accepted as righteous in the sight of God, in order to our being capable of yielding the least degree of acceptable obedience to Him. As long as a man is not justified, he is under the curse of the law; but how can a man who is under the condemning sentence of the law, and consequently under the dominion of sin, perform good works? The Apostle Paul informs us that "as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse" (Galatians 3:10). It is evident, then, that as long as they rely on their own works of obedience to the law for justification, they are utterly unable either to love or perform the smallest good work. It is the distinguishing property of all good works that they are performed from, and not for, justification. Oh, that secure sinners and self-righteous formalists would believe this, and flee speedily to the compassionate Savior for righteousness and strength!”[3]

So one way to evaluate yourself is to consider what your trust is in. Are you trusting in your works? If your trust is in your own good works, then your ultimate trust is in yourself, and that is not a biblical foundation. This false foundation produces pride, arrogance, and sin. Your faith is misdirected, and you must repent of this. You must change your mind. Bring your gaze to the Savior, the source of spiritual life and righteousness for all who believe. And when we do this, God is faithful to save us from our sins and our former dead works, and we can finally say with confidence that our righteousness and justification before God is purely from His works, not ours. We no longer have to pretend to wear the works that believers do so that we can blend in with other Christians, we can now actually become a true Christian. And it is from this deep recognition of our former (and even continued deficiencies), as well as recognizing the eternal grace we have now received, that we are able to obey Christ and perform good works that are pleasing to Him. These works we do, they do not yield us glory, and we shouldn’t want them to, nor do they benefit us in terms of earning our justification (since we already have that from the work of Christ and our faith in Him!), but our new works flow from experiencing Christ’s great love for us, and His Spirit produces in us a fountain of good fruits that are in accordance with His love and faithfulness.

So if you are a true believer, and you truly have faith in Jesus, and you have experienced the grace of God, but you have simply drifted your focus in recent years from Christ to your own good works, repent of that mindset. Return to the Fountain, this is where spiritual works that are pleasing to God come from; and likewise flee the stream, not that you refuse to continue in good works, but that you recognize streams come from fountains, and not the other way around. If you are an unbeliever, and you have trusted in your good works, and you have hoped that they will make you a more likely recipient of God’s grace, repent of this. All of those works are formally worthless and condemnable and sinful, because they do not proceed from the work of God’s Spirit. Turn to Christ, place your faith in Him, and then, you can finally do something that is pleasing to Him. You will now do truly good works because they will come from Christ’s love already in you, not as a means to merit it.
 
Cite: Faucett, D. (2025). Dressing Up Our Dead Works in Sheep’s Clothing. Science Faith & Reasoning. Retrieved from: https://www.scifr.com/articles/dressing-up-our-dead-works-in-sheeps-clothing 
 
References:
1. After all, the original title of the book is “Hebrews”, and many early manuscripts had titled it “To the Hebrews”, symbolizing the recognized context of the book by early Christians that it was written as an epistle to Christian Hebrew converts.
2.Colquhoun, J. (1999). A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel. Reformation Heritage Books. Pg. 304
3.Colquhoun, J. (1999). A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel. Reformation Heritage Books. Pg. 309