Core Convictions VII: Not By Faith Alone by Maxie Dunnam

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?