Work and Saving Faith

John 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

Can faith ever become a work? It seems like a silly question but I don’t think it is. If there is any possibility that it can, then there is a whole class of people out there who are going down into the pit without realizing it.

I suppose the real question is to define what is meant by faith. If one means "saving faith" then that can never become a work because, if one is being saved through faith one does not rely on works. But there is a mindset that thinks that faith is the act of believing performed in the strength of the flesh. In that view, faith is a conscious, deliberate effort to make oneself acceptable to God by believing, which is worked out through acts of "obedience" performed in a desire to be perfect before Him. It is, in fact, works in disguise.

There is a remnant of such works-related faith, even in the true elect. It is human nature to seek to justify oneself instead of relying on the justification provided by another. One struggles sometimes to remember that salvation is the gift of God’s grace, which is simply worked out through faith. It is hard not to think that the more faith we "show" the more sure will be our salvation. But though it may be hard, it is also essential. Whatever remains within us of that insidious deception of thinking that we can contribute in any way to our salvation must, at all costs, be eradicated. We must come to the full and complete rest of realizing that, as Spurgeon said, salvation is "all of grace."

It is one of the apparent paradoxes contained in the supernatural wisdom of God’s revealed plan that we are saved and sanctified, not by what we do, but by what He has done and is doing in us. Yet, at the same time, through the exercise of faith in the finished work of Christ, we actually labour to lay hold of that for which we were laid hold of by Him. It is a “partnership” in which one of the partners is silent - or struggles to be so. Our contribution is actually not to try to contribute to justification. Doing that is the hard work. It is the process of mortifying the flesh and all of its self-justifying propensities. It is the process of actually being saved from sin, as C.D. Cole would say, and not merely from hell - as the perishing may sometimes want.

Salvation from sin is the hardest thing in heaven and earth. Only the death of God’s Son could provide the means. Only our own death in Him could lay hold of that means. Only in the complete death of our flesh could we comprehend that we can contribute absolutely nothing to our own salvation - and that our sanctification is merely the process of getting out of His way, so to speak, so that He can make us what we will be. We are saved through faith - not by faith.

"But what of obedience?" someone may say, "Isn’t obedience in faith of some value to God, in our sanctification at least?" No. But it is of immense value to us. Obedience is nothing more than doing His will instead of our own. Doing His will requires nothing less than abiding in the loss our lives for His sake, or putting to death the deeds of the flesh. Unless He had first put a new heart within us, we should never even want to commit such suicidal sacrifice, let alone run headlong to do it, with joy in our hearts. How could we? What natural man would abandon all that he is in the hope of becoming all that he is not after he is “dead”?

Yet, so insidious and vile is sin that, even in believers, it clings with a tenacity which only Christ can release for us. Sin is a disease that runs through and through our entire being. In the same way that the body’s cells are totally replaced every seven years, so in our sanctification we must be totally replaced with something made by Christ. That He partially does this while we are living on earth, without us losing our actual identity, is something that testifies to His power of creative Deity.

Do I work out my salvation? Yes. Is there any contribution to it from my work? No. My salvation is entirely the work of Jesus Christ, including the ability to believe in Him and the will to follow Him. My work is the process of mortifying my sinful members so that I can actually see the wonders of His glory in my own salvation. And only by my believing in Him with the faith He has given me can the fruit of this gift be manifested. It is my only work. It is not really a work. It is the grateful recognition of the work of Another.