Works of Faith or a Faith of Works?
(Bible Study - January 2000) Behavior. What does that word mean to you? Does it seem to require a descriptor, such as "good" or "bad?" The word "behavior" usually comes with an adjective letting us know if the behavior is acceptable or not acceptable, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, juvenile or adult, and so on. We seldom use this word without a qualifier to label the behavior. Like the word "weather," it seems incomplete without a descriptor. The term "behavior" by itself may seem strange to many of us.
For this article, however, we want to consider this word in just this manner. We want to consider behavior itself -- not good or bad behavior, but the concept of behavior. Behavior refers to our actions, our deeds, our comings and goings; it simply means what we do. Behavior is the visible and measurable part of our existence. Standing, walking, talking, sitting; anything physical that we do comes in the category of behavior. Behavior includes little doings, like "smiling," and large comprehensive categories, like "going to meeting," which in itself comprises many smaller behaviors.
Emotions, motives are not behaviors
Behaviors normally have thoughts and emotions associated with them, but the thoughts
and emotions themselves are not behaviors. Thinking "I’m lonely"
is not a behavior, nor is feeling sad; that’s an emotion. But crying is a behavior.
The three go together, the thought, the emotion, and the behavior, but we can only see the
behavior.
Moving on to a religious context, we note that ritual observances are, of necessity, behaviors. Works are also behaviors, such as tithing or preaching or singing praise to God. All works are behaviors. Again, in this sense we don’t mean good behavior or bad behavior -- just an action, a behavior. Something done with the body, something that someone can see and measure. We can’t know what people think or feel when they do acts of service or worship; only God knows the heart. Because we can only observe the tangible aspects of being (that is, the behavior rather than the attendant thoughts) we readily reduce great issues like religion and morality to strictly behavioral terms. We think of righteousness as "doing good" and "obedience," and we look for behavioral manifestations of our faith, such as giving or preaching or going to meeting. We elevate behavior to the level of faith because that’s all we can see. Yet God sees the heart from which the behavior comes.
A good deal of the New Testament addresses this issue, namely, "at what level does God measure righteousness?" Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt. 5:20 NKJV). How can anyone exceed the punctilious righteousness of the Pharisees? Paul said that he was "as to the law, blameless" (Phil. 3:6). How can anyone exceed blamelessness? Obviously, we look for the answer in another area than ritual observance.
We can exceed legalistic righteousness two ways. In the context of Jesus’ words, our righteousness extends beyond behavior into thinking. If adultery (a behavior) is sin, the higher righteousness even calls the thought of lust sin (Mt. 5:28). So, to exceed the Pharisees in matters of morality, we must avoid sin at the thought level, not just the behavior level.
Paul doesn’t command giving
Now let’s look at another example, one from the positive (doing good) realm, as
opposed to avoiding evil. For instance, tithing is a good idea, but the behavior itself
means nothing. We must give with a willing heart. Paul expended much ink on this issue in
II Corinthians (8:1-9:15). He wouldn’t command the Corinthians to give (II Cor. 8:8).
He didn’t make a rule that they must give any set amount or percentage of their
assets, because the behavior of giving wouldn’t yield righteousness. Their attitude
alone would determine God’s view of their giving. Thus, Jesus and Paul taught that
the way our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees comes not in outdoing
them in good works, but in having a basis of righteous thinking from which the behavior
emanates. The Pharisees, working under the system of law, could only measure
behavior. God looks at the intent that drives the behavior.
The last example -- that of giving -- provides an ideal opportunity for showing the difference between behavior and attitude. If all that mattered was the actual giving of a tithe or any specified amount, then Paul would have instructed the Corinthians to give the money, period. He could have commanded their obedience. But what Paul wanted to know was: did the Corinthians really love their brothers and sisters in famine-struck Judea? (II Cor. 8:8,24). Would they give without being commanded?
Would they be truly glad to give, and count it an honor? Or would some only give because everyone else did and they felt ashamed not to? Would some take pride in the amount of their donation? Paul left much of this territory unaddressed. He only exhorted them to stir up their generosity, and then he let them act as their consciences directed them.
The nature of the situation made Paul’s non-directive approach even more thought-provoking. Famine relief had immediate practical application. The issue at hand meant meeting a basic need for the saints in Judea who had suffered from the famine prophesied by Agabus (Acts 11:28-30). This wasn’t an issue of ecclesial policy or worship practices. This could well have been a life or death matter for the recipient ecclesias. They really needed the behavior of giving to happen. Still, Paul wouldn’t command it. He would only exhort and appeal to their spiritual conscience, because if he made it a command, then love could no longer occur. Once we have a law, behavior takes precedence (because laws only deal with behavior), and motivation becomes immaterial. So even in this dire situation, when Paul probably wanted so much to raise funds for the suffering Judean ecclesias, he still deferred to the greater work of God in giving the Corinthians the chance to show their love.
So Paul refrained. He typified God Himself, giving people the option to make the right choice of their own accord. Sure, giving is good, and giving a lot is better. But once it becomes a standard, a law, or a rule, then love can no longer operate. Attitude becomes irrelevant. Only the behavior itself would matter.
