Part 3: James 2:17 Carrying Out Your Faith

                I have been thinking about the passage in James where it says “faith without deeds is dead”. Many Christians take this passage to mean, “If you don’t go out and do ‘good things’ in general then your faith is useless”. This is not what the passage is talking about. Simply said, we should carry out our faith. This passage is not saying that we need to tag on good deeds to our faith, but rather, we should act on our faith. If we know God wants us to preach, then to not preach is to make our faith useless. If we do preach however, then we have carried out our faith “in word and deed”. Deeds (or works) can be anything that God has called us to do. It is not limited to helping the poor, but to everything we know by faith (even simply going and talking with someone can be living out our faith; whatever God’s will is for us). If we believe that God wants us to speak for or against something for believers (on the basis of God’s word) then in that case by doing it, we are acting in faith and deed.

                Both works and faith have to work together and can never be separated since we live out our faith in whatever that faith is (as based on the Bible). We can never then have faith apart from carrying it out (that would be sin because we are not doing what we know we ought to do) and things that we do should never be done not in faith, “for whatever is not done out of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) From this we can see that we are justified by faith being taken to completion and not by deeds independent of faith.

Part 2: Needs Based Ministry

                I have been thinking lately about what is called a “needs based approach to ministry”. This approach does definitely focus on some important things, like helping the poor to have autonomy, a higher quality of life and to promote mental health. There are however, inherent attitudes and messages that this approach is sending to the recipients of “needs based ministry”. I feel that this approach is perpetuating a mentality which chooses to say that human needs take precedence over God’s sovereignty over us. I have heard it said that one’s needs must be fulfilled first (or to reach autonomy) before we can and should share the gospel with them. Although needs are important, we should never try to forcefully cram the gospel message into a formula. The reasoning behind this is simple: Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” “Do not be conformed to this world” means that we should not conform to an “A leads to B” mentality, which would be rooted in self (a narcissism or serving something other than God). In other words, we need to teach others not to be rooted in themselves (which is the message conveyed in a needs based approach to ministry). Rather, we should teach others to be rooted in God.

                Too many times the carrot for the unbeliever has been “join so that you can reach self-actualization and have all your needs fulfilled” and, “God is here to fulfill your every need and so are we”. This could sound great on the surface, but what is really behind this approach is the deification of the self. When people become Christians on this precedence they would generally do one of two things: they either view God as a cosmic Santa Claus who is there only for their own self-wellness, or they conform to a sort of secular humanism where human suffering is the greatest evil and is the highest priority for humankind to alleviate. The difference between a Christian approach and a secular one here appears subtle, but makes all the difference. After all, who does not want self-wellness or human suffering to be alleviated? While these are both great things, they are not the main things in Christianity. God is being left out of the picture to a large extent. We are teaching others to submit to the gods of self-wellness, autonomy and humanism, which greatly plague the church today.

                There is, further, a great irony in this approach to ministry. We hear a lot about promoting justice, human rights and various tenets of humanism in what is called “the social gospel” but we never hear anything about God’s judgement. Am I missing something here? Last time I checked, judgement was synonymous with justice because it is the carrying out of justice. Who better to define what justice is and is not than God himself? Or do we find it unthinkable that God would dare to condemn humanity? 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 says:

“This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our testimony to you was believed.”

And

Romans 2:4, “Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?”

God has made a way for humanity to be saved despite their just deserving of eternal condemnation. The greatest charge of God to Christians is that we tell others about God’s grace which goes beyond justice. Grace is also different from any conceivable “human right” because it is undeserved (the only right we have is to condemnation). Grace is at work through a belief-obedience in God so that we do not need to face God’s just and eternal condemnation. Anything good in addition to God’s just judgement is an undeserving grace as is any kind of relief from suffering. We justly deserve eternal death, but God has given us a way out by taking consequences that should be upon our own heads upon himself. What greater love can there be then this: that one would lay down his life for his friends? God has laid down His life to save our wretched selves. Who else would do such a thing? People need to know and accept this or face eternal judgement! Therefore, the single greatest and most potent injustice a Christian can do to humanity is deprive them of Christ's call to repentance, forgiveness and eternal reconciliation with God. God’s judgement is totally and utterly interwoven into the fabric of justice. To leave God’s judgement out of justice is to have no justice at all. We can have a façade of justice in absence of God’s judgement, but in reality, it is only an illusion. This is because God is the standard of justice and without Him we are caught perpetually in a cycle of subjectivity.

