There is a story about a painter by the name of Stenberg who was struck with the beauty of a Romani girl. He took her to his studio and frequently had her sit for him. At the time he was also working on his masterpiece, “Christ on the Cross,” and the girl used to watch him paint. One day she said to him, “He must have been a very wicked man to be nailed to a cross like that.”
One of the common denominators of all world religions except Christianity is that they do not correlate faith and works. In Christianity there is the closest correlation between them. In fact the Bible says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26).
The Bible is clear: a workless faith is worthless faith.
Faith and works must be balanced in true religion. Faith in God and commitment to Jesus Christ are foundational. No man becomes a Christian merely by being good. Faith is the soil from which good works must grow. Real Christian faith always brings forth the fruit of good works. The true follower of Christ first believes, then he serves. As Dr. Perry Webb, former pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Antonio, once said, “A religion that does not look out and reach out and help out is washed out.”
Let us then put our faith into action and thus prove to all the world that it is not dead.