Workless Faith?

What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of 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 does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. . . . Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

James 2:14–18, 21–24 RSV

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great London preacher, was once the guest of a man who made his virtues the chief topic of conversation; but his virtues were all of the negative kind, consisting of the bad things he had not done.

Disgusted with the man’s self-righteousness, Spurgeon said, “Why, man, you are simply a bundle of negatives. You don’t drink, you don’t gamble, you don’t swear. What in the name of goodness do you do?”

We know that, fundamentally, salvation is not of works. But in stressing this phase of the Gospel, too many have neglected to emphasize the fact that we will be judged more according to the good we have left undone than for the evil we have done.

Good works are not a means of salvation because we are saved by grace through faith. We are saved only on the grounds of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But, our good works are an evidence of salvation; and if we fail to do all the good we can, to all the people we can, at any time we can, by any means we can, we will be condemned at the judgment bar of God. Make no mistake about that.

Our Father and our God, activate my faith into good works that glorify You in the world. Let the world see, by my good works, that I have great faith in You, and let that knowledge lead them to You as well. Build up my faith, Lord, and thus extend my good works to everyone around me. In Christ. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).