In Ephesians 2:8, Paul says “By grace you are saved through
faith; and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.”
This passage answers the self-righteousness of the Pharisee
in Luke 18.10-14, i.e. we can never exhault ourselves and
claim righteousness purely through any such actions of our
own as fasting twice a week, giving tithes, etc. The pharisees
thought they could obtain righteousness and justification
through obeying law and tradition in a mechanical fashion,
many of them simply believing they were saved simply through
their Abrahamic ancestry as if salvation were a birthright.
The letter of the law and tradition gradually overshadowed
love and the natural good works that spring from love. Jesus
castigated the Pharisees time and time again for this very
failing. (See Luke 13:10-17 for one such example)
St. Paul's statement reiterates this. Faith is the first
thing.
Faith produces love, and love produces good works. If we went
around visiting the sick in hospital simply to check another
good work off our list and say to God "Look what I have
done today!", then we fall into the trap of self-justification
by works. Ideally, our good works must flow naturally from
our love, a love that we have allowed to grow through our
love of God, gratitude towards Him and our desire to obey
Him and to please Him.
St. James takes Paul's message a step further:
James 2:14 - My friends, what good is it for one of you to
say that you have faith if your actions do not prove it? Can
that faith save you? Suppose there are brothers or sisters
who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is
there in your saying to them, "God bless you! Keep warm
and eat well! - if you don't give them the necessities of
life? So, it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no
actions, then it is dead. But someone will say, "One
person has faith, another has actions." My answer is,
"Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I
will show you my faith by my actions." Do you believe
that there is only one God? Good! The demons also believe
and tremble with fear. You fool! Do you want to be shown that
faith without actions is useless? How was our ancestor Abraham
put right with God? It was through his actions when he offered
his son Isaac on the altar"
And finally, Jesus Christ Himself spoke volumes on the subject
of how we will be judged and what type of reward we will receive in the final judgment:
Matthew 25:34-36 - Then the King will say to the people on
His right,"Come you that are blessed by my Father! Come
and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever
since the creation of the world. I was hungry and you fed
me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and
you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I
was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited
me"
These are the types of works that will be paid attention
to at the time of our judgment: works of the heart, spontaneous
works that involve directly assisting our neighbour, lovingly,
in their needs. These are works that have the power to save
us, compared to the types of works many Pharisees believed
automatically justified them - refraining from greed or adultery
and obedience to other commandments, fasting and tithing.
All these things can be done without any love in one's heart
or without any genuine concern for one's neighbour. It is
not always true that obedience to the commandments is done
without love and genuine concern being present in the heart
of a soul, but Jesus, James and Paul were speaking mainly
to the Pharisees, who proudly publicised their good deeds,
yet were like "whitened sepulchres", gleaming on
the outside yet full of corruption on the inside.
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