This quote is something I’ve seen enough times that I feel like I need to address it. I understand the sentiment, I even think it is noble to strive to live for God the best you can. But I fear that this kind of statement distorts the God of the Bible and misses the point of the gospel.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Salvation is a free gift, no one can earn it, Paul says in Romans 4:4-5 “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,”
The Bible is clear, if you had to work or do something in order for God to save you then it is no longer a gift, it is a wage. You’ve earned it at that point. Nobody can earn salvation. Jesus gives it freely to those who believe.
Romans 3:23-24 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
But here is where we struggle. So far nobody should have an issue that salvation is a gift. But we tend to believe that salvation is free but sanctification requires effort. I’ve heard a preacher say one time. “Anything worth having requires effort, if you want to make it to heaven you are going to have to work for it.” What a tragic misunderstanding of the grace of God.
Yes, the Bible calls us to a life of sanctification. We understand passages like 1st Peter 1:16 “For it is written: Be holy, because I am holy.” The issue isn’t whether we should be holy or not, the issue is what is the source of our holiness and sanctification.
Too often people believe that you must follow a list of rules, obey certain teachings, or stay as spiritual as you can in order to be holy. While again, these are not necessarily bad things but by focusing on these things we have missed the point of holiness.
2nd Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus came and took our sins, nailed them to the cross, and offers to exchange our sins for his righteousness. He is holy, we are not. We are made holy through his Spirit not through our efforts. Does this mean that we do not have to live a certain way? Of course not, but it does mean that I do not live my life with the fear that God is angry with me every time I fall short of His standard.
Galatians 3:1- “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain - if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing in what you heard? So also Abraham, ‘Believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
Paul is pretty clear, the Judaizers of the day were coming into the church preaching that Gentiles needed to add circumcision to their faith in order to be saved. Paul is perplexed by this. He says, Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? The NET Translation says it like this, “Although you began in the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?”
Paul is angry that they are moving away from faith and focusing on human effort. Instead of relying on the power of the Spirit, they have begun to rely on their own works. But this temptation and this idea that it is better to do too much than to do too little has always been the temptation.
Genesis 2:16 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
God placed Adam in the garden and told him that he was free to eat from every tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Later, God creates Eve and she is tempted in the next chapter by the serpent. But notice the subtlety of what happens.
Genesis 3:2-3 “And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, NEITHER SHALL YOU TOUCH IT, lest you die.”
Notice, that the original command from God was not to eat from the tree. By the time we get to chapter 3 man has placed a fence around the command of God, don’t eat of the tree and don’t even touch it! If you cannot touch the tree then obviously that will protect you from eating it. Seems harmless, but the reality is that once we create these fences around the Word of God we leave people more vulnerable than protected.
“Some Jewish writers… state that as soon as the woman had asserted this, the serpent pushed her against the tree and said, ‘See, you have touched it, and are still alive; you may therefore safely eat of the fruit, for surely you shall not die.’”
Eve had to touch the fruit before she ate it. When she broke the no touching rule nothing happened because God never commanded them to not touch it. It wasn’t until after they ATE of the fruit that God punished them.
Creating fences around the Law always brings more burdens than blessings.
Mark 7:1-8 “The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the traditions of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles). So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands? He replied, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
This passage is interesting. The traditions of the elders were more than just some custom they had. The tradition of the elders is the body of detailed, unwritten, human laws regarded by the scribes and Pharisees to have the same binding force as that of the Mosaic law. According to the Law, priests were to wash their hands before offering a sacrifice (Numbers 18:8-13), something that kept them from becoming ‘common’ or unclean (Leviticus 15:11). This instruction was then extended to lay people in the first century, especially by the Pharisees and Essenes.
To walk according to the tradition of the elders was to live according to its teachings. In essence, the Pharisees were taking the law of Moses and adding to it in order to protect the law from being broken.
There is a phrase in Judaism known as “A fence around the Torah” which was based on the idea of Deuteronomy 22:8 “When someone builds a house, he must build a fence around the roof in order to avoid guilt should someone fall off the roof.” This has been interpreted by many as a requirement to “build a fence around the Torah” in order to protect the Mitzvot (commandment).
Notice how Jesus responded to these fences.
