Justified by Faith Alone (Paul and James)

In a recent email, you suggested that I wanted to change James’s phrase “faith without works is dead” to something of my own making.

The purpose of this blog post is to show how I understand that Paul and James do not contradict each other about how salvation is by faith alone. If we have justifying faith, it will show up in our lives (sometime) and if it doesn’t then it was dead in the first place.

Faith is ....

There are a set of words that stretch my mind.  Faith is one of these words.  Over the years I have developed a working definition for most of my mind stretching words and here is my working definition of faith.

Faith is accepting someone else's description of my current circumstances and acting on that description as if it is true.

Can We Live Like That?

The past few weeks I’ve been in two different Bible studies (at two different churches) that are both going through the book of Ephesians chapter 4 at about the same pace. This chapter is a raw rubber-on-the-road chapter! I’ve been studying this chapter in the Contemporary English Version (CEV)

Here are some highlights that have impressed me:

The War of Worldviews

In the middle of a Wednesday afternoon this video came up on the side of my screen, and I stopped what I was doing and listened to Dr. Albert Mohler describe the Christian Worldview as compared to every other worldview we know of.

His parting statement is that faith, faith in Jesus, is all that stands between us and eternal loss.

It's powerful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F-n6RwHqOo

The Wisdom of God

It seems to me that these verses are a perfect fit for our conversations about how great God is and how wise he is. Our only job is to recognize his wisdom. The world has been here 13.5 billion years, according to our scientists, we only have 60-80 years to recognize that the heavens declare the glory of God, and that Jesus loves us enough to die in our place. - Amazing!

Philip Yancey Quotes

A while back you pointed me to Philip Yancey’s online blog, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. So much so that I’ve included a couple of them into this blog post:

http://philipyancey.com/q-and-a-topics/faith-and-doubt

And you wrote the book A Skeptic’s Guide to Faith for them?

Christ Offered Himself

Hebrews 9 "Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins." 9:14 (NLT) Father God, There is nothing I can do, or not do, to be acceptable in Your sight. My good behavior will never cover my sinfulness. To think that I would have to do something of value to have worth in Your eyes would not only put me in bondage to daily striving to perform perfectly, but it would annul Christ's perfect gift offered for me. By accepting His payment on my behalf, He set me free to seek You in open fellowship.