If you have been around Christianity and the Bible for very long, you know that one of the great controversies is the relationship between faith and works. If you haven’t noticed that yet, and you have an interest in Christ, rest assured, it will find you soon enough.

Someone once said that faith and works are like two oars on a row boat. Paddling with only one of them, when it comes to salvation, will only take you in circles. You must use both oars if you are to move from the lost side of the river to the saved.

So often, human illustrations break down when they are pressed too far and this one is probably no exception. I tell it simply to get before your mind the topic of my message this morning, which a controversial one:

If you have been around Christianity and the Bible for very long, you know that one of the great subjects of debate  is the relationship between faith and works. If you haven’t noticed that yet, and you have an interest in Christ, rest assured, it will find you soon enough. 

Our modern difficulty actually goes back in history to a period of time called The Reformation – a time in the early 16^th century when men in Europe set about to reform the Roman Catholic Church and ultimately broke away to form what we know today as Protestant Churches.

Church history is beyond the scope of my time this morning, though I will make a reference to it here and there as we progress. My main focus in this message will be the Bible and how it can resolve this issue of faith and works and give us peace with God.

So let me begin with a strong and clear declaration about the subject of faith:

There are many New Testament passages that teach us this. Let’s go through some of them briefly:

John 3:14-19:

John 5:24:

Acts 16:31:

Romans 1:16-17:

Romans 3:28:

Romans 5:1:

Ephesians 2:8-9:

Hebrews 11:6:

The role of faith as our means of justification before God is seen clearly in these passages and others that we could cite. If we were to close our Bibles at this point we might get the idea that it is faith alone, or rather, simple mental agreement with certain facts or identities that saves us.

Martin Luther, a Catholic Priest who lived early in the 16^th century, during a time when the Scriptures were kept from the masses, proposed just that in the face of the salvation-by-works practices of the corrupt church in his day. Men of his generation were accustomed to the idea, taught and prescribed by the Catholic hierarchy, that fasting, self-abuse and neglect, vigils, penance, counting beads, and other similar man-conceived works of human merit not found in Scripture, were necessary for salvation.

I recently read of some extremely gruesome examples of this. One called Saint Assepsumas thought he could rid himself of sin through self-inflicted pain, so he wore so many chains that he had to crawl around on his hands and knees. Makarios the Younger sat naked in a swamp for six months until he had so many mosquito bites that he looked like a victim of leprosy. Another called Saint Marin spent eleven years in a hollowed-out tree. All these things were done in the belief of that day that they could earn salvation for the one doing them. A young and beautiful woman, Agnes de Roucher, the only daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in Paris, left her entire estate at age 18, when her father died, and spent the remainder of her life (she lived to be 80) in a narrow cell built into the wall of a church building. She ordered masons to cement her into this living tomb and to leave only a small opening through which she could be fed and observe what went on in the church.(1)

You can see what would motivate Luther, whose objections to things like this started the Reformation, to emphasize the justification by faith taught in the New Testament over such barbaric but useless examples of self-effort.(2)

Let me say plainly that I believe that we are "justified by faith" just as Paul said in Romans 5:1 and the other passages that we read earlier. I am happy now and will be happy in eternity that this is so and that God has allowed me the opportunity to see it in His word and respond to it. We live in marvelous times when we can study God's word freely. However, I must also tell you that:

2. The Faith that Saves us is an Active, Obedient Faith.

Said another way, the faith that saves us is not merely mental agreement to certain facts or identities. While such agreement with the facts of the gospel must be there, this is not all there is to Biblical faith.

Sadly, Luther, in his reaction to the salvation by works of human merit taught by the Catholic church of his day, went too far. Reactionary theology often does that. Those who have followed him and others like them today go too far also – not too far from salvation by works of human merit (you can’t get too far away from that!) but too far from what the Scriptures teach.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by going too far. I read this in a commentary on Ephesians 2:8-9 this past week. It is written by a very prominent contemporary evangelical author and radio personality:

Tell me, those of you who are familiar with the examples of conversion in the book of Acts, is this what Peter told the Jews on Pentecost to do when they asked their question about salvation? "There is nothing you need to do but believe it?" No, it isn’t. Is this what Jesus told His disciples to tell people as they preached the gospel? Again, it isn’t.

