Is Faith a Work? Part II

Have you noticed these days how faith--the very means of our salvation, upon which Luther's Protestant Reformation was built--is often casually dropped from the process of salvation? The omission, we find, is intentional.  It is also contradictory.  Those who preach that we are saved by grace alone and who leave out "through faith” seem afraid we will discover that there is, after all, a condition of salvation.  If there is a condition to salvation, then free will is involved, and Calvinism isn't true. But Calvinists say that, if there's a condition, we are saved by works. So, there's no condition. Well, not exactly. There is a condition, but it's not one you have to meet if you've been chosen to be saved. God has met the condition of having faith for you if you have been chosen to be saved. Thus have these theological magicians waved a wand over the one requirement God makes of us and turned faith into a work--a work that isn't a work because it's a gift. The question I have is--if you really believe what you just did there, then why do you have to drop "through faith" from the very passage you say affirms your election?

It just doesn't make any sense. But it's no use arguing with a Calvinist. Even when you show him from the Bible, he's already got his paintbrush out to turn it a different color. The truth is, a condition is not a work. The answer to the riddle is always right there in the text, and the text of Ephesians 2:8-9 clearly says that faith is a condition for salvation--by grace are you saved through faith--and this salvation is "not of works, lest any man should boast." If faith is required for salvation that is not of works, how is faith a work? It isn't. And the death of common sense among some hardheaded liberal theologians will not make it so. I say "liberal" because this debate fuels the hyper-grace antinomianism of some of the new Calvinists. The bottom line for them is that, if you did absolutely nothing to obtain your salvation, you also can do absolutely nothing to lose it. And they've made their point.

It is difficult to track all this down to its source, but I have read some really weird, convoluted teachings to affirm salvation by election while bypassing any condition to be saved. Another question I have is--if election is true yet the text of Ephesians 2:8-9 states that salvation comes from meeting a condition which wouldn't be true if election is true, why did God go to all the trouble to state conditions that aren't conditions because He has met all of them Himself? Then couldn't He just decree anybody and everybody to be saved? And this He would do, unless, of course, He would rather they be damned. But why bother to pretend there is a condition when there isn't? But the Calvinist wipes all of his dirty arguments clean with the one rag he always pulls out his pocket--the sovereignty of God.

By all of this reasoning process, we see the doublethink that faith both is and is not a “work.”  It is a “work” if I must do it on my own, but because it is a work, it is not a work but really a gift.  Thus, I cannot exercise faith on my own without calling it a work, even though faith is not a work, according to Ephesians 2:8-9 and the rest of Scripture.  Does any of this make any sense at all?  Rather than embracing the tension between faith and works, as James does, Calvinists lump faith with works and render both as irrelevant to salvation.  By trying to invent their own logic apart from the Scriptures, Calvinists and their like have embraced the most illogical doctrines known to the Gospel. 

Surely, in the hands of Calvinists and all their followers, we are left with a word that has no meaning if faith becomes passive as something I receive rather than something I exercise.  My exercise of faith messes up the Calvinist’s doctrine, so he snips this vital phrase out of the Ephesians 2 text and slips it back in with a different meaning.  Need we point out how dishonest this is?  As we have already said, this view of salvation by “grace alone” has become the breeding ground for antinomianism. To deny the need for any human response to salvation—through faith—is to deny any human responsibility to maintain that salvation through persevering faith.  One would think that the Redeemed would not take advantage of such “grace”—but take advantage he does, for that advantage is the very reason he has invented such a doctrine in the first place! 

In the end, this logic can mean only one thing:  if I have no part in my own salvation—not even faith—then I cannot respond to the gospel, and I have no “say so” if God Himself decides not to save me.  Call that something else, but don’t call it grace. Challenge this, however, and you will receive an angry and self-righteous lecture on how God isn’t obligated to save anyone and how the fact that He saves even one is amazing. On the surface, this would seem like an argument to vindicate God.  But it actually slanders the heart of God.  Once again, we need look no further than God’s Word to refute this warped thinking. John 3:16 reveals the heart of God.  “For God so loved the world.”  Why?  “That whosever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  Any supposed defense of God that puts His wrath above His love does not understand the heart of our Savior who took God’s wrath on Himself.  Why such wrath should remain on anyone arbitrarily excluded from grace would make God a liar in claiming to love the whole “world,” such that “whosoever” comes would find grace at the Cross. 

