Question:  Dear Greg,

            I’m a faithful reader of the Plain Truth Magazine and thoroughly enjoy it.  However, I either have missed it, or do you never stress works as part of salvation?  Jesus told people that he ministered to that they should bring forth fruit meet for repentance.  In James we are told that faith without works is dead.  We are told to strive to be holy, and without holiness no one will see the Lord.

            Churches of today don’t stress works as part of salvation and this worries me.  I don’t want to be as one of the foolish virgins and be found wanting when the Lord comes, but I see all around me what might be called lukewarm Christians.  Christ says he will spew them out of his mouth.  Am I being judgmental?  I hope not, but this bothers me, for I feel that my works are as important as my faith.

            Please comment on this.

            Mattie

Answer:  Dear Mattie,

            Great question!  And “yes” we do stress works as part of salvation – and “no”, we don’t stress works as part of salvation.

            The question is simply – whose works?  Where do they come from?  Who gets the credit?  Who produces the works?

            The Bible tells us, as you note, that Christians will behave as Christ did – not perfectly, but since Christ lives in authentic Christians (Gal. 2:20), Christians will bring forth fruit for repentance, they will strive to be holy, and they will overcome.  But all of these works will come because of Christ who lives in us, not because of ourselves.  To God be the glory, great things he has done!  Salvation is by grace alone – by faith our own will never earns or merits anything before God that amounts to salvation.  Only God can save.  But he saves us so that we might bring forth fruit.

            We are not saved BY our works – God saves us FOR works – that we might become his workmanship (see Ephesians 2:8-10).  We are like a fruit tree that “produces” fruit – but it is not we, but the Creator who produces that fruit.  We of course have a part to play – we are a tree – but “only God can make a tree”.  Not any stick of wood can decide to plant itself into the ground and become an apple or peach tree.  God does that.  Only God.  The tree is simply there because of God, and brings forth because of what God does in it.

            Of course, the analogy breaks down in that we are human – and as Paul tells us in Romans 7, we have a war going on within us – between the “old man” of sin and of the flesh, and the “new man” of Christ, of the Spirit.  In terms of salvation, the good that we eventually do in our lives is not of us or from us – it is from God.  Our part is to yield to God, to allow ourselves to be used as his tool, to reflect the light of Jesus – not to generate it.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht