Our Kid’s Craft Projects for God

Ali Hafed owned a farm along the Indus River—orchards heavy with fruit, grain fields, a garden, a family who loved him. By any honest measure, he was a rich man.

Then a traveling priest stopped for the night and told him about diamonds. A diamond the size of his thumb, the priest said, could buy the whole county. A mine of them could buy a kingdom. But this place of diamonds was far away.

Ali Hafed went to bed that night poorer than he’d been that morning—not because anything had been taken from him, but because he now believed something was missing.

He sold the farm.

He left his family with a neighbor.

He set out across Palestine, into Europe, chasing rumors of diamond fields. But no matter where he looked, he found only dirt. Years passed. His money ran out. Ragged and broken, standing on a beach in Spain, he watched a great tide roll in, and in his despair, he walked into it and was never seen again.

The man who bought his farm was leading a camel to the garden stream one afternoon when he noticed something flash beneath the water—a stone throwing back light like a small sun caught underwater. He picked it up, admired it, and set it on his mantle as a curiosity. A visiting priest later recognized what it was and asked whether there were more.

There were. That farm became one of the richest diamond mines the world has ever known. Stones pulled from that very soil later sat in the crown jewels of nations. Ali Hafed died a beggar in a foreign land, having spent his life and fortune searching the earth for what he had been walking over every single day.*

We do this with our own righteousness.

The Verdict Already Rendered

We hear of Jesus. With sincere hearts, we repent and come to Christ. Something happens in the courtroom of heaven that we do not see and cannot feel. Paul describes it in blunt legal terms: God made Christ “to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The transaction is complete. The verdict rendered. We’re set free from sin—set free to live the abundant life we were meant to live in the Garden. Gold, onyx, perhaps even diamonds (metaphorically speaking). We inherit the riches of Christ and are pronounced sons of God.

And yet, how many of us leave that courtroom and immediately start digging elsewhere, convinced that we somehow lack proper standing before our Father. Surely, He means for us to live up to the royal regalia of our new family crest.

Paul had reason to trust his own pedigree more than most of us do. Trained under Gamaliel, blameless under the law, zealous to the point of violence for what he believed was righteousness. And he called all of it what it was: a righteousness of the law—of works. “Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ” (Philippians 3:9). He came to Christ through faith—and instantly recognized the futility of his former life.

In a moment of brilliance—not Paul’s own, but the glory of Jesus knocking him to the ground—he stopped digging.

He looked up and found the righteousness he sought was before him the whole time.

Stand firm in the freedom Christ gave us and do not let yourselves be caught again in a life of slavery. Galatians 5:1 (KJV—translated into words Eddie can understand)

This is why Paul has curt words for the Galatians. They had received grace and then gone looking for a second deed to the same property. “If righteousness come by the law,” he tells them, “then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:21).

That is not a gentle correction. That is Paul saying, in effect: How dare you treat all that Jesus did—his scourging, his beating, his humiliation, his slow, excruciating death on the cross—as if it were not enough. Do you really think your efforts will make His righteousness in you complete?

He writes, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”

Freedom

Paul is not describing freedom as a future hope, but as liberty we have today, this moment. A man who finally believes he is standing on a diamond mine does not need to prove to anyone he is rich or free. He simply knows this: if ever there’s a bill due, a debt past due, he knows exactly where to dig.

Paul makes clear our freedom is not a license to sin. A poor man made suddenly rich may, at first, be intoxicated by his sudden wealth. A little exuberance can be explained away. But a life of drunkenness shows something worse than excitement—it shows a man who has decided the well can never run dry, so he no longer bothers to cap the bottle. He has mistaken inheritance for permission.

Freedom in Christ invites us to be hands for the person who is in need. Freedom in Christ invites us to visit those in prison. Freedom in Christ invites us to make eye contact with the person seated on a wall in a park, all their belongings in a bag at their feet. To ask their name and if we can pray with them so that the God of the universe will bring them into the abundant life Jesus promised.

The Work That Follows

This does not mean our digging is wasted—only that our motive must be pure. Once the land is legally yours, working it makes sense. But brothers and sisters, working the land to become the owner will never do.

James put it plainly: faith without works is dead (James 2:17)—but notice the order. The works prove the faith is alive; they do not make it alive. A diamond does not become valuable because a man polishes it. He polishes it because it is already valuable.

There is a day coming when our works will be examined—Paul tells the Corinthians that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” to give an account (2 Corinthians 5:10). That is not a contradiction of Philippians 3:9; it is its sequel. What will be examined is the fruit of our efforts on the land we inherited—the riches of Christ we spent bringing others to Him.

There is one thing God will not do without us: bring someone into His kingdom. He has entrusted that work to those who have already received it.

People Are Our Kid’s Craft Projects for God

Ali Hafed spent his life and died broke, searching the world for what was already his.

Don’t spend yours the same way. Yes, God appreciates the effort, and our neighbors certainly appreciate it when we do the right thing. But in God’s eyes, our righteousness is but a kid’s craft project—loved, displayed, kept forever on the refrigerator of heaven, but never needed by us to prove to our Father whose child we are.

Start A Conversation: Read Galatians 5:1-15 and James 2:14-26 together. How does Paul’s warning against earning righteousness fit alongside James’s insistence that faith without works is dead? Are they arguing against each other, or answering two different questions?

Start Today: Name one place you’ve been quietly trying to re-earn a standing you already have in Christ. Then name one person today who could use your hands, your feet, your eyes, or your ears—not to prove anything, but simply because you’re free enough now to give them away.

* Adapted from Russell H. Conwell’s classic address, “Acres of Diamonds”

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