One of my favorite artists was
Rich Mullins. I grew up listening, no
jamming, to his popular Christian music that had just a touch of bluegrass in
it (although he might deny that). One
song that I particularly liked had the phrase that went like this (pardon my
singing voice, I am a little rusty…),
“Faith without works is as useless as a
screen door on a submarine.”
Every time I hear that song I
picture myself in a submarine while the captain declares, “DIVE!” as an enemy ship
spot us in the distance. As we dive, he
yells to the crew, “Make sure the screen door on the hatch is closed, we don’t
want to take on water!”
Then I giggle as I picture that (men
giggle too) because of how absurd that idea is.
If a submarine had a screen door for a hatch, it would sink.
Likewise, James says, in no
contradiction to any other Scripture, that faith without works is dead. Meaning that if you claim to have faith and
yet you live a lifestyle that contradicts the Holy Word of God, your faith is
dead. James 2:18-20, 26
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I
have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my
faith by my works. 19 You
believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be
shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 26 For as the body
apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
“But Greg, what about Ephesians 2:8-9
that says you have been saved by grace and not of works?”
Great question! James does not contradict Paul in any
way. For it is by grace and grace alone
that we are saved, but the absolutely astonishing thing is this; every, and I
mean every single Christian that has
walked the face of this earth has had works to prove their faith. There is not a single Christian that has
passed away that is residing in heaven who lived a life of faith that had no
fruit to show for it.
Therefore, you may say you are a
Christian and yet if you have no works, then you are not one. (ouch, that cuts
deep…but bare with me for one more minute).
Read this passage from 2 Corinthians 13 very slowly and
then re-read verse 8
5 Examine
yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not
realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you
fail to meet the test! 6 I
hope you will find out that we have not failed the test. 7 But we pray to God that you may not do wrong—not
that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right,
though we may seem to have failed. 8 For
we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.
Paul says that we must examine
ourselves to see if we are in the faith.
How do we examine our self? We
look for fruit because the fruit arises from the fact that when we are in the
truth we will do things that are motivated by the truth.
Therefore, in the words of Rich Mullins,
faith without works is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. And if
you don’t believe us, then go ahead, build a submarine and put a screen door on
it, and watch what happens. The sadness of watching your handmade
submarine sink to the bottom of the ocean will not scratch the surface of the
emptiness you will feel if your faith is dead.
