[Another in the series of “Responding to Bumper Stickers,” or “Long Answers to Short Questions,” in which I try to give a Latter-day Saint response to a question or accusation commonly lobbed against us on X.]
Latter-day Saints are commonly accused, especially by Protestants, of believing in a “works-based salvation,” in supposed contrast to a faith-based one, relying for their distinction on the Pauline epistles.
And this is an accusation for which the refutation has to be about a hundred times longer, which means that too many people will TL;DR. Nevertheless.
First: When Paul speaks of “works,” he’s almost always referring specifically to the works or observances of the Law of Moses (“wear a phylactery,” “sacrifice two turtledoves,” “circumcize your sons,” etc.). His point is that the action itself doesn’t grant any particular blessing without the attitude of faith behind it. Latter-day Saints would agree with that wholeheartedly; being baptized without any intent to follow Jesus, for instance, is just getting wet. Going through the outward motions doesn’t save you. Absolutely.
But that’s absolutely doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow God’s commandments, that is, do what He says to do. The supposed dichotomy between “faith” and “works” is a blind alley, because both terms are being misunderstood. Relying on outward actions and ordinances without being motivated by trust and loyalty (which is what the Greek work pistis, translated as “faith,” means*) is bad; that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t Do Things.
Hebrew 11 catalogs a slew of examples of Old Testament figures living “by faith,” and most of those are occasions in which the figure Did Something.
Abel made a sacrifice.
Noah built an ark.
Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice.
The list goes on.
The work itself doesn’t save anyone; I couldn’t go out in the wilderness and build an ark and think that that’ll get me into heaven.
But if God tells me he wants me to do something — either a unique specific thing like building an ark, or something universal like getting baptized — I can only keep faith (i.e., demonstrate loyalty and trust) by doing it.
Now, I’ve heard Protestants say that if one is converted in the inner creature, then good works naturally follow. But if that were true — or if that were the whole truth — why would both Jesus and Paul have concentrated so much on instructing believers what they should do and how they should behave? With the Pauline epistles especially, Paul isn’t addressing mix crowds of believers and curiosity-seekers like Jesus so often was, he’s reaching out specifically to those who had received the good news and counted themselves as Christians. And yet Paul didn’t assume that, because they had been born again, they didn’t need anyone to counsel them in their behavior toward each other and those outside the faith. A Christian is still imperfect, and still needs to school his mind and deliberately direct his actions beyond what springs out naturally because of his conversion.
Those whose theology revolves around “faith alone” usually base it on isolated verses of the Pauline epistles; I would say that they’re not looking at the whole context. And what did Jesus himself teach? Here’s a sampling.
Matthew 5:19 “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 7:21 “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
Matthew 19:17: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”
John 3:21: “But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”
John 9:31: “If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.”
John 14:15: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
Now, I’ll readily admit that we Latter-day Saints sometimes use a shorthand that doesn’t help with cross-denominational understanding. We might say, “You have to baptized,” and a Protestant will retort, “That’s a work!”
But what we mean isn’t simply the act of baptism, because the outward ordinance isn’t what saves. What we really mean is that making and keeping a sacred covenant is necessary. If the covenant is kept — if one is faithful to (trusting of and loyal to) Christ — then one is an inheritor of the blessings. Everything we would call a “saving ordinance” — baptism, endowment, eternal marriage — is making and keeping a sacred covenant. It’s faithfulness to keep one’s covenants to God, it’s what Paul is talking about, not simply a passive doctrinal belief.
Now. Are there times when people — even Latter-day Saints — go through the motions? Of course. We’re as human as anyone.
Is there anything wrong with behaving more faithfully than one is feeling at that exact moment? I’m not talking about the hypocrisy of of maintaining a facade for appearances or ulterior motives, I’m talking about behaving as one does when one’s faith is strong, even when one’s faith is weaker.
Let me put it this way: If I’m feeling a little distant from and put out with my wife, should I still continue with all of the loving habits I’ve established during seasons of greater closeness? Of course. Faithfulness, to spouse or to God, isn’t simply a matter of “when I’m feeling it.” In fact, faithfulness is the resolute determination to continue in your path even when you happen NOT to be feeling it.
The cynical phrase in our culture is to “fake it until you make it,” but that again brings hypocrisy into it. Say rather, as Jesus Himself did: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). Behave as if it’s true to find out that it’s true. Behave as if it’s true even when your enthusiasm has cooled, you’re distracted, you’re not living as Spirit-filled a life as you want to or as you once did.
And if those are “works,” well…
Matthew 16:27: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”
*I’ve written much more specifically about pistis here.