Furthermore, let's consider a few more verses that pertain to the subject of salvation:

Jesus said in Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven." Notice that this verse calls for more faith than just calling Him Lord.

A few verses later, In Matthew 7:24-27 He said, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall."

What "words" did Jesus have in mind that his hearers should act upon? He was talking about His words in the Sermon on the Mount. It wasn't enough to just hear them - or even agree with them. There had to be enough faith to act upon them.

In Romans 6:17-18 Paul said, "But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." Paul is thanking God here, not that they had believed his teaching, but that they were obedient to it. Obedience takes more faith than mere agreement to facts.

Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9, "…the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power…." The gospel must be obeyed, not just believed.

Hebrews 5:9 says, "And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…That earlier quote I showed you - the one that said, "There is nothing that you need to do but believe it," doesn't fit these words, does it? We must do more than believe. We must be willing to obey.

James said in James 2:17: "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself." Then again in 2:24 he said, "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone." Then once again in James 2:26: "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." Clearly, according to this Biblical passage, we are not justified by "faith alone."

Yes, faith saves us, but it is a certain kind of faith. It is an active, obedient, working faith, not an inactive, workless, disobedient, "do-nothing" faith.

The problem with most discussions on this subject is that they tend to polarize people into one or the other of two extreme views, neither of which the Bible endorses. One is salvation by "faith only" and the other is salvation by "works only." On the "faith only" side, "faith" is wrongly defined as mental agreement to a few facts and identities. On the "works only" side, "works" are wrongly defined as anything that takes effort. And so, from these two equally illegitimate "fortresses," the battle rages with the "do nothing" forces on one side and the "do everything" forces on the other side.

If we step back from this argument long enough to look at the bigger picture in the Scriptures however, we will learn that:

Of course, the word "works" has become a dirty word in some circles. Just saying what I just said would get me drummed out of the corps in some places. That is partly because people do not understand or acknowledge that there are  several kinds of "works" mentioned in the Bible.

There are works of the flesh, as mentioned in Galatians 5:19-21, which have no direct relevance to our discussion here.

There are works of Satan, mentioned in 1 John 3:8, which also have no immediate relevance to this discussion.

There are works of the law, that is, the keeping of the Law of Moses, of which Paul said in Romans 3:20, "by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight." Israel lived 1400 years under the Law of Moses and not a single one of them, save Jesus Christ, ever was able to keep it perfectly.

There are works of human merit, which Paul referred to in Ephesians 2:8 when he said, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." These are works wherein we claim that we can be saved solely on the basis of our own effort and accomplishment. This would include the works of the Law (already mentioned) and other manmade works of which we have already spoken.(4)

But there is another class of works referred to in the New Testament (and this is the one that is often overlooked in discussions of faith and works): Works of obedient faith - that is, works that spring naturally from the life of a person who truly believes God and wants to do His will. There is no fleshly self-confidence in such works. They are done solely with confidence and dependence upon God and the desire to do what He asks. Listen to some passages from the New Testament that use this terminology:

You might have noticed that the last three references linking faith with obedience come from Romans, the very book that many today claim teaches a do-nothing "faith only."

Also linking faith and obedience or faith and works is the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, often called affectionately "God’s Hall of Faith."

Notice that all of the "works" these people did were done "by faith." Their works were not antagonistic to their faith. Neither did their obedient deeds nullify their faith. Neither would any of them claim that what they did possessed any merit based on human effort, apart from God, because their deeds were based upon faith in Him. What they did flowed naturally from their faith! Theirs was indeed, "faith working," or "the obedience of faith."

Were any of these people perfect in their lives? No. Yet were they ultimately saved? I believe so. After all, we see Moses in Matthew 17 appear with Jesus in the transfiguration.(5) I don’t think Jesus brought Him up from torment to appear there with Him. We see Abraham in Luke 16(6) watching over the righteous waiting to be justified by Christ in that place called ‘Abraham’s Bosom." They were saved, not because they were perfect, but because they had he kind of faith that moved them to obey to the best of their ability.

Works are involved in the kind of faith that saves. These are not works of human merit or works of the Law of Moses. They are works that spring naturally from a life of faith.

If I were to discover this week that I have cancer and my doctor tells me that he believes my life can be saved by surgery if we move quickly and I believe him but don't show up for the surgery, what use is that? True faith in the doctor would cause me to submit to the surgery.

Now the controversy begins!

If you have been listening to my sermons very long you know that I regularly point out from Scripture that baptism, along with faith, confession of Christ, and repentance, are necessary for salvation.

Peter said on Pentecost in Acts 2:38, when asked about salvation, said, "Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Jesus told the apostles in Mark 16:16 to preach, "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned."

Ananias, in Acts 22:16, said to Paul who had been praying for three days (!) that he must "arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on His name."

Peter said in 1 Peter 3:21, "Baptism now saves you."

Tell me, if there is nothing else we can do but believe, why would Christ and His apostles command and teach these things? If repentance and baptism are works of human merit rather than works of faith, are Jesus and the apostles false teachers because they taught them?

But isn’t baptism a work? And isn’t it true that we aren’t saved by works?

I hope by now that you understand that the Bible speaks of different kinds of "works," and that we need to consider what kind of works the writers of scripture are referring to. "Works of faith" are different than works of human merit. Works of faith depend upon God. Works of human merit depend upon man.

Is baptism a work of human merit or a work of faith? Is it the kind of work that would allow me to go to God with my baptismal certificate, wave it in His face, and say that because I was dunked in some water, that now He must let me into heaven because I somehow earned it? Not on your life! I could be baptized 1000 times, but unless it is motivated by "an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ,"(7) it would be meaningless.

But before I say any more on the subject, let me take you to a passage that makes this issue very clear.

Please turn to Colossians 2:11-12.

In this passage Paul is comparing the circumcision of the Old Covenant (which was required of the Jews prior to the death of Christ) with baptism in the new. In verse 11 Paul says to these Christians, "In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ…"

And when did this circumcision made without hands occur, Paul?

Verse 12 says, "…having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead."

Did you notice what Paul said? "having been buried with Him in baptism… you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God…."

Yes, baptism is a work. But it is a work of faith, not a work of human merit. These people were "raised up" from baptism "through faith in the working of God." We provide the faith and willingness to do what His word commands. He provides the work of salvation!

Baptism is a work of faith, not a work of human merit or a work of the Law of Moses. It is an act of obedience that steps forward to accept the promises of God which we cannot see. We cannot see the forgiveness of sins, can we?. We have to take God’s word for it. We cannot see the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, can we? He is invisible. We know He is there only because we believe God when He says so. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." If I step forward to receive from God that which I cannot see, then it is an act of faith.

When I was baptized in March of 1973, having confessed Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Lord of all creation, and having repented of my sins, as I came up out of the water, I didn’t feel anything supernatural. God didn’t send me any miraculous verification. There was no sudden sense of a burden lifted. Yet I felt great because I knew by faith what kind of a transaction had just taken place. I got dried off and left that place with the confidence that I had done what Christ commanded and He had done what He promised. He had saved me. There was no merit based on human effort to it. By faith, I had that "assurance of things hoped for," and that "conviction of things not seen."

My friends, most of you here already know these things. To you I speak them only to renew your confidence in what the Word of God says.

To any of you here who might be considering these things for the first time, I hope you will review them in the privacy of your own consideration of the Scripture, and see if they are so.

Footnotes: User your back button to return to your place.

1. John MacArthur, Hard to Believe, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, pp. 145-146.
2. Colossians 1:8, 16-19
3. From The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, (c) Moody Press and John MacArthur, Jr., 1983-2002
4. Colossians 2:8-23
5. Matthew 17:1-8
6. Luke 16:19-31
7. 1 Peter 3:21

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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