Faith Without Works
There is a saying that goes “knowledge is power”. That is basically saying that the more you know, the better off you will be. This is true, since the more things you know, the more options you will have.
Of course, you can’t get by with just knowledge. You can’t go to school all your life, learning more and more, and expect to get ahead in life. Your debt will continue to increase, and with no income coming in, there won’t be much you can do.
For the knowledge to actually be valuable and helpful you need to use it. For example, using the knowledge you have in acquiring and performing well at a job can help solve the debt issue. Knowledge may be power, but unless it is used it is a waste.
Another example is with physical strength and self defence. A person can be very strong and powerful, but if that person doesn’t know how to block or throw a punch what good is that strength?
We know it is good to use our gifts and not waste them by doing nothing with them. In Matt. 25:14-30, we see that those who used the talents were rewarded and the one who did nothing was punished.
It would make sense for the same thing to hold true for faith. Some people of the world teach that merely believing is enough. For example, if you only believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God you will be saved. However, this would not only contradict the Bible, but also the logic in the pattern that we have been seeing.
If we have knowledge but don’t use it we won’t get a job. If we have strength and someone tries to rob us and we don’t use it then we lose out. When the servant didn’t use the talent in Jesus’ parable, he was punished. From these examples, it would make sense that if we have faith and don’t do anything, we will lose out.
We can see in James 2:14-26 that if we do not act upon our faith we do not truly have faith. By acting we can show our faith; we show that we have faith. We cannot physically see faith, but through actions we can see that it is there, like it says in verse 18, “[…] I will show you my faith by my works.” If we have faith then we will have acts of faith, for faith without works is dead (v. 26)!
-- John Thrower Jr.