Part 1: God and Human Rights

                Many Christians see humanity as “deserving” to be relieved from suffering, which would imply that God, who orchestrated the consequences of the fall was unjust in giving them. This reminds me of Lecrae’s song, Truth:

“But then some say 'How can God exist when
All this evil stuff in the world keep persistin'?
Wrong question. Ask again.
‘How come God ain't' let you feel the wrath from sin?’
What you thought last night deserved a first class flight
To Hell where God doesn't dwell.”

                How many times do we put humanity and its desires above the reality of God? It is so easy for Christians to become self-absorbed and self-entitled in this day and age. We forget that we are under grace. The consequences of the fall (Garden of Eden) are as just as the one who initiated them. We chose them and we deserve nothing more, but that is of course, where God’s undeserving grace comes in.

                The image of God upon us was tarnished as a result of the fall. We still have part of it, but not as it once was in the garden. Many Christians use the “imago dei” (image of God placed upon us in the Garden of Eden) to claim that we are valuable independent of God. They say that we are valuable because of the image of God which is upon all of humanity. Many Christians use this as a basis for “human rights” to which they believe that God should be held accountable and promote. This would assume that we have one-up on God, when in reality we have nothing at all to which we can keep God accountable. This is secular humanism in disguise. Rather, God is the one with the power. In fact, the only reason why we have any value at all is because God has placed value on us. In other words, we only have value at all because of God’s love upon us all. Otherwise we are worthless. We cannot have any value independent of God. This reminds me of an action figure that looks like a man. However, the value does not come because the action figure looks like a man but because the one who owns it places value in it. If humanity, as its creator, placed no value in the action figure, it is worthless (despite being in the image of a man). We are valuable because God places value in us.

                Despite popular belief, to believe in what some call “natural evil” is to actively condemn God for his just consequences which resulted from the fall in the Garden of Eden. Some try to justify this position by saying that “natural evil” is “chaos”. However, the implication of this is that there are things that are “chaos” to God (that there are things outside of His control). If we truly believe that God is sovereign, then it would be wrong to believe in “natural evil” because nothing is outside God’s control. As such, we should never call God’s just consequences evil. To do so, we are in fact, advocating a self-entitlement and humanism before God where we place ourselves as gods above Him. Furthermore, God did not choose these consequences for us, but we chose them for ourselves. It is a consequence of our free will. As mentioned earlier, all that humanity really deserves is condemnation. As such, we can never say that we deserve anything but condemnation. Jesus dying for us was purely by God’s grace. Let us never call God’s just consequences evil.

                A truly remarkable thing about God, is that despite knowing that we deserve nothing more than eternal torment, he took pity on us. He came down from heaven himself and took the consequences of our actions upon himself when he died on the cross. Jesus is the only person who did not deserve any of these consequences. Because of God’s tremendous love for us, he took our place. Because of this, even when we are saved in Christ, we are still as undeserving of God’s grace than an unbeliever. With that said, we should not go around telling people that they have “rights” that God is obligated to fulfill (that would be humanism). Yes we are called to help the poor and to act justly, but this command is from God to humanity. It is by no means a fundamental “right” that we can hold God accountable to. It is a command from God to do it, but not our “right” to receive it. Why should believers say that they have any “rights” under God? Wouldn’t this be abusing the grace God has given us? We should never call God’s grace a right.

“God has never been obligated to give us life. If we fought for our rights, we’d be in hell tonight. Mere sinners owed nothing but a fierce hand.” Lecrae's song: Boasting