Worth Repeating - September 25, 2017

Ephesians 2: 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV)

Christian faith must be demonstrated to be credible.*

The relationship between faith and works gets all tangled up in our minds at times. We are saved by faith, we understand, but does that mean we don’t have to do anything? According to James 2: 17, faith not accompanied by action is dead. So when we start to give works the respect it deserves are we then in danger of trying to earn our salvation?

Let’s forget about our own salvation for a moment. Let’s talk about those lost people out there. How will they come to know the Lord if we don’t do or say anything? Without works, there is no witness. Faith cannot speak for itself. If a Christian can’t at least testify to his faith, I would argue that he doesn’t even have a dead faith. I would say he has no faith at all.

In II Corinthians 5: 17, Paul declares that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation. In this verse in Ephesians, he builds on the new creation theme to inform us that we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works. If he created us to perform good works, I wonder: can we be saved if we don’t fulfill the purpose for which were created?

Let us remember that we are Christians not only for our own sake but also for the sake of others.*