A sermon preached by Dr.Green on Sunday, September 9. In the New Testament it is not “faith” or “works,” but “faith that works.”
Galatians 3:1-14
(cf:Romans 1:1-8:39)
James 2:10-26
When I was a student in Clinical Pastoral Education at the
University of Kentucky Medical Center, I had occasion to provide
pastoral care to an elderly gentleman who had once been a very
prominent citizen in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
I visited him in the hospital over a period of several weeks, and
we became friends. At the very least I had a great deal of
respect for him, and I think it was returned, for he gradually
began to speak to me about his spiritual life. First, he let me
know that, though he was not a person of faith, he wanted to be.
He was very interested in what I believed, so I gladly told him,
he listened, and we discussed things. Then, one day, near the end
of his stay in the hospital, he spoke about his own convictions.
He said:
I am not a perfect person. I have made some mistakes in my life;
but I have been a good husband to my wife, a good father to my
children, a good friend to my neighbors, and I done a lot of good
in this state for a lot of people. If there is a heaven, and if
there is a God in heaven, then God will let me it.
I responded then as I would respond now. I said something like:
Sir, I am not God, and I am glad that I am not. Therefore I am
not sure how God will judge you. I do know you don’t have to wait
on that judgment, you don’t have to take the chance.
I then gave him my version of Romans 3:28 saying, “…that we are
justified by faith in Christ, apart from the works of the law.”
And I am pretty sure I tossed in Romans 10:9, “If you confess
with our lips, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your hearts that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
I wish I could tell you that he invited me to pray with him a
prayer of faith. That would make a good story. However, I
cannot. He left the hospital, I left Kentucky, and I have not
heard from him since.
I remember this conversation for two reasons. First, I remember
it because for years I often wonder how he decided the issue.
Second, I remember it because it is the first serious
conversation I ever had on the subject of faith vs. works, a
conversation that begins in the New Testament itself.
On the one hand, my friend took the side of works. He held that
when we come at last to stand before God the only thing that will
matter is what we have done, whether it be good or bad. If the
good outweighs the bad, there will be a reward. If the bad
outweighs the good, there will be punishment. This vision of
Divine judgment is common to many cultures and many individuals,
ancient and modern. Even most children are convinced of it.
On the other hand, I took the side of faith. I suggested that
regardless of what we had or had not done, good or bad, we can be
accepted before God simply by placing our faith in Jesus Christ,
whom God himself put forward as a sacrifice for our sins. I got
it from St. Paul.
St. Paul’s argument for justification by faith is two fold. In a
nutshell, Paul held that God had consigned all human beings to
disobedience that he might have mercy upon all. (Romans 11:32)
First, St. Paul did not agree that when the good outweighs the
bad we are justified before God. St. Paul argued that no “one
would be justified by works of the law.” He said that if a man is
guilty of breaking one law, he is guilty of breaking them all. In
other words, if we pile a ton of good deeds on one side of the
balance, and stack an ounce of sins on the other, it matters not.
Just one sin outweighs all the good deeds in the world.
Now some have argued that Paul’s vision of God’s justice is
extremely harsh. I had one man tell me once that he preferred the
vision of justice we have here in the United States. He then
went on to describe Lady Justice, blindfolded so that she might
deal with the great and small with equity, holding the sword of
authority in her right hand and the scales of judgment in her
left. He said that if the good we did outweighed the bad, we
ought to be acquitted and set free.
I told him I thought he was mistaken about our symbol of justice.
I told him that the scales do not weigh the good and the bad in
the lives of individuals, but the evidence and the truth.
The American vision of justice and judgment is not at all unlike
St. Paul’s. In America I may be a model citizen for sixty years,
and then commit one heinous crime, and be convicted of that
crime, and receive a harsh sentence, even the sentence of death.
Of course that when Paul says that “no one,” not even one, “will
be justified by works of the law,” that is only half his doctrine
of justification. The other half of his doctrine is that even
the meanest sinner can be justified by faith in Christ, apart
from the works of the law.
Think of it. I may be a colossal sinner. I may have a stack of
good deeds that are barely knee high to a grasshopper and a stack
of evil deeds that are higher than an elephant’s eye. It makes
no difference. When I turn to Christ in faith, God declares me
innocent of all wrongdoing, and when he looks at me it is
“just-as-if-ied” never sinned.
This picture of Divine Justice gives rise to the truth that we
are justified by faith, and not by works. This is a grand
scriptural truth; but it has led to abuse.
According to Romans 3:28, even when Paul still lived, some people
slanderously charged him with saying that Christians ought to
practice evil, and be as sinful as possible, so that good may
come of it.
Paul never said sin does not matter, but no doubt some of his
followers did.
This disregard for the Law is called “antinomianism,” which means
“lawlessness,” or “disregard for the Law.”
Even today, this doctrine has adherents, some wittingly, some
unwittingly.
I have more than one well-meaning preacher say that the only
thing that matters for a person is a public confession of Christ,
such as baptism. That once someone has made a public profession
of faith, he or she can never again be judged and found wanting.
