This is the seventh installment in Maxie’s series on Core Convictions. You can find the first seven articles here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Someone will say “You have faith; I have deeds. ” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, ” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. (James 2:18-24)

As you look closely at this word of James, you realize that James is not asking whether works without faith can save us, but rather, whether faith without works can save us. His answer to that is a resounding no.

Before we take issue with James, let’s look at the similarity between his words in this theme text and Jesus’s parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25:31-46. This is the only time Jesus told us what judgment is going to be like. He says that when the Son of Man comes in his glory and gathers before him all the nations of the world, he’s going to separate the people the way a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. He’s going to place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on the left. He will say to those on his right hand (the sheep), “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me (vv. 34-36).”

That was a surprise to both the righteous and the unrighteous, because neither of them knew they were guilty of Jesus’s accusation. They asked, “When did we see you hungry?” His response to their question is unforgettable: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (vv. 37, 40).

Nothing about belief, nothing about right doctrine, nothing about proper churchmanship. As is often the case for me, a Charles Schulz Peanuts cartoon speaks to me here. Linus and his sister, Lucy, are having a conversation. Linus says to Lucy, “You think you are smart just because you are older than I am!” Lucy gets up and walks off, but Linus follows, saying, “You just happened to be born first! You were just lucky!” Then he screams, “I didn’t ask to be born second.” And in the final frame, he adds in despair, “I didn’t even get a chance to fill out an application.”

When it comes to the last judgment, there are no applications to fill out. The conditions have been predetermined by Jesus himself. Consider James’s word in light of that. Again, his question is not whether works without faith can save us, but rather whether faith without works can save us. To gain clarity, consider these bold affirmations.

• One, there is no salvation without discipleship. We can’t claim Jesus as Savior without a willingness to surrender to him as Lord.
• Two, an emphasis on faith that does not include fidelity to Christ’s call to walk in newness of life is a distortion of the gospel. This is what James is saying: Faith that does not give attention to ethical issues-to telling the truth, seeking to live morally clean lives, shunning evil, fighting personal immorality and for social injustice, feeding the hungry, caring for the needy, seeking the lost, suffering for those the world has said no to–is dead.
• Three, a faith that emphasizes ethics and good works as a saving way of life is a false faith. Ethics and good works do not save us, but rather are the expression of the transforming work of the Spirit within us.

Faith and works.  Not faith without works nor works without faith.  Our deeds reveal our faith, and our faith comes from following our Lord. Salvation by God’s grace runs through sanctification by faithfully Jesus and arrives at deeds we are empowered to do by the Holy Spirit.

This is the seventh installment in Maxie’s series on Core Convictions. You can find the first six articles here, here, here, here, here, and here.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed, ” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way faith by itself if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

One point of theology and faith where there is often tension is the relationship of faith and works. Hans Küng, the brilliant Roman Catholic German theologian, spoke a corrective word about this issue. “Whoever preaches one half the gospel is no less a heretic than the person who preaches the other half of the gospel.”

An ongoing temptation of most preachers is to preach one half of the gospel. Most of the time, it is not a matter of whether we believe one half more than the other; it’s what we feel is the need of the people to whom we preach. There is a narrow line we walk, preaching a gospel of faith alone, or one in which works are essential for being Christian.

James is an unequivocal champion of works. He minces no words. Our theme Scripture (James 2:14-17) is the primary emphasis of James’s entire Epistle. We must be doers of the word and not hearers only. This is what has caused so many problems for this epistle through the years. Martin Luther called it a “right strawy epistle,” for he was calling his church back to the core of the gospel: justification by grace through faith. “Faith alone” was Luther’s battle cry, and he felt that James was undercutting that core of the gospel by contending that salvation also had to do with works.

The battle has raged ever since. The need is to keep the perspective that Jesus comes to us as both Savior and Lord. We don’t have to keep those separate, believing that Jesus first comes to us as Savior, offering us eternal salvation; and later comes to us as Lord, with a call to surrender ourselves to him, to clean up our lives, and to follow him as disciples.

Again, it is helpful to think of justifying and sanctifying grace. Jesus is not Savior now and Lord later. He comes to us as one, Savior and Lord at the same time. In full salvation, we surrender to Christ as Savior and Lord and are regenerated by his grace. As we explored earlier in this study, the metaphor of a house is instructive. Justifying grace is the door, and sanctifying grace is all the rooms in which we live as we grow as disciples in holiness.