  Faith is the word that quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked—even the darts of unconditional election.  The problem of the Calvinist is that he relegates “faith” to the religious world when it isn’t necessarily a religious term at all.  The entire world operates on some form of faith.  Put this faith in God’s grace and you find salvation—saving faith.  Put it in yourself, and you find legalism.  Put it in your love of sin and you find antinomianism.  To say that only the recipient of God’s grace can exercise faith is false.  People put faith in anything. 

As such, faith is not a work but is a neutral aspect of our humanity.  Even an animal puts faith in his master and removes faith from an abuser.  The world could not function without faith.  Thus, the exercise of the one thing that defines us—our will to faith—is the sole condition of our salvation.  When we surrender that will to Christ, we find saving faith in the Cross.  But the Calvinist who rejects such a simple fact does not understand the Cross, and he certainly does not understand grace.  I cannot be found guilty for rejecting the love that saved me if God Himself elected not to save me.  I think that at bottom of Calvinism is a secret entitlement to sin.  This sin need not be removed in my life if I am “elected” regardless. 

  At the root of this entire line of reasoning that would call faith a “work” is a very sloppy under-standing of “works.”  As we have already said, Ephesians 2:8-9 contrasts faith with works, so how could faith be a work?  A true understanding of “works” in Scripture necessitates that I link “works” with that which cannot save.  How contradictory, then, to claim that I must have faith which saves while saying that the faith which saves is a work that cannot save?  Faith is not a work but a surrender of the spirit.  Works are associated with the flesh, whether those works be bad or whether they be good.  People do bad things in the flesh—the “works of the flesh,” like murder or slander, but they also appear to do good works in the flesh, like feed the hungry or give their body to be burned.  These good works are not the same as the obedience God requires. 

Good works by their very nature presuppose human effort, in sharp contrast to the fruit of the Spirit.  To say that we must produce fruit if we are saved is not to argue salvation by works.  Fruit is effortless when one abides in the Vine.  This fruit borne of obedience can never be confused with the good works required by legalism.  This is a vital distinction if we are ever to reclaim the life of holiness in Christ that the antinomian is now labeling “legalism.”  While it is true that no one can keep the good works of the law, many who think they keep the law do not keep it in spirit. 

Cain, like Abel, offered a sacrifice to God.  This was his “work,” an apparently good thing.  But God rejected it.  Why?  It was clearly a work of the flesh and not of faith.  By faith, Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.  How, then, can faith be a work, when by this “faith” Abel was justified?  Obedience by faith is clearly not the same as any work of the flesh.  Cain’s work was a work of the flesh because, like the legalist, he invented his own way to God.  His sacrifice was the best of his own labor in the field rather than a blood sacrifice that pointed in helpless faith to the Cross.  He was trying to impress God with his hard work—"Look at the produce I have raised!  Here, I’ll let you have some.”  

  Thus, we have seen that, in addition to the antinomian denunciation of scriptural holiness and obedience as “legalistic works,” even faith itself is now being called a “work” by Reformed theologians and Hyper-Calvinists.  The fact that even many mainline Baptist preachers have jumped on the bandwagon, including those I have known and loved, does not change God’s Word.  I find it impossible to understand the motivation that would preach such a doctrine as election and call it “good news” or “grace.”  To me, this seems as exclusive a mindset as that possessed by the Pharisees of Jesus’ day who saw themselves as the elect sons of Abraham. 

With good reason, Jesus contrasted their sense of entitlement with the faith of the newly born in Christ.  Did Jesus tell Nicodemus this because He had a preferential love for Nicodemus?  Was it not rather that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night?  Surely, the Lord drew him, but it was his own choice to come—a choice that brought danger with it—thus, “by night.”  What am I to conclude?  Exactly what Jesus told Nicodemus: “whosever will” may come.  If this is not true, the only possible result is a game of favoritism right back where things started in the minds of the Jews and especially the Pharisees.  In this game of chance, there is only one result: if I am not saved, it is because God Himself has not saved me.  This is all a trick of words to me, for it divests faith of all meaning if I am commanded to exercise something I cannot exercise and if I possess it only when God decides to give it to me.  But I am judged if I don’t have it.  Does this make any sense at all to you?  It surely makes no sense to me! 

