God Works and We Must Also Work
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
So in this essay today, I'd like to delve into another aspect of works: how faith in Jesus Christ requires that we work, that we DO something, not simply sit back and wait on God for a miracle. Sometimes all we can DO is cry out to God: "Help! Have mercy on me!" Remember the two blind men who followed Jesus, "calling out and saying, 'Have mercy on us, son of David!' When He had come into the house, the blind men came to him. Jesus said to them, 'Do you believe that I am able to do this?' They told him, 'Yes, Lord.' Then He touched their eyes, saying, "According to your faith be it done to you" (Matthew 9:27-29). They could have sat there on the side of the road, saying nothing and just hoping Jesus would see them. But they didn't just sit there, they cried out for help.
And when Jesus was out in the countryside with His disciples, all sorts of people heard where He was and came running. Afterwards, the disciples said to Him - "This place is deserted, and it is late in the day. Send them away, so they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat." There were no grocery stores nearby, not even a Seven-Eleven. But instead, Jesus told His disciples - "You give them something to eat." But they could barely scrape up $200 between themselves, and that wouldn't be enough to feed this crowd of thousands. So Jesus asked them - "How many loaves do you have? Go see." They checked their backpacks and said - "Five loaves, and two fish." Jesus took up what they had, offered it to the Father in Heaven, they handed it out, and Wow! There was enough for 5,000 men! (Mark 6:35-44). Jesus asks us to use what we have, do what we can do, and He does the rest.
Soon after that, a similar thing happened: a huge crowd gathered to hear Jesus teach but they got hungry. Again, He asked His disciples - "How many loaves do you have?" They said, "Seven." He had the crowd sit down. Then - "He took the seven loaves. Having given thanks, He broke them, and gave them to His disciples to serve, and they served the multitude. They had a few small fish. Having blessed them, He said to serve these also. They ate, and were filled. They took up seven baskets of broken pieces that were left over. Those who had eaten were about four thousand" (Mark 8:5-9). The disciples gave Him what they had, they did what they could do, and He multiplied it to do what only He could do.
God expects of us to do what we can do, not to just sit back and wait for something to fall from heaven. Taking that step of faith with the little strength you have can be very scary -- but then we are amazed when the Lord responds to our action of faith by opening the door to the next opportunity.
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Faith is tied to obedience: "God, who 'will reward everyone according to their works' [quoting from Proverbs 24:12b], to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruptibility, eternal life" (Romans 2:5b-7). What we DO is the proof of our faith, what we believe. God rewards such faith with eternal life. St. Paul here shows the need for accompanying our faith with good works, he's not the "faith alone" person that some people say he is.
Perhaps the key proof-text for the "faith alone" folks is Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast." What they miss here is that St. Paul is referring to the "works of the Law" - trying to fulfill all the details of the Pharisees' interpretations of Jewish ritual law. But in the next verse, the Apostle uses "works" in a different sense, "good works" or doing good to all people - "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them" (v. 10).
Paul wrote along the same lines to his disciple Titus - "Not by works of righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy, He saved us, through the washing of regeneration [baptism] and renewing by the Holy Spirit, which He poured out on us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior; that, being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This saying is faithful, and concerning these things I desire that you affirm confidently, so that those who have believed God may be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men" (Titus 3: 5-8). The first "works" are "works of righteousness" or "works of the Law" but the second "works" are "good works" - the fruit of saving faith.
James, the "brother" (half-brother or step-brother or cousin) of our Lord, wrote on this same subject - "But be DOers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a DOer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a DOer of the word, this man will be blessed in what he DOes" (James 1:22-25). It's not enough to listen to sermons and say "Amen!" We must hear the word, then DO it.
In the next chapter (2:14), James wrote - "What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can that faith save him? The implied answer, of course, is "No!" Then in v. 17 he wrote - "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself." And in v. 20 - "But do you want to know, vain man, that faith apart from works is dead?" Faith without works is dead faith, and dead faith can't save anyone.
And the clincher is v. 24 - "You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone." Martin Luther, in his commendable fight against the legalism of penance and indulgences in Roman Catholicism, went too far by insisting on "sola fide" - Latin for "faith alone." And this verse, the only place in the Bible where "faith alone" is found, directly contradicts Luther's "sola fide" doctrine by stating "not by faith alone."
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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