Living Our Faith: True Works Are The Result Of Faith

Knowing that a man is not justified by

the works of law but by faith in Jesus Christ,

even we have believed in Christ Jesus,

that we might be justified by faith in Christ

and not by the works of the law; for by the works

of the law no flesh shall be justified.

But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ,

we ourselves also are found sinners,

is Christ therefore a minister of sin?

Certainly not! For if I build again those things

which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.

For I through the law died to the law

that I might life to God.

Galatians 2:16–19

            How often has a person come to faith in Jesus Christ only to become a slave to works, to be content in their voyage that has left behind original faith in Jesus Christ only to now have faith in works?  How religiosity has taken hold of a person and they become more interested in works than in true faith Jesus Christ?  There is a feeling of piety when a person leans on some experience, some emotional reaction that has more to do with some supposed supernatural work than in the simple gospel of Jesus Christ.  These Christians have left the true gospel for a perverted form of Christianity.  This corrupted gospel tickles the ears, sounds so good, so real, so, so, so, so, and on and on and on; yet it is only a man’s supposition that has no basis in true faith in Jesus Christ.  The letter to the Galatians is purported to be a letter about freedom; and it is about freedom, but what meaning are we to understand about this freedom?  The doctrine that Paul sets forth in this letter is the gospel of faith.  Blessing that we all desire from God are from God based on faith, not the law.  The freedom that Paul speaks about is from law, not works, so why do you or any Christian rely on doing works.  Works outside of faith is not faith causing works; rather these works may seem pleasing to God; they are not necessarily so, rather these works are more pleasing to the person doing the works.  Our faith is what drives a person to do good works and to please oneself, rather to please God who has called us to good works.  We are doing just what our Father in heaven requires.  It is no different in this world whereby we do what our superior, or boss, orders us to do, that part of the job description we are doing.  We do have any right to some special attendance for doing what we are supposed to do.  Do you say you have faith?  Listen to James: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?  Can faith save him?  If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body what does it profit/?  Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works,’ show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do will. Even the demons believe–and tremble!  But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead” (James 2:14–20)?

            We have freedom in Jesus Christ, a liberty and this liberty is not license, a license to do whatever we so desire for we have been: “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1Corinthians 6:20).  If you truly believe in Jesus Christ and have converted to Him, not just decide that He is better than not to believe in hope of eternal life, then you are not your own, you are owned by God.  This is not bondage for we are free, free to even life as we so desire, and to by autonomous, to live in antinomy, but this is not the freedom in Jesus Christ.  Freedom in Jesus Christ means something entirely different, it is not what this world, in this post–modern, pluralistic society teaches, that we all have truth, it is our truth and we are not to judge against that truth, that we are free to do whatever pleases us, and entitlement mentality.  We are not free to do what we want because we are elected, chosen by God before we even were alive; no!  This freedom is that we produce fruit; fruit of righteousness and this is able to happen if we lead a Spirit led lifestyle. You may shout to the top of your lungs that you are free and you do good works.  Great! Are you doing these works by means of your faith?  Or to make you feel pious, acceptable to God, that you are doing God a favor by doing some work.  This work may be in the Church, to feed to poor and downtrodden.  To work in clinic to aid pregnant women to not get an abortion, to help in a recover program for alcoholics, or drug addicted persons: Great!  Is this so that you work so hard, so faithfully, because you are a servant of Jesus Christ and you are producing works of righteousness?  Is your faith is based upon Him that you are a child of God, a member of the bride of Christ?  Are you doing this work for man’s approval, nor even the approval of God?  Are you working for God because you have faith in Him?  Do you live, and are devoted to God who saved you, called you, enabled you?  Are you doing all because the mercy of God, before time chose you and loves you enough to die for you?  All this by His Wisdom, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Only Begotten Son, on a cross, for your sin, for sin, and will one day take you home to be with Him, not temporarily, rather forever and forever, no time limit.

            We are free, we are chosen, we have eternal life in Jesus Christ, our faith drives our works, and by our works, we reap a harvest of fruit, the fruit of righteousness.  We are active in our Churches aiding our brothers and sisters in Christ, we care for our families, we live what we preach.  WE ARE FREE!

There is therefore now no condemnation

            To those who are in Christ Jesus,

Who do not walk according to the flesh,

            But according to the Spirit.

                                    Romans 8:1

Let your Faith shine today!

