Thinking About Faith and Works

“Yea, a man may say, Thou has faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” James 2:18

As I mentioned before, I’ve had what may be an epiphany about the relationship between grace and works while I was in Texas. To be honest, it’s soemthing I’ve been pondering for a long time. I’m thinking I might have it figured out enough to be worth sharing. See, the thing is that it stems from the idea that maybe we Mormons aren’t doing something quite as well as the Christians do and if I don’t say this right, there may be an uprising against me and I’ll lose Facebook friends and my stake president might read it and have a nice little chat with me and so on and so forth.

All I ask is that you hear me out to the end before you start judging me too hard.

A while back, President Hinckley invited all those who don’t share our faith to “bring all the truth that they had and see if we couldn’t add to it.” The underlying idea is that all truth fits under the umbrella of the gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Honestly, I am comfortable with that idea. Unfortunately, what I think happens is that we as members assume that since the Church espouses all truth that we as members have a greater concept of truth than our non-member counterparts. With this attitude, we can get locked in to our own understanding and refuse to see the truth in opposing viewpoints. Honestly, it’s a lot like most evangelical politicians: I’m right and you’re wrong and that’s the end of it. Period.

But I’m thinking that sometimes we as individuals might not get it as well as some of those outside the church. The prime example of that is espoused in our approach to James 2:18. We tend to take that scruipture and the idea that we need to work out our salvation and extrapolate that into an unhealthy mindset that our Christian brothers and sisters don’t have. Sometimes I think we begin to believe that we have to earn our exaltation, that if we do enough then we qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven through our own merits. Now, I grant you that most of us wouldn’t say this consciously, but I think that it lurks just below the surface of our discussions about works and grace.

When I was growing up, I heard the metaphor of a man who owned a rowboat with a paddle marked works and a paddle marked grace. The story illustrated that without works, you go in circles. The thing is that the story also illustrates that without grace, we get the exact same results.

All of the Christians that I know personally are full of good works. They live very Christian lives of sacrifice, service and concern for their fellow beings. Even though they may not openly discuss the need for works in the gospel as they know it, their lives overflow with acts worthy of any disciple of Christ. But they deny the need for works.

In fact, I think that’s what gives them the edge. Their works are motivated by nothing more than gratitude for the gift of God’s grace, for the incomprehensible gift of the atonement of Jesus Christ. Because of that deep gratitude there is no need for works, they become a joy, an opportunity to show thanks for the grace that saves them from the clutches of the devil. Rather than, “I have to go serve in the nursery” or “Great, it’s the end of the month, now I have to go home teaching”, they respond with, “I thank God for his grace and this chance I have to show my gratitude by helping those around me.”

I have to say that I think our Heavenly Father is much happier with their attitude about serving Him than He is with the way ours can be sometimes.

Granted, their attitude can be taken to an extreme. I remember a conversation I had on my mission where my companion asked one of these Christians, “So, if I accept Christ tonight and come over and put a cap in your head tomorrow, I’m still saved?” As much as he didn’t want to, the guy we were talking to felt like he had to say, “Yes.” What this guy was forgetting is that we show our change of heart by our works. If I claim to accept the grace of Christ and beat my kids and cheat on my wife, then my conversion can’t have been a very genuine one.

But what they get so much better than we do is that an understanding and acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and a true drawing of our hearts to his makes it so that all the things that God asks us to do become simply another opportunity to demonstrate gratitude rather than just another thing we have to do in hopes that it’s enough to get us in to heaven.

The thing is, and the thing we always need to remember, is that we can’t do enough to get us in to heaven. It’s impossible. We have already lost our right to exaltation. What we can do is accept the atonement of Jesus Christ, His eternal sacrifice for us, and let it work in us and change us into the kind of people who belong with him in the eternities. Then whatever things He asks us to do become easy and delightful.