Salt and Light Part 2 - Actions of Faith

Continuing on this theme of “Salt and Light” and “good deeds” I want to look at the book of James. In reality I would love to look at this entire book but for starters I’ll just hit a few verses that I think give us an even greater challenge to the idea of being Salt and Light and explore this idea of others seeing our good deeds as I discussed in my last blog post. (If you have not read that one yet just look down a few posts for “Salt and Light” and read that one first)

When we looked at Mathew 5 we see Jesus challenging us to show that we are truly followers of Christ, Salt and Light to this world, by our “good deeds” and I ended it with a challenge to go do good deeds. This past week I was reading in the book of James and I came across the same phrase, “good deeds” and it got my attention again.

In James 2:20 James says “How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is dead?” In other words, if our faith is not seen by what we do then we really don’t have a life changing faith. That might seem harsh but look at the verse right before. In verse 19 James says, “You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. “

Here James makes a very hard direct statement to those who call themselves Christians. He says that just claiming the knowledge of truth does not set us apart yet as followers of Christ (or as Salt and Light). Even the demons know that truth you claim BUT it has not penetrated their heart and life to a point of living out that truth in a way that makes them different then the way they where before they knew the truth. Our faith MUST be shown! Not because our actions save us, but its our actions that show we are saved. If the actions are absent, if our life does not have the good deeds Jesus and James talk about then what do we have? We have knowledge of Truth, yes we know Jesus is God, but what is that alone? James even asks the question in verse 14 “If you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions…Can that faith save you?”

When we truly surrender to God as the LORD of our lives our faith then is shown in our actions and good deeds because we truly begin to live out the truth that “our lives our not our own” (1 Cor 6:19) and our actions show our faith is real and alive by how we live, showing that we are living as Jesus would live and do what we saw Jesus doing.

This is not an easy word to think about but I think it’s a word that all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ must be willing to hear and let God speak to us and challenge us through.

This has greatly challenged me! Is my faith seen as active and alive by my actions? Am I Salt and Light that is seen by the world around me as different then the rest of the world? Does my faith appear dead by my actions, or lack their of…? 

I encourage you to read James Chapter 2 completely to get an even better picture of this incredible challenge to us all.  BUT also find encouragement that God is writing this to Christians who had the same struggles when it was written back then as we do today. God wants us to grow through these words and find our strength in us coming to Him in this challenge!