Richard L. Crumb

Conversion is sure: Decision is Changeable

For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism,

how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure

and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond

many of my contemporaries in my own nation,

being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions

of my fathers. But when it pleased God,

who separated me from my mother’s womb

and called me through His grace to reveal His Son in me,

that I might preach Him among the Gentiles,

I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood,

nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles

before me; but I went to Arabia and returned to Damascus.

Galatians 1:13–17

            Have others heard of your former conduct?  Those times when you lived concupiscent, when God did not have a place in your life.  Do others still hold your past life away from God in aberrance, that is, they just will not allow your new life in Jesus Christ to be real, they only see your past?  It does not matter in the most as to the seriousness of your past sins, although those sins must be accounted for, people hold grudges against you, they even go so far to condemn you and point out your past as though it is what you are in the present.  Do not despair, do not give up the hope that was kindled in your heart: “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5).  Paul had to face this terrible ordeal by those who disallowed his new life in Jesus Christ, that he was truly an apostle of Jesus Christ.  It was not non–Christians that were pointing and wagging their fingers of distrust at Paul, it was those claiming to be Christians.  It is to those in the Galatian churches that Paul had to defend his faith, his new life.  Did Paul decide by his own will to follow Christ?  No!  Paul, and you, have be separated by God from his and your mother’s womb.  It is God who has chosen you.  It is God who has invigorated your faith to follow Him.  Do not be as the Galatians had become and follow after a perverted doctrine.  Do not allow others to deter you from being all that God intended you to be.  Paul had to suffer many things for his faith, and those in the Galatian churches had and were suffering much for their faith in Jesus Christ but were not falling back into the Law fulfilled by Jesus Christ.  I am not speaking of the Ten Commandments, rather those ceremonial laws, those laws that the nation of Israel had to perform, circumcision being one of such demanded rites.  God’s people are not suffering for no reason.  When a person follows Jesus Christ and is converted, not just decide to follow Him, rather to convert and allow that conversion to be real in your life, others will persecute you in some way: “And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe” (1Thessalonians 1:6). God will repay those who persecute you and cause you to suffer for His name and for His Son: “…since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His might angels” (2Thessalonians 1:6–7).  You are not alone others are undergoing the same trials but you are a friend of God as was Abraham: “And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to huim for righteousness.’ And he was called the friend of God” (James 2:23; cf. Romans 4:3).  Are you looking for rest now?  Don’t!  The world, and other small-minded Christians who will not allow a person to change and hold what they have done in their past, as though their past is forgiven and yours is not, to have rest.  Paul makes it very clear; rest is coming, and it comes when Jesus returns for the second time and this time with His angels and destroys sinners, this world, gives you a new body, and incorruptible and immortal body: Now you can rest!  Until then we push forward in our faith and do not allow this world or anyone else to deter us from our conversion by a perverted gospel, by causing you to become slave to works, even those supposed supernatural works.  Remember this: “For He says to Moses, ‘ I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’ So then it is not of him who wills, no of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the  Pharaoh, ‘for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.’ Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens” (Romans 9:15–18). We do not save anyone, we do not heal anyone, it is God, and God alone who does that which He wills, our job, our work, is to live the life that He has commanded us to live, and to be a witness for Him in whatever capacity that we live and work, and play in this world.

            Let us then tend to that will of God and live for Him that our life will not return to the past and to destruction, not a loss of our eternal life, rather a loss of His blessings in this life.  We will not be guided by Him, rather by our own will in matters that lead to sin.  Are you now inclined to fall? Are you being led astray by thoughts that are impure? Are you allowing doomsayers to destroy your walk with Jesus Christ?  STOP! God is there for you, did He not choose you before you were born? YES!  LIVE THEN FOR HIM!

The law of the LORD is perfect,

            Converting the soul;

The testimony of the LORD is sure,

            Making wise the simple;

                                    Psalm 19:7

Love God: Live life

Richard L. Crumb

           

Preserving The Truth: Not Following A Different Gospel

I marvel that you are turning away so soon

from Him who called you in the grace of Christ,

to a different gospel, which is not another;

but there are some who trouble you and want

to pervert the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven,

preach any other gospel to you than

what we have preached to you,

let him be accursed.