“Faith alone,” or works, in extreme expression, is not only limited, but is a distortion of the gospel. Some extremists insist you can be a Christian without being a follower of Jesus. They are so committed to preserving the gospel of “faith alone” that they separate the offices of Christ. They say that Christ comes to the sinner only as Savior and makes no claims of Lordship. It is only after you become Christian that the lordship of Christ has any claim upon your life. That understanding encourages a person to claim Jesus as Savior by simple intellectual affirmation, by saying yes in his mind to four spiritual laws,” or to believe a particular “plan’ of salvation, and defer until later, or never, the claims of Christ in the transformation of life. This leads people to believe that their behavior has no relationship to their spiritual status. Thus, there is nothing different between these Christians in terms of the way they live their lives in the world and those who are not Christian.

Jesus, Savior and Lord, is the door to both eternal life and a life which makes a difference for the Kingdom here and now. Do your neighbors see the fruit of both in your life?

This is the fifth installment in Maxie’s series on Core Convictions.  You can find the first four articles here, here, here and here.

In daily conversation of Christians from different denominational expressions, it’s difficult to talk long about salvation before someone raises a question or makes a claim about “falling from grace.” The term is used when discussing eternal security (what some Christians today refer to when they say, “Once saved, always saved”). Let’s consider the issue. 

Peter’s word is good to keep in mind:

Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. (1 Peter 4:1-3)

John Wesley’s View: Sin and God’s Favor

Though our salvation is certain, sin remains in our life. We practice Christian devotion and discipline to make sure that though sin remains, it no longer reigns. John Wesley was clear about it and spoke succinctly: “A person may be in God’s favour though he feels sin; but not if he yields to it. Having sin does not forfeit the favour of God; giving way to sin does. Though the flesh in you ‘lust against the Spirit’ you may still be a child of God; but if you ‘walk after the flesh,’ you are a child of the devil.”

It is not a question of whether God is able to keep us from falling; of course, he is able! Whether we can or can’t fall is not as important as whether we do or don’t. Following Peter’s advice is essential. We are to arm [ourselves] with the same attitude as Christ. We have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do (1 Peter 4:1,3). We must be vigilant in responding to God’s grace, allowing the Holy Spirit to sensitize our consciences and make us aware of the new sins that spring up in our lives.

The case is clear. We may “fall from grace” and forfeit our justification, but we don’t have to. We won’t, provided we stay in relationship with Christ. Abiding in Christ, we are kept from allowing temptation to move us into intentional sin.

One preacher argued it this way: “It is our responsibility to be saved, but it is not our responsibility to stay saved.”  Wrong, I say.  The responsible action we take in being saved–repenting and exercising faith–is the same action operative in staying saved.

Relying on God’s Grace and Spiritual Discipline

God is able to keep us from stumbling and to “present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24). We must continually exercise absolute dependency on him, even after we have been converted. We can do no good of ourselves anywhere along the way, so we must rely completely on the Spirit of God, which performs the good in us and through us. We must give ourselves to moral and spiritual discipline.

As Christians, we repent daily, and cast ourselves on God’s grace. We grow in that grace and move from the threshold of faith, our justification by God, toward the fullness of grace-our sanctification. And all along that journey, we can be kept from falling from grace, kept from forfeiting our justification by the glorious assurance of our salvation. Regenerative and sanctifying grace keep us so long as we keep them.

This is part III of Maxie’s series on Core Convictions, you can find his prior articles here and here

In his introductory comment to Wesley’s sermon “Christian Perfection,” Albert Outler wrote, “If, for Wesley, salvation was the total restoration of the deformed image of God in us, and if its fullness was the recovery of our negative power not to sin and our positive power to love God supremely, this denotes that furthest reach of grace and its triumphs in this life that Wesley chose to call ‘Christian Perfection.”

Wesley’s Call to Love

Wesley was avidly attentive to Scripture. I’m sure he wrestled with Jesus’ word,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)/p>

In my last article we reflected on the third portion of what is considered the “four alls” of Methodist Wesleyan thought: all can know they are saved. The third, along with the fourth are the most distinctive of the “alls” in Wesley’s understanding of salvation, all can be saved to the uttermost. For Wesley, this meant Christian perfection.

Christian Perfection and Sanctification

Christian perfection is another term for sanctification, which is a core conviction of the Methodist Wesleyan way.  We accept justification and regeneration as ‘what God does for us’– our entry to our Christian way. Sanctification is what God does in us, to mature and fulfill the human potential according to his design for persons in Christ.

