A Word About Works

Among the hobbies that my wife and I enjoy are photography and videography.  And one of the things one learns rather quickly is that nothing shows off a spectacular foreground like a proper background.

In this same way in his letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul takes the diamond of God's salvation and shows its qualities to the fullest by setting it against the dark backdrop of human religious history.  And though he does this throughout the letter, it comes through strongest in chapters 9, 10, and 11.

One of the main threads of thought that the Holy Spirit communicates through Paul, is that salvation is God's idea.  It functions according to His design and it can only be apprehended by humanity in one way and one way only: through true faith in the true Messiah:  Jesus Christ.

But the Holy Spirit also communicates that there are some very important misunderstandings about how salvation works.  Paul addresses some of these in the chapters mentioned above.

One of the areas that was most misunderstood in Paul's day was the concept of faith verses works.  This misunderstanding still lives on in the church today, but it has shed it's Jewish robes and now wears the trappings of Christian orthodoxy.

Romans has many threads of thought and I won't tackle all of them here, but to summarize Romans 9 we have this:

1. Paul is dealing with a very serious question regarding Jewishness as a religion, Jewishness as an ethnicity - Jewish descent from Abraham, and Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation.
2. The core question Paul is answering is this:  How in the world did the 'elect' people, the Jews, become 'unelect'?  How did God's people - who as Paul says - had the adoption as sons, the revelation of the divine glory, the covenants, the law, the temple worship, and the promises (Rom 9:4) - how is it that the people that were elected to sonship were now rejected by God Himself.

How did the 'elect' become the 'unelect'?  Paul answers this by showing several things:

1. That the Jewish belief that they were 'elected' to salvation due to descent from Abraham was a horribly faulty argument.  After all, Abraham had another son:  Ishmael, but God chose Isaac as the pathway for His promises.  Isaac himself had two sons:  Esau (the older), and Jacob.  In semetic culture the first son was due a double portion of honor and wealth.  If anyone would have received the promises through anything resembling a 'natural' course of events, it would have been Esau.  But God turns human customs and perceptions on their heads:  God chose Jacob and rejected Esau as the conduit for the promises made to Abraham.
2. So Paul is trying to show his fellow Jews that mere human descent from Abraham wasn't enough to gain salvation:  to be 'elect'.  God has His own plans, and He is working those plans, and they don't include natural, human descent.
3. Instead they include 'spiritual' descent.  As Paul made the point in Romans 9:6B  "...For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel."
4. God also makes the point through Paul, that He will have mercy and compassion on whom He wishes.  Although the Jew's descent from the patriarchs comes with many, many honors and blessings - as far as salvation is concerned, human descent means nothing.  God is under no rule or law to have to give salvation to anybody, no matter from where they are descended.  God doesn't owe anybody anything.  That's an important point to always keep in mind.  But there is an even more important idea from our own standpoint as humans:  God has said who He will save and who He won't, and that takes us to our last point.
5. At the tail end of Romans 9 Paul explains then just how one can be saved.  In essence, he answers the question about to whom God shows mercy and compassion.  The answer isn't based upon human descent.  It is based upon spiritual descent - and spiritual descent is decided in this question of faith verses works.

Romans 9:30-33 (NIV)
(30) What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;  
(31) but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  
(32) Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."  
(33) As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."


Verse 32 is the real kicker.  When God says that He will have mercy and compassion on whom He desires - Jew or Gentile,  it can sound a bit arbitrary.  But Paul shows that it isn't arbitrary at all.  He shows that the recipients of God's mercy and compassion are those that place saving faith in His Son: Jesus Christ.  Those that miss out on God's mercy and compassion are those that reject His Son.  It's as simple as that.

Now one would think with this simple of an explanation that every Christian throughout all of history would get this, but not all have.  Not all do now.  One of the main points of confusion that I find in many people that I read or talk to, is that they have their own definitions for 'faith' and 'works', and they have these other ideas because they have rejected God's definitions for these words.

Let me show you what I mean.

You've probably heard teaching in certain traditions that basically goes like this:

1. Salvation is only about God.
2. Because of the sin nature we inherited from Adam, and have dived into head first ourselves, none of us can respond to God for salvation at all.  Dead in sin means we are a corpse with no sensitivity whatsoever.
3. Because of this, unless God first 'regenerates' people - which in itself is a saving act - unless God does that first, no one would ever be saved at all.
4. Partially for this reason, God must have already selected who will be saved and who will perish, because in the realm of humanity no one could decide anything.  So the functional will involved in salvation is God's and God's alone.

And another thing that plays into this, is that folks who interpret Scripture in this way seem to tell me that anything resembling the exercise of 'faith' by a human is actually a work.  And as a work, it can't save.  In fact, they say that we can't do anything to be saved at all, and if we are mistaken about that and try to do something, then we are engaging in works.  

In some ways, to certain types of people, that can sound very pious.  It can sound very proper and submissive.  It sounds like God is being honored and glorified because everything is deferred to Him, even a human response that in this view isn't really a bona fide human response.



The issue with all of this is that there is nothing pious about disagreeing with God.  There is nothing pious about reading what God says, and then rejecting it and filling in the void with our own ideas, no how matter how religious they may sound.  That's what sank the religious Jews of Jesus' day.  They had God incarnate standing right in front of them telling them they could only get to the Father via Him, and instead they rejected Him and went on about their very busy, very rigorous religious ways.  They ignored Christ just like they ignored all of the other prophets God had sent their way.


Well, rebellion against God comes in many forms:  the seemingly religious and the outright depraved.  What matters is listening to what God is saying, perceiving it correctly, then taking the actions that God demands.