Mark 7:9- “And he continued, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, Honor your father and mother, and, Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God) - then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that. Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”
Notice that Jesus never has a problem breaking their traditions. Whether his disciples are eating without observing the washing rituals, plucking grain on the sabbath, or not fasting as often as other disciples, Jesus refused to accept their legalistic fences.
I know some will disagree with this. They will point out that the Pharisees added to the Scripture and they are simply obeying what is there. Someone will inevitably say, ‘Faith without works is dead!’ Someone will say that in order to be saved we must obey the gospel. Someone will quote 1st Peter 4:17 "For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome of those who do not obey the gospel of God?"
So the obvious question that will help us make sure we aren’t adding to what Scripture says is to ask, what does it mean to obey the gospel? The word gospel in Greek is ‘euangelizo’ and it means to bring good news or to announce glad tidings. Now that we understand that we need to ask, how do we obey good news? Let’s look at the word obey and see if we can find an answer.
Obey the Gospel
The Greek word used in 1st Peter 4:17 for "obey not" is the word "apeitheo" which means to disbelieve (willfully and perversely). To obey the gospel in this context simply means to believe or be persuaded by it. It is the same Greek word used in 2nd Thessalonians 1:8. This is further clarified when reading these passages with Romans 10:16, Pauls says they have not all obeyed the gospel, how does he know? He quotes Isaiah when he says, who has BELIEVED what he has heard from us?
“Obeying the gospel is to illustrate by our actions that we believe Jesus Christ is the redemptive plan of the One True God. God, Himself, handed down a very important piece of “Good News”. That “News” is Jesus Christ as Redeemer. The people who were persecuting the church of the Thessalonians were not treating the Gospel of Jesus Christ as if it were actually handed down by the Almighty Creator Himself (2 Thess. 1:4-6). Instead, they were persecuting the church, as if Jesus were just some common religious idea. Obeying the Gospel means that we live a life oriented around the unique, holy, glory of Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 1:9-10). Obeying the gospel is a faith in God Himself.”
Too many people are living for God with a fear of missing out on eternity. I’ve heard people who have lived for God for 20 years say things like, “Lord willing, if I’ve done enough the Lord will let me in.” I understand the humility, but it lacks understanding.
We are secure in Christ, all he asks is for us to put our trust and faith in him. Our righteousness is not our own. We are righteous not by what we do, but by being in Christ.
John 3:36 ESV "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
John 3:36 NET "The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God's wrath remains on him."
John 3:36 KJV "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and. he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."
But what about James 2?
Some will push back with James 2:17 "So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."
In order to really understand this, we should spend a little more time on the subject of the relationship between faith and works. The late R.C. Sproul in a discussion on this topic points to Luke 7 to help us gain a fuller picture of faith and works.
Luke 7:31-35 “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, We played the flute for you, and you did not dance, we sang a dirge, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, He has a demon. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look at Him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”
Why start here? What is going on in this passage? What is it about this conversation that we can draw from in our discussion of faith and works? Jesus is rebuking the unbelieving Pharisees and lawyers who rejected both John and Jesus. Like the children sitting in the marketplace, the unbelieving Jews refuse to sympathize with either of them (did not dance, did not weep), condemning John for his exaggerated strictness, and Jesus for his supposed indulgences. What is Jesus' conclusion? In verse 35 Jesus says, ‘wisdom is justified by all her children.'
While most of us are familiar with this passage, if any of you are like me you have probably never paid much attention to verse 35. What did Jesus mean by wisdom is justified by all her children? The Greek word used in this passage for justified is ‘dikaioo’. This word has a few meanings,
1) To render righteous or such he ought to be.
2) To show, exhibit, evince, one to be righteous, such as he is, and wishes himself to be considered.
3) To declare, pronounce, one to be just, righteous, or such as he ought to be.
In the context of Luke 7, we see that Jesus is saying that wisdom is shown to be true by the fruit of what it produces. In other words, the unbelieving Jews were demonstrating that they were in fact unbelievers, rejecting anything that came from God no matter what it looked like. Likewise, those who believe in Jesus would be justified, or in this case proven to be true, by the fruit of what they do.