Well, as I understood it back when I was a kid in Sunday School in the 1980s, the point of the “faith, not works” doctrine was that Christianity doesn’t come with a karma meter, i.e. “God will overlook your bad deeds if you do more good ones.” As I learned in college later on, back when Martin Luther was focusing on that passage from Habakkuk about how “the righteous shall live by faith” in his fights with the corrupt clergy of his time, he likewise was not saying that we shouldn’t do good works, just that those weren’t what saved us (and it’s worth remembering that at the time, he was taking up the cudgels against a lot of religious practices—such as the sale and purchase of indulgences—that seemed to be saying that good deeds were what saved your soul, even those that were purchased from others via those indulgences). According to a student Bible I had as a teenager, Martin Luther himself eventually came to the conclusion “It is by faith alone you are saved, but if faith is alone, it is not faith.”
As I recall a more contemporary radio preacher saying when expounding on some of the finer points of the book of James, while good works are not what saves us, they do stand as a sort of proof of the faith that does. He compared these to proofs of a marriage’s existence. In his analogy, he starts off with the premise: suppose you’ve known a certain young couple with several young children who lives down the street from you for a number of years, and you happen to notice one day that these lovebirds are not wearing wedding rings and—as you continue to engage in various activities with them—in fact they never wear wedding rings; so one evening when they’re having you over for dinner, you raise an eyebrow and ask “By the way, you’re married, aren’t you? Don’t you have any wedding rings?”
“Oh yes, we’ve been married for more than seven years now,” he says. Says she, “It’s not right to advertise your beauty with jewelry, as Paul told us in his second letter to Timothy, chapter 2, verses 9-10.”
“Um, OK…” you say (trying to hide your skepticism about their dubious interpretation of that Bible passage). “You’ve got a marriage license, though, right?”
“Ah, well, no,” he replies. “We’re big believers in Common Law here; marriage is in the eyes of God, not the state; and you know how worthless those licenses must be in God’s eyes these days when the perverts running that state will issue them to any two men or two women just as readily as they would to us.”
“Oh.” Your eyebrow rises a bit higher. “So you’re kinda old-school, eh? You had your parents record the date of your wedding in a family Bible like some of those old-fashioned folks up in the Appalachians do?”
He and she both shift a bit uncomfortably in their seats. “Well, no,” she says. “Mom and Dad didn’t much approve of my dating him; thought he was just trying to get into my panties.”
“It was the same with my folks,” he adds. “They both thought she was just some floozy, and they wouldn’t listen when I told them we loved each other and wanted to get married, so… truth be told, we ended up eloping.”
“Oh, so you had a quickie wedding at a Vegas chapel?”
“Heavens, no!” she cries. “Can you imagine us getting married in such a den of iniquity?”
“Well, who witnessed your wedding, then?”
“Just she, me, and God,” he replies.
“Didn’t you have any friends to help you with any of this?”
“Well, no,” she says, “He and I weren’t too popular among our peers and kin back then; kinda lone kindred spirits, you might say.”
“Don’t you even have any pictures of your wedding? Tickets for the gown and tuxedo rentals? Anything?”
“No…”
To be sure (this radio preacher went on to say), maybe this couple really are a husband and wife in God’s eyes as they say; but you’d be pretty skeptical of their claim to be married if they gave you this kind of runaround, wouldn’t you? So too with believers: maybe the guy who says he’s a Christian and yet never goes to church, never gives any of his time or money to charity, is never seen bowing his head in prayer or reading a Bible, never helps any of his neighbors with their problems, never sticks up for various Christian causes, and basically is never known to do any kind of good works whatsoever really is a Christian. However, that’s not the way you’d bet if anyone asked you whether you think he’s a true believer, would you?
Hence (he concluded) James’ famous declaration in chapter 2, verse 17 of his epistle that “Faith without works is dead.” While our Lord & Savior warned us a lot against making a big show out of doing good deeds to impress the people around us in chapter 6 of Matthew’s Gospel, he also said (in the previous chapter, verses 13-16) that we were to be “salt” and “light” to the world and let others see us do good deeds in general so that they might give due glory (i.e. credit) for these deeds to our God. In short, if we really are Christians, we should be doing good deeds whether anyone is watching us or not.
You point out that good works demonstrate faith even when we’re not feeling all that faithful. I would say if anything, good works demonstrate faith especially when we’re not feeling all that faithful and yet do them anyway. Conversely, a faith that never has to struggle to persevere through challenges because it’s never challenged can hardly be called faith at all.
Your understanding of faith vs. works is far better than most of the X commenters who try to use it as a cudgel against Mormons. Pity they didn’t go to your Sunday School.