Seize the Moment – Day 318
The Hearth of Your Life!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, January 29.
In the 1500s, Martin Luther championed the fundamental Christian belief that we are saved by faith alone and changed the modern world in the process.
James 2:18-20 focuses our minds on the importance of living the life of faith and not just saying we have faith, lest we be deceived ourselves:
But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
Luther certainly did not miss this point. Listen to this wonderful teaching that informs the church’s faith and practice to this day, 500 years since he wrote it:
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake life itself on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes people glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and with all creatures. And this is the work which the Holy Spirit performs in faith. Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God, who has shown this grace. Thus, it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.[1]
YOUTUBE:
[1] Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 576.