The Role Of Faith And Works In Salvation
Many people think they are in right-standing with God simply because they see themselves as good people. However, if our salvation was solely based on comparing our good deeds to our bad, we would surely fail. Thankfully, God’s Word says something different.
The Gospel
The Christian gospel (literally, "good news") teaches us that all of mankind has sinned, separating us from a perfect and holy God. But despite of our shortcomings, God, out of love, put on human flesh in Jesus Christ and took the punishment for the sins of the world upon Himself. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, offering forgiveness and everlasting life to all who place their faith in Him as their Savior and Lord.
Salvation is not something earned through the good works that we do but is something we receive freely through faith, resting in the work Jesus has already done for us. This truth is laid out beautifully in Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
So, the good news of the gospel is that anybody can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. But the Bible appears to say something else, later in the New Testament, in the Book of James:
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)
Now, you might be thinking "Wait a second... I thought the Gospel says people are saved by faith, not works!" But hold on. Before you go off believing you have discovered a contradiction in the Bible, let me remind you that a debate over these two verses has already taken place over 500 years ago in the Protestant Reformation.
The Debate of the Protestant Reformation
The hallmark of the 16th century Protestant Reformation was the view that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Not that this was a new idea, but the Catholic church at that time had fallen away from this view of salvation and began to believe salvation was earned partly by the good works someone did. While the Reformers firmly stood by Ephesians 2:8-9 to defend their view of salvation, the Roman Catholics used James 2:24 to explain theirs. This led the Catholic church to excommunicate Martin Luther (a leading voice in the Reformation) and hold the Council of Trent where they used James 2:24 to explain their view of salvation.
Tragically, this actually led Luther to go as far as rejecting the Book of James as an inspired book of the Bible. In volume 35 of Luther’s Works, he wrote “I consider that [James] is not the writing of any apostle…. Flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture, it ascribes righteousness to works…. St. James’ epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to the others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.” Though Luther was an incredible theologian and the church today is largely indebted to him, he was certainly wrong in this regard.
So, our question still remains: how can both Ephesians 2:8 and James 2:24 coexist without contradicting?
The Context of James 2:24
When James 2:24 is actually read within its larger context, it becomes clear that James is not teaching salvation by works. In this section of Scripture, James is actually making an argument against Christians who say they have saving faith in Jesus yet show no evidence in their life that transformational salvation has taken place.
James begins this argument in 2:14 asking, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” (2:14). By this rhetorical question, James shows that he does believe it is faith that saves, not works, through his wording. He did not ask “can those works save him?” but "Can that faith save him?"
Furthermore, he goes on to say that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (2:17), and similarly at the end of this argument, “faith apart from works is dead” (2:26). Admittedly, these texts can easily be interpreted in a way that a person must somehow work to earn their salvation. However, what James is really saying is that true saving faith inevitably results in good works.
Let me give you an example. A young man loves money so much that his whole life revolves around it. One day, he attends a Christian event and in response to the message claims to believe the Gospel. He repents from his sins and begins to follow Jesus. He tries to obey the Bible's commands for a while, but after some time gives up and goes back to his old lifestyle of self-pleasure. He still attends church a few times a year but never regains the passion for Jesus he once had.
Though only God could truly know if this young man was saved, this analogy sounds exactly like Jesus’ parable of the sower. In the parable, the seeds sown in the thorns illustrate those who hear the word of God but soon desert it for riches and worldly desires (Mk 4:18-19). In contrast, the seed sown in good soil (which bears good fruit) illustrates those who hear the Word of God and respond with true, saving faith. The soil is not made good by the fruit it goes on to bear, rather, the soil goes on to bear good fruit because it was good in the first place. Similarly, James teaches that only those who go on to do righteous works are those who truly had saving faith.
After reading James in context and seeing how saving faith is understood and taught elsewhere in the Bible, we see that these two verses are not in contradiction. Good works are a mere byproduct of genuine faith in Jesus Christ.
Moreover, just after Ephesians 2:8-9, the verse the reformers used to teach salvation by faith alone, Paul states in verse 10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10, italics mine). Paul demonstrates that faith and good works go hand in hand; it is faith alone that saves, but a genuine faith that inevitably results in righteous works. If that result is not the case, it might not have been true saving faith in the first place.