In the book of Galatians we find the statement that "a man is not justified by works of the law" (Gal.2:16), and 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 because of works lest any man should boast."

These passages raise one of the thorniest issues in Christian theology ie. just what is the obligation to do good in Christianity? In the writings of Paul the expression "works of the law" simply denotes the doing of good works, any good works. That a Christian should do good works in order to be a true servant of God is indisputable. It is plainly taught by Jesus and the Apostles.

In the incident concerning the adulterous woman Jesus does not say "Depart, your sins are forgiven you", rather he exhorts "go, and sin no more"(John 8:11). Even in the passage from Ephesians quoted above, which is the standard text used to prove that salvation is not by works, the following words appear immediately after v.9:

The demand to do good appears in teachings about "bearing fruit".

Ideas of bearing fruit and Christian growth are linked in this last passage and it would seem to be fairly clear that a Christian should always be growing in faith and knowledge, and demonstrating this in the performance of good works.

The need to keep the commandments appears in the following verses:

How do we reconcile seemingly conflicting teachings about the need for good works? Why is it that theology students must spend years in higher religious education learning that God's laws have been dispensed with, when it is obvious to the most biblically illiterate man on the street that such a proposition is inherently nonsensical?

The answer to this problem lies in the experience of being imbued with the spirit (or spirit-filled). In Acts 2:38 the scheme of salvation is expressed by the words "Repent and be baptised ... and you shall receive the gift of the holy spirit". In Ephesians 1:14 the spirit is described as the "guarantee of our inheritance". In Romans 8:9 we find Paul stating categorically that only a person possessed of the spirit can really claim to belong to God. In Acts 19:2 recent converts are asked "Did you receive the holy spirit when you believed?" Why do we need the spirit? Because the salvation God offers us is to become spirit-beings in the world to come. For this to come about we need to become imbued with spirit-life during our mortal existence. As Paul states:

What is the significance of these passages to the issue of salvation by works or faith? In Acts 5:32 it is written that we obtain the spirit by obeying God. We start to do this at the point of repentance. Repentance is a change of mind in the direction of wishing to live according to God's ways and turning from evil. Repentance is a decision based on faith and belief. God responds in grace by bestowing the spirit. At this point our good works, if any, may not amount to very much. But when we have obtained the spirit we are at this instant "saved" people whose salvation is assured (Eph.1:14).

How then are we to understand a statement such as we find in James 2:17 "faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead"?

The answer is that the works "component" of salvation lies not in the area of qualifying for salvation, but becoming disqualified by turning our back on God and living lives of sin, in accordance with the book of Hebrews (10:26) where it is stated that "if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". We are not worthy of salvation by our good works because they are to God as a dirty rag (Isa.64:6), but we may become unworthy of the salvation he has granted us, though we did not deserve it by our good deeds, by repudiating our gesture of repentance. Just how wilful our sin must be, or how much a sustained course of conduct must be involved, may be unclear, but it appears certain that to commit deliberate sin after conversion seriously jeopardises our salvation.

This is not to say that we do not possess a guarantee of salvation by the spirit, as in the passage in Ephesians, but suggests that we may lose our salvation by in fact losing the spirit - by setting out on a deliberate course of disobeying God. Such a thing is reported in the Bible in connection with King Saul ("Now the spirit of the LORD departed from Saul" 1Sam.16:14). Furthermore this interpretation is borne out in the words of Jesus when he declares that the only sin God cannot forgive is "blasphemy against the spirit" (Mat.12:31). There are no doubt many Christians who have wondered just what the unforgivable sin might be without suspecting that it is really a profound sin against one's own self in the form of repudiating the very basis of our salvation - God's gift of the spirit.

This fact illustrates the interconnection which exists between good works and "life in the spirit" and underscores the point that spirituality has as much to do with actions as attitudes.

A supposed distinction is drawn between obeying the stipulations of the Old Testament law, and being a spirit-led person under the New Testament. Such a view is assumed to be expressed in Gal.3:1-3.

This passage is routinely pulled out to emphasise the baseness and carnality of those who seek a righteousness based on a "legalistic" adherence to divine law (specifically the commandments of the Old Testament). Yet in the very same book "works of the flesh" are defined (as in Gal.5:19-21) in the language of morality and spirituality. "Works of the flesh" are not simply adherence to Old Testament ritual as some Christians imply; they are decidedly spiritual shortcomings.

