Page 26 - 《每日活水》靈修月刊

19 行為所成全的信心
星期六 雅各書 2:14~26

信心和行為 Faith in Action
14
14-17 Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in
15 this if you learn all the right words but never do
16 anything? Does merely talking about faith
indicate that a person really has it? For
17 instance, you come upon an old friend dressed
18 in rags and half-starved and say, “Good
morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled
19 with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without
20 providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—
21 where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that
22 God-talk without God-acts is outrageous
23 nonsense?

24 18 I can already hear one of you agreeing by
25 saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith
department, I’ll handle the works department.”
26
Not so fast. You can no more show me your
works apart from your faith than I can show you
my faith apart from my works. Faith and works,
works and faith, fit together hand in glove.

19-20 Do I hear you professing to believe in the one
and only God, but then observe you
complacently sitting back as if you had done
something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons
do that, but what good does it do them? Use
your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that
you can cut faith and works in two and not end
up with a corpse on your hands?

21-24 Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with
God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on
the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and
works are yoked partners, that faith expresses
itself in works? That the works are “works of
faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the
Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and
was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s
that mesh of believing and acting that got
Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident
that a person is made right with God not by a
barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?

25-26 The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn’t
her action in hiding God’s spies and helping
them escape—that seamless unity
of believing and doing—what counted with
God? The very moment you separate body and
spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith
and works and you get the same thing: a
corpse.