Something that often causes confusion among Christians is the
relationship between salvation, faith and good deeds.
Many believers can’t help feeling that the Bible contradicts
itself on this topic. They come across
passages which seem to say that salvation is by faith and not dependent on
doing good deeds. But they find other
passages which seem to teach that salvation is
dependent on doing good deeds. And they then
become confused.
So what are we to make of this?
Does the Bible contradict itself on this issue? Or can we find a reasonable solution that
accounts for all the data?
I believe that the latter is true.
I am confident that when passages on this topic are properly interpreted,
they do fit together without contradiction.
And in what follows I will try to explain how this is the case.
Salvation is by faith
and not by doing good deeds
To begin with, it is certainly true that the Bible presents salvation
as a gift and not as something we earn. There
are passages that cannot reasonably be interpreted in any other way.
In John 3:14-15, for example, Jesus states:
‘14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in Him might have eternal life.’
Jesus’ words here fit very poorly with the idea that Christians
need to partly earn their salvation. Instead,
salvation is presented as a gift that is simply received by faith in Christ.
In Acts 16:31, similarly, Paul and Silas tell the Philippian
jailer:
‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your family.’
These words very strongly imply that Christians in no way earn
salvation.
Again, in Romans 5:1 Paul says:
‘Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . .’
The justification Paul refers to here involves being declared perfectly
morally upright in God’s sight. It is very
difficult to reconcile this text with the idea that Christians partly earn their
salvation by doing good deeds.
Ephesians 2:8-9 points in the same direction. Here Paul states:
‘8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of deeds, so that no one may boast.’
This passage is clear that salvation is not the result of
performing good deeds.
Verses such as these teach us that being saved from sin and hell
is something we receive by faith in Christ rather than something we earn by
doing good deeds. Other passages which
teach the same include John 1:12; 3:16; Romans 1:17; 3:22, 26, 28; 4:1-6, 24; 9:30-32;
10:9-11; Galatians 2:16; 3:2, 24; Ephesians 1:13; Philippians 3:9; 2 Timothy
3:15.
Saving faith is not
just intellectual assent
It is important to understand that saving faith is not mere
intellectual assent to the basic truths of Christianity.
Probably the passage which teaches this most clearly is James
2:14-26. We should especially take note of
v. 19, where James warns his readers:
‘You believe that God is one. Very impressive! Even the demons believe that – and shudder!’
James is saying that the correct beliefs of demons will not enable
them to avoid God’s final punishment. And
he clearly implies too that people who merely believe the right things about
Christianity will likewise not be saved from hell.
When the Bible talks about saving faith, it has in view not only
intellectual assent to the basic truths of Christianity, but also personal
trust in Christ. Saving faith involves
not only belief that Jesus is Lord,
but also belief in Jesus, i.e., reaching
out to Him in an attitude of personal trust.
Saving faith does not
include good deeds
Roman Catholics and some others often claim that when the Bible
speaks about salvation by faith, we should understand the faith to include doing
good deeds. Those who take this view
define saving faith as a combination of trust in Jesus and the performance of
good deeds.
This idea should be rejected, however. Note how Ephesians 2:8-9, which I cited above,
clearly contrasts saving faith and doing good deeds.
We should also note Romans 4:4-5, where Paul writes:
‘4 Now to the person who works, his pay is not considered to be a gift but an obligation. 5 But to the person who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is considered as uprightness.’
This passage is another that clearly contrasts having saving faith
in Jesus with working, i.e., doing good deeds.
The idea that performing good deeds is a component part of saving
faith should therefore not be accepted.
Summing up
We can sum up the discussion so far as follows:
Christians are saved by faith and not by doing good deeds. Saving faith involves personal trust in
Christ and not just assent to the basic truths of Christianity. And doing good deeds is not a part of saving
faith.
Only those who do good
will be saved
Although the Bible teaches that salvation is by faith and not by performing
good deeds, it also teaches that only those who perform good deeds will be
saved.
Of course, when someone becomes a Christian, all their sins are
forgiven. Therefore, if someone lives a
terribly sinful life and then dies shortly after conversion, they will be saved
even though they may not have had the opportunity to do many good deeds.
It is simplifying things a bit, then, to say that the Bible
teaches that only those who do good deeds will be saved. If we want to be more precise, we could say
that it teaches that only people whose lives are characterised by good deeds at
the time they die or Jesus returns will be saved.
Numerous passages point in this direction.
In Romans 8:12-13, for example, Paul warns the Roman Christians:
‘12 So then, brothers, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, 13 for if you live according to the flesh you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.’
This passage tells us that those who live unrepentantly sinful lives
are not on track for heaven.
Again, in 1 John 3:8 we are told:
‘The person who practises sin is of the devil.’
This verse is completely clear that people who have not repented
of their sins are not saved. It is
unthinkable that anyone who is described as ‘of the devil’ could be a saved Christian.
James 2:14-26, which I have already referred to, also clearly
teaches that those who do not perform good deeds will not finally be saved.
In fact, in v. 24 of this passage James even says:
‘You see that a person is justified by deeds and not by faith alone.’
