Faith and Works

Faith and works; what does this mean?

Well most Protestants say that you can be saved by faith alone, they also say, “You can’t work your way into heaven.” They will take you to Roman 3:28= for we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.  They will also take you to Romans 4:1-12, where it talks about Abraham justified by faith and not works. This is true, but on the other hand what kind of works are they talking about here? Abraham was justified by his faith, his faith in God to trust in God fully. So what did Abraham do with this faith, he acted it out by taking his son to the alter to sacrifice him, as God told him too. Let’s look more into what the bible teaches about believing in faith and works.

 As I said Abraham was justified by his faith in trusting God and acting it out, we can clearly see it’s in, James 2:21-22= Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the alter? (22) You see that faith was active along with his works, and his faith was completed by the works.

James 2:14-17= what good is it, my brothers, if someone says they have faith but does not have works? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of them says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. So here we see that if you have faith but don’t have works, your faith is dead.

James 2:24= See how a person is justified by works and not faith alone. Faith is a need, we must have faith, but we al so must have the work that goes with faith. Read all of James 2:14-26. It explains more of faith and works together as one.

Galatians 5:6 = For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. As we see here faith is working through love.

1 Corinthians 13:2= And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but not have love, I am nothing. We must have love with our faith, faith working through love. Love is what makes our faith act out.

1 Corinthians 13:13= So faith, hope and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love. We can clearly see here that love is the greatest of the three. Not putting faith or hope down, but what are the other two without love?

Matthew 7:21= “Not everyone who says to me,’ Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven”. Not everyone who calls to God will go to heaven, but the one who does the will of the Father. So here we can see you must do the will of God. Doing is working.

Philippians 2:12= Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
This is pretty straight forward, we must work out our salvation.

-AVM