Faith and Works

So I read this past month through the Scriptures on the topic of faith. I have already written about a few important truths, when it comes to faith, last week. Today I finished reading on the topic of faith from James chapter 2. This reading followed on the heels of reading Hebrews chapter 11 yesterday. James chapter 2 has that famous and yet misunderstood line, "faith without works is dead". And Hebrews 11 shows this line in example form. So lets think about this line for a few moments today.

That line throughout the history of the church has produced some very bad theology. The biggest and worst theology and wrong truth that comes from, "faith without works is dead", is a works salvation. Works salvation says that a person needs to do good, work real hard for God, and serve both God and human kind, and by working and doing a lot of good in the world, a person will earn their salvation and entrance in heaven. This thought flies directly in the face of my post last week, where Paul in Galatians says that salvation is by faith alone. That is the truth of our salvation. Salvation is given to us becasue of our faith, which in turn is an act of God's grace. Paul makes it very clear in all of his writing that salvation is a free gift of God's grace and can never be earned or deserved. So how do we understand then that faith without works is dead and how is works then connected to salvation. Let me explore that for a few moments.

Our faith is what allows God to save us, period. God sees the faith and belief we have in Him, then He justifies us, calls us righteous, and seals us for the day of the Lord and eternity with Him. So our faith is what gives God the ability to reach down and save us. But we also need to realize that before God, we do not have faith. Simply put, our faith is given to us by God also. God reaches down into our lives, into our dead (spiritually speaking) corpses, and changes us from dead to alive. God making us alive is seen the clearest in Ephesians 2, but can also be found throughout the book of Romans. Once God revives us or makes us alive, we then have the ability to have faith. Before God makes us alive, we are dead. And what can a dead corpse do, nothing. As dead beings before God we can do nothing in ourselves and are simply waiting our time out for our destruction because of our sin nature. But God in His great mercy comes upon us and makes the dead alive and when they come alive they have the ability to have faith. At this point when we become alive , by God's hand, we now will have faith in God and are able to trust Him and desire Him alone, which then in turn lets God save us and justify us.

So what does God making us alive have to do with works? And how does God making us alive help James chapter 2 and a faith without works is dead? Simply put, when God makes us alive, we now have the faith in us that allows God to save, but we also have the ability in us to delight in God, desire God, obey God, and live a life that please God. A life that does all this, and only for the glory of God, is a life that has good works. A life of works before God's regenerating act, that was full of "good works", was not really good works and was still a life that was dead in sin and destined for destruction. But now since God regenerated the person and they have faith, they now can please God and glorify Him in all that they do. So a life of faith and a life of pleasing God go hand in hand. If we would not have the faith part, then all the good works would not matter and are really being done for selfish reasons. But if we would lack the good works and please God attitude, then the faith part would come into serious question. This is what leads James into saying, "a faith without works is dead". Unless we can see the visible life giving regenerate act of God in the person by them pleasing God in all of life, their claim to having faith is untrue. The faith that allows God to save is so connected to a new heart that it must produce a life that pleases and desires God alone, which is good works.

This is why James is not teaching a works salvation and why James can use the word dead. Salvation is all about God. Salvation is all done by God. We are simply the beings that benefit and are saved by all that God does. God regenerates us. This then is God giving us the gift of faith in Him. This then allows God to justify and save us. We with this new heart, can do the good works that please God and show the work that God has done in our hearts. And all this good work and pleasing God, glorifies God and honors Him, which is why He saves us to begin with. God, who is rich in mercy, does all the saving so that at the end of the day He gets all the glory. And all we can do is stand in awe, gratitude, and a life pleasing Him.