No not THAT kind of green, and not the tree hugging new age, earth worship nonsense either. I’m referring obliquely to a most excellent analogy written by Dan Phillips that I stumbled across over at Pyromaniacs today.
Team Pryo is such a solid theological resource and my hat is off to them once again for yet another deeply insightful and extremely helpful missive.
The clarity of Dan’s post entitled “Faith, grace and works in James and John: an illustration” serves to shed some much needed light on the subject of those pesky, seemingly ubiqitous verbal professions of faith in Jesus Christ which are not only not born out in the practice of day to day living (the conversation of one’s life), but are actually flatly denied by unbroken, unrepentant, reprobate patterns of sin and rebellion against the commands of Christ.
Dan begins by saying:
A simple man, I like simple illustrative analogies. Here’s a homely little illustration I’ve worked up that’s helpful to me. Like all analogies, it eventually breaks down… but first, I get to flog it a good deal.
Premise. James and John both say things that (ironically) gutless-gracers and works-righteousness heretics both take out of context and turn to harm. Like for instance:
Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:4-6)1 John 3:7)
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? (James 2:14)Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. (
CONTINUE READING HERE.
Pilgrim
thejunglemissionary
Bill
Manfred
abidingthroughgrace
Chris Hohnholz
The pix are creepy, but the message is, as usual, spot-on! It’s a fine preacher who rightly teaches the distinctions between “saved unto good deeds” and the commonly believed “saved (at least in part) by good deeds”. Many Christians do not realize that ever their “good deeds” are worthless unless Christ works it out through them. For this reason, we must in and of the Bible so we will know His will and obedient to His commands rather than to the instructions of sinful man.
Thanks for sharing this, Coram!
This was actually a pretty good piece. Very easy to grasp. Unfortunately, no matter how easy to understand one presents the faith vs works issue, most people still don’t get it. That’s too bad because it is so liberating.
- The Pilgrim