FAITH AND WORKS

"But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."  (James 2:18 ESV)

Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again -- until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other.  

-- William Booth in “The Founder’s Messages to Soldiers” 

#5362

THE GOSPEL OF GRACE

“This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.”  (1 John 4:9 NIV)

The Gospel descends on mankind -- it does not rise from us. It is not a projection of our innate spirituality. It is revealed not discovered or invented. It is of grace, not works. It is conferred not attained. It is a gift to our poverty, not a triumph of our resource. Its Christ is a Christ sent to us and not developed from us, bestowed on our need and not produced from our strength.

-- P.T. Forsyth, British theologian

#4317

FAITH AND WORKS

"But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."  (James 2:18 ESV)

In my intellect, I may divide [faith and works], just as in the candle I know there is both light and heat; yet put out the candle, and both are gone.

-- John Selden (1584-1654)

#3920

THE GIFT OF SALVATION

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast."  (Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV)


A headline in the Grand Rapids Press read, "Conversion to Hindu Faith Is Tortuous."  The article stated that a German businessman had completed his conversion to the Hindu faith by piercing himself through the cheeks with a ¼-inch-thick steel rod and pulling a chariot for two miles by ropes attached to his back and chest by steel hooks.  Other converts had walked through long pits of fire, donned shoes with soles made of nails, or hung in the air spread-eagle from hooks embedded in their backs.


Aren't you glad that conversion to Christianity is not accomplished by self-inflicted torture?  In contrast, Jesus Christ was afflicted with one of the cruelest forms of torture ancient Rome could devise so that He could freely give you the gift of salvation.  Jesus paid the price for your conversion so that you could not and would not have to do a thing to earn it.  The only requirement is for you to receive the greatest gift God gave.


-- Lenya Heitzig and Penny Pierce Rose in Pathway to God's Treasure: Ephesians




#3739

WENDING OUR OWN WAY

"You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." (James 2:24 NRSV)

What James is protesting is not Pauline theology, but a perversion of it: acting as though God's Word is mere advice and then wending our own way. Few Christians would ever put it quite so boldly, but in effect that's the way many so-called believers live. They say, "We believe," but there's nothing to distinguish them from unbelievers. They live by their own lusts rather that by the will of God.

How sad that we would claim to be Jesus' followers and go our own way. (I recall Ambrose Bierce's bitter definition of Christians as those "who believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with the life of sin.") It only confirms the world in its opinion that we Christians are up to no good and makes unbelievers by the score. How sad -- indeed, how tragic. Can that "faith" save us? Can it draw others to salvation? "No, indeed!" says James.

-- David Roper in Growing Slowly Wise


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