Faith vs. Works
I have struggled with this for a long time. Clearly the Bible teaches that THE requirement for entering paradise is to accept God’s grace….that is, to accept Christ as your saviour. But, the example of “good works” is everywhere, especially in James. How do you reconcile this?
Or
Can somebody who has accepted Christ but has no “good works” be saved?
To begin with…….what do I mean by good works?
Good works are practical everyday acts of love for our fellow man…….they typically involve sacrifice:
Financially supporting the church.
Praying for friends……..and strangers.
Feeding and clothing the poor.
Visiting those in the hospital…….and prison.
Helping the elderly and the ill.
Any small act of kindness to a stranger.
The Boy Scouts include this in their code: “Do a Good Turn Daily”
On the face of it, faith vs. works is tough. First off…..there are Christians who, because of their situation and resources, can’t perform much in the way of “good works”. Let me be clear…..I’m not talking about them. I believe that God can sort this out.
I’m talking about the Christian who has accepted Christ as his saviour but doesn’t help his fellow man, doesn’t support the church financially, doesn’t attend services, and routinely disregards Christ’s teaching. This is the Christian who occasionally “talks the talk”, usually for an hour on Sunday morning but for the rest of the week doesn’t “walk the walk”. This is the person, whom, if you encounter him on Wednesday afternoon, you might not recognise him as a Christian. This is the person with a fish sticker on his trunk who cuts you off in traffic and then gives you the finger. What about him?
I think that the key question here is sincerity. Your faith must be sincere. Your acceptance of Christ as your saviour MUST be sincere. Your acceptance of Christ’s gift of salvation can’t be some kind of cosmic slight of hand………a trick you plan to use to sneak into paradise while nobody is looking. If your faith is sincere, you can’t help but do the good works that are within your power. That may mean building a billion dollar mission ministry. It may mean sitting in your wheelchair and praying for somebody else.
So…….what about “works”? Can you be saved without good works? Sure. Otherwise heaven would be inaccessible to many people who, because of physical/mental/emotional limitations, can’t perform “good works”. For most of us, however, works are a critical indicator of salvation. If you have no good works, you have to question whether your acceptance of Christ was sincere. If your salvation has not led you to do good works, then it is quite possible that you have lied to both yourself and to Christ. We humans are very good at this.
The presence or absence of “good works”, then, is an internal barometer of the sincerity of your faith. If you lack “good works”, then you need to re-examine your faith. You need to ask yourself, “Am I just paying lip service to God………or is my faith real?”
This, by the way, does not work the other way. Works are not an external measure of faith. We are not to judge our neighbor’s faith by counting up and cataloging his works. Especially, we are not to compare our works with our neighbors works in order to judge who is going to get a front row seat in paradise.
Faith is what gets you into paradise…………Works are simply your personal barometer for measuring the sincerity of your faith.
BTW
Have you ever wondered………..what was the greatest example of “good works”?
The crucifixion of Christ.
How’s that for a benchmark to compare your “good works” to?
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
James, NIV
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Paul, NIV