God’s masterpiece is not what today’s church expects. It’s not Jesus, for He is God. It is the Wife of God…mankind brought into oneness with the Messiah. We are the best work of His hand. We are no longer poor, depraved sinners—children of wrath.

I got into this during my daily Bible study this morning. I’ve gotten to Ephesians 2.

“(We) formerly walked according to the age of this world and according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among them we all also once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2:2-3‬ ‭MEV‬‬

This was the state of us all. Some fools get braggadocios over the excitement and vast extent of their sin and rebellion. I can match most of them, but that old character died. God killed him. And he serves every stroke he gets from God.

God’s masterpiece requires many hammer blows

We must know the key to understanding our life as believers. Like a huge block of marble, the Father reveals our true self as He carves off the waste and refuse of our former life. Stroke after stroke, He places the chisel. And, the hammer falls with His sure stroke to cut off all the ugliness of our personal development outside of His design.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we should walk in them.” ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2:10‬ ‭MEV

Our lives are models for our characters—our story. No, autobiographical character is not what we need. But, we need to remember the strokes we received as the old became new. Most of these strokes were painful. It hurts to have favorite sins and attitudes pruned away by God’s clean and accurate slashes of the pruning knife.

“Every branch in Me that bears no fruit, He takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2 MEV

Pruning isn’t punishment

God uses these strokes and cuts to reveal our true nature after our re-creation. That formless stone blank must be cleaned, carved, and polished. In other words, the sin must be cut away. Although we are emotionally attached to much of it, the hurt, pain, and damage must be excised. There is no room in God’s masterpiece for any of the ugly. The process is often painful as we desperately hang on to the old ways of our lives.

We need to treat our protagonists in the same manner. They need to start out flawed and be carved into glory. I can’t see a Godly anti-hero. In fact, the entire concept of the anti-hero is worldly. Unless you can share with us examples, I’ll continue to maintain that the “anti” is cut off in the character development. In redemptive fiction, protagonists are just as God created Man in His world.

Our world building is created as a setting for our heroes and heroines to grow in the Lord. This is how Christian fiction differs from heathen work. After all, God started this by calling you to write. Right?

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