Galatians 1:6–8

            The readiness to believe preaching, or teaching, that which on the face of their suppositions to leave what was formerly taught by the apostles was a “marvel’ to the apostle Paul. The Jews who became believers in Jesus Christ still held on to a salvation of works. A person must do the former things of the law, not just the ten commandments, but the works of the law, those ceremonial acts God in His dispensation commanded under the Old Testament covenant; i.e., circumcision, which was a major point to the uncircumcised that unless they were circumcised they did not have merit before God. These Christian Jews believed that the Gospel was a grant to them as reward for doing the works of the law. They looked down upon and even condemned the uncircumcised and those who allow murderers, and adulterous ones, the divorced, etc., to be admitted into the church of God. Those dissenters left behind the preaching of the apostle Paul and devised another gospel.  This gospel was not saying that Jesus did not come and die for sins, “which was not another”, rather it was a gospel that was not preached by Paul and was an addition adding works for a person to obtain favor and merit with God. They preached works; they preached that without these works, doing these things, that their salvation was not complete.  It was a perversion of the gospel. Paul was in this letter calling them back to what they were taught by him from the beginning and to return to that gospel. If a person was preaching or teaching another form of gospel, they were to be “accursed.”

            Fast forward into out time, a time after the Reformation, a time when the Bible, its truth was reforming what was taught by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church added works, a system of indulgences whereby money paid to the church would ensure them a path into heaven, a going off the fight in the crusades and having their past sins absolved. The Reformation was a return to the gospel, to Sola Scriptura, the Reformation changed the way people thought and believed, and God worshipped in truth and not by doing some act. Some Christians even taught and do in this day, teach that to be saved you must be baptized; baptismal regeneration. Martin Luther has been so misunderstood yet as one who led the Reformation never claimed that salvation came to one apart from faith in Jesus Christ: “to seek the efficacy of the sacrament apart form the promise and apart from faith [in Christ], is to labor in vain and to find damnation” (Luther’s essay, “THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF CHURCH”). Jonathan Edwards an important person of the first Great Revival, led this nation to return to God as many, as happened in the Church from the beginning of the church, to put God first, to hold fast to the Gospel as revealed in Scripture. Many were following men; “as we have said before, so no I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:9).  We have even today, many churches and Christians who are following another gospel, a gospel of works, not of faith alone, not Sola Scriptura, rather a system of works.  Some teach that you must have a “second baptism” demonstrated as being done, by speaking in tongues, or doing some other supernatural miraculous act. Some teach that to be a “true” Christian there must be supernatural signs. They speak of raising the dead (which they do not have any proof), that they must hear God in their minds, a special revelation, (I suppose the God did not give us all we need in His word), and all this without even mentioning the name of Jesus Christ, His gospel. My one recent experience will give some evidence. There are those who believe that the school of Supernatural that they attend, believe that they have the “gospel, ”and are doing the work of God One day while walking my German Shepherd dog along the river trail.  Speaking to my dog to move to the right from the bridge wall, was heard me saying “right”, and this young man stopped his bike and asked, “Do you have pain in your right foot?” He wanted to pray for my foot. He believed that God directed him to hear me and to pray for my hurting foot, for this is what a Christian was to do. God would speak in words into his thought process and this special, supernatural revelation is what the Bible teaches. Is it? No! When speaking to him about Jesus Christ and the Bible I asked: “If God gave partial revelation, an incomplete revelation, a gospel that we were to be healers, or to have God speak to us in ways that are not in His word?” He answered back: “Jesus said, “we would do greater things than He had done.” I asked, “What is greater than raising the dead?” What more I ask can we do that is greater? Is it not to take the gospel, not some man’s presupposition based upon this world, upon men who do not believe in God, i.e., Charles Darwin, John Dewey, etc, who pervert the gospel.  Teaching that which is not recorded for us, not allowing Scripture to speak.  We are not to add anything to it, we then preach and teach the truth, the Gospel as handed down to us from the Apostles and other men God used to transmit the truth about what God had and has done through the death of His Son Jesus Christ.

            Don’t be misled, don’t just tacitly acquiesce. As one man has said: Trust, but verify. Do this with what I write, comment to me when you think that I am speaking in a false way, or you don’t fully understand. Iron sharpens iron. Paul continues: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men. I would not be a bondservant of Christ. But I make know to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached be me is not according to man. for I neither received it  from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:10–12.

Oh, bless our God, you peoples!

            And make the voice of

His praise to be heard.

            Who keeps our soul

Among the living. And does

            Not allow our feet

To be moved.

                        Psalms 66: 8–9

Make God the center of your life

Richard L. Crumb