At first sight this seems to strongly contradict Romans 5:1 that
we looked at above, which clearly implies that justification is by faith and
not by doing good deeds.
Another passage that at first glance also seems to contradict Romans
5:1 is Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus teaches about the Day of Judgment. Here are verses 34-36:
‘34 Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited Me in. 36 I was naked, and you clothed Me. I was ill, and you visited Me. I was in prison, and you came to Me.”’
Note the causal word ‘for’ in v. 35. In this passage those who reach final
salvation in heaven are said to do so because
they have performed good deeds!
Some of the other passages which teach that only those who perform
good deeds are on track for heaven are John 3:20-21; 5:28-29; 8:42; 10:27-28;
12:25; Acts 11:18; Romans 2:5-10; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 6:7-8;
Hebrews 12:14; 1 John 3:9, 14-15; 5:18; Revelation 21:8; 22:12, 15.
Reconciling both
groups of passages
The Bible is very clear, therefore, that performing good deeds is
in some sense necessary for salvation. How,
then, do we reconcile passages which teach this with the earlier group of
passages we looked at, which teach that salvation is by faith and not by doing
good deeds?
I believe we can reconcile these passages if we suppose that they
are all describing the same thing but some are doing so more technically and
precisely than others. (As far as James 2:24 is concerned, the issue is actually much more complex than
this. Nevertheless, I would still maintain
that one key point to understand about this verse is that it involves a
relatively untechnical way of describing things.)
If we speak technically and precisely, we can say that salvation
is by faith and not by performing good deeds, and that although saving faith is
always accompanied by good deeds, the good deeds are not themselves a means of
salvation. Many biblical passages,
especially in Paul’s letters and John’s Gospel, express things along these
lines.
However, if we speak relatively untechnically and more loosely, we
can simply say that salvation is conditional on a person having the package
that contains faith and good deeds. Here
there is no attempt to analyse the contents of this package or to distinguish
the roles of the faith and the good deeds.
They are just seen as things that go together. Many biblical passages express things along
these lines.
An analogy
Let me give an analogy that I hope will help to better illustrate
what I am saying.
Suppose a cargo is being transported on a train. One person, A, might say that the engine of
the train alone is doing the work in transporting the cargo, and that the rest
of the train is doing no work but is simply attached to the engine. That would be a correct way of putting things. However, another person, B, might just say
that the train is doing the work in transporting the cargo. That would also be a correct way of putting
things.
Importantly, A and B would have an identical understanding of what
is happening, despite their different ways of expressing this. A expresses things more technically and precisely
than B. However, the difference is only
in how things are expressed, not in what A and B believe that the train is
actually doing.
This analogy isn’t meant to correspond in detail to the discussion
on the relationship between salvation, faith and good deeds. I am not suggesting that each part of the
train corresponds to faith or good deeds or something else. I am simply using the example of a train to
illustrate how a situation can be expressed with different degrees of
technicality and precision.
If we think precisely about what is going on in salvation, we can
say that a person is saved by faith and not by doing good deeds, and that the
saving faith will be expressed in the performance of good deeds. Many biblical passages involve this kind of
precision.
However, if we speak more loosely, we can simply say that
salvation is by faith and good deeds. Or
we can say that salvation is conditional upon faith and good deeds. Or we can just assume that faith exists and
say that salvation is conditional upon performing good deeds. Many biblical passages involve untechnical
expressions of these kinds.
This solution fits
with evangelicalism
I should stress that my solution here is in line with the standard
evangelical understanding of this issue, since I am agreeing with these key evangelical
points:
(1) Salvation is properly understood to be by faith and not by performing
good deeds.
(2) Performing good deeds is not included in what we mean by
saving faith.
(3) If someone has saving faith, that faith will always be
expressed in the performance of good deeds.
Running into
difficulties
As I have already noted, many Christians run into difficulties
when trying to understand biblical teaching on this issue. And often this is because they have failed to
understand that biblical language can at times be relatively more or less
technical. Frequently, because Christians
(rightly) hold Scripture in such high regard, they simply assume that every scriptural
statement is made with full technical precision.
This, however, is a mistake.
It is perfectly legitimate to speak about matters loosely and
untechnically at times, and Jesus and the biblical authors clearly believed this. In fact, there are times when imprecision in the
Bible goes far beyond what we are used to in the modern West.
If we insist on taking the biblical passages on saving faith and those
on doing good deeds with full technical precision, we are going to end up with
a big problem. Either we will have to
say that some passages contradict each other.
Or we are going to have to force some passages to say something that
they really don’t.
However, once we allow that Jesus and the biblical authors could
speak with different levels of technicality, the problem disappears or is at
least greatly reduced. We can much more
easily reconcile passages without forcing interpretations.
Some passages, which speak technically and precisely, teach us
that salvation is by faith and not by performing good deeds. And these passages expect the reader to
assume that saving faith will always express itself in good deeds.
Other passages, which speak less technically and less precisely,
teach us that we will saved by performing good deeds or because we perform good
deeds.
See also:
