Preach the Faith, Not the Works

“Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? “

Therefore, it is not only hearing the law but the zeal with which you try to obey it in your actions that is in vain. Even if people try to do everything being zealous for God, and trying their best to be saved by the law, and exercising themselves day and night in this righteousness – they still are working and spending themselves in vain. Those who are ignorant of the righteousness of God and seek to establish their own (as Paul says in Romans 10:3) are not submitting themselves to the righteousness of God. Again: “Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it” (Romans 9:31). Paul is speaking here in Galatians about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the early church. The Holy Spirit came down in a clear form on those who believed and by this sign showed that he was present when the apostles preached and that those who believed the message preached by the apostles were accepted as righteous before God. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would not have come down on them.

MARTIN LUTHER | Galatians Commentary, ed. Alister McGrath, J. I. Packer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 1998), 123

This is the charge against the Judaizers, Rome, and the Federal Vision. It stands against their claims that the Law, even in making baptism itself a law, is a portion of the Gospel.

I heard a theologian say, “God makes believers, and the church makes Christians.” This makes good sense. The law-keeping that Christians maintain is not in the equation for making believers. It is only out of gratitude and desire to be godly that Christians make their feeble attempts to do good works.

The three camps above all attempt to make Christians into believers. They set standards for belief that are contrary to the message of holy scripture. They set the mission of believers to be something other than, more than, the communication of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This, of course, comes from a failure to distinguish the Gospel from works.

Making disciples is preaching the FAITH, not the WORKS. Ergo, transforming culture, making the kingdom of God, right here on Earth, is nothing more than the Galatian heresy of the Judaizers. Making baptism a law, an act of the believer, whatever its presumed impact, is the same thing. It’s not faith, it’s works.