Will commented yesterday
Mmm. I wonder what your response to this bible passage is that seems to contradict that faith alone saves:
Faith and Deeds James 2:14-2414 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 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? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that —and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless[d]? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[e] and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
Well today’s reading helps. Sort of.
1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. 4Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving. 5Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
6Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. 7Therefore do not be associated with them. 8For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – 9for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; 13but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Now, I firmly believe that our salvation comes from the cross. There is nothing we can do to justify the evil we have done. And all of us are tarred by this. It is a bit like the “one drop” rule — it only takes a cup of sewage to contaminate thousands of gallons of drinking water, or a drop of some pollutants to make the water poison.
And sin is poison. We should not be sinning. And if we continually and flagrantly sin…
Paul, however, has a cure. And it is confession and accountability. Here by Catholic friends have it aright by insisting that confession occurs before communion: indeed the rubric for the confessing churches has a general prayer of confession and clear instructions for this before we come to the table.
What is in the light is not hidden, and it needs to be dealt with. What is unsaid here is that this is very painful. It requires keeping short accounts with our brothers and sisters, and with the Almighty, It requires concentrating on the means of grace, and not on the things of grace.
And it makes us humble. We think we have our desires controlled, and then there is a poster of [insert movie star here in a bikini], Or a beer ad. Or we are encouraged to cheat, to cut corners, to lie, to hurt, to exploit: in fact all the above may be SOP in the firm you work for.
We are judged by our actions, and on this we all fall down. We all massively fail.
The difference between Paul and James is the difference between two types of works. Paul addressed Jewish Christians who believed they could earn their salvation through meritorious works. No amount of good works will ever earn the sacrifice made on the cross on our behalf, so any attempt to do so is vain (and perhaps prideful). James, on the other hand, addresses the need for works of obedience… not because they earn our salvation, but because God has commanded them as a condition of our salvation. Christ Himself admonished us that if we do not confess His name before men, He will not confess us as His before His Father. Certainly this confession is a work; it is something we do. Yet just as certainly this confession in no way allows us to “earn” our salvation. We do it because God commands it and we are saved by Christ’s blood through grace. Works of merit are antithetical to grace, works of obedience work together with grace.
Not quite. The Ephesians were not Jewish. But the Jewish teacher had arrived and introduced either legalism, mysticism or both thus diluting the gospel.
Being judged by your fruits goes back to the teaching of Ghrist. We are judged by the product of our lives. Using that yardsikck, we will all fail. but we are still to try. We are to attempt. We are expected and required to obey.
For may years I looked for a magical way, some formula or experience that would remove my wish to sin. I have come to the conclusion that it does not exist here. Obedience is hard — Jesus ised an analogy of taking up ones cross. And I think that much of our current contextualizing and post modernistic exegesis is our strying to rationalize our disobedience, instead of repenting.
Before salvation must be repentance and submission. Although man could not earn salvation:
Isaiah 64:6
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous
acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the
wind our sins sweep us away.
And Jesus showed the real standard of god’s law which we can never keep. Yet as a result of being born again a person desires to do good works and does them it is a sign of a living faith. There is a good explanation on faith and works from this website:
http://tektonics.org/af/baptismneed.html