The Gospel Message: The Result Of Our Faith

In this final post we will consider the outcome of one’s faith in the life of a believer. This question is in fact a trifle misleading. The ultimate outcome of one’s faith is decided the moment one believes. “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life,” John 3:36. “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed,” John 8:36. The grammar speaks to present, immediate possession when one believes the gospel. One is saved the moment one believes.

The outcome of one’s faith, practiced in daily life, is to serve the Lord willingly; not for honor or reputation, but motivated by love. We may claim that we love God, but our words can ring hollow if our demeanor does not align with our confession. The gospel message can be (and has been) grievously hindered by men and women whose lives fail to align with their professing faith. It is the essence of James’ message in his epistle about dead faith. It does not mean the believer has lost their salvation, or that they were never saved. It means their faith does not yield anything vital for the glory of God or the benefit of our fellow man.

Loving God ought to reflect in our lives as we yield to the Holy Spirit and permit Him to lead us in the path of God’s choosing. I write this even to my own condemnation, knowing that I often do not walk accordingly, and use this as a reminder to myself that I have so much more to learn, and more room to mature and grow in the faith. Visibly, the world will know that Christ is our Lord by how we love one another as fellow saints. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,” John 13:35. “And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God,” 1 John 4:7. We are warned not only by James, but John as well that Christian love should not be mere lip service, 1 John 3:18. What I ultimately would say about the culmination of the Christian faith is that a saint’s love for God cannot be expressed in isolation. We are not to take our God into some remote place and adore Him, disconnected from the same humanity God sacrificed His own Son to redeem and bring back to Him.

I think of the monasteries of nuns and monks whose profession is holy isolation, which makes no sense from a Biblical perspective, since Christianity is a social faith, meant to be carried out, preached and practiced in this sinful world, before sinful men. Between the saints we are to, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” Galatians 6:2. Our works, if they are done in love, are an expression of God’s love for a fallen world, the same world Jesus Christ entered and died for. He selflessly gave until He ultimately gave His own life for ours, to ransom humanity, to ransom you and I, back from sin and eternal separation. Our works, then, as fellow believers in Jesus Christ and sons and daughters of God the Father, are our individual expressions of love for God, demonstrated by our love for mankind. This is the heart of what James meant when he wrote, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” James 2:14. He asks his brothers in Christ, recognizing them for what they are, how a faith that does not manifest in good works profits. This idea of profit is not only personal, but a profit for others who would gain materially or spiritually from a saint whose walk in the Spirit has matured them to produce fruit.

Good works, not the dead works motivated by worldly or carnal reasons, come from the heart of God as He works His will through His yielded children. Paul wrote that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, going so far as to say that God prepared these good works beforehand for us to walk in, Ephesians 2:10. The verse almost makes it sound as if God were preparing the work for us, and our job is simply to carry said work to its recipient. This idea would fall in line with our Lord’s teaching that we are branches in the True Vine, and that simply abiding in Jesus will bear fruit. It is the Lord’s vital life that bears the fruit, the branch is just the conduit through which the fruit comes, so while the branch grows the fruit for someone else to pick, it is the strength and vitality of the vine that provides the nourishment. And while there are many branches, there is but one Vine, and if a branch refuses to yield fruit, others will yield bountifully. Further, failure to yield fruit results in burning. Not of the believer, but of its resulting efforts apart from the True Vine, see John 15:1-8. The context in John is about fruit bearing, and the branch that yields nothing is burned; this agrees with the believer being saved, as though through fire, 1 Corinthians 3:15.

The saint is fit for Heaven the moment we are born again. Let us just rejoice in that truth and allow its beauty to vitalize our life on earth as we continue our walk. Sanctification is not making us more fit for Heaven, so to speak. No, when we are born again we receive the righteousness of Christ, substituting our human righteousness with His own, and making us fit for Heaven and God’s presence. This is a simple, necessary thing to be reminded of, because it will mean a world of difference for how one views works in this life. Why does one perform good works? How is one made fit for Heaven once the Christian life begins? Both questions are simple to answer. The first is contingent upon our view of salvation. If one believes in conditional salvation or works salvation, whichever name we deem to call it, works will always have a place in terms of earning from God what God says He freely gives us. Good works begin when we hear the gospel message, understand it, and believe it to the salvation of the soul. The question of our eternal destiny is laid to rest, and the believer may now focus on serving others. The service of others is our best way of simply honoring the Lord and demonstrating our love for Him, by heeding His command to love one another, preach the gospel and bring His peace into a hurting world. But we must understand that the matter of our salvation was settled at the cross. When we believe, we are born again, never to suffer the Second Death, never to be parted from the love of God, never to feel the wrath of God the unregenerate world will experience.

The second question would naturally result from a misunderstanding of salvation. The gospel saves; Jesus Christ alone saves. Our denominations won’t save; our humanitarian efforts won’t save. The world needs Jesus Christ. His gospel, when heard and believed, transforms the dead and brings them to life. This is how one is made fit for Heaven, and having been made so, we are also now prepared for those good works God has made ready for us to do. As stated before, the gospel is simple. God’s gospel of grace is a message of reconciliation between an estranged race and their holy Creator, who removed the barrier of sin that prevented our return through the death of His Son. His death paid sin’s penalty for Adam’s race, since Christ, like Adam before Him, was our representative Man. Adam’s sin passed the curse of death to all; Christ’s sacrifice passed the hope of life to all, predicated on the fact that one must hear and believe the gospel to receive this great boon, Romans 10:14, 15, 1 Corinthians 15:45, 47-49.

To summarize, a believer’s life after being saved ought to be (but may not always be) a life of fruitful service to the Lord and Savior that purchased them. It is not always so, and EVERY believer has their barren seasons, to be sure. As James himself pointed out, this does not point out that such individuals are unsaved; it means they are barren, whose faith is lifeless and unfit for the benefit of others, or performing good works. Such an attitude seems to indicate that love has waxed cold for the Lord, a symptom indicated in the Lord’s rebuke of some of the churches in the opening chapters of the Revelation. But God is the perfect Father, and chastens us as we need it for our benefit, as we learn from His correcting hand, Hebrews 12:11. In Hebrews the writer refers to the peaceable fruit of righteousness. In Galatians, Paul names some of the fruit of the Spirit the believer will begin to manifest when we walk with the Lord: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, Galatians 5:22, 23. As we walk in the Spirit and learn to crucify the flesh this fruit, these godly attributes, will manifest in us, and we may bring the bounty of this to others, glorifying God and serving men. No matter what you have been called to by the Lord, however public, however discreet, be emboldened through love to do it with your whole heart. It is not the scope of the ministry, but our yieldedness to His will that glorifies Him best, and will enable us to be able servants that will simply do as our Father in Heaven desires.