Wesley particularly emphasized this idea that “all can be saved to the uttermost”; he called it “going on to perfection,” drawing on Hebrews 6:1. By this he didn’t mean a sinless kind of moral perfection, nor a perfection in knowledge, but a perfection in love. The single identifying mark of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is love. Do we love God, and do we love one another? That’s the test of our sanctification.

Wesley’s Critique of Pharisaical Righteousness

Wesley was always deeply disturbed when he saw Christians who were more like the Pharisees– people who trusted in their own righteousness, and consequently, showed little evidence of the growing presence of God’s love in their lives. He spoke of this often.

I don’t know where I heard the story, and it could be apocryphal, but it illustrates Wesley’s passion about the issue: 

Once while he was preaching, he noticed a lady in the congregation who was known for her critical attitudes toward others. All through the service she stared at his tie, with a frown on her face. At the end of the service, she came up to him and said very sharply, “Mr. Wesley, the strings on your bow tie are much too long. It offends me.” Wesley immediately asked for a pair of scissors, and when someone handed them to him, he gave them to the woman and said, “Then by all means, trim it to your satisfaction.” She did so, clipping off an inch or so from each side. “Are you sure they’re all right now?” he asked, and she replied, “Yes, that’s much better:”

“Then.” Wesley said, “let me have the scissors for a moment, for I’m sure you won’t mind a bit of correction either. I do not wish to be cruel, madam, but your tongue offends me; it is too long. Please stick it out so that I may trim some of it off.” 

Needless to say, this critic got the point.

The Role of Believers in Sanctification

The work of the Holy Spirit is transformative. We can better understand the full impact of that transformation by reflecting on the distinction between God’s action for the sinner–pardon and justification–and God’s action in the pardoned sinner’s heart–restoration of the broken image of God and of the human power to avoid and resist intentional sin. Again, Albert Outler expresses it clearly: “We have no part in our justification before God, save the passive act of accepting and trusting the merits of Christ. But we have a crucial part to play in the further business of ‘growing up into Christ, into the stature of the perfect man.’” 

In the dynamic process of sanctification, “Christian perfection,” we work out in fact what is already true in principle. In justification, our position in relation to God is that we are new persons; now, in sanctification, our condition, the actual life we live, is brought into harmony with our position.

In the questions Jesus was often asked, two stand out. A young man of great wealth asked him, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). In another setting an expert of the law questioned, “Teacher, which one was the greatest commandment in the Law?”

The first question, often phrased “What must I do to be saved?” has to do with how we get into the life Christ offers us. Justification is the heart of the answer. The second has to do with sanctification, living the life we have been saved to live. 

The Greatest Commandment: Love God with All Your Heart

It is difficult to believe the person who inquired about the “greatest commandment” was sincere. The answer would have been “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)  It is the first Scripture that every Jewish child commits to memory. Worship for Jews begins with this affirmation. It is the phrase that the devout Jew wore on a leather bracelet when he went to prayers. When Jesus quoted this phrase as the greatest commandment, the Jews were nodding their heads in agreement. They knew these words meant that we must give our total love to God.

The burden of Scripture is that the God we are called to love with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength loves us to the point of sacrificing his Son for us. There is a God, and he is a loving God.

Jesus’s answer expresses the nutshell of his teaching. Wesley had only words, but he used them as best he could. He talked about loving God with an undivided heart and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Though Jesus named love of God and love of neighbor as two commandments, there is no division of the two. Love of God is necessarily named first because we can’t truly love God without loving our neighbor. The ongoing dynamic of our faith expression is keeping the two together.

Inward and Outward Holiness

Wesley spoke of “inward holiness,” that is, love of God and the assurance of God’s love of us. And he spoke of “outward holiness,” that is, love of neighbor and deeds of kindness. But never was it personal alone. In his extravagant way of saying things, Wesley made clear the unity of faith and action: “Christianity is essentially a social religion; and that to turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it.”

Though we must stay keenly aware of the connection between holiness and social justice, we do not equate the two. What Wesley meant by social holiness was that we can’t grow in holiness apart from community. That’s the reason the class meeting and accountability was so important; other people are essential for our growing in holiness.

However, we must also be just as clear, holiness and becoming Christlike entail concern about social injustice and the systems and structures that threaten human life and community. Dag Hammarskjöld echoed this when he said, “The road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”11

The Challenge of Holiness in Today’s World

We need a recovery of holiness, for holiness, by its very nature, is an enemy of the relativism that is the operative dynamic of our culture. Francis Schaeffer has spoken a challenging word on his point: “If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, then something is profoundly wrong… Just as what we may call holiness without love is not God’s kind of holiness, so also what we call love without holiness…is not God’s kind of love.”