A week ago I got a visit from a well-known billionaire. He told me that his team of scientists discovered that, without a doubt, my building was going to collapse at 5:00 this evening. Due to the nature of the fault, there was no possible way to shore up the building or delay its demise in any way. Yet he told me that he also had some good news for me. He had plenty of land around his mansion, and he was having a number of mansions built nearby. He would allow me to live in one of those mansions for the rest of my life, at no charge! The other mansions were for my neighbors, so that they would have a place to live as well. He would be back with several buses a week later to pick us up and transport us to our new homes. We could not take anything with us, but he gave me a stack of credit cards with which we could purchase items for our new homes and have them delivered there, waiting for our arrival. Of course, I was to spend the next week letting my neighbors know about the situation, preparing myself for the move, and assisting my neighbors in their preparation.
A few minutes ago, the buses pulled up. The man came up to my condo and told me that it was time for us to go. Then he looked around my condo. He noticed that I had just had the carpets professionally cleaned. I had a brand new big-screen tv mounted on the wall. My bags of groceries were on the table, as I had just returned from the store. “Why did you have your carpets cleaned?”, he yelled. “Why the new tv? Why the bags of groceries? You knew that I was coming to pick you up, and that this building was about to be destroyed! Didn’t you believe me?”
“Yes, I believed you,” I replied.
He shook his head in disbelief. “Focusing on your life in this building which you knew was about to be destroyed seems like a waste, but ok, show me the receipts for the items that you ordered for your new home,” he said.
“Oh, I couldn’t find the time to order anything,” I told him.
“What?!”, he screamed. “You had time to improve this place that you knew was days away from destruction, but no time to focus on the place where you would be living out your life? Let’s go get the others and I’ll see what they ordered.”
“Oh, sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t get around to telling them.”
“You had a week!”, he screamed. “All you had to do was get yourself and your neighbors prepared for the move, and you would all have been saved! All you had to do was believe me!”
You probably realize that this story never actually took place. But a similar story is actually unfolding. You see, God offered me an escape from destruction. He offered me a mansion in his neighborhood that I can move to at no cost. All I have to do is believe. I have to believe that Jesus died for me, that God raised him from the dead, and that his death paid the penalty for my sin. But here’s the question: if I say that I believe that, but nothing about my life changes, do I actually believe?
If the story with the billionaire had actually taken place, and I claimed to fully believe him, he could simply point out the way that I had lived my life over the past week as proof that I did not actually believe. The same is true if we say that we believe God, but our lives prove that not to be the case.
James 2:14 says “What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone?” Then verse 17 says “So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”
James continues in verses 18 through 24, saying, “Now someone may argue, ‘Some people have faith; others have good deeds.’ But I say, ‘How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.’ You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless? Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. And so it happened just as the scriptures say: ‘Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.’ He was even called the friend of God. So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone.”
Now you might read that and say, “I don’t believe that to be true. The Bible is clear elsewhere that salvation is by grace, through faith alone.” After all, Ephesians 2:8 and 9 say “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” So am I now trying to argue that works have something to do with salvation? Yes I am, actually. No, I am not arguing that we are saved by good works, but we are saved to do good works. The very next verse, Ephesians 2:10, talks about that. It says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Another version words it, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
A lot of people are content to simply believe in their own belief, thinking that they contorted their minds enough to squeeze out enough faith to get themselves into heaven. Yet if that faith is not enough to change their lives. It simply is not genuine. I would have no leg to stand on in claiming to believe the man in the first story if I did not change my life in any way. Likewise, an unchanged life would be proof that I do not have saving faith in Jesus. Next time I would like to talk about that changed life, and how it looks and works, but for now, I will close this with the words of Jesus from Matthew 7:13-23:
“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
“Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.
“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’