Faith and Works

Ah, come on James. I really didn’t want to have to think that much. I just wanted to do some recreational reading. Now you’ve given me a headache.

A brief article caused me to ponder some challenging thoughts from St. James’ Epistle. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” (James 2:14) And, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:17)

Can faith save us? There is plenty in Scripture that indicates it can. For example, John 3:16 couldn’t be much clearer. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

God generously grants salvation to everyone who believes in His son! We can’t earn Christ’s salvation. It is a freely and infinitely gracious gift. Yet, while it is clear that we cannot work our way into Christ’s saving grace, James offers a sobering warning. The gift is freely offered. But, we accept it only by living as though we believe in it. We reject the gift, we literally deny its existence, when the “works” of our lives do not clearly reflect faith in Jesus Christ. It is as though we were given a gift, and then never unwrapped it. Or we might misuse it, like using a fine crystal bowl as a hammer. The gift of Christ’s saving grace is not a gift until it is embraced as defining our entire lives.

Therein lays the challenge for most of us. Our faith needs to be reflected in every aspect of our lives. But, our broken human nature resists the surrender of what we want to what God wants. Our culture reinforces that resistance. We are continually drawn to live as our consumerist, me-oriented, society defines successful life. And, we also have a tendency to pay attention mostly to the big things, such as stealing, murder, and adultery, and overlook the little things that diminish our Christian living.

Our unwrapping of God’s gift of salvation and living our lives as reflections of our faith is a matter of the stewardship, the care, and management, of our lives down to the smallest detail. Even our smallest “works” reflect what we believe.

We can become so wrapped up in attending to what we think that we need, that we overlook what would reflect our faith at work in our lives. We may purchase something more expensive than necessary, and then have less to share with those who have a greater need than we do. We may be quick to criticize another person because it fills some need in ourselves, rather than considering how we might lift that person up and help them to do better. We may maintain our comfort zone by avoiding giving attention to a stranger near us in church, rather than extending Christ’s embracing welcome. Examples of these “small works” that can help reflect Christ alive in our lives abound.

Our works matter greatly. They cannot earn us Christ’s saving grace, but they can stand in the way of our accepting it and living into it.