What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? Can faith save him? James 2:14
The old man had maintained almost all his life that he was a Christian. He had a little story about a conversion during revival meetings when he was a small boy. He was going to heaven, he said, because of his faith in Jesus. But that little story was all he had. Rarely did he attend any type of Christian service or give to any Christian effort. In fact, he never contributed any money, time, or effort to any good cause in his community. No one ever saw him bow his head in prayer or in thanksgiving for his food. If he had a Bible, he kept it well hidden. His speech was no different from any of the people around him, and he was known to often curse the very Name by which he claimed to be saved. But even in his old age, he insisted he was a believer and prepared for Heaven. When he died, almost no one came to his funeral. No Christians took his profession seriously, and labelled him an empty hypocrite. So, apparently did everybody else. That doesn’t mean the man went to hell. But it does mean that he left no reason for anyone to think otherwise. His works and his words didn’t add up to evidence of faith. What about ours?
We have all heard the old saying that calling yourself a Christian doesn’t get you into Heaven any more than calling yourself a surgeon gets you into the hospital’s operating room with a scalpel. If a hospital board requires surgeons to have credentials and proven experience, so the oversight in God’s Assembly requires clear evidence of divine life before opening the doors to admit a professing Christian. Consider the words of Ephesians 2:8,9: ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast’. Our works cannot save us; otherwise Heaven would be filled with braggarts. God cannot accept any of our works as partial payment for our salvation, regardless of the deadly spin that the Mormons put on Ephesians 2:8,9. The atoning work of Christ alone provides merit for our salvation. Our part is but to accept that work. But if we have accepted that work, we will also have accepted the Person of the Holy Spirit as an eternal Resident within us. And the work of the Holy Spirit is to display the proofs of salvation. Those proofs are good works.
God alone knows whether we have the divine life that comes from trusting Jesus Christ as Saviour. But everybody else should know, by the way that we live and by the works that we perform, whether that divine life is there. If there are no works, the faith is almost certainly missing, too. – Jim MacIntosh