Thank you. I needed those.
First of all, happy Father’s Day to the fathers with us this morning. It’s a little self-serving. It’s like wishing myself happy birthday. But I’m gonna do it anyway.
We are continuing our study in the book of James. If you would turn with me in your Bibles to chapter two, we’re going to finish off the chapter. I’m going to read our passage this morning, which is going to be verses 14, finishing the chapter at 26. This is God’s word:
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace. Be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. You want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works, and the scripture was fulfilled that said, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,’ and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith, apart from works, is dead.”
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you that we are in the house of the Lord this morning. How refreshing it is to see all these faces. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be acceptable in your presence. And, Lord, long after my words are forgotten, I pray that your word would be remembered. I pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
When I was in high school, my friends and I were looking for a way to make money for college, so we started a painting company. We called it Collegiate Paint and Stain, and our motto was, “Half the quality, half the cost.” We largely lived up to that motto. We would dramatically underbid professional painting services, show up with our paintbrushes, paint, a 40-foot ladder, a boombox, and no insurance.
One day, we opened a paint can, and on the underside, the splash of paint on the lid formed the perfect replica of Jimi Hendrix’s album cover, “Both Sides of the Sky.” We took it as a divine sign that our painting company was in for big things. We actually took that paint can, took a picture of it, and had it matted on shirts. I still have my sweatshirt somewhere. But as I have come to find out in my many years of marriage, my wife will abscond with my clothing, and I never see it again.
While I think that our painting quality was not half bad, it was our safety record that probably left the most to be desired. One summer, I remember falling off the top of our ladder at least twice. One of those times, I bailed out into a large pine tree and was so full of sap that no matter how hard I scraped or scrubbed, my friends could stick things to my head for weeks afterward.
One time, I remember working on a house with a severe slope in the back, too steep for our ladder. So I kid you not, we took our lightest friend, tied a rope around his waist, and dangled him from the roof, using the chimney as a winch. I guarantee you right now that Adam’s insides are churning. It was an absolute miracle that none of us were seriously injured.
We put in about half the work for half the pay, with half the necessary equipment and half the safety concern. While we were mercifully allowed to move on from that time unscathed, James is warning us this morning that that same attitude when it comes to living our lives in Christ has disastrous consequences.
As a brief refresher to the context that Wes had given us a few weeks back, the author does not specifically identify himself as such, but the letter is almost certainly written by Jesus’ younger half-brother, James. James was not a follower of Jesus during his earthly ministry, and those of us who are younger siblings in the room may be able to sympathize with James a little bit here, as it might be a challenge to accept that your older brother is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. You think you’re overshadowed by your older sibling.
But as Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus appeared to James post-resurrection and was later described as an apostle with Peter in Galatians 1 and a pillar of the church in Galatians 2. James became one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem, being singled out by Peter as a leader in Acts 12, and delivers the decisive speech to the Jerusalem council in A.D. 49, affirming the gospel message not just for Jews but for the Gentile world.
As Chuck Swindoll notes here, James most likely wrote his letter in A.D. 45 to 48. Such a significant event as the Jerusalem Council warranted comment from James as he was writing to a Jewish Christian audience. But James made no such mention of Gentile Christians at all, making an early date for the letter most likely. In fact, it was likely the first New Testament book written. James wrote this letter to Jewish Christians who had been dispersed and scattered throughout the Roman world, what’s come to be known as the diaspora.
After living through our own period of isolation during COVID, and perhaps even living here in Madison, most of us originally from somewhere else, living amongst a very pagan culture, maybe we can identify with James’ message. We can relate to the struggles and challenges of the time of James and his practical application. He starts out in the face of grumbling and complaining and persecution, and James says, “Count it all joy.” James knows how difficult that is and how when we are dispersed, we sometimes know the truth but struggle to live it out.
