An interesting take on good works from the book, "A Lutheran Toolkit," by Ken Sundet Jones. He writes on page 50:
The second reason to do good works is that the old person in me, the guy who's curved in on himself, hates doing good works. The "The Freedom of a Christian," Luther put it this way: "The human creature cannot be idle because of the demands of its body, and because of the body, it attempts to do many good things to bring it under control." Luther's assumption is that we're like addicts working a program of sobriety. The first step in Alcoholics Anonymous is this: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable." For Luther, we do good works in order to create the discipline the unmanageable sinner inside us. We can't create the new person of faith (remember: the Spirit does that with the office of preaching). But where faith exists, we'll see ever move clearly how we don't do what we should and in turn do what we shouldn't. When faith arises we grab hold of opportunities to make the sinner in us do what it hates - that is, think about others and serve their needs before our own.
