Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dead Faith or Dead Works?

Hebrews 6:1 (ESV)
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

Dead works, I tell you, I get sick to the stomach of people quoting James about dead faith admonishing people to works. I don’t think the real danger is dead faith. I think the real danger is dead works. We need to repent of these before we can go on to maturity. Dead works are those works that look good but are false. Dead works are works we want to point to when we stand before God. Dead works are those that draw our attention away from the Cross of Christ. Dead works probably account for most of the works we think are good. Works don’t make faith alive. The Holy Spirit brings faith to life in Christ, and good works flow from that, most often when we aren’t looking.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"....most often when we aren't looking." We always get messed up at one end or the other, don't we, when we start looking for our works? We either despair for not seeing enough or we become arrogant claiming more than we actually do. Our new life is "hidden in Christ". What a comfort.

Brigitte said...

Thanks for saying it again, anyways. You probably will not get finished with that while here.

Bror Erickson said...

Well, I hope I never get finished with it while I'm here.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bror Erickson said...

Well, I had dropped the spam filter thingy that made you type in the letters you saw, but it looks like I may need to put it back up. Given people wanting to distribute porn unsolicited on other peoples' blogs.

Steve said...

Xcellint post!

My works are filty rags unless faith is behind them.

Like you said, good works are probably really never noticed (by us).

Bror Erickson said...

Steve,
Aren't you supposed to be working? Or did you quit already?
I'm going to refrain here from making a comment about the name of the store you work at, and the deleted post. But perhaps you are working....