FAITH OR WORKS?

'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 effort is the only thing will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing that can save you from despair at this point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.148.

FAITH & WORKS

'Faith is not opposed to knowledge. It is opposed to sight. And grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning.'

Dallas Willard, Hearing God, p.188.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS LIKE SAILING

'Life with God is not like a motorbike, where we are in control of the power and direction. But neither is it like a raft, where we just sit back and are carried along. It's like sailing. While we can't control the most important thing - the wind that makes us move - that doesn't mean there is nothing left for us to do. We have to draw the sail to catch the wind. We must labor to be brought near.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.215. 

THE SILVER BULLET OF UNION WITH CHRIST?

'The church is in desperate need of a way to express the grace of the gospel and the demand of the gospel in a way that enhances both without canceling either. If you have ever asked these questions, union with Christ is your answer.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.93. 

TRUE SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE

'Divine knowledge fills a man full of spiritual activity; it will make a man work as if he would be saved by his works, and yet it will make a man believe he is only saved upon the account of free grace.'

Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth, p.178.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH NOT WORKS

'The reason we can speak of justification/ rectification by faith, not by works, is that faith is not a work.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.331.

FAITH & WORKS

'Faith alone justifies but a justified person with faith alone would be a monstrosity which never exists in the kingdom of grace. Faith works itself out through love (cf.Gal. 5:6). And faith without works is dead (cf.James  2:17-20).' 

John Murray, Redemption, p.124. 

ETHICS TODAY

'One of the ironies in the story of Western theology during my lifetime has been the way in which the"liberal" tradition, which used to pride itself above all on clear, rational thinking, has quietly been taken over by emotivism, not least in the area of ethics. Meanwhile, the "conservative" tradition, which used to pride itself on carefully articulated ethical as well as doctrinal stances, has often been so worried about the danger of "work-righteousness" that it has turned a blind eye to the nature of moral understanding and effort upon which Paul is doing his best to insist, and has effectively ruled out virtue before it begins, lest people should suppose themselves to be contributing to their own salvation. No wonder that, when we try to debate key issues, we find ourselves in a dialogue of the deaf.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.138.  

OBEYING THE LAW

'If people in our Christian fellowships today were to announce that they had decided to keep God's law, we would probably be sceptical and alarmed. We would probably take them aside for some counselling and possibly alert other responsible people in the group to keep an eye on them. We would be sure nothing good would come of it. We know that one is not saved by keeping the law and can think of no other reason one should try to do it. 

This leaves us caught in a strange inversion of the work of the Judaizing teachers who digged the footsteps of Paul in New Testament days. As they wanted to add obedience to ritual law to faith in Christ, we want to subtract moral law from faith in Christ. How to combine faith with obedience is surely the essential task of the church...'

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.157.

OBEDIENCE MATTERS

'Let us learn from the divine principle lived fully and perfectly in Jesus's life that God will not fail to honor those who honor him, that he will exalt those who are humble, that he will reward obedience in ways beyond our comprehension. Oh, how our obedience matters! So, how wrong it is of us to appeal to our obedience as the basis for our right standing before God. If we could just get Ephesians 2:8-10 (i.e., not just vv.8-9) all together, we would be in such better shape as Christian people. Yes, we are saved by grace, through faith, fully and completely apart from works. But our salvation apart from works breeds a life filled with good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. May God grant us longing of heart to live more fully as Jesus lived. May we see that just as his relentless and perfect obedience, rendered in the power of the Spirit and in faith, brought him the full approval of his Father and the reward of his exaltation, so our obedience, rendered in the power of the Spirit and in faith, likewise will be seen and rewarded by our gracious and benevolent God. Let us learn from Jesus that obedience matters.'

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.146.   

GRACE

'There is a story from the American Civil War of a Northerner who bought a young slave girl at a slave auction. As they left the auction, the man turned to the girl and said, "You're free!"

She turned to him in amazement. "You mean I'm free to do whatever I want?"

"Yes," he said.

"And to say whatever I want to say?"

"Yes, anything."

"And to be whatever I want to be?"

"Yes!"

"And even go wherever I want to go?"

"Yes!" He laughed. "You're free to go wherever you'd like!"

She looked at him intently and replied, "Then I will go with you."' 

Sally Lloyd-Jones, Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, p.118. 

WORKS

'To fret about the quality of our love is to miss the point. Yes, we examine ourselves, confess our failings and pray for grace to offer the best. But it will never be good enough, unless with all its flaws it is handed over and taken up into his love for the Father. Foolishly we rummage through what Yeats called the "rag and bone shop" of our hearts to find a love that is pure, untouched by self-interest or pretense. It is an endless and futile search, compunded by complexity the more rigorously it is pursued. Among the things we give up, among the things we hand over, is that futile search.'

Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p.235.

 

GRACE

'We are not saved by the love we exercise, but by the love we trust.'

PT Forsyth in Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiriutual Life, p.213.

CHRISTIANITY

'The human conscience is very deeply disorientated in its conviction that we must have works and sanctification to recommend ourselves to God. We must carry out very deliberate replacement of this misunderstanding with the awareness that God simply wants honesty, openness and a trusting reliance on Christ our Savior.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.114.

MOTIVATION

'We should not avoid good actions because of the infirmities attending them. Christ looks more at the good in them which he means to cherish than the ill in them which he means to abolish.'

Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, p.50.

FAITH & WORKS

'The tree must be first, and then the fruit. For the apples make not the tree, but the tree makes the apples. So faith first makes the person, who afterwards brings forth works.'

Martin Luther in John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.220.

FAITH OR WORKS?

'Are we considered worthy to enter the kingdom because of faith in Christ's death or because of our persevering good works? Are we saved by faith in Christ plus good works? An analogy might help explain.

You must pay money in order to obtain entry to a professional football game. In order to enter the stadium, however, you must present a ticket at the gate. Is it the money that provides access to the game or the ticket? Both! But are the money and the ticket equal "causes" that get you in? Ultimately, the money paid is what really gets you in, but you must have the ticket as evidence that you really paid the price for the game. Likewise, true Christians are those on behalf of whom Christ has paid the penalty of sin, but they must have the badge of good works as evidence that Christ paid their purchase price in order to be considered worthy of passing through the final judgment and entering the kingdom. Therefore, both faith in Christ and human good works are absolutely necessary for being considered worthy of salvation, but the former is the ultimate cause of the latter. At the last judgment people will not be able to say that they have benefitted from Christ's redemptive work only because they have believed; they will have to show evidence of their belief through their good works (Mt 7:21).'

GK Beale, 1-2 Thessalonians (The IVP New Testament Commentary Series), p.184.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH

'...justification by faith. Many religions teach that if you live as you ought, then God will accept and bless you. But Paul taught that if you receive God's acceptance and blessing as a free gift through Jesus Christ, then you can and will live as you ought.'

Timothy Keller, Generous Justice, p.97.

OBEDIENCE & BELIEF

'The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. "Only those who believe obey" is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and "only those who obey believe" is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient who believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation.'

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p.25.

GOOD WORKS

'Our mind-set toward our own good works must always be: These works depend on God being totally for us. That's what the blood and righteousness of Christ have secured and guaranteed forever. Therefore, we must resist every tendency to think of our works as establishing or securing the fact that God is for us forever. It is always the other way around. Because he is for us, he sustains our faith. And through that faith-sustaining work, the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of love.'

John Piper, The Future of Justification, p.186.