Some preachers tie this doctrine to the doctrine of “the
Perseverance of the Saints,” “Eternal Security,” or “Once saved
always saved.”
I believe that Paul believed in “Eternal Security,” but only in
Christ.
Paul never said that how we act does not matter. He never
championed lawlessness. He argued that a Christian would keep the
Law in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 6:3-4 he writes:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with
him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of
life.
In Romans 6:10-12 he continues:
The death (Christ) died he died to sin, once for all, but the
life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider
yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let
not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey
their passions.
And in Romans 8:1-4 he writes:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done
what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned
sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit.
Paul says that God first declares us righteous, then God makes us
righteous.
He says that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:5). He says
that the Holy Spirit produces fruits in us including, “love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance, etc.” (Galatians 5:28)
Some Christians understood what Paul was saying. Some did not.
The book of James is a response to those who still did not get
it.
Martin Luther said that James was an “epistle of straw.” I
think Luther not only misunderstood James, but in one sense, he
also misunderstood Paul. He saw justification too much interim of
imputed righteousness, and not enough in terms of imparted
righteousness. Modern Scholarship—especially those writing under
the rubric of “New Persepctives on Paul,” has done much to
correct this error, as James himself attempted to do. Let me sum
up James for you.
First, James is not buying the idea of faith without works. He
says that “as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith
apart from works is dead.” (2:26)
He then makes a very human example. He writes:
What does it profit, my brothers and sisters, if a man says he
has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? 15 If a
brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, 16 and
one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and
filled,”without giving them the things needed for the body, what
does it profit? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is
dead. (James 2:14-17)
He also gives an example that is almost sub-human example. He
says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons
believe — and shudder.” (James 2:19 RSV)
James is not buying the idea of faith without works—demons
believe in God, but they hardly belong to the household of faith.
But neither is he selling the idea of works apart from faith.
In verse 10 of chapter 2 he echo’s Paul in saying, “Whoever
keeps the whole law but fails in one point is guilt of all.”
James is not buying the idea of faith without works, and he is
not selling the idea of works apart from faith. He is pleading
for a faith that works.
But some one will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show
me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show
you my faith.”
In simple words, “if a person is truly a person of faith, his or
her life ought to show it.” Now suppose that we buy James’
interpretation of faith that works. That still leaves us asking,
“Why is faith that works, superior to works alone?” That is a
question that would have interested my friend in Kentucky.
I would suggest two answers.
First, faith that works is superior to works alone because it is
rooted in love and family.
In his book, “The Bridge at Andau,” James A. Michener tells the
story of the tens of thousands of Hungarians that fled Hungary
after the uprising of October 23, 1956 had been put down by the
Russians. Those who fled despised communism, and by and large,
they were the best and brightest. They fled across a bridge at
Andau that led to Austria. The Russians were strangely
inconsistent about this bridge. Sometimes they ignored it, and
refugees strolled across it as they might stroll in a park.
Sometimes they watched it carefully and shot or captured anyone
trying to use it. Those they captured were ordinarily sent to
Siberia. One day Michener witnessed a scene that brought tears to
his eyes. It was the dead of winter, and the temperature hovered
around zero. The Russians blocked the bridge. A family of four
came to the canal spanned by the bridge. It was not so deep, but
it was wide, and frozen over with a skim of ice. Soldiers with
dogs were not far behind. The family could not go back. The
father stripped naked, took his eldest child in one arm, used the
other to break a way through the ice, and carried her across to
Austria. Then he returned and carried the youngest child to
safety, carrying the child in one hand and his own clothes in the
other.. Then he returned for his wife. He lifted her up, and
carried her across, too. Not a single member of his family had
gotten wet, except, of course, the father. Michener wrote that
he did not know if the father lived or died—when last he saw
him his body was blue from the cold, but that it was one of the
most powerful acts of love he had ever witnessed.
Christians are a part of a special family, too. We believe that
in the person of His Son, the God we worshiped robed himself in
human flesh, and became one of us. He knows our pains and hurts.
He carries us in times of trial. He delivers us from death.
When we work, we work for him—from gratitude.
There is a second reason that “faith that works” is superior to
works alone. Those who work from the position of faith are often
more motivated. Suppose that there are two workers in a
vineyard.
The first is a hired worker in a vineyard. He goes up and down
the rows of grapes, cutting some that are ripe, but leaving
others. He knows that others will follow, and clean up his
mistakes. He works for a wage, and he knows that he will receive
it, but if he could make a higher wage elsewhere he would take
it.
The second is a son or daughter of the Vineyard owner. He goes
up and down the rows of grapes, being careful to cut all that are
ripe. He knows that others will follow, but he does not want them
to accuse him of not doing his best because he is the child of
the vineyard’s owner. He wants to set an example. He does not
work for a wage. He works for a share of the inheritance.
Now ask yourself, if you were God, and you were planting a
vineyard, what kind of workers would you want? Would you want
workers that worked for a wage, or workers that worked for an
inheritance? Which do you think would be more productive?
If you know then answer to that question, then you know that it
is not faith, or works, but faith that works.
Finis
Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
New Philadelphia Moravian Church
4440 Country Club Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27103