Much Ado About Grace

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend about the common preaching that faith with works is the way to get saved in an effort to encourage good behaviour from new converts. This is wrong. For one, you are actually saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone. There are so many passages that support this. Even the famous John 3:16 highlights that:

“whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Works do not save, no matter how good you think you are. Our righteousness is filthy rags anyway (Isaiah 64:6). The fact that we are righteous is purely through grace.

I understand that this might be a tough pill for some people to swallow, it was tough for me because of how I was taught about Christianity when I was younger. However, on 06.01.2019, I heard a message that changed my life. The person preaching was talking about how we get saved and stay saved. If you read my salvation story, you’d know that I struggled with the thought of Jesus leaving me. I was so unsure of my salvation that I couldn’t sing the hymn, ‘Blessed Assurance’ with my full chest. So, I was extremely interested in knowing how I could stay saved. On how we get saved, the person preaching quoted Romans 10:9-10 (NLT):

If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.

I was alright with this point because I knew that it was only faith in Jesus that could save me. But I was unsure of how I could stay saved. On this point, he quoted Colossians 2:6 (NLT)

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him.

To be honest, I was afraid he was quoting the verse out of context. In fact, I was suspicious of his whole message. I thought, “Surely, we can’t just continue being saved without doing anything!” So, when I got home, I questioned God about it. Here’s an excerpt of my conversation with God in my journal:

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“Basically, we accepted You by believing and confessing, therefore we continue in You by believing and confessing, so he explained. So, I have a problem with this because it might seem like he is endorsing people to live their lives anyway they want to as long as they have believed and confessed. But I actually need to read Paul’s letters and the Gospels again because basically what I’ve read in Colossians 2 can be classed as hyper-grace. It’s just kind of different because here Paul is talking about circumcision and food.

Well, I don’t know. I struggle with the fact that You don’t require performance for us to be with You. I understand it a bit; and as he was preaching I remembered abide, I remembered the sabbath day and how You were so serious about a day of rest and I remembered the story of Mary and Martha. It’s pride that’s making me cling on to this fallacy that I need to work.

But Your word says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling, let me find it. It’s in Philippians 2:12. Funny that the next verse says that it is You that works in us to desire and gives us power to do what pleases You. It’s funny that these verses are together because it would seem that You are asking us to work out our salvation and the next verse You tell us that it’s not our work but Your work. So, God, what is our work? I feel like I already know the answer to this and this verse dropped in my mind: Romans 12:1-2 (NLT)

‘And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.’

I was about to ask what do You find acceptable and when I started reading verse 2, I saw my answer. I should not copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let You transform me into a new person by changing the way I think. It should be noted that You do all the work here (Like You don’t know already and You’re not trying to teach me, lol), all I do is to give myself.

Our work is to surrender, to allow.”

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I can imagine someone asking, what about James 2:26?

Well, I think that the whole faith without works message has been preached out of context so many times. Read James 2:14-26 to get the full picture that James was talking about. He spoke about works being an evidence of the faith you claim to have. Obviously, Jesus does not leave us the same way we came. We will definitely be transformed. However, it is not works that transform.

As already highlighted in my conversation with God above, it is through surrender we get transformed. James uses Abraham as one of his examples for his faith without works message. He talks about how Abraham’s action of taking Isaac to be sacrificed showed that he was justified. It should be noted that God actually declared Abraham as righteous because of his faith (Genesis 15:6) way before Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed (Genesis 22). In fact, James said of Abraham in James 2:22 (AMP):

You see that [his] faith was working together with his works, and as a result of the works, his faith was completed [reaching its maturity when he expressed his faith through obedience].

Basically, these works show that our faith is mature. God took Abraham through a lot of transformation before he got to the point of being able to sacrifice his own son; this same Abraham that didn’t trust God enough to wait for his promised child and slept with Hagar. And this was all after God declared him to be righteous.

And how does one become transformed/mature? Through faith and surrender. When we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit who lives in us, step by step we transform into what God wants us to be and we start bearing fruit of this (works). So, don’t be worried about showing fruits or not. Jesus said that we should abide in him and then we will bear fruit (John 15:4-5).