The Life of Faith

Faith. Performance. Independent of each other? Co-dependent? Or, something else?

The Catholic-monk-reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546), was tremendously frustrated with his inability to live a godly enough life to justify God’s forgiveness and acceptance of him into heaven. At the peak of his disillusionment, he encountered Romans 1:17, “The righteous man, shall live, by faith.”

Faith, period.

Faith alone.

Luther embraced the passage. He appropriated scriptural truth into his life and discovered the true Gospel. His works-based salvation was bankrupted and his discovery of salvation, by faith alone, in Christ launched the Protestant Reformation.

But Protestants, like Catholics, struggled to believe that acceptance with God did not require human contribution. Consequently, while holding theologically to sola Christos and sola fide—salvation by Christ alone through faith alone—acceptance with God was considered conditional, a performance-based acceptance.

One of the foundational teachings of Lifetime Ministries is that God does not have us on a performance-based acceptance. Rather, He has us on a Jesus-based acceptance. If you are in Christ, you are accepted. If not, you are not accepted by God. Bill used to say, “God is very interested in your performance; what you do is important. It just doesn’t have anything to do with your acceptance.”

Said another way, if you are in Christ there is nothing you can do to cause God to accept you more than He already does. The converse is true as well: There is nothing you can do to cause God to accept you less than He does if you are in Christ.

Thus, performance is established as important to God but is taken out of the salvation and acceptance equation. Sola Christos, sola fide. Given the transformation of this great grace in the Gospel, we concur with Paul that we are created in Christ for good works.

But why?

Faith and works are connected—even reflective of each other, as James writes—yet they remain independent.

Our salvation, the acceptance it gains us with God, and our establishment as members of God’s family is very problematic for Satan. Once we are born again, we are secured—sealed—in Christ by the Holy Spirit. This establishment is part of an irrevocable trust—a covenant—between the Trinity. Not only is our salvation irrevocable, it is unchangeable, and it exists in perpetuity.

For us, this is Good News. But for Satan, this is really bad news.

As Satan grapples with the grace of God to save and transform fallen humankind, the best he can do is bend orthodox theology to create heresy. He reasons, The people of God may be saved, but if I can tempt them to associate their effort with salvation to either annul it or discredit it, then the magnificence of salvation by faith in Christ will be irrelevant in this life.

Salvation is established, but on either side of the walk of faith there are precipices.

On one side there is the ditch of legalism, performance-based acceptance. God will love me more, accept me more, be more pleased with me, etc. if I perform well.

On the other side of the walk of faith, there is the ditch of license. Since I’m saved and secured in Christ, totally and completely forgiven, why not live like hell in this life and still enjoy heaven when I die?

Simple belief has its place in our theology. Yet, determined performance has its place as well.

Spiritual performance because God expects it of us is a derivation of legalism. But passivity about performance, or indifference to it, is a derivation of license.

Martin Luther was not a fan of the Book of James. But, James’ book remains one of the inspired books of the Bible. As much as Luther struggled with it, and as tempting as it is to over-embrace or under-embrace his writing, James’ spiritual reasoning still stands: “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

Faith alone. Sola fide. Yet, created for good works—“zealous for good deeds,” as is written in Titus.

Acceptance with God is established by faith in Christ alone. This set Martin Luther free from his works-based salvation. Yet he, like you and me, had to live. Thus, he said, “God does not need my good works, but my neighbor does.” In another place, “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” And, “I don’t always nail things to church doors, but when I do stuff happens.”

The final quote might have come from the left field of my brain, but the others are Martin himself. In them you can hear him aligning his faith and his performance while leaving his salvation established. As much as he disliked James, as he digested that he was righteous by faith (Romans 1:17), he eventually connected behavior to belief (James 2:18).

Our new person, called elsewhere a new creation, is transformed from darkness to light. Upon salvation, we are accepted, secured, justified, and endowed with a new heart. This new heart is the seat of the indwelling Christ, the place of the Holy Spirit. On its walls are inscribed the dreams and desires of God.

Thus, when we live truly from our heart, we exhibit behavior indicative of God and representative of our true selves. In Christ alone, by faith alone, we are saved and secured and transformed. When apprehended, taken aboard, grasped, embraced, our behavior reflects and is representative of our heavenly Father and our new person. This is what the Bible means when it says that we walk by faith.

Performance makes faith objective. What does it mean to have faith, I may ponder? My performance is a demonstration.

Performance can also misrepresent faith. In Christ, by faith, I’m established. When my performance is contrary to my true self, the incongruity serves me by contrasting God’s truth against performance. When this occurs, the Bible calls it sin or walking after the flesh.

What’s the point?

The point is, this new heart I possess desires to please God, not to gain greater acceptance—an impossibility—but because it is what a new heart does. Thus, true faith is faith that performs, not to gain or enhance salvation or standing with God, but because it is in our hearts to perform in keeping with our transformed person.

Faith is abstract. Performance is objective—serving us either positively or negatively to better understand God and ourselves.

This conflict, tension, and laboring to demonstrate faith through works is nothing new. A disciplined, spiritual life has been practiced for centuries. What the Gospel changes about the disciplined, spiritual life is that rigorous, spiritual discipline is not done to gain God’s favor but is motivated to demonstrate a heart made new, a soul secured, and a life driven by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

In our hearts, we desire to know more about who God is and who we are. The most effective way to realize this desire is via spiritual discipline. In fact, from the biblical writers until now, a set of disciplines has emerged that are simply called, the spiritual disciplines.