So he continues saying, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” When we are separated, it is much easier for worldly values to seep into our lives. This is why the Bible commands us in Hebrews 10:25—and I actually like the NIV here, don’t judge me—it says to not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
Our world is ordered through factions and divisions, mostly hierarchical, based upon politics, money, power, and influence. We are called to live different lives with different priorities. So as a leader in the early church, James encourages his audience that we are not to show partiality or favoritism inside the body of the church.
This brings us to the second half of chapter two and James’ defense of his call to unity by a common method of argumentation, preempting what he thought may be objections. The structure that I’m going to use for the passage this morning breaks down into five parts.
First, verse 14: thesis.
15 through 17: illustration.
18 and 19: an objection.
20 to 25: we look at two examples.
Then his closing axiom in verse 26.
This morning, we’re going to be unpacking some basic but very important theological truths and also reconciling passages of the Bible with each other. So I’m going to lay the groundwork as best I can before we dig into the passage. If you go to our church website and look up our statement of beliefs, you will find the following:
1. We believe that God wrote the Bible through men without error (2 Timothy 3:16), and that it is the ultimate authority in all of our lives as well as our journey together as Red Village Church.
2. The Bible is the dominant voice in all of our groups and gatherings. Therefore, the Bible is true and coherent. It does not teach us things that are false, and it does not contradict itself.
3. We believe that all human beings are born separated from God and are in need of being made right with God (Romans 3:23).
4. We believe that salvation comes to us by grace alone, God’s loving favor to us through faith alone, not by works, baptism, or any other religious act.
It will be imperative to have these biblical basic truths as a foundation for our time this morning:
1. The Bible is true and without contradiction.
2. Salvation comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone.
So before we get into James, turn in your Bibles with me real quick to the book of Romans, chapter three, and I’m going to start in verse 21.
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, meaning declared right with God, by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation or atoning sacrifice by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.”
So let’s go back to James 2 and read James’ thesis in verse 14.
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”
At first glance, it appears that James is contradicting Paul’s teaching. This is a natural question that many Christians have asked down through the centuries. As we just read in Romans, Paul is abundantly clear that salvation is through faith alone. Is James rebuking Paul in this passage?
Several commentators that I went through think Martin Luther may have thought so, and in every James commentary I reviewed, each author felt it important to spend considerable time on Luther and his beliefs, so I will briefly outline it. He famously called the Book of James that “strawy epistle.”
According to Dr. Josh Moody, that phrase comes from Luther’s preface to his translation of the New Testament in 1522. When he called James the “epistle of straw,” he didn’t only call James that; he also said the Book of Hebrews had lots of “strawy” elements to it as well. By the way, though, he never wanted to remove James from the Bible; it is always in his translation of the Bible.
But in Luther’s theology and its interpretation, what’s called his theory of canon, in his mind, while the whole Bible was inspired by God, some parts of the New Testament were more precious than others, had more pure gospel than others. Now, of course, we do not agree or accept any sort of theology of tiered inspiration. All scripture is God-breathed and inherently inerrant.
In fact, the great reformer John Calvin says it much better when he said, “We should not be surprised when James does not go over the same ground as the apostle Paul.” We will spend a considerable amount of our time this morning unpacking that there is no contradiction between James and Paul.
The great expositor Kent Hughes comments that Paul’s teaching about faith and works focuses on the time before conversion. James’ focus is after conversion. New Testament scholar Douglas Moo expands on this, saying, “Paul denies the efficacy to pre-conversion works, but James is pleading for the absolute necessity of post-conversion works.”
Paul is confronting a Roman and Galatian church being led astray by works-based salvation. James is confronting the dispersed Jewish Christian church that in his mind was growing apathetic, disconnected, and had begun to minimize the love and care absolutely necessary in the body of Christ.
James has an illustration that he starts with in verses 15 to 17, saying this:
“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
James takes us back to his earlier illustration from the beginning of chapter 1, but now takes it one step further. Not only are we not to show favoritism for the wealthy and powerful in the church, but the body of Christ must have a heart to meet actual, immediate physical needs.
I know we don’t want to imagine this right now in the middle of June, but it is Wisconsin, so it would be easy to imagine this.