Disobeying the Old Testament commandments is as spiritual a matter as anything else. Traditionalists argue that adherence to the moral commandments amounts to spirituality, whilst adherence to the Mosaic regulations of the Torah amounts to "legalism". The truth of the matter however is that if a person breaks the dietary laws of the Bible he is committing a spiritual sin. The spiritual aspect of this wrongful conduct consists of being disobedient to God. This very point is addressed in Mk.7:14-23. Here Jesus contrasts the outward purity of the Pharisees with inner corruption and declares that nothing which enters a man from the outside defiles him. Jesus is emphasising the fact that true purity is always spiritual, and mere slavish obedience to religious rules and rituals is never actually relevant, unless accompanied by a state of spirituality.

Jesus Christ was not interested in the question of eating or not eating pork. He was interested in what motivated people to act in the way they did. He wanted people to act only on their faith - to observe the dietary laws because they really knew deep-down that it was what God required of them. To have this kind of faith one must really believe in the rightness of obeying God in such a matter and not engage in merely mechanical obedience to a set of rules. One might refrain from unclean food for all the most superficial reasons. Jesus wanted people to understand the deeper spiritual significance of everything they do in the service of God. For example the Christian should have a basic conviction that he should keep the dietary laws because they were given for his physical well-being, and that there is a God ready to back up his demands by allowing us to suffer the physical consequences of our disobedience. It is in the light of this that Christ's endorsement of the Mosaic Law in Mat.5:17-20 is followed up by references to the underlying spiritual aspects of the commandments. In this way it becomes impossible for us to demean God's law by not treating it as a heartfelt experience. In a sense one might argue that Jesus was not concerned with whether or not people committed murder or adultery. That these things are wrong is obvious. But Jesus addresses our deepest spiritual motivations.

In Rom.14 the Apostle writes:

Here the Apostle is addressing himself to the question of Christians who for religious reasons practise vegetarianism as opposed to eating (kosher) meat! The passage assumes the dietary prohibitions of the Old Testament. How do we know this? Because Paul himself observed the Jewish law as was indicated in the previous chapter.

The person "weak in faith" here is not a person who adheres to the Old Testament law (on this basis Peter would have been "weak in faith" in Acts 10:14 in the episode concerning Cornelius). It is the person, the vegetarian who goes beyond God's law, whose ritualistic observances are such that in their outwardness they constitute a threat to the inner experience of religion. In truth this passage has more to do with Jesus' statements about praying in secret rather than on street corners (Mat.6:5-6) than the dietary laws, because it is the person who really lacks faith who makes the biggest show of religiosity. The true man of faith is the one for whom religious belief is something felt in the depths of his being and recognised by God, not something put on display for the benefit of men.

As for the reference about "observing days" the same line of thinking applies. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that the "days" which this person "weak in faith" is observing are the Old Testament holy days. They are just as likely to be purely arbitrary days kept by this person as an added expression of outward piety towards God. At the end of this passage Paul suggests that we should accept prohibitions on the eating of meat and drinking of wine if this will help our "weaker brother". The real meaning of the whole passage is revealed in this statement because abstention from wine is not part of the dietary code of the Old Testament! These observations concern those who go beyond the dietary laws of the Bible.

These insights into the spiritual nature of the law were not, and never can be, part of the more formalistic human traditions of religion, this is why Jesus was misunderstood in his teachings on the law and ran afoul of the religious authorities.

All foods are indeed "clean" from the point of view of the spiritual life of the individual. Contrast this with the tendency of orthodox Judaism to regard food as intrinsically clean or unclean, and which tends to elevate the cleanness or uncleanness of a thing above a consciousness of right and wrong. Hence orthodox Jews will not eat food which is one sixtieth unclean. But this is a mechanistic form of righteousness which provides us with a false perspective on things. Can the same people claim a similar standard of purity in their moral and spiritual conduct? Can they claim to have rid themselves of all but one sixtieth of their lustful thoughts, greed, or pride? According to Christ it is these shortcomings which men should be concerned about. Emphasising the purity of permitted foods can camouflage our awareness of our unworthiness, giving us an appearance of righteousness when we are really a seething mass of corruption within. In the spiritual universe in which the Messiah moved unclean meat was "clean" because it exists in the realm of the physical world. We now have knowledge about what real uncleanness is - it is the uncleanness of the heart.

However it is still true that a conscious decision to eat forbidden food constitutes disobedience to the word of God, and this can only be described as a spiritual sin.