Let's start with God's word and then we'll think about it.  Let's perceive it and then decide upon what we must do.


God says in Romans 9:32 that there are two options for trying to attain salvation.  These two options are not the same, they are mutually exclusive.  They are two different things.  What are the two things?  They are "faith" and "works".  Faith and works are not the same thing.  This isn't my idea, it's God's idea.  This might be a good time to glance up and read Romans 9:30-33 again, then continue on below.

Here's the thinking part.  It isn't horribly difficult, but here it is:  Although all 'works' are verbs, not all verbs are 'works'.  

I hope that makes sense.  Let me try to explain it with shapes - think teaching a little kiddo the difference between a rectangle and a square.

What's a rectangle?  It's a shape that has four sides, and the angles between the sides are all the same:  90 degrees.  So it's a box, but potentially an 'uneven' box.

What's a square?  It's a rectangle, but it has one other very special quality:  all of its sides are the same length.  So it's a 'perfect' box.

Ergo, all squares are rectangles - but not all rectangles are squares.

In the same way, all 'works' are verbs, but not all verbs are works.  Why?  Because 'works' in salvation parlance means 'works of merit'.  Things people do to try and earn favor with God.  Things people do so that God will have to save them.  'Works' are things people do to try and look good before God, to try and scrape up their own righteousness so they can be pleasing to God towards the attainment of salvation.

The problem with this, is that God says there are no such 'works' that can be completed by sinful men and women.  What God demands is trust - the special kind of trust that the Bible calls 'faith'.

But some from various Christian traditions like the kind mentioned above, feel that faith is functionally a 'work'.  All I can say to that is that clearly, God disagrees with you.

The core of the reason why faith isn't a 'work', is that although a human being exercising faith in Christ is exercising obedience to God, that same human being is not undertaking an action to gain merit before God so that God has to save them.  Not with true, biblical 'faith' anyway.  There are counterfeit faiths that can't save anyone, but the 'faith' Paul is speaking of here is the genuine article.

The exercise of genuine faith can't be meritorious, because it involves a human demonstrating the belief - not that they are good (or being good) and therefore deserve something from God - but instead that they are totally and utterly bad, and the only thing they deserve from God is an eternity in hell.

As far as accepting or rejecting God's salvation, rebellion against God is refusing to agree with God about what we are.  The exercise of faith is stepping away from that rebellion and instead embracing everything that God says about us, and the news isn't good.  Fortunately, it's also about accepting what God says about Himself, and that news is excellent!  The Good News indeed!



I must admit to being somewhat in shock at the thought that anyone could believe that the exercise of biblical 'faith' is in any way meritorious, when instead it is completely and totally damnable.  

When one is convicted of their sins by the Holy Spirit and turns to Christ in repentance and faith - they are copping to a horrible plea.  In this place there is no beauty, there is no holiness on the part of the sinner.  Instead, there is the complete and total recognition that the wrath of God that fell on Jesus at Calvary is the wrath and suffering that is rightly due the sinner in question:  us.  Meritorious?  Not on your life.  It is unmeritorious to the infinite degree.  And to make it worse, in order to be saved we must accept from God His own righteousness:  the righteousness of Jesus.  


How can accepting God's own righteousness, because we don't have any of our own, be seen as meritorious?  The lack of any righteousness of our own, any merit of our own, is the very fact to which we bear witness when we bow down before God and ask Him to save us.  The act of submitting to God, even though it is obedient, can't be meritorious because of the very reason why we must submit to God's righteousness.  The very obedience that we exercise under the enabling of the Holy Spirit literally screams the fact that we have no merit at all that we can claim.  'Faith' and 'works' are mutually exclusive, just as God has shown.


To accept salvation we must take the ultimate hand-out.  We must come as beggars before the throne of God.  But never as beggars that have somehow found their own way into the castle - we don't have even that ability.  We come as beggars who have been invited in by the King's servants.  


Now indeed all throughout Scripture God has commanded us to repent and believe in Christ.  But as we see from Romans 9 (as well as other places), God has said in Scripture that saving faith and works of merit are two different things.  Therefore to describe or hold to any exercise of faith as being something of merit, is to disbelieve what God has clearly said.


Not all verbs are 'works'.  Exercising faith in obedience to God's command is certainly a verb.  But as God has shown us in His word, it is in no way a 'work'.


On one side of the fence, some sit held in thrall by these traditions of men.  They sit around, wrapped in religiosity, convinced of the fact that they have no responsibility towards salvation at all and that God will do to them what He will.  And they interpret their own religiosity as the sign that God has indeed chosen them.


That is not a door you should take.  It is a different Gospel.  (Galatians 1:6-10)


On the other side, there are those who hold to the traditions of men that tell them that anyone, anywhere, can be saved in Christ anytime they like.  They believe they aren't blinded by sin, they aren't derelict on the side of the road and they need no one to enable their faith.  They have birthed their own faith and they can exercise it whenever they like.


This is also a door you shouldn't take.  It is a different Gospel. (Galatians 1:6-10)


God makes it very clear that He must enable repentance (2nd Timothy 2:24-26).  God also makes it very clear that He must enable our faith (Philippians 1:27-30).


But once, and only once, that enablement has taken place via God's Spirit - the decision then lies with you.  Will you do what God has both called and enabled you to do, or will you go another way?




Matthew 7:13-23 (NIV)
(13) "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 
(14) But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

(15) "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 
(16) By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 
(17) Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 
(18) A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 
(19) Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 
(20) Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. 


(21) "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 
(22) Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 
(23) Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'