Behavior and attitude
The point we want to focus on now concerns the differentiation between behaviors as a
category and thoughts and attitudes as another category. For now we want to omit
considering whether the behavior is "good" or "bad;"
we’ll get to that shortly. We want to make sure we understand the difference between
what comes under "behavior" and what comes under "attitude."
Tithing is a behavior. Loving your brother enough to give is an attitude. We can see and measure the act of giving. We can’t see or measure the attitude behind it. We can know (although we ought not) if someone gives money. We can’t know anyone’s motivation for giving; sometimes we don’t even know our own attitudes. We can make a rule that says "you must tithe." We can’t make a rule that says, "You must be a willing giver."
Why shouldn’t we make rules that specify appropriate actions if they’re good activities? Why can’t we specify attitude as well as behavior? Why can’t we make willingness a rule? The answers to these questions will help us understand the nature of faith under the New Covenant and how it differed from the Old Covenant.
Let’s suppose for a moment we did have a rule that specified we must tithe. If tithing is good, why not have this rule? Then everyone would do the good behavior, and we’d all accrue righteousness, yes? NO! Because if we make a rule, then we have eliminated the possibility of doing good as an expression of our faith and love. Once we make a rule, we have removed the possibility of free-will from the equation. We have short-circuited love. We have killed motivation. We have replaced the New Covenant with the old, because we have gone back to the realm of behavior. We have substituted the psuedo-righteousness of works.
Law or free will?
So why not take the next step and legislate love? Why not improve the rule of "giving"
to a rule for "willingly give." Two reasons. One, as we have just said,
the presence of the external law to give precludes the possibility of true willingness. If
you have been told to do something, then you can’t think of doing something of your
own free will. For instance, if you tell your children to wash the dishes, can they
possibly now do it of their own free will? No, because the command to do a task takes free
will out of the picture. They can obey your request, but they can’t show voluntary
free will. They either obey or they don’t; the matter now no longer concerns love or
initiation.
But can’t someone willingly follow a command? Can’t the children willingly and cheerfully wash the dishes according to your request? Yes, they can willingly obey, but they can’t offer, because you have asked them to do it. That’s the key difference. If we have a rule that asks for money, we can't give of our own accord.
The second reason you can’t legislate love is because there is no way to measure it. How would you measure attitude? How would you measure or quantify willingness? Look for a smile on someone’s face? That’s back to behavior. We can neither detect nor legislate attitude. It must come from a heart touched by God’s love. A good attitude will produce good works.
Taking this one step further, we can see what would happen if we tried to regulate the attitude, also. In other words, what if Paul had said to the Corinthians, "You must give much money, and you must do so with a willing heart." Can anyone command a willing heart? If one has a willing heart, he doesn’t need the command; if one has not a willing heart, no command can make it willing. It’s plainly lose-lose to attempt to command attitude. You can’t create attitude on command, and if you could, it wouldn’t be the right attitude anyway. (God willing, we’ll discuss John 15:12 and others -- an apparent contradiction to this thesis -- in a future article.)
We do not say that following commands cannot show faith, for Hebrews 11 lists several acts of obedience, all done by faith. Abraham left Ur -- at God’s command -- by faith. This was not his initiative; it was God’s. Hebrews does tell us that Abraham’s motivation came through faith; we would not otherwise know this. Had we lived at the time of Abraham, and knew that he left Ur at God’s command, we would only know that he obeyed, but we could not assess his faith. We could see the behavior -- leaving Ur -- but not the inner workings of the heart. (That is why we cannot ever judge the faithfulness of one who does something apparently godly, or the unfaithfulness of one who fails in the same mission). We can only observe the behavior, but we can’t judge the motivation behind the behavior.
The basic principles of love, commitment, service, humility, and faith should suffice for generating our behaviors, initiated and given freely. The more God leaves us with guidelines instead of directives, principles instead of commands, the more we can display our faith, our love and our spiritual maturity. God allows us to struggle that we might develop character rather than mindlessly follow rules for behavior’s sake.
A faith of works, or works of faith?
James clearly delivers the message: the attitude of faith really doesn’t exist
unless it manifests itself behaviorally. We must show our faith by our doings. Faith
cannot exist at the attitude level only, it must show itself really where it counts --
doing something. This is where behavior counts, but as humans, we can never judge a
person’s faith by their doings. God respects the behaviors of faith, and only He can
ineffably distinguish them from their counterfeit counterparts.
On the other hand, if we establish the behaviors as necessary and mandatory, then we have reversed the Bible’s admonition. When we make the behaviors themselves laws (in our day, known as "rules, standards, codes of conduct, etc.") we have reverted to the Old Covenant. We can no longer exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees because we have returned to their level.
That’s why we took all this time to discuss behavior as a concept, not as good or bad behavior, but just as the category of behavior. If we would live by faith, we need to have a clear appreciation that what we do stems from our faith, and our doing does not suffice alone or as some addition to our faith. Nor is this at all a matter of balance; we don’t believe for a moment that somehow faith and works compete