I recently received this question:
So in the bible it says that faith without works is dead. But you can’t really do works without faith. And doesn’t God care more about our heart than our works?
Here is my attempt to wrestle with what faith means and how works becomes an opportunity and a gift from God in which we experience faith and ultimately a lifelong walk with God.
1. Faith without works is dead.
Bible declares it, it is a proposition, it is fact and it is truth, unlike a parable or a psalm or a narrative, this is a direct statement. Therefore, this will be the measuring stick where we align our understanding of faith and works/laws.
2. One cannot do works without faith.
One must examine the definition of faith and works to bring a fuller understanding to this assertion. For our discussion sake, I will assume that by works, we mean “good” works, the process of bring about what is good and beneficial to oneself and others.
In the case of faith, there can be more complexity. For example, if faith is a sense of self awareness, a sense of morality, then the above assertion stands true, because one cannot bring about what one does not have. Just as a battery can only power a device with whatever energy is stored inside of it, a person can only attempt to do works with whatever sense of goodness is stored in him or her. In that particular case, God has created all of us to be good, but sin corrupted us. What we have, Christian or not, is a distorted goodness that needs constant transformation to Christlikeness. It is not hard to observe that there are non-Christians who are more honest or loving than some of the Christians we know, regardless of how imperfect it might be.
However, I describe faith as a byproduct of being with Jesus. Faith is not the sole mean of which you reach God, it is also not the end where you arrive at. Christian walk is in of itself a walk with God, a life long experience of the presence of God, and through which you recognize His faith in you, and there, your faith in Him grows. If that is the case, if faith is a byproduct of walking with Jesus, enabled by His faithfulness to us, then one must recognize the need and the necessity to walk with Him. The question then, is, what does it mean to walk with Him?
Micah6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice,
and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God.
Here are the parallels, walking with God means humility, walking with God means love kindness, and do justice. Sounds like works don’t they? Does that mean God really just care about the works we do? The laws we obey? On the surface, these sound like a disagreement to the third assertion
3. God cares more about our heart than our works
There are couple things we need to examine about God and works. First question, does God need our works? If He is indeed God, by definition, He is all together self-sufficient and all together perfect and complete. Therefore, God does not need our works. However, just because God doesn’t need our works, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t care about our works. But why should God care about our works? To this question, we have answered in the previous assertion, works brought us to the place of a lifelong walk with God. In addition, remember the account we learned in Genesis, God gifted Adam works to do, which provides responsibility and meaning to Adam’s life and brought forth identity to the animals.
By the above discussion, we can summarize that works is a gift from God, which brings forth meaning, purpose, and the very presence of God into our lives, in order that we may experience God’s ever present faithfulness and love so that we might know Him and know that He knows us intimately. It is in knowing God and being known by God, we have ultimate peace, wholeness and fulfillment in this life and life everlasting.
Therefore, God cares so much about our hearts and our relationship with Him that He graced us with works so that we might experience life and life to its fullest in abundance.
Therefore, God cares about our hearts, that is why He enabled us with His salvation works and gave us good works, not to burden us or ask us to meet His standards, but to bring us closer to Him.
ok, enough bragging, but that moment really got me thinking, why don’t I do that for my own spiritual battles?
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