It’s mid-January, and we’re coming off all the pageantry of Christmas—the Advent worship, the songs, the feasts, the presents. And it’s cold; it’s snowing. You show up on Sunday service, take off your coat, brush the snow off your hair, and you sit down. A little later, a man walks in that you don’t recognize. His long-sleeve T-shirt is soaked, as well as his old sneakers. After the service, you zip up your North Face jacket, look at him, and say, “Good to meet you. Thanks for coming today. I hope you find some food and a jacket for the cold.” And you head out.
Whether or not your greeting was sincere, what exactly have you done for this gentleman? James would say nothing.
William Temple was an English Anglican priest who served as the Bishop of Manchester in the 1920s. He described worship this way: “Worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination with the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
The point of James’ illustration is to show us that if the holiness of God and the propitiation of Christ has not quickened our conscience to see and meet the needs of those in our midst, then we don’t understand God’s truth at all. And we do not have a vibrant faith. We have a dead faith.
The author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace,” an English cleric, John Newton, in the 1780s, referred to it like this: “That little thing that looks like religion.” He went on to describe the individual who appears in the church at the summons of the bell, to repeat words because others do the same, to hear what is delivered from the pulpit with little attention or affection, unless something occurs that is suited to exalt self or to soothe conscience, and then to run with eagerness back out the door and into the world again.
Alistair Begg comments on that, saying, “It’s amazingly up to date, isn’t it? Here he is, hundreds of years before, saying, ‘The thing that I’m facing in my congregation is this: that I have a vast crowd of people who come. Many of them listen with very little attention and very little affection. The only way you can get them to listen,’ he says, ‘is if you will exalt their self-esteem or if you will seek to soothe their conscience.’ In other words, in 21st-century terms, if you will tell them that they’re great and that they’re just okay.”
James is saying that true faith requires compassion and action. There’s a story of an English preacher who happened across a friend whose horse had been accidentally killed. While the crowd of onlookers expressed empty words of sympathy, the preacher stepped forward and said to the loudest sympathizer, “I am sorry. Five pounds. How much are you sorry?” And then he passed a hat.
Profession requires action, or it is not real. Paul actually backs up James here after laying out his theological argument of grace alone in Romans 3:5. He balances it perfectly with chapter 6:6 through 8:6, verse 1:
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
Verses 12 and 13: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
Verses 15 and 16: “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”
To the Galatian church, Paul says in chapter 5: “For in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love.”
John Piper comments: “When Paul dealt with the abuse of his doctrine of justification by faith alone, he said, ‘It’s not added works like circumcision that will win God’s favor.’ What then? It is faith working through love. Notice very carefully what he says: What counts with God? Faith. But what kind of faith? Faith that works through love. He does not say that what counts with God is faith, plus a layer of loving works added to faith. He says that what counts with God is the kind of faith that by its nature produces love. But it is faith that gives us our right standing with God. The love that comes from it only shows that it is in fact real, living, justifying faith.”
Next, James is going to take us through an objection in verses 18 and 19:
“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder.”
James imagines another objection to his argument, and he employs a rather effective but fairly risky tactic. He uses sarcasm.
“Someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Think of two people talking in church, and one says to the other, ‘You like theology and are more astutely familiar with biblical faith. I, on the other hand, prefer to be more practical. I don’t get too concerned with theology; I just want to feed the poor. We are both Christians, just with a different emphasis.'”
James is challenging both perspectives as incomplete in mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis puts it this way: “Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions or faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary.”
A serious moral error is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point, and out of that faith in him, good actions must inevitably come.
James, in verse 19, ups his sarcasm: “You believe that God is one. You do? Well, even the demons believe and shudder.”
The start of verse 19 is another evidence that he is writing to Jewish Christians. Moody notes that the statement “God is one” is referring to what in Judaism is called the Shema, or Shemal, from Deuteronomy, chapter six, which is the creedal statement of the Old Testament faith: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
James says, “You believe that God is one. You do? Well, sort of a good job, champ. Even the demons believe and shudder.”
