WHAT a terrible thing it is to find any one trusting to their (supposed) good works for salvation. On the other hand, how dreadful to hear people say they believe in the Son of God, and yet in their " works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate" (Titus 1:1616They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16)). When the unconverted Jews asked the Lord, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" (John 6:2828Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? (John 6:28)), His answer was, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (verse 29).
All works are dead works, done by sinners dead in trespasses and sins, till they have believed in Him whom the Father hath sent; and, so surely as there is faith in Christ, there will be good works as the fruit of that faith. The following cases will illustrate these points.
I was asked to visit a woman who was supposed to be dying. When I got there I found her much better, but she had been very ill, almost at the gates of death.
“How did you feel lying there at the thought of death?" I asked her. She replied," I felt quite happy." “What made you feel happy?" “The thought that I had never told anybody a lie," was the rotten foundation on which she was building.
How solemn! How blind she was! How unbelieving as to what God says in Rom. 3:13,13Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: (Romans 3:13) where He speaks of "all," and says, “with their tongues they have used deceit." And how presumptuous to thus make God a liar, as we read in 1 John 1:10,10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:10) “If we say that, we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
Poor woman! I tried to show her how fatally she was deceived and blinded, and that even if she had never lied, that would not suffice to stand with before God, being only filthy rags.
One day, in a fair, a drunken man said to a preacher, who was unfolding the Gospel of the grace of God, "I believe all that." “Do your neighbors know that?" was the quick response of the preacher, but to this there was no reply. How could there be? The man was plainly a drunkard, not a believer; as his own works showed, and as Scripture says, "Faith without works is dead” (James 2:2020But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? (James 2:20)). There is the profession, but nothing more; it is profitless.
You may be sure, when there is living faith it will be manifest in good works, by which your neighbors will know and own you as a Christian. Reader, on what are you building? Is it Christ and His finished work? All other ground is but sand. Do you make a profession of believing? and do your neighbors know you are a believer?