On Faith, Work, and Works

Being saved by grace through faith and not by works does not mean there isn't work to do.

I have been emphasizing in previous articles that God is the focus of salvation. Our redemption is an act of his grace, and we must be very careful not to focus on our own glory or put faith in ourselves to get us to Heaven. However, that does not mean that we get to just sit around doing nothing. There is still work to be done.

Now, some of you might already be thinking, “But what about that famous passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.’ (Eph. 2:8) There it is in black and white: we are not saved by works.”

I agree. The works to which Paul is referring will never save you. However, that does not mean there is not work to do as part of your salvation, work that needs to be done if you are going to get to Heaven. You see, there is a difference between the works that Paul warns about in Ephesians 2 and the work that James assures us must happen in James 2:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.

You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (Jam. 2:14-26)

At first glance James seems to contradict Paul. He does not. The key is to understand the difference between works that are useless for procuring salvation and work that is essential for salvation. For the purpose of my argument I will refer to non-salvific deeds as “works” and salvific deeds as “work.” We are not to do works (at least not in order to achieve salvation), but we are to work.

Here are some of the differences between works and work. Works are tasks undertaken for the purpose of raising our own stature. Work is undertaken to raise God’s stature. Works are done solely out of our own imagination. Work is done out of obedience to God. We know we have been doing works if we can look back on them and only take pride in our accomplishment. We know we have been working if, when we look back, we see primarily God’s accomplishment. We will never get to the Promised Land by doing works, but we will also never get to the Promised Land if we refuse to work.

In this article we will look primarily at examples of the righteous work, and in future posts we will examine some examples of the works that scripture condemns as useless.

We Still Have to Swing the Sword

When the Children of Israel survived the Passover, God did not place the blood on the door for them. They had to physically kill a lamb and use hyssop to get the blood in the right place. When the Israelites were told to leave Egypt, God did not provide them with limousines for the trip across the desert. They had to walk. When the armies of Egypt were bearing down on the Israelites at the shores of the Red Sea, God did not provide them with ships. God parted the sea and, again, they had to walk.

In each case, do you suppose the Israelites were tempted to look back on their deliverance and say, “Wow, we were great! Look at how we defeated the Egyptians! That was a tremendous display of our own wisdom and power!”? I doubt it. One does not sensibly look back at the Red Sea crossing or the plagues and see anything but God’s power and glory. However, does that mean that the Israelites played no part in their own deliverance? No. They still had to slaughter the sheep, place the blood, pack up their belongings, and walk. They had to do some work. They did not just sit on the ground and passively wait for God’s deliverance. When God told them to act, they acted.

Then, when God provided manna in the wilderness, he did not place it directly in their mouths or in their stomachs. He let it fall on the ground and the people had to go out and gather it. Could they look back on this task with any sort of self-congratulation? Of course not. There was no possibility of them taking credit for feeding themselves in the wilderness. However, if they had not gone out and used their hands to gather food, they would not have eaten, so they did play a part in the process.

This is the kind of work God asks us to do. We are to labor as part of his plan of redemption, but it is not work that will cause us to puff up in pride. It is work done in response to God’s grace (God always acts first), in obedience to his command, that results in his glory. Humans work, but they look back on their task and say, “Wow, wasn’t God great.”

An excellent example of the type of work I am talking about is found in one of the next episodes of the Exodus story:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up – one on one side, one on the other – so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. (Exo. 17:8-13)

The Israelites had to go to war. They physically had to face the Amalekites in man-to- man combat. However, they could not look back after the victory and take pride in their accomplishment, nor could they stand in awe at their own bravery and strength on the battlefield, because it was clear who won the victory: God.

In allowing the Israelites to prevail in the battle only when Moses’ hand was in the air, God showed who was in charge of the fight. The victory was all God, yet the soldiers of Israel still had to go out and swing their swords. They had to work to defeat the Amalekites, but even while pouring out their own sweat and blood, all the glory for the victory had to go to God.

By Faith They Worked

This is the type of work we need to be doing. We need to be sweating for the Kingdom, busy about our Father’s business, just as Jesus was (John 5:17). As James explained, work is the mark of true faith. There is no such thing as true faith without deeds, just as there is no such thing as righteous deeds without faith. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”¹ One cannot separate faith and action.

Just believing in your head that God exists or even that he is good is not enough. True faith shows itself in deeds. Look at the heroes of faith showcased in Hebrews 11. Without exception, they are people whose faith is described by action. Look at all the verb clauses that accompany the term “by faith” in this passage:

By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead. ...

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. ...

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.

By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Heb. 4:4, 7-10, 17-40, emphasis mine)

What a tremendous example for us! Look back over the list of works. Notice in each case that the task was undertaken out of obedience to God and resulted in glory to God. Not one of these heroes of faith would look back on what they did with a sense of pride. How could they? Obedience to God results in a display of his power that is unmistakable.

That is why Goliath was defeated by a shepherd boy using stones (1 Sam. 17:48-50). If the Israelites had won using regular soldiers and weapons, they may have been tempted to think that their own strength had saved them. That is why Jericho was defeated by marching and trumpet blasts rather than a battering ram (Jos. 6:20). Nobody could question that God had brought the walls down. However, in each case God’s servants had to obediently do something. David had to pick out some stones and swing the sling. Joshua and his people had to walk around Jericho for seven days. It was not a case of simply assenting to some proposition about God’s power or being passive receptacles in some other way – they actually had to put their money where their mouth was, so to speak.

Faith that does not produce action is no faith at all.

So what kind of action are we supposed to take? One way to look at it is to divide our tasks into two kinds: obeying the universal moral commands that God asks of everyone, and obeying the particular steps of faith that God asks of each person individually.

Moral commands are easy to understand (although often hard to practice.) They involve following the rules and religious duties that God gives to everyone. Attend church, love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you, take care of the poor and those in prison, etc. These are not suggestions that only super-spiritual people actually do. They are explicit demands of everyone who wants to live the Christian life. Those that don’t practice them need to re-evaluate their standing before Jesus. We’ll have more on moral commands in future articles.

The particular demands that God makes of individuals are a bit more difficult to pin down. However, they also are an essential part of the Christian’s duty and cannot be ignored. Look again at the list of faith heroes listed in Hebrews 11 above. Each one is commended for performing an action specific to their circumstances. That is how God operates; he asks each of us to step out in faithful obedience to him and do something. I don’t know what it will be for you, but I know it will be something. Indeed, a lifetime of things. And they will be demands that likely result in various degrees of pain and hardship, including being mocked and rejected by those close to you. You have to do them anyway.

Personally, I think the lack of people who are clearly choosing a life path of stepping out in faith and following a path of radical discipleship is one of the clearest signs that American Christianity has a false assurance problem. Most Christians I see live very safe lives. They do what their in-group thinks people are supposed to do with their lives (whatever that might be - get a high paying job, buy a house, vote a particular way, etc.) and settle in an effort to get as comfortable as possible. That is not the work that Jesus calls us to.

The Bottom Line

As with running any race or fighting any battle, traveling to the Promised Land requires a lot of hard work. God requires obedient action, for this is the nature of true faith. As Paul exhorts and explains, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:12-13). Those that do this to the end will be saved.

1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 89