September 17, 2016 PROVE YOURSELF
James1:22, 25: “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does.”
The book of James makes it abundantly clear that faith and works are connected, and if we misunderstand that truth, we are in error. There is a current teaching to today that places the emphasis on grace, but fails to point out that an accurate understanding of grace results in works. We must understand however that only through the grace of God that He extended to us by sacrificing His Son could we ever come to know Him; we stood in great need of the grace of God. Perhaps because of information overload, or whatever the reason, it seems that in our culture, we are content just to hear-and not act. We can hear a great message or listen to a great sermon, and then go our way, not impacted by what we heard. The sobering truth in the scripture above is that if we are not a ‘doer of the word’, then we are deceiving ourselves! As someone said in a song, we may be “moved by what we heard, but not changed.” Our salvation is much more than a ticket to heaven; our salvation is about being transformed into His image-and that process is to start at our salvation. As we are being transformed into His image, we are becoming more and more like Jesus in thought, word and deed. Christianity is not just about having the right theology or what one professes to believe, but about being disciples of Jesus-and the goal of the disciple is to become like their discipler. Works-putting the word into action-are necessary because the works we are called to do give a clear, tangible picture of what our God is like, and God is good. The scriptures tell us that Jesus went about doing good (Acts 10:38) and the scriptures tell us that we are to do the same, as we see in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” It is important to understand that it’s not about just finding something ‘good’ to do, as anyone could do that, but it’s about understanding that God has already prepared good works for us to do and the Holy Spirit will let us know what those works are. At the same time, we should live and act out of a heart that God has made ‘good’, so we do not have to wait for a voice from heaven before we engage in a good work-being about good works should be our nature
James 2:20: “But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?”
Blessings,
Buddy
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