Faith and Works in the Old and New Testaments

FAITH AND WORKS

 In the NT the believer’s confidence in and acceptance of what Christ has done to make reconciliation with God possible is called faith. Conversely, what someone may attempt to do, through compliance with ritual requirements or by charitable deeds, to earn merit with God as a means of salvation is called works. In this sense, faith and works are seen as mutually exclusive, as are light and darkness. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians is the apostle’s classic reply to the theory that Christians, who presumably have found salvation by faith in Christ, can better their standing with God and become more eligible for His grace by efforts of their own—specifically, by complying with the ritual requirements of the Jewish religious system. Paul’s categorical censure of the Galatians’ attempt to find salvation by adding the works of the Jewish ritual law to faith in Christ is applicable to all in every age who suppose that they can earn merit toward salvation by compliance with any legal requirements, even those of the moral law.

In later centuries, however, the idea that ritual performance, penance, and charitable deeds sufficed to expiate a person’s sins, and entitled that individual to salvation, eclipsed the NT concept of righteousness by faith alone. This great truth—that men and women are wholly dependent upon faith in Christ and His righteousness-was restored by the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and constitutes the very essence of Seventh-day Adventist belief and practice today.

Walking on earth as a man, Jesus exemplified perfect righteousness. Dying on the cross, He satisfied the law’s demand, so that through faith repentant sinners may come into a right relationship to Christ. Outside of Christ, trusting in their own works, they would be confronted with the full demand of the law as the standard by which character is to be judged, and would be wholly unable to satisfy its claims upon them. Even perfect compliance with God’s moral requirements subsequent to conversion, if such were possible, would not atone for a past life of sin; hence the sinner’s need of faith in and utter dependence upon the vicarious death of Christ and His enabling power to live in harmony with the will of God. Christ’s saving righteousness is complete and sufficient; humans can add nothing to it.

If the Galatians would abandon the works—righteousness prescribed by the ritual law and find salvation by faith in Christ, says Paul, the good works of the Holy Spirit would be manifest in their lives (Gal. 5:22, 23; 6:2), not as a means to salvation but as the result of it. And, as James explains, faith unaccompanied by this kind of works is dead (James 2:20; 3:13). Such “good works” are the inevitable product of genuine salvation by faith (Eph. 2:10; Heb. 8:10). They are the works of faith, not of the law. Without them a person’s faith is utterly vain. Faith works by love to produce a life of obedience and fruits unto holiness. Faith results not only in a right relationship to God but also in a cooperation with Him that makes possible a likeness to Christ in both spirit and conduct. Where living faith exists there will always be corresponding works. Good works of faith manifest in the life of the believer prepare him or her to enjoy the fellowship of heavenly beings. They demonstrate that he or she chooses to walk in loving obedience to God here and so can be trusted in a perfect world (Review and Herald 92:10, Sept. 23, 1915). Such a life proves that the believer’s  profession of faith in Christ is not in vain. The absence of good works in a professing Christian’s life is evidence that he or she is still under the dominion of sin, despite profession of faith in Christ. The loving and obedient response of good works reveals a sincere and complete surrender to God and to His will (ibid. 67:612, Oct. 7, 1890). The Holy Spirit is said to write God’s moral law upon the heart (Heb. 8:10).

The gospel saves from sin and unto righteousness. Those who would dwell with God and the angels will not love darkness, nor will they indulge in works that are evil. The good works of faith are an expression of loving gratitude to God (John 14:15, 23). No one can give evidence of a living faith if there is an absence of good works, of victory over sin (Matt. 7:16–20). A professed Christian destitute of good works gives no evidence of having been saved by Christ, or of union with Christ.

