It's Not About Words But Practice That Shows Authentic Christian Faith

I remembered the words of John F. MacArthur from the book called "Hard to Believe" saying, "Don’t believe anyone who says it’s easy to become a Christian.  Salvation for sinners cost God His own Son; it cost God’s Son His life, and it'll cost you the same thing.  Salvation isn’t gained by reciting mere words.  Saving faith transforms the heart, and that in turn transforms behavior.  Faith’s fruit is seen in actions, not intentions.  There’s no room for passive spectators: words without actions are empty and futile.  Remember that what John saw in his vision of judgment was a Book of Life, not a book of Words or Book of Intellectual Musings.  The life we live, not the words we speak, reveals whether our faith is authentic."

Today, we really need more preachers like Jonathan Edwards.  Edwards' statement is really true up to this very day.  It is possible to talk about the Bible facts and figures or to profess to be a Christian but you are not a Christian.  I have seen Jehovah's Witness' publication "Awake" print several amazing facts about the Bible, some sites have given me information to defend the Bible but they end up promoting some unbiblical garbage like conditional security, salvation as a license to sin, baptismal regeneration and anything else that denies true salvation.  If your salvation is real then your life ought to change as 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 contrasts the unsaved person unworthy to inherit God's Kingdom with the statement that they were redeemed and sanctified from their old life.  The more the Christian grows, the more self-denial takes place and even if it does not always go upward but we cannot deny self-denial as a mark of true conversion is happening.

James 2:18-24 is all about what authentic faith is and not about doing works to stay saved.  When the question is, "Can faith save him?" it means, "Can that faith save him?"  Although salvation has never been by works but authentic faith is bound to produce good works.  Now some produce thirty, sixty and a hundredfold but never zerofold when it comes to varying degrees of maturity among Christians in their growth.  Instead, we talk about how true faith produces good works.  A dead faith cannot save but a living faith saves.  Any authentic faith will inevitably validate itself with good works.  Sad to say but many people today think they are saved because of a profession without ever thinking that a lack of conviction for sin is a huge mark of false conversion.


See also:

Jonathan Edwards' Acid Test For True Conversion