There is, of course, a type of faith that demons possess, for there is no demon on the planet who is an atheist. Demons have a high level of orthodox knowledge, hence the shudder.
When Jesus was teaching in the temple in Mark, chapter one, it says in verse 22: “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. He cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent and come out of him.’ And the unclean spirit convulsing in him cried out with a loud voice and came out of him.”
Did the demon know that Jesus was God? Absolutely. Was the demon saved? Certainly not.
James is warning an individual who says, “I have an orthodox view of scripture, and I think Jesus is the Son of God.” If that realization does not stir your affections first for God and through him, second for others, then your faith is no better than a demon’s. That is, your faith is dead. That is, it’s no faith at all.
Begg comments on this, saying, “There is no intellectual road to God in the sense that we can simply decide to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get there. No, we need God to do what only God can do, and that is to wake us up to our need of a savior, which is very different from being wakened up to an interest in a deity or being concerned to acknowledge that there is an existence of a superpower or that there is some great unmoved mover at the origin of the universe or that we’re prepared to give credence to the idea of a prophet who roamed the Galilean hillsides. We can do all of that and yet still have no notion of what it means to have our sins forgiven, to have our lives invaded by the expulsive power of a new affection, to be convinced within our hearts that God is who he claimed to be.”
There is great potential for a lonely faith. And a lonely faith, says James, is a dead faith. It is no good. It is dangerous. It is unhelpful. It will take a man or a woman eventually to hell. That is why it’s so significant.
On the other end, as Paul teaches, there is no works-based salvation either. The American church is full of performance artists with no understanding of their sinfulness, no appreciation for the cost of salvation. They go about their lives feeling good about their goodness. Men and women who see humble acts as their stage and hollow works as their presentation. When they look up to their Savior, they see themselves, and they will do so until the day the earth swallows them whole.
James continues in verses 20 to 25 with two examples:
“Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works, and the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,’ and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?”
James has brought forth two examples to complete his argument. His first is the father of Israel, Abraham.
“Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?”
If we are to understand James’ point in this sacrifice found in Genesis 22, we need to actually understand Genesis 22 in context. If you go back to Genesis 15, Abraham had returned from a military campaign. He had rescued Lot. He was old; battle had probably worn him down. He was exhausted. He had been wandering in the land for over a decade.
Abraham, in his discouragement, expresses his anguish to the Lord, saying, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”
But the Lord answered him, “This man will not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look into the heavens and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” And he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
It was then, hearing these words, that Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Old Testament scholar H.C. Leopold calls the word “believed” here the biggest word in the chapter and one of the greatest in the Old Testament, noting that it is the first time the word “believe” appears in the scriptures. The patriarch rested everything on God’s word and kept on resting in faith. As a result, he was declared righteous apart from works. This is the faith that Paul refers to in Romans 4 and Galatians 3.
Now we fast forward 30 years to Genesis 22. He and his wife Sarah have a son, Isaac. And now God speaks to Abraham, saying in verse 2, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall tell you.”
This easily has to be one of the most shocking commands ever given by God. Can you imagine the horror, the twisting of his stomach, the crushing of his soul that he must have felt as he traveled to the mountain, this man of well over 100 years of age, looking at his only son, the one who he was promised? Frankly, his obedience is shocking.
But you know the end of the story. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
Genesis 22 reveals this incredible obedience from Abraham and his heavenly approval. James argues Abraham was thus justified by works, for his righteousness was demonstrated for all to see. His works in offering Isaac gave testimony to the reality of the faith and righteousness that had immersed his life.
To dig into this a little more, Piper’s typical clear-headed thinking is going to help us close this example. He says, “So when James says in verse 21 that Abraham was justified by works, he has a meaning in mind different from Paul’s. When Paul denies that a man is justified by works, James is answering the question: Does the ongoing and final reckoning of Abraham’s righteousness depend on works as the necessary evidence of true and living faith?”
