Now, before you assume anything, make sure to stick around, because I promise that I’m not writing things that are unbiblical when I say this, even though it sounds controversial.
We all know that we are saved by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life on Earth, and sacrificed himself on the cross so that we could be free of sin. The Bible is pretty clear on that. And let me be clear: works cannot save you. But what I’m getting at is how our faith should manifest itself in the everyday lives we have.
We often talk about Christians showing good fruit, and how Christians who aren’t showing the good fruit of the Spirit need to check their lives and relationship with Christ because something’s gone wrong in their faith, and that’s very much the truth, but having good works is just as important as being patient, kind, gentle, having self control, etc. See, after we’ve accepted the gift of salvation given to us, we don’t get to just relax in our little bubble of Christians where we practice patience and goodness and peace. We have an obligation to God to do as He calls us to do.
James challenges his readers to change the way they thought about their faith. James 2: 14-17 says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.”
Based on verses 15-16, I presume that the people James wrote to had the same problem a lot of us have today: they liked to pray about everything, but never do anything about it. Think about it. How many of us pray about the homeless person we see walking down the street every day, but never stop to give him food? How many of us hear from a neighbor who’s struggling to pay their bills but don’t think about loaning or giving him some of our spare cash until he can find a new job?
I think some of this faulty faith we have stems from our belief that God will step in and take care of things deus ex machina style. We tend to run straight toward asking God to provide via a miraculous divine intervention, but we often forget that we are God’s representatives on Earth. We are His deus ex machina. We are called to be an unexpected power to save others from a potentially hopeless situation. Think about this: if God just did everything by His divine intervention, what reason would we have to be on Earth?
That’s why we are called to have faith with works. It’s really easy to say you believe in God and you believe that he will take care of you, but I think we can all agree it’s a lot harder to act that out. It’s difficult when you see someone unable to afford the groceries they need, and you feel God telling you to step in and pay for them, but you know that you don’t have any money to spare for the month. That’s why we have phrases like “put your money where your mouth is,” and “actions speak louder than words.”
The good news is twofold. The first part is that God comes through when we exercise our faith. Remember Abraham? I hope so because James certainly did in James 2: 20-23, “Foolish man! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was perfected. So the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.”
In Genesis 22, after Abraham proves he is willing to sacrifice his only son for God, God promises that the descendants of Abraham will be numerous and a blessing to the world, and man oh man did he come through with that promise. And, in fact, one of Abraham’s descendants became the greatest blessing the world has ever seen: Jesus.
The second part of the good news about faith is that it works like a muscle: the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. Exercising your faith is like the trust we have in all things, but I’ll adapt the age-old chair example. You can’t know a chair will hold you up until you sit on it, but once you do, you’re quicker to believe it will hold you each subsequent time you sit down.
When we give away our last bit of money to help someone in need and see that God takes care of our needs afterwards, we become quicker to do something similar the next time, and quicker again the next because we have experienced God following through on His promises.
That’s what works is, and that’s why it’s important. Since we’re called to be God’s representatives on Earth, it’s so very important that we exercise our faith via works because that’s how the faithless see God. It helps set us apart so that we can show who God is, how He works, and that He truly does take care of those who believe in Him. When we don’t exercise our faith through works, all we’re doing is spouting hot air.
Finally, just to get you thinking a little bit, let’s go back to the chair. See, a lot of us are really quick to say we believe the chair will hold us. And we’re free to do that as much as we want. But the fact of the matter is, you don’t really believe the chair will hold you up if you refuse to sit on it. In the same way, we must question our faith: If you say that you have faith in God until you’re blue in the face but refuse to step out and exercise your faith, do you really have faith in God? And since we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, the question then becomes: are you truly saved?
Finally, if you want a song reference for what I’m getting at, check out these two down below! These guys are great artists and they tell a wonderful message.