Recently in my quiet times I have been reading James. James is such an awesomely practical book with some great teaching. I thought that I would share one thing that I was reminded of lately.
In chapter 2, James talks about a weird concept
“faith without deeds is dead”
I remember when I first heard this in Yr 11, I had a mini freak out. My whole life I had been taught that I am saved by grace and not by anything that I had done (Ephesians 2), but here is the Bible saying that deeds are nessessary.
Thankfully I now understand this concept a lot better. We are only saved through grace alone by faith, but our faith is shown through our deeds. James says
“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”
Believing is not enough, our faith is shown through what we do and how we live.
A useful analogy that I have found is the wind. The is there, but we only known it is there through what we see it do. We cant see the wind, we can only see the effects of the wind, we can see leaves moving and trees swaying, but we cannot see the wind.
It is the same with faith, we can only show our faith through what we do. And how we live represents our faith. Anyone who has true faith in Christ will be living a life that aims to please God.
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