James’ answer to that question is yes, and Paul’s answer is also yes. In Galatians 5:6, “The only thing that counts is faith working through love.”
If you ask James and Paul, “How does an ungodly person get right with God and receive the righteousness of God in Christ as a gift?” Both James and Paul would answer with the words of James 2:23: “Trust God, trust Christ, and that faith alone will be reckoned as righteousness.”
But if you ask them, “Does justification as an ongoing and final right standing with God depend on the works of love?” Paul is going to say no. If by works you mean deeds done to show that you are deserving of God’s ongoing blessing, the point of Romans 4:4, and James is going to say yes. If by works you mean the fruit and evidence of faith, like Abraham’s obedience on Mount Moriah.
And Paul is going to say, “I agree with James based upon his definition.” And James is going to say, “I agree with Paul based on his definition.”
To put it yet another way, when Paul teaches in Romans 4:5 that we are justified by faith alone, he means the only thing that can unite us to Christ for righteousness is dependence on Christ. When James says in James 2:24 that we are justified by works, he means the faith which justifies does not remain alone. Those two positions are not contradictory.
Faith alone unites us to Christ for righteousness, and the faith that unites us to Christ for righteousness does not remain alone; it bears the fruit of love. It must do so, or it is dead, demon, useless faith that never justified.
The Lord Jesus says as much in the end of the Sermon on the Mount when he gives the parable of a tree and its fruit in Matthew 7, verse 15:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruit.”
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
To finish, James, probably arguing against someone thinking that Abraham is the father of the nation and one of the pinnacles of the Jewish faith is an unachievable, unrealistic example, goes to kind of the opposite end of the spectrum and highlights the works of Rahab the prostitute.
Her story is found in the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapter two. Joshua, the successor to Moses, had sent out spies into Jericho. The two men came to the house of Rahab, and when the king of Jericho inquired about the men, Rahab hid and protected them.
Later, she went to the two spies and said, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and to Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.”
Because of her faith in what she had heard and her actions of unbelievable courage that exposed her faith, she and her whole household were saved.
James finishes with a concluding axiom in verse 26:
“For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
Hughes comments: “Faith without action, even if embalmed in a beautifully profound creedal statement, is a decaying corpse.”
It is pleasantly ironic that of all people, Martin Luther, who relegated the book of James to a second-class, less precious scripture, would, in his preface to Romans, give us about the best defense of James’ argument: “Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. And so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises, it has already done them. It is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man. He gropes and looks about after faith and good works and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks with many words about faith and good works.”
How then shall we conclude?
Let us conclude with spiritual truth.
First, salvation is by faith alone. Scripture teaches us that we are dead in our trespasses. We have sinned, and that sin has separated us from a holy God. But God, in his mercy and grace, would give us the greatest gift he could give, the gift of himself. Jesus, who was fully God and fully man, would be crucified. And as he suffered and died on the cross, he was taking my sin. He was taking your sin onto himself so that forever we could be reconciled to God. Jesus rose from the dead so that we, too, could rise into new life.
Donald Bloesch said, “Our peace and confidence are to be found not in our empirical holiness, not in our progress towards perfection, but in the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ that covers our sinfulness and alone makes us acceptable before a holy God.”
Second, salvation is by a faith that does not remain alone. By its very nature, it cannot.
The glory of Christ is not only that he has justified us, but also our response to that kind of crazy, extravagant love can’t possibly keep us the same person we were yesterday. If you have real faith, you are saturated in Christ’s love, cloaked in his forgiveness, and emboldened to do good works in your world. And you must continue to do so.
Brothers and sisters, put your armor on. Go out into the world. Plant the flag of Christ doing good works where he has planted you, and for his glory.
Let’s pray.
Father, we are such novices at this. And, Lord, we humbly come to you and we ask for your forgiveness for ways that we don’t measure up. Father, we are incredibly thankful that salvation to you is from faith alone. And we humbly request that you instill in our hearts a yearning for us to take that faith and to translate it into love for those around us. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and for his glory. Amen.