It does not take much imagination to realise that there are many things which are unclean for human beings to ingest, but even these things are not by themselves harmful to a person's spiritual standing before God. Again the question arises, just what purpose is served by retracting the commandments once they were given? Indeed, if these laws were of themselves subversive of the New Testament spirituality of Christ, why did God give them in the first place? Should not God have seen this in advance?

Mention must once again be made of the passage in Jeremiah (31:31-34), which is the Old Testament prophecy of the Christian religion. In this passage the connection between good works and the spirit-filled life is expressed precisely in accordance with the Messiah's teachings. We have the law written on our hearts (2 Cor.3:3), it is within us, we have no need to instruct others concerning the law; where the law was once our tutor now the spirit fulfils this role; where we were once under the law and slaves to sin Christ now declares our freedom (recall Paul's reference to "Christian freedom" in Gal.5:13) because it is something living within us and linking us to God through the agency of his spirit.

Note again the words of Ezek.36:26:

Our salvation depends upon our having this spirit, but our possession of the spirit does not imply that we are free to act as we like. Otherwise why would we have needed to repent in the first place? The need to do good works is not something which makes us worthy to attain salvation - since the spirit accomplishes this (our acceptance of it being dependent upon the acceptance of Christ as our saviour) - but our neglect to do good works may make us unworthy to continue in possession of it.

Christianity cannot get around the need to justify doing good works as a central component of its theology. I know of no Christian church where the doing of good is not a fundamental feature of its teachings. While recognising its existence, Christian theology cannot define with any precision how this obligation operates within the "gospel of grace". Artificial distinctions are made between different aspects of divine law in order to allow both points of view to be argued, such as the concepts of "no salvation by works", as opposed to the view that Christians must turn from sin.

It is argued that the written law is done away with, and that now we are led by the "law of the spirit". But is this literally true? Is it really right to not commit theft, only so long as one is not consciously observing the eighth commandment, in which case we fall into the error of "legalism"?! Is it right to see an all-embracing principle such as "love thy neighbour" as actually replacing the written commandments? How do we then understand a passage such as Rev.2:20, where the church of Thyatira is castigated by Christ for eating food offered to idols, or that those who are without the gates of the New Jerusalem in Rev.22:15 include those who practice idolatry (commandment number two)?

The fact is that not only is Christian theology profoundly confused about the need to do good, but even about what constitutes "sin"! The Bible itself defines sin as the transgression of the law (1 Jn.3:4). Whenever New Testament writers talk about turning away from sin they are in effect talking about disobedience to the Mosaic Law code, which includes such stipulations as "you shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev.19:18).

What is the competing definition of "sin" adopted by contemporary Christianity? As might be expected there is little consensus on this point among the various churches, no real attempt to define sin biblically, and wholesale confusion among the religious and secular community at large as to just what sin actually is.

Once again a persistent refusal to simply follow the Bible is in evidence. Not only does this result in theological confusion, but it makes it almost impossible for the established Christian churches to offer much leadership on the social level.

In rejecting the necessity for good works theologically, Christian teaching relies on passages which contrast the life of faith with human ideas of achieving salvation through the accumulation of good works (eg. Eph.2:8-9). Unfortunately these teachings have been taken to establish the principle that faith is somehow incompatible with obedience to the commandments; that one is somehow less faithful to God by carefully observing the laws of the Bible. It is difficult to see the logic of this notion. How can we say that we possess tremendous faith in God if we persistently disobey his commandments?

Imagine someone who wishes to be seen a loyal and conscientious worker, but who consistently disregards directions and orders from his employer. Such a person would lack a certain amount of credibility, would he not? Modern Christianity protests its devotion to God whilst mocking the idea of actually obeying his commandments in day to day life.

Not only is the doing of good works central to the true Christian experience, but the profoundly life-changing character of Christian conversion underlies the idea expressed in Matthew and Revelation about overcoming the world:

In arguing the above case one is likely to be met with a resounding conversation-stopper particularly favoured by Southern Baptists; "All you have to do is believe in Jesus!" (inspired principally by passages such as Acts 16:31 - "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.")

At first sight this declamation sounds like a complete rejoinder to a modern day Galatian heretic, but let's examine this statement. The assumption is that the word "believe" suggests simple belief in the various facets of Jesus' historical realty such as that he was born of a virgin, performed miracles, rose from the dead, or was the son of God. As creditworthy as it is to believe these things, it is obviously impossible to "believe Jesus" unless you actually believe what he said! One of the things he said was:

One should indeed believe in Jesus and assiduously set about doing the good works the spirit of God inspires one to do (Eph.2:10)!

CONTINUE

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