Faith as a biblical concept is an essential component to salvation. Looking at it in this light, 2 passages immediately present themselves: James 2:14-26, which discusses faith and works, and Ephesians 2:1-10, which discusses faith and grace. From reading these two passages, it becomes clear that our salvation is a combination of faith, grace, and works. God’s grace to us, to allow us salvation; our faith in God and His promises; and our works, or the good deeds we do to please God. Somehow, these three factors work together to allow us salvation. Let’s start by looking at the roles of grace and faith and come back to works, afterwards.
Our passage in Ephesians talks about grace and says in verse 8, “for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” By grace, but through faith. This phrasing has led to a lot of confusion about how grace and faith work together, but if you take a step back and look at the context of the verse, it is actually very simple. In verse 1, it says we are dead in our trespasses. Living a life of sin makes us spiritually dead. Grace is the God’s gift by which we can be saved from that life of sin, and faith is our reaction to that grace. It might help to picture this as someone who is falling off of a cliff. Imagine that you are about to fall off a cliff, but someone else is standing there ready to help you. They outstretch their hand to you and, seeing this, you reach your hand out and grab it and they pull you to safety. The person standing on the cliff holding their hand out to you is Grace. They are reaching out ready to save you. Your reaction to this is faith. We are saved by grace. We are saved because God had grace on us and reached out his hand to us in our sinful state to save us. But, we are saved through faith. Our choices and our reaction to God’s grace allows us to escape our life of sin. We could never do it on our own, but God simply reaching out His hand won’t save us. We have to make the choice. So, this gives us a look at the dynamic between grace and faith in Ephesians 2. But, James introduces the idea of works, and that seems to throw a wrench into how we understand these ideas. James 2 verse 14 questions what good faith is without works, and a few verses later (verse 17) it is stated that faith without works is dead. Verse 24 tells us that we are saved by works, and not by our faith, and, throughout the passage, examples of Abraham and Rahab are used to show how these works present themselves in our lives. The first thing we need to do is understand the role of works in salvation, and, to be honest, it is actually not complicated. Works are the extension of faith in our lives. The passage in James talks about a man who will show his faith without his works and a man who will show his faith through his works. Think about it this way: if you see a man who claims to be a great Christian and read his Bible every day, a man who claims to love the poor and take care of those who need it, but you never see him do anything to show it, would you believe him? On the other hand, if you see a man who takes care of the sick and the poor, visits people in hospitals, and talks to the elderly at church every Sunday morning, would you believe that he is a faithful Christian without him even telling you? Works are supposed to be the physical proof of our faith. If someone has faith, then by extension they will do the works that are described in Ephesians 2:10. So, with a little bit of digging and analysis of these chapters, it seems like we have a good layout of how faith, works, and grace all work together for salvation.
However, there is one last wrinkle that we need to address. James 2 tells us that we are saved by works and not by our faith, but Ephesians 2 tells us that we are saved by grace not of works lest anyone should boast. How can we be saved by works in James 2, and not works in Ephesians 2? Well, to answer this, let’s redefine how these three factors play out in salvation. Grace is the outstretched hand to us. Grace is God allowing us to be saved in the first place. Faith is us reaching back to God. Faith is us accepting God’s offer of salvation. Works is us choosing to lead lives that reflect this decision. Our good works are the physical proof of our faith. In Ephesians 2, when it is said that we are saved by grace and not by works, this means that we cannot go to heaven on account of the good things we do, alone. Someone who stands before God on Judgment Day, cannot say “look at all these good things that I’ve done. I should be allowed into heaven because of this.” Works alone do you not save us. Works without faith cannot save us. In James 2, when it is said that we are saved by works and not by faith, this is to say that faith alone cannot save us either. Faith without works is dead. Faith alone is simply a belief. It’s nothing more than a fact that we accept. But, works are proof that we have let this belief change our lives, that we have allowed faith to reshape how we live our lives. Faith without works is dead, but works without faith is equally dead.
One last time let’s revisit our layout of how the three factors work together. On our end, faith and works are two sides of the same coin. True faith will bring good works, as someone strives to please God and to take care of people as God has instructed. At the same time, real good works can only come from faith. Otherwise, they are insincere and will never be enough to get us into heaven. But, all of this would be useless without grace, on God’s end. Without that Grace we would have no hope of ever getting into heaven at all. Ephesians 2 and James 2 might seem at first like they contradict one another. It might seem like they are both offering separate mechanisms of salvation that cannot work together. But, on closer examination and taking into account the context of both books and the intended audiences, we can see that they are really just describing two different parts of the same mechanism. Faith, grace, and works all combine to form a means by which God allows us to be saved. We are not saved by our own works, neither are we saved by our own faith, but by having this faith and these works, God in his infinite grace allows us to be saved.