Faith Without Works
When we think of “faith without works”, we usually think “faith without works is dead”, which can be confusing, because it seems to contradict being “saved by grace”, as stated in Romans 11:6 (AMP), But if it is by grace (His unmerited favor and graciousness), it is no longer conditioned on works or anything men have done. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace [it would be meaningless]. I’ve heard a lot of interesting messages about grace, works and faith without works, and some were actually pretty tortured. And since this is such an important principle in faith and marriage restoration, I wanted to get a better understanding of it based on what the Bible says.
One of the easiest ways to clear up the contradiction is to read the same verse, James 2:26, in the Amplified Bible, which says For as the human body apart from the spirit is lifeless, so faith apart from [its] works of obedience is also dead. The difference is that being saved by grace and not by works refers to works BEFORE salvation, and faith without works being dead refers to works AFTER salvation. Jesus made it pretty clear that there is a direct connection between our faith and our works, obedience to His word, in John 14:23, which says Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. And then in John 14:24, Jesus even said He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. And, we certainly can’t ignore what Jesus said in Matthew 7:18, which says A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
Then James 2:14 says What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Obviously, that’s an important verse for us as we stand for marriage restoration, so “faith without works” will be the topic for this week’s Restoration Principles. Because if we’re all honest, we have to admit that time after time we fail to walk out the words of faith we speak and profess to believe. 2 Corinthians 1:24, leaves little doubt how important this is to us, because it says Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm. And we all want to stand firm!
We can learn a lot more about what the Bible teaches about faith by reading James 2:14-26 (AMP.