You can know everything about righteousness through faith alone. You can turn against the Roman Catholic teaching of salvation by good works. You live by the five-point star, the five ‘solas’ of the Reformation: only by faith, only by grace, only by Jesus Christ, only by the Word of God and only to the Glory of God. Or more precisely and in Latin:
Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ. Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the grace of God alone. Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King. Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.
Your set of Christian dogmas on the basis of the Bible is beyond reproach, you are convinced. Your orthodoxy is above all criticism, you think. But stop for one moment. Go back, in your thoughts, to that wonderful moment when the meaning of Christ really got through to you for the first time, and to the joy and the happiness it gave you—the precious gift of salvation that was simply laid in your hands. That is the way you heard it. Keep it that way. Your first love.
You have perhaps gone through tremendous theological development since then and you have turned against everyone and everything that was wrong in your opinion. But are you still with Jesus, and is He still with you? Has your faith become a matter of your mind, but is your heart and your daily life still in accordance with this love? Or did it go along with an ever looser lifestyle? Then stop doing that. Turn around. Places of immorality, violence and corruption where you previously never thought of going to now invade your living room through radio, television and magazines. You are becoming more and more tainted, while your judgment of others is becoming more and more harsh and severe. Be careful that your faith is not just in the head but not evident in your life. Have you allowed your thought life to be polluted with unclean thoughts that slipped into your mind through the media? Have you become cynical and harsh and critical in your judgment of others as you deem yourself more spiritual than them? If the above describes you, stop backsliding and return to the Lord!
Christ speaks harshly to Sardis. He does so to win them over, however. They are dead, perhaps, but He can resurrect them if they listen to His voice. Whoever wakes up with a shock, realizing his own deplorable situation and that of the church, and then comes back to real spiritual life, will look around and will feel sympathy for other people. The realization will drop into your life: I was just like you. That person tries to rekindle the spark that is lying somewhere under the ashes1—to strengthen what remains but is about to die.2 Instead of pointing the finger, looking for a spark of true faith, even in their lives.
1 John 2:15-17: ‘Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.’
There is a remnant in Sardis, fortunately—a few who have not gone along with the world, who have not allowed themselves to be suffocated by wealth, choked in their criticism of others, who have not allowed their lifestyle to become polluted. There are a few names of people who are in the world but not of the world. “They will walk with Me, dressed in white,” says Christ. They are worthy to do so because they lived through grace. They did not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. The believers’ white clothes reflect what they are: new creations in Jesus Christ, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, redeemed by His death on the cross. He is worthy and He makes us worthy.
• The Protestant aversion to the Roman Catholic teaching of salvation by good works has led to the proper conviction that good works will follow the believer as works of gratitude, after having experienced by faith God’s saving grace. But although that was part of the teaching and was confessed with the mouth, in practice ‘good works’ sometimes hardly followed.
• James 2:14 says: ‘What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?’ The good works of Roman Catholics are commendable. Who does not think with touching emotion of the life of Mother Teresa for example, who, together with her sisters, Roman Catholic nuns, looked after discarded babies and those who were dying of starvation and illnesses in the Calcutta slums? However, Roman Catholic Piety that resulted in many wonderful works of mercy, nevertheless robbed many believing Roman Catholics of the inner assurance of salvation and eternal life.
• What we need is faith by grace in what Jesus did for us. True faith working through love will show the ‘nine-fold fruit of the Spirit’, as Galatians 5:14 and 22-25 say: ‘For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self- control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
Bible References:
1.Matthew 12:20 2. Revelation 3:2
