Faith & Works

The age old debate of faith vs works:

The Reformers basically knee-jerked everything back to faith on Christ alone
and rightfully so.. and their definitions were quite carefully made

Today however it has become quite common to hear preaching that faith involves doing nothing... and the minute words like 'discipline' and 'duty' come up - that is legalism

Now faith always leads to obedience.. because faith while in itself is not a 'thing' - it is a trusting, a knowledge-based, Word-based conviction that results in the newly-enabled 'Yes' to the divine invitation of following Christ

So then faith is doing EXACTLY what the object of faith proclaims - that is doing whatever Jesus tells us to do - the more we do it, the more faith we have - similarly the less we do, the less faith we have. Now this is not a discussion about being born again.

Faith is to rest in Who our Father in heaven is and to trust that by doing everything He says, everything will be alright, everything will be taken care of, everything will inevitably be good - what He does not say is that everything will be easy or pleasant - but He does say everything will be good

Now to do the 'works of the law' or 'dead works' is to oppose faith - it is to resent Christ - it is to say I want to go my own way - I want to leave Eden and create my own life for myself - inevitably resulting in death

Next - what is so bad about works?
Of course first and foremost it denies Christ and all He does - it undermines who God is
But what about this - the people so often accused of doing works are the Pharisees and Israelites like them - they act without knowledge - not because they do not know but rather they suppress the truth by being disobedient

Why does Jesus hate this?
To do one's own works to gain salvation is actually playing the part of the prostitute - the adulteress
We act like sin acts - we attempt to seduce - to dress ourselves up in a hypocritical show of the things we think God will like in order to arm twist Him to do the things we want to do ourselves
This is really powerplay - we desire to consume God - like sin does with us - we become sin itself - we desire to be God ourselves

In all this God's appropriate response is the same as He tells Cain - dominate and destroy - He has no time for the adulterer - she must be cast away and burned - she has no love for Him - she hates Him and only uses Him to achieve her own selfish desires

This is all forms of idolatry and moralism - it is not the poor child desperately seeking His Father's love in all the wrong places - it is the harlot seeking wealth and possessions from anyone and anything she can get it from - whatever the abuse that comes with it. Demons love this stuff - they get a real rush out of it - seeing us flaunt our nakedness before them and flattering them by doing the things they love to see - then abusing us for it - teasing us with the things we were asking for as well as degrading us further - before finally disposing us like the street trash we are...

Forget all this - let us come to the Living God for Who He is and what He has done - let us trust Him and do what He says - this is faith... let us seek Him with all our heart and seek His will for He is good and worthy to be followed - He has proven it