All tagged works
A couple of days ago I wrote about those who are young in Christ, and how they energetically worked in the church and elsewhere but confused this with devotion. Today I would like for us to study a thought that E.M. Bounds wrote, and which takes this a step further as he speaks directly to the clergy, and to church workers. He is concerned about the enthusiasm for the physical activities becoming our focus at the expense of our prayer life and faith in general.
Faith and works have long been hot topics of discussion in the Church. The question is which is most important the religious works we do, or the faith we hold dear, and can we really have one without the other. Do you have them both in your life? Do you perform good works, the kind that any moral person can perform, but don’t believe in Jesus, or have faith in God? Or, do you believe and have faith in Jesus, but never demonstrate that in your works? Do you keep your faith, but are reluctant to live it outwardly?
Are we working hard to do all of those things that Jesus spoke of during His Sermon on the Mount? If so, how is that working out for us? Are we going at it alone, or are we leaning on Jesus for our success, and salvation? Sometimes we get tripped up by His simplest sounding instruction, and most certainly we fail if we continue to struggle along by ourselves. But, in Him we are able to succeed, for in God all things are possible.
As I thought about the point of my morning devotional reading by E.M. Bounds, I looked back on my own life as a Christian and could easily see the point he was making regarding action. His point was that working, and moving about, doesn’t insure that a person is advancing and becoming more devoted to their faith in God and Jesus.
When we go about trying to earn our own way into Heaven, or win eternal life for ourselves by doing good deeds, it might temporarily make us feel better about who we are, but such efforts have little to no effect on our salvation. These are called dead works, and although all good deeds have some intrinsic value, these deeds are a hollow attempt at creating our own version of redemption. Only through Jesus Christ can we come to God, and truly be cleansed of the sin and guilt that has plagued mankind since his fall in the Garden of Eden.
When we accept the God of Abraham as our God, and His Son Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer, we are saved by our faith, but until we begin living out that faith by acting on it in our lives, then we are only a glimmer of the person we are intended to be; we are lesser sons and daughters of God. We are like a child whose parent has given him a dollar for candy, yet he walks around with that dollar in his pocket, never putting it to use, and never tasting the sweet goodness that was intended to be his gift. We convince ourselves that the dollar has value, but it is just a piece of paper until spent; until put to use. So it is with our faith; that without acting on it we actually have nothing because we have squandered the gift. Without praying, loving, showing mercy, or forgiving… what is the true value of our faith, and having accepted Jesus as our Savior? We are deceiving ourselves.
Every Church employs liturgy, even if they don’t call it that. We go through our liturgical rites and rituals as we worship, and many of them remind us of the more important things of Christian faith, but in the end they are just empty actions without the Holy Spirit helping us to infuse them with the blood and life of Christ. What is communion if we can’t remember Jesus in it, ingesting His body and drinking His blood as we partake of the elements? What is baptism but a refreshing dip without the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to the truth of Jesus, and being born again? If our liturgical actions become performa, and don’t include Jesus then they are nothing but dead works.
We are not meant to take pride in our faith, or works, but are to remain humbled by them, knowing full well that it is only by God’s love, and grace, that we have come know Jesus, and as a result of His sacrifice can stand in the Father’s presence. No man, by his own doing, can earn an audience with God in Heaven lest He has been called in faith, and shown works, through Jesus Christ.