Articles
How do Works “Work”?
All non-Calvinists would agree that our obedience to God plays a vital role in our relationship with Him. But exactly what role that is is a matter of some uncertainty. An extreme Calvinist says there is nothing a person can do to be saved. A believer’s works are irrelevant, for God saves him and keeps him in fellowship no matter what he wants or does. An extreme legalist exaggerates the role of works to the degree that confidence in God’s approval is nullified. He recognizes that forgiveness is a gift of God, but he places himself under such rigorous conditions of receiving it that he has no assurance of an intact relationship with Him.
Non-Calvinists would agree that God provided salvation for us apart from our works (cf. Tit 3:3-7; Eph 2:8-10). We did not earn the sacrifice of Christ by works; we had no input in the plan for our redemption. God provided it wholly by His own grace and mercy. But what about after our initial redemption? Are we then on some kind of quasi-merit system where our works are now the main foundation of our heavenly hope?
We don’t have the space here to explore this idea fully, but I want to consider it from a particular angle: Did Jesus merit or earn anything from God by His moral perfection? Jesus’ sinlessness is affirmed by His own words and the testimony of inspired writers (Jn 8:29; Heb 4:15). To put it another way, did Jesus achieve a certain status before the Father by healing, teaching, loving, forgiving, praying, observing feasts, etc., or were these things merely the outgrowth of who He was? In His case, nothing Jesus did was to “make up” for any deficiency or “pay for” any sin. He came into the world in fellowship with God, exhibited character and behavior that God always approved of, and died in a state of acceptance because there was nothing – sin – to estrange Him from the Father. Jesus simply acted consistently with Himself, and in so doing He did what God expects of anyone – He lived consistently with the nature and laws of God. This didn’t earn anything; it was merely what any of us owe to God.
Our case, however, is different, for when we sin we create a state of separation from God (Eph 2:1-3). Our very first sin creates a “negative balance” (debt) that can never be repaid no matter how many or what kind of works we do. Works of any kind or volume do not negate sins; only atonement by Jesus’ blood accomplishes that. The question is: How do I access or appropriate that sacrifice? How can I secure the forgiveness which was offered to all the world for myself personally?
The short answer to that is “faith”: “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed … even the righteousness of God which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe … whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith … that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is the boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law ” (see full citation, Rom 3:21-28).
Jesus’ faith in His Father was not the same kind of faith as ours, for Jesus existed with the Father before becoming incarnate (Jn 1:1; 6:46; 17:5). He knew the Father from personal experience. He did, however, trust that the Father would care for Him in every respect. But, again, His faith was not “reestablished” or a pathway back to God from alienation. It was simply the outgrowth of the relationship He had always maintained with the Father because they were of one nature and accord.
By contrast, we must be taught to have faith in God, and specifically trust in the sacrifice of Jesus. We not only sever our fellowship with God, we become imprinted with sinful habits and responses. We must learn that we have broken divine fellowship by our own choice; that no “performance” can of its own heal the breach. But when we grasp who God is, what our disobedience has wrought, and what terrible price He has paid to restore us, the resultant submission and desire to live in harmony with Him is called “faith.” We learn about the Father what Jesus has known all along.
And that faith that is created within us by the word (Rom 10:17) carries with it the feature of Jesus’ own life: it seeks to be obedient to God , respectful of Him, transformed into His own character. In other words, our faith must be responsive, compliant, submissive … obedient: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead … You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only” (Jas 2:17, 24). The “faith only” James speaks of is an intellectual recognition only, characteristic of demons (2:19), and oral declarations that have no action (2:14-16). Must it be perfectly obedient? How can that be, since we have already forfeited a meritorious standing before God by sin? Perfect anything is out of the equation, except the perfect sacrifice that takes away our sins.
