Sheepish Works

Inevitably when the topic of justification arises and, in particular, the reformed doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone arises, people ask the same sort of questions.

“So, let me get this straight. Do you mean all I have to do is say I believe that Jesus died for my sins and I go to heaven?”

No. That’s not what we mean.

“So, as long as I trust in Jesus I can do whatever I want?”

Well, yes, but of course if you really trust in Jesus what you want will, increasingly, be what he wants because he will have come and made his home in you.

That leads up to the point I wanted to make in this very brief post. In these arguments my Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or confused evangelical friends will often ask:

“Well, what about James?”

James, as most of our readers know, explicitly states in the second chapter of his letter, that we are not justified by faith alone apart from works. How can we believe a doctrine named after a phenomenon that the apostle James tells us cannot happen?

I’ve written before about the relationship between James and Paul who, in Romans 3:28 with equal clarity, tells us we are justified apart from works. The long and short of it is that they are dealing with two very different ideas using the same word “faith”. James uses “faith” to refer to mere intellectual belief. Paul uses faith to refer to the utter surrender of the self and trust in Christ. Here’s a summary:

“When James writes that “faith alone” does not justify and that faith must be joined to works, he does not mean that the “pistis” of which Paul writes does not justify. He means the mere “belief” of demons cannot justify. Agreeing, intellectually, with the proposition that Jesus lived, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, is necessary but insufficient. Such “belief” cannot justify because, as the absence of good works makes manifest, there is no substance to it. Abraham’s faith, James observes, involved more than cognitive assent. His trust in God’s promise was such that he was willing to sacrifice his own son. He lived out what he professed with his mouth revealing that his was not a dead faith but a living one…read more here“

The faith that alone Justifies is not merely believing what the bible tells us about Jesus is true, although that is necessary.

Justifying faith happens when you place your whole trust in the work that Jesus has done on your behalf and commit everything you are and all that you have to Jesus as Lord, King, ruler of the cosmos and, of course, your life.

This is a bit like a marriage. And as anyone who is married will tell you, marriage means radical change. Your waking, sleeping, talking, walking, working…everything changes because from the wedding on, it is not just you doing the things you want to do, it is the two of you. “I” becomes “we”. And in the Christian life, the “I” increasingly becomes “He”.

Of course, the truth is that even the wedding itself was the result of a relationship that began long before. We commit our lives to Christ because he has already loved us, remade us, and called us to himself. So, necessarily, we come and we commit, and our lives are forever changed.

Jesus gives a beautiful picture of this new life in his parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.

The parable is not – as some tend to read it – an instruction manual for earning your sheephood. Jesus is not teaching us how, if we try really really hard, we can become sheep. Sheep do not work to become sheep. They do not earn sheepishness. They are born sheep. Sheep play no role in making themselves sheep. But from the beginning of their lives they look like sheep, smell like sheep, bleat like sheep and, as they grow, the necessarily act in sheep-like ways. This enables the onlooker to distinguish between sheep and goats. The appearance, smell, bleating, and behavior do not make the sheep sheep. Sheep do these things because they are sheep. In the same way, one does not feed the hungry, visit prisoners, serve the needy in order to become a Christian or to be justified. One does these things as a necessary result of being regenerate, born again from above. It is your new nature.