Today's Reading:
James 1,2,3,4,5
Scripture
“You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do, and not by faith alone. […] As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” (James 2:24, 26)
Observation
A wrong (but often acceptable) definition of faith can be useful to those who need an excuse:
- Those who believe it is more spiritual to just pray than serve.
- Those who rationalize their poor behavior or a lack of character with, “But you don’t know my heart.”Those who look and act just like the world, yet assert, “But God doesn’t judge me like you do …”
- Those whose actions are questionable, yet say, “I am under grace. After all, I am a Christian and Jesus forgives!”
- Those who lack discipline or character and when held to account, they say, “Hey, don’t be so legalistic about it!”
Application
A wrong definition of faith is also insidious and like a computer virus, it slowly eats away at the hard drive of your soul. You will be doing great one year, then the next, something changed. How often, when consequences are delayed, we get duped. We give into fleshly thoughts and we go back to the default system of our baser nature. But when someone points that out to us, we blame others or God for being so un-compassionate or unfeeling …. Or we defend ourselves vehemently and get others to agree with us so we don’t need to make any real changes.
One man said, “If you change, everything else will change for you.”
Faith is not “good intentions.” It is fruitfulness — for this is why life can be so incongruent and inconsistent. But when faith is re-attached to works, so will our life.
1 Peter 1:7 reminds us:
“These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Faith is not a result of works. Works, however, is the result of faith; it is the evidence of faith.
Prayer
Father, may I be courageous enough to check myself. We are good at excusing and exonerating ourselves. The best is to leave that part to others to measure. I must measure myself by my fruit and the results of my faith … not the intentions of it.
More resources like this...
The Delivery System
I think that I often focus more on the delivery system than what is being delivered. I guess we live in a society of fancy packaging and attractive images, regardless of content. For example, TV programs that are useless and void of true substance, but command the rapt attention of millions of viewers for “entertainment purposes.”
Bottom Line
Everything that is taught in New Hope must keep in mind the bottom line. Paul says to Timothy that our 1st goal is to somehow incite and develop pure hearts from which exudes love — but this love is an unadulterated love because it comes from a pure heart.
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