Grace vs Works

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”  James 2:10

In Matthew 19:16-22, Jesus met a young man who desired to know how to obtain eternal life.  Jesus told him to keep the commandments, so he wanted to know which ones implying that he didn’t think that he had to keep them all in order to please God.  Jesus began to list some of those that focus on man’s relationship with his fellow man.  The young man confidently checked those off.  Jesus then told him that he needed to sell his valuable possessions and follow Him.  That wasn’t going to happen.  He could not part with all of his stuff.  His stuff had become his god.  He was able to comply with some of the commandments, but when it came to the most important one, that of putting God first, he couldn’t comply.  Matthew Henry wrote, “Not that all sins are equal, but that all carry the same contempt of the authority of the Lawgiver, and so bind over to such punishment as is threatened on the breach of that law.  This shows us what a vanity it is to think that our good deeds will atone for our bad deeds, and plainly puts us upon looking for some other atonement”.

Folks see sin in varying degrees.  Murder is a much greater sin than telling a “little white lie”, and frankly, it is worse.  However, as Mr. Henry points out, all sin, no matter the degree of severity, is a slap in the face of God who gave the law, and who is perfectly justified to carry out the prescribed punishment, an eternity separated from Him.  Good works can never atone for sin because the badness of sin is much greater than the goodness of deeds.  The only work that can atone for sin is the work that Christ did on the cross.   Jesus, in His sinless condition, paid the extreme penalty for man’s sin.  Good works come as a result of our faith in Christ, not as an attempt to earn His favor.  Grace is a gift, not something that can be earned.

The law was given as a “schoolmaster”, to teach us that we are not capable of observing God’s law perfectly, and that we must look to the cross and the atoning death of Christ, who kept the law perfectly.  Even if a person thought he or she could keep the law perfectly, within seconds they would find that it was futile.  Sin is not just doing something bad; it is not keeping with God’s standard for all aspects of life.  It is “missing the mark” of how God desires for us to live and serve Him.   To break one law makes us guilty, and to not meet God’s standard for righteous living also makes us guilty.  James wrote that to know to do good but not do it, it is sin (4:17).  Paul wrote in Galatians 3:10-12 that those who try to be justified by the law are actually condemned by it.

While those who reject God’s only way of forgiveness and salvation through Christ will be judged by His law, a law that will condemn them without fail, those who live for Christ will be held accountable for their life using Jesus’ “law of liberty”, the gospel of Christ.  Believers will face an examination of all that they did after believing on Christ.  James urged his readers to be conscientious of their actions and words because they are representatives of Christ on earth.  Suppose that questions like the following will be asked when standing before Christ:  Were we conscience of the fact that our words and actions affected how others viewed Christ?  Did we always put Christ first in all decisions we made?  Was it evident by the conduct of our lives that Jesus is our Lord?  Just thinking about questions like these can cause us to examine our lives to see if our commitment to Christ is genuine or not.

James then gave a somber warning to sinners: don’t expect God to be lenient when He passes judgment on all those who had refused to accept His loving and generous offer of pardon in sending His only Son to suffer and die to pay our penalty.  There is a lot on the news lately about several district attorneys in various states who are being extremely lenient on criminals, letting them out of jail, even murderers.  That’s not going to happen in God’s courtroom.  No matter what the sinner has done in his life, he will be judged by his refusal to repent and receive Christ as Lord and Savior.  That refusal is the unforgiveable sin.  James wrote that the sinner will be judged without mercy because he had not shown mercy.  There is no point to throw oneself on God’s mercy if one hasn’t displayed any mercy upon others or upon himself in hardening his heart and not allowing God’s love to penetrate.  The hard-hearted sinner usually has hardened ears that refuse to hear the good news of the gospel.

The believer will be able to rejoice in God’s mercy because His mercy will override His judgment.  Because of God’s mercy, our sins were judged at the cross.  It was all by God’s grace.  Our works have absolutely nothing to do with our salvation.  I am so grateful that I don’t have to work to earn eternal life.  For those who still think that their good works which supposedly outweigh their sins will be sufficient to get them into the pearly gates, I would ask them, “How do you know when you have done enough good works?”  Eternity is too long to be wrong.