In no small measure the debate about the relationship between faith and works is a matter of semantics—of differing definitions read into the words “works” and “law,” of neglect to ascertain from the context of passages of Scripture cited the sense in which the terms are used, and of failure on the part of those in dialogue to recognize these differences. Often, for instance, there is failure to recognize that by “law” the Bible writers usually mean the revelation of God’s will as recorded in Scripture, particularly the Pentateuch (Ps. 119; Luke 24:44), but also at times (as in Gal. 3:2, 4) the Jewish religious system of rites and ceremonies (which is an integral part of “the law” in the former sense). Similarly “works” and “works of law,” when used in the context of the Jewish religious system, always refer to the ritual requirements of this “law” (e.g., Gal. 2:16; 3:2). Often those on one side or the other of the law-grace, faith-works dialogue restrict the word “law” to the Decalogue. This is the sense in which SDAs usually speak of the “law.” A discussion involving the terms “faith,” “works,” and “law” should begin with a clear definition of these words and a recognition of the sense in which the various Bible writers use them. In each use of one of these words, those in dialogue should make clear the sense intended.

Finding many passages of Scripture in which “the law” is spoken of in a favorable sense as “holy,” “just,” “good,” and “perfect,” and as enduring forever (for example, Ps. 34:7; Matt. 5:17, 18; Rom. 7:12, 14), Seventh-day Adventists usually think of “works” as voluntary obedience to the moral law, or Decalogue, on the part of one who has already found salvation by faith in Christ. Sometimes the antinomian in dialogue also uses the word “law” in the sense of “Decalogue.” But reading the depreciative declarations of Paul in Galatians about “the law” (the apostle’s term for the Jewish religious system), the antinomian mistakenly concludes that obedience to the commands of the Decalogue must be the “works of the law” against which Paul inveighs so vehemently (Gal. 2:16, 21; 5:1–4). At other times the antinomian in dialogue understands “law” in the same sense in which Paul uses it, but leaps to the erroneous conclusion that because the moral principles enunciated in the Decalogue were incorporated into the old covenant ritual system at Mount Sinai, the Decalogue itself must have lapsed with that system at the cross. This person forgets that these principles were also to be incorporated into the new covenant (Heb. 8:10, 11). Antinomians seem to be blind to the fact that the moral principles set forth in the Decalogue have always had an independent existence apart from the Jewish religious system, and were never dependent upon it nor subordinate to it. This independent existence, apart from the Jewish or any other religious system, is based on the fact that the commands of the Decalogue express God’s infinite, righteous character and will in terms adapted to humanity’s understanding in its fallen condition. These principles are not relative to anything else, but absolute in the same sense that God Himself is absolute. See Law.

In Galatians the idea of “law” as the Jewish religious system merges imperceptibly into that of law in an abstract sense to mean any law, and “works of law” to mean legalism as a way of salvation. When “law” is used to mean the Jewish religious system with its rites and ceremonies, which became obsolete at the cross, and “works” to mean compliance with these ritual requirements, SDAs agree that faith and works (in this sense, as Paul uses the words in Galatians) are mutually exclusive. The same would be true if the principle set forth in the Epistle to the Galatians is applied to the Ten Commandments, and “works of law” is construed to mean a legalistic compliance with the moral principles of the Decalogue as a means to salvation. But when, as Seventh-day Adventists usually use the words, “law” is a synonym for the Decalogue and “works” is understood to mean compliance with its moral precepts—not as a means of salvation but as willing obedience rendered by a grateful son to the expressed will of a beneficent Father—then the two words are complementary, not contradictory. This agrees with Paul’s teaching in Gal. 5:22, 23; 6:2. It was in this sense that C. M. Snow wrote: “Thus we see that there is no conflict between the law and the gospel [faith]. The one reveals sin, the other reveals the remedy. The one reveals the character of God, the other reveals the only arrangement whereby we can have bestowed upon us a likeness of that character. The one reveals heaven’s rule of government, the other reveals the only arrangement God has made to counteract the effect of Satan’s rebellion against that government. Thus do the two work together and thus will they continue to work together until sin and all the results of sin have been eradicated from the universe. Then will the gospel cease, for salvation will have been completed; but the law will never cease” (Review and Herald 83:6, Oct. 18, 1906). See also Justification; Law; Law and Grace; Legalism; Righteousness by Faith; Sanctification.