Again, R.C. Sproul gives this example, “If I told you I could run a 4-minute mile you would be wise to not believe me. In order for me to justify that claim, I would have to demonstrate that I could in fact run a mile in 4 minutes. My words aren’t enough, there needs to be something that we can look at to justify or validate that claim.”
I find it interesting that Jesus uses the personification of wisdom in this passage as that was extremely common in the Old Testament and its Wisdom Literature. This means Jesus isn't working from an unfamiliar framework, they would have understood the reference to wisdom. In The New Testament, we find a book that is considered New Testament Wisdom Literature that touches on this same topic, the Epistle of James.
“The book of James looks a bit like the Old Testament book of Proverbs dressed up in New Testament clothes. Its consistent focus on practical action in the life of faith is reminiscent of the Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament, encouraging God’s people to act like God’s people.” - Chuck Swindoll
How does James fit with what Jesus is saying? How does Luke 7:35 connect with James 2?
Luke 7:35 “Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”
James 2:21 “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.”
Again, the context of James is important, James is wisdom literature, so what is James trying to teach us by saying Abraham was justified by his works? In order to understand this, we have to ask the question, what is the problem that James is trying to solve?
James 2:14-17 “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
This is pretty strong stuff. James is rebuking Christians whose claim to Christianity is simply lip service. Comparing it to telling a hungry man to be full without actually giving him food that he needs. The words themselves are pointless unless there is something working with it to validate the words. James isn’t done though!
James 2:18-26 “But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
James uses that same Greek word Jesus used in Luke 7 to say that Abraham was justified by works. So either James is teaching that Abraham was declared right with God by his works, or that Abraham was vindicated by his works. It gets even stronger when James says that a person is justified by works and NOT by faith alone.
Before we get ahead of ourselves and declare that the protestant position of justification by faith alone is incorrect we need to first understand what question James is trying to answer. In verse 14 we see James ask the question, "What good is it, my brothers, if someone SAYS he has faith but does not have works, can THAT faith save him?”
James is addressing believers who merely claim a profession of faith, but have never demonstrated any fruit of that faith. Like Jesus saying wisdom is justified by her children, James is saying that a person's faith is justified, or vindicated, by their works. In other words, if someone claims to be a Christian but they do not produce the fruit of the spirit, you don’t have to take their word for it
If we misunderstand this we will assume that somehow Paul and James are at odds with each other. Paul repeatedly claims that we are saved by faith APART from our works. These two New Testament writers are not contradicting each other or trying to correct each other. They are answering two totally different questions.
Romans 3:23-24 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”
Paul is addressing the question of how can an unrighteous sinner stand in the presence of a holy and righteous God? Paul’s concern with justification is before God, that’s why he says in Romans 3:28 “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Paul is addressing how one is right in the eyes of God while James is addressing what true faith looks like. If I claim right now to have saving faith, you standing next to me would not be able to validate that or not. My works that follow will either vindicate my claims or will expose me as an unbeliever. You can’t read my heart, that is why the Bible says in Matthew 7:20 “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” It’s the only way we can tell if someone is a true believer or not.
However, ask yourself this question. How long does God have to wait to know if my profession of faith is genuine? Can God read my heart? Of course! That’s why the basis of our salvation is by grace through faith!
This is why Paul can say in Ephesians 2:8-10 "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
God’s grace declares me righteous through my faith, just like God declared Abraham righteous in Genesis 15 by his faith. My works demonstrate to those around me that my profession of faith is legitimate, just like Abraham offering his son Isaac on the altar in Genesis 22. Abraham was already Justified before God by his faith, he was vindicated through his works.
"Realizing that James is wisdom literature and moral instruction helps us to avoid two widespread misunderstandings of James. One is that James is a legalistic book. Martin Luther (1483-1546) called it "an epistle of straw," meaning it had little value because he could not find the gospel there. Luther and many after him misunderstood the teaching of James on faith and works. The misunderstanding stems from reading James as legal literature instead of moral instruction. When the book is read properly, it is clear that James does not believe in works righteousness but, like Paul, teaches that Christians are saved by an active faith." - Gary Holloway
Salvation is more than a verbal profession, it is the life-changing power of the Spirit of God transforming an individual. This transformation leads to a lifestyle of good works, not to gain salvation, but to validate it.
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