‘A true and lively faith’
I’m always encouraged when something I’m learning from one source is confirmed by what I find elsewhere, especially when it reinforces what God is saying to me in his word. Last Sunday, speaking on James 2, it was impossible to miss his insistence that a faith that is real will be seen by what it does: “faith without deeds is dead” (verse 26).
Then, on Monday morning, I was reading The Catholic Faith by WH Griffith Thomas (first published in 1904 – have been trying to follow CS Lewis’ advice of reading old books as well as new ones). I had got to a section headed: Obedience is the Natural and Necessary Expression of our Faith (you can tell it’s a hundred years old!). He reminds us that this is Anglican teaching, expressed in Article XII: “Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s Judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.” It’s pure James!
In case you find that a little complicated, here’s a more popular statement of the same: “I would not work my soul to save, for that my Lord has done; But I would work like any slave, for love of God’s dear Son.”