Where In The Bible Will I Find:

Believing Is A Work?

To claim that you have faith without works is to confess that your faith is dead. The Bible affirms that "...faith, if it hath not works, is dead..." (James 2:17). It does a man little good to affirm his faith in Jesus Christ if he is unwilling to obey his commands. Profession without practice is a contradiction. Belief in Jesus as the Son of God is an act of will. Each person chooses whether or not to accept the evidence and testimony of the Scriptures. Belief does not come from a miracle of God nullifying human choice. We choose to believe. This choice is prompted by the overwhelming love of God and by the reasonable evidence of the Scriptures, but it is still a personal choice-- a work of the will.

The Bible says, "... this is his commandment that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ..." (I John 3:23). The Bible shows that belief is an individual choice. The blind man that Jesus healed said, "I believe" when Jesus revealed Himself to be the Son of man (John 9:36-38). The pronoun "I" is the subject and "believe" is an active verb. Language shows that belief is a willful choice. Jesus said that belief in His being the Son of God is a "work" that one can do (John 6:28-29).

The writer James has a lot to say about faith and works, he asks, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he has faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?.... Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone ... But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?... Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only ... For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" (James 2:14-26). In the last words of Jesus to the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos, He said, "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according to his works shall be" (Rev. 22:12). Do not wait until some rational "proof" from a philosopher or a will-shattering "miracle" supposedly coming from God, to resolve your doubts. Choose to believe on the bases of what God said, His Son, the Holy Spirit and His apostles have revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

Belief and faith certainly are required unto salvation but it takes more than these to save the sinner. Jesus said, "Not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21). Jesus is our savior and he has told us what to do in order to be saved and it is through the obedience to His gospel plan of salvation that we will be saved. Hear from His Word (Rom. 10:17); believe (Heb. 11:6); repent (Acts 17:30); confess his name before men (Matt. 10:32); and then be buried with Him in water baptism for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38, 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21; Mark 16:16).