Friday, March 10, 2006

Faith and Works

No one, to my knowledge, equates obedience with faith.

On the other hand everyone connects them. God says faith without works is (Jas. 2:14-26), for example.

It is similar to love and works--the Bible says that we will know that we love God if we keep his commandments (1 John 5:3). No one that I know would say that obedience automatically means that we love God. A guy could be doing it totally on his own power for his own glory. But the text means that loving God means that we will do what he tells us to do. In this sense love means obedience.

Just so, a person can say he has faith and not have it affect his life at all. But James says this kind of faith is meaningless--dead. But if a man has faith, he will trust God for every aspect of his life and this will produce works. These works reflect/show his faith. And faith without these works does not exist. So while faith and works are not exactly synonymous they are so closely connected that we can say faith will never be without works.

Another way to put it is to acknowledge (happily) that salvation is totally based on faith. God grants us faith, we believe, and based on that faith God justifies us and thus saves us. But how do we know we have faith? Or how do we know we don't have the faith? This knowledge comes when we apply what we believe. Our faith will always produce something. If it is faith in God, it will produce fruit in keeping with salvation. If it is faith in ourselves, it will produce fruit in keeping with our damnation.

Is faith equal to works? NO. But works are the other side of faith, they are produced by faith. So that if a man has no works, we can legitimately say he does not have faith (or at least that he is in sin).

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