Referencing back to the walk of faith having precipices on either side of the path, Foster defines the path itself: “The spiritual disciplines are like a narrow ridge with a sheer drop-off on either side: there is the abyss of trust in works on one side and the abyss of faith without deeds on the other. On the ridge there is a path, the disciplines of the spiritual life. The path does not produce change; it only places us where the change can occur.”

A change in what?

We have been changed; made new. We are set apart for God and to God, i.e. sanctified. This was established in Christ alone, by faith alone.

But we labor to live truly and truly live. We struggle to reflect in our behavior what is true of ourselves and God. Yet, we are motivated to refine our understanding, to see more clearly, and to perform more accurately and compellingly the truth of true desires.

Practicing the rigor of the spiritual disciplines puts us in position to experience change in how we live, perform, behave, and think. Yes, we are sanctified, but as we walk the path of faith and practice the spiritual disciplines, our experience of sanctification changes, grows, develops, sophisticates, and our behavioral consistency increases.

But let’s simplify. Willard says the spiritual disciplines are "simply a matter of following [Jesus] into his own practices, appropriately modified to suit our own condition."

We say we are followers of Jesus Christ. By this, we don’t mean that we can do what He did or that we are mini versions of Him. What we mean is that we emulate the motive and method underlying how He lived. He too lived by faith, in complete dependence upon His heavenly Father, and as we will see by examining His practices, He practiced a set of disciplines that assisted His heart in accurately reflecting His Father in heaven.

On the one hand, it could be said that practicing the spiritual disciplines and personally benefitting from the rigor is a reasonable goal. But that is shortsighted—selfish even. Yes, we are to demonstrate the life of Christ in us, but we are also called to be ambassadors of Christ—His representatives in the foreign land of this earthly life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was martyred by Hitler, was asked how it was the German (Lutheran) Church did not resist the Nazis. Bonhoeffer replied it was because the church taught cheap grace.

By cheap grace, Bonhoeffer meant teaching void of the spiritual disciplines. This perspective was not unique to Bonhoeffer. Cheap grace has been resisted by the church fathers, the Reformers, and Christian teachers, philosophers, and thinkers through the ages because it misrepresents God’s actual grace and results in a church that is ineffective, shallow, and pithy.

A vibrant, active, robust church influences society and is both a clarion call for the Gospel as well as societal guardrails to establish and champion a moral people. A church imbibing cheap grace fails to influence society, morality, and advance the Gospel.

Bonhoeffer knew that as the spiritual disciplines go, so goes the vibrancy of the church and the church’s influence in society. He elaborated: "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

The German Church had the appearance of spiritual life. But their religious belief did not translate into practiced, relevant, spirituality in daily life such that German society was influenced.

It would be inaccurate to imply that all Christians in Germany lacked spiritual rigor. Bonhoeffer, Niemoller, and countless others resisted the Nazi regime for reasons of faith. It cost many their lives, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

It would also be inaccurate to imply that the parallel between the German Church of the 1930s and the American Church is a direct correlation. However, it would also be inaccurate to believe there is not a parallel close enough to help diagnose America’s turn from God and the church’s complicity in society’s slide into darkness.

America has not embraced a tyrant like Hitler and the American Church turned a blind eye, but American society is moving quickly from its moral founding to incorporate degraded, dark, debauched sins of societies distant from God. The church has lost its influence and relevance. While we cloister ourselves inside our brick and mortar, our spiritual vibrancy wanes, our influence of society is as a voting block, and America is now a post-Christian nation. As Tony Evans says, “The church no longer has the home field advantage.”

Society resents us, and for good reason. We declare a solution for what ails the human soul while keeping the solution to ourselves and not possessing the spiritual wherewithal to engage a desperate, writhing culture drowning in darkness.

The image is of a religious people in possession of a life ring, singing praises to God and rejoicing that we are the redeemed of the Lord, while the outside world is drowning. We should be resented.

The innate disposition of all humankind knows intuitively that the grace of God exists—what Pascal called the God-shaped vacuum. Society understands, even at a rudimentary level, that the job of the church is to dispense God’s grace liberally throughout society.

When the church fails to influence society, it is due to the fact that the church has cheapened God’s grace by not disciplining itself to distribute a magnificent grace effectively. An undisciplined church cannot, will not, dive into the dark waters of society to carry the life ring of the Gospel to a drowning world.

Thus, the rationale to write to you about the spiritual disciplines, not so you can draw closer to God; you are in Him and He is in you. But rather so you can enjoy the confidence of a robust faith that does not cheapen grace with spiritual talk but demonstrates faith with disciplined, rigorous, spiritual performance.

Faith alone. Indeed. By grace through faith we are saved.

But faith without works is useless.

Barna, among other researchers, tell us that the primary criticism of the church today is that it is irrelevant. In other words, what the church teaches and provides is not useful.

Why? Because a true faith, a transforming faith, will discipline itself for the purpose of godliness, advocacy for the Gospel, and demonstrations of Christ’s life through our behavior. The world longs for this from us. Who doesn’t want a light when they are in a dark place?

The spiritual disciplines fuel the change that experientially reconciles who we are with what we do. We embrace these disciplines because it is our heart’s desire to accurately and compellingly demonstrate the grace of God, not only for ourselves, but for others so that society is thirsty for God.

After all, Jesus declared that we are the salt of the earth—called such because the manner in which we live will create savor and thirst.

How then shall we live?