  Such a heresy feeds right into the mouths of wolves pushing progressive Christianity, validating their antinomianism and antagonism to true faith.  Who is bothering to refute this heresy?  These are not mere doctrinal differences.  This redefining of salvation as being “by grace alone” is a paradigm shift which will shake the very foundation of the Church.  Thank the Lord that He Himself builds the Church and that the gates of hell cannot stand against it, for the Church itself has seemed to camp at the gates of hell by denying the very means of our salvation—by faith.

If we cannot be saved by any response of our own but only by a sovereign act of grace, why then does the Lord say, “Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation”? (II Corinthians 6:2).  If every man needs to be saved, does he not need salvation now?  The drowning man is not comforted by a helping hand by and by; he needs it now.  The despairing man does not need hope in the distant future; he needs it now.  The very word “salvation” implies a need for urgency, an urgency logically denied if we must wait for grace.  Oh, no, you say.  You may apply God’s grace now.  How, if not by faith?  Furthermore, if salvation is truly by grace alone, either that grace is not extended to all (limited atonement) or it is extended to all (universalism).  The fact is that no one can be saved without faith.  We are saved by grace through faith.  Leave these two words out of the process and you have no salvation.   

  Tragically, Satan’s genetic mutation of salvation has gone unnoticed by those already predisposed to tampering with God’s Word.  What happens when an entire generation has become so tone deaf that it can no longer hear God’s Word?  Scripture foretells such an age of apostasy in which the “strong delusion” will deceive, if possible, the very elect.  What is this delusion?  Certainly, it is a false view of Christ, a false view of God’s Word, a false view of sin, and, in result, a false view of salvation.  We already have many false teachers promoting another Jesus and another gospel. 

In this other gospel, all sins are equal, and no believer is exempt; therefore, no one can “call out” anyone else because all are guilty of the same thing.  That being the case, if you have an angry thought, you are no better than the transsexual.  To protest against this line of thought is to be judged as “legalistic”—thus, sin runs rampant because you can’t stop it without being legalistic.  To be legalistic is to deny grace.  You say even one word about holiness and you are called a Pharisee.  You apply any biblical standard of the portrayal of Christ (in response to The Chosen) and you are judged as not caring about the lost. 

  But what a sad prison we have found ourselves in when faith itself is dropped from entrance into grace—for the very reason that faith is seen as a “work.”  Lump all this together and see what you find:  what Scripture calls the “works of the flesh” are allowed under “grace” to judge the “fruit of the Spirit” as “works”—for this fruit demands separation from the works of the flesh—but that is oh, so legalistic!  We have entirely forgotten that this fruit is produced by abiding in the Vine—and yet those who say there are no conditions to remaining saved must, by their own logic, deny Christ’s own commands to abide!  Abiding is in itself an act of continual faith.  Why else did Jesus ask, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”  We are to contend earnestly for “the faith” once delivered to the saints.  Notice this is not throughout Scripture called “the grace” but “the faith.”  We cannot access God’s grace without faith.  Salvation is by faith and has always been by faith. 

  Thus, we need only look to the Scriptures to correct this heresy.  “For by grace we are saved, through faith.”  The phrase “through faith” is under vicious attack from all sides, when this word remains the one requirement for salvation by grace.  Why should Satan attack faith as the key component of our salvation?  Because without faith it is impossible to please God.  Jesus rewarded people according to their faith, and faith itself is our shield against the fiery darts of Satan.  By faith, I hereby affirm that we must never lose “the faith” or our understanding of what faith means.  I maintain that faith is the “narrow road” and the antithesis of both antinomianism and legalism.  Faith follows the commands of God from the heart, where the antinomian regards the commands of God’s word with contempt, labeling them “legalism.”  Faith follows the commands of God from the heart, where the legalist follows them—if at all—from obligation.  Legalism keeps the speed limit, as it were, only when he sees a policeman nearby.  When he doesn’t see that policeman, he speeds, just like the antinomian. 

So, I ask you: do you have saving faith?