That’s the image that stuck with me this week. James said “faith without works is dead”. That was one thing. But the apparent demonstration of faith without works is in citing demons? I mean, they are certainly creatures of belief. Seems that every time Jesus tossed one out of a human in the gospels, they were fearful for their own survival. They were the ones who identified Jesus for who he really was. And Jesus kept shushing them.
I am not a great fan of the either/or. What I mean by that is labeling things as
black or white, with no gray between. At
first glance, this seems to be a clear dichotomy, faith with or without
works. Demons believe (have
faith-although for me, having faith has a positive connotation), but are they
without works? But demons are not
demonstrated to be passive agents. They
are active agents of evil. They have
faith, believe in Jesus-or the power of Jesus-but they work actively against
that faith (by definition, they are demons). So there is the either/or, working for or against the Lord?
Demons have faith and shudder, they are afraid, as well they
should be. So their belief provokes a
work ethic of attack and assault against what God, through Jesus, is seeking to
bring to the world? But this is not the
thesis James is presenting. James is
telling us ‘faith without works is dead’.
The belief of demons provokes evil workings.
It is with humans, with our faith, if it does not provoke
works, then that faith is dead. The
presupposition seems to be that faith provokes action. If not, it is dead. It is passive. Maybe a means of expressing that is “Jesus is
my Lord and Savior, He died on the cross for me, rose again from Calvary,
welcomes me to the joy of forgiveness and eternal life, and it means nothing to
me-I just do what I want.”
A dead faith is an unexpressed faith. An unlived faith. A faith that either doesn’t care or doesn’t
know what love is (“I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner just started in
my head). Accept demons as Scriptural literal
truth or Scriptural literary truth, the actual experience behind them is absolute. It is the active work of sin and evil in
creation. There is no ‘passive’ sin in
the world, it is destructive by nature.
To have faith, to declare faith, to have a living faith,
demands a response. It demands that the
love Jesus shows us is shown through us to the world in need. Demons have faith and shudder-their destruction
is nigh. We have faith and we need to
sing out in joy. Act out in joy. If we really know that Jesus has done something
wonderful for us and in us, how can we possibly do anything different?
Peace,
Pastor Peter
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