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The Enormity of a Verse

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
James 2:26

I was amazed by the great significance of this verse as I read it again and again today. James summarized so much truth in one sentence that I was in awe.

God has been speaking to me a lot lately about what it means to be dead. Whether it is in my own study of Scripture, a sermon I heard, or interactions with other people, I see more and more just how dead dead really is in God's Word. A dead man cannot think, speak, walk, see, or hear. What makes us so quick to think that we humans are capable of discerning the things of God?

James says that the body apart from the spirit is dead. The life-giving spirit was severed in the garden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Sin made us dead! There is one hope and one hope only: that Christ resurrect our spirits and give us newness of life.

1 Corinthians 2:14 says "the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."

Ephesians 2:3 says "among whom [sons of disobedience] we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

We are naturally children of God's wrath and natural people don't accept the things of the Spirit of God because they appear foolish.

I won't get into a debate on election vs. free will but wrestle with those verses and decide for yourself.

In the same way that our body is dead apart from our spirit, so our faith is dead apart from good works. Dead, lifeless, ineffective, useless. Do good works save a man? No, however, they are the natural outflowing of a sincere faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our faith is manifested in our works. Our works are what displays the faith we have that Christ testifies to the Truth and has been victorious.

What a phenomenal message from God in one sentence! I'm constantly amazed by the power of God's Word and its effectiveness at giving me deeper insight and stronger faith to do the good works that God has prepared for me to do.

Comments

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