I keep coming back to this verse in thinking about faith and works ...
Romans 14:23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith.
For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
This verse does a great job of clearly showing us just exactly how low the bar is set for sinfulness. If we are honest, we immediately realize that we don't have to go very many seconds before we have some thought, some desire, or some motivation that does not proceed from faith. We are very sinful creatures indeed.
Before we are justified we do not have faith in Christ and according to this verse everything we do, whether it looks good or bad, is sin.
After we have been justified and God has given us his free gift of saving faith in Christ we are able to put that faith into action by performing
deeds in keeping with our repentance (
Acts 26:20).
Now, that's not to say that everything we now do proceeds from faith, for that would be to say that we are no longer capable of sinning, but whatever we do that does proceed from faith is good and righteous in the sight of God. These are the good works that
Eph 2:10 tells us we were created in Christ Jesus to do.
As a matter of fact, the kind of faith that God gives us always produces these faith-works, which are not done under compulsion or by threat of punishment under the law, but are works of grace which we do out of love for God and for our neighbor.
Who benefits by these works done in faith? Certainly not God. He is "omni-sufficient" and doesn't need our works, though often he uses them for his purposes, just like he uses our law-works and even our sin-works at times to achieve his purposes. Remember that to God even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags and polluted garments (
Isaiah 64:6).
Do we ourselves benefit from our faith-works? Not as far as our justification is concerned. We are saved by faith apart from works. If our works had anything to do with our salvation it would only give us a reason to be proud of ourselves for having been smart enough or strong enough or good enough to choose to allow God to save us or because of some very good thing we think we may have done (
Eph 2:8-9).
Our faith-works are done for the benefit of our neighbor, to serve, love, and bless him, to be a part of God's grace by which he richly provides us our daily bread and everything that goes along with it.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves in its most perfect form is a completely selfless act in which every motivation perfectly aligns with God's will. This kind of act is exceedingly rare and is something most people in most situations are simply incapable of doing, and thus we see how sinful we really are indeed, that even our best faith-works are tainted by our sinful and selfish motivations.
Thankfully, we do not have to do even these faith-works in order to be justified. Jesus our Lord has done absolutely everything that could ever be done to earn our salvation and freely exchanges his righteousness for our sins, taking our sinfulness into himself and nailing it to the cross.
