FAITH, WORKS AND

Faith and works are as inseparable as sun and sunlight. Faith is the sun; good works are its rays.473

I was hungry, and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger.

I was imprisoned, and you crept off quietly to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release.

I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health.

I was homeless, and you preached to me the spiritual shelter of the love of God.

I was lonely, and you left me alone to pray for me.

You seem so holy, so close to God, but I’m still very hungry, and lonely, and cold.474

A man who claims to have faith without works is like a man who puts all his effort into building the foundation of a house and never builds anything on it.

A man who displays great works but claims no faith is like a man who builds a house on sand without any foundation.475

As gloves are to a surgeon’s hands, so are Christians in service for God. It is actually “God’s hand” doing the work. We are but used by him and therefore have nothing to boast of.476

A minister was talking to a professing Christian and asked him if he was active in a local church. The man responded, “No, but the dying thief wasn’t active in a church and yet he was still accepted.” The minister then asked if he had been baptized. The man responded, “The dying thief was not baptized and he still made it to heaven.” The minister then asked if he had partaken of the Lord’s Table. The man responded, “No, but the dying thief didn’t either, and Christ still received him.”

The minister then commented: “The only difference between you and the dying thief is that he was dying in his belief and you are dead in yours.”477

Doctrine and doing are like the two chemical ingredients of salt, which is composed of two poisons: sodium and chlorine. If we ingested either of the two poisons, we would die. But if we combine them properly, we have sodium chloride, which is the common table salt that gives flavor to our food and indeed life and health to our bodies. So, too, are faith and works inseparable.478

You’ve probably heard it said, “It doesn’t matter what you believe; it’s how you live that counts.”

A. J. Gordon encountered this philosophy one time as he talked with a fellow passenger on a train. The man believed he could get to heaven by his good works. Pointing to the conductor who was making his way through the coach, Gordon asked his new friend, “Did you ever notice how carefully he always examines the ticket but takes no pains whatever to inspect the passenger?” The man immediately caught the significance of the question. He had just been saying that God was interested only in what we do and not in a “little bit of theological scrip called faith.”

“You see,” continued Gordon, “the passenger and the ticket are accepted together. If he doesn’t have one, or has the wrong one, he will be asked to get off the train—no matter how honest he might appear to be. Just as the ticket stands for the man, faith stands for you.”

Note that the “ticket” of faith was purchased at a great price, but not by you or me!479

Martin Luther, who had made himself the apostle and champion of faith alone, wrote the following: “Faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing; it is impossible for it not to do us good continually. It never asks whether good works are to be done, but has done them before there is time to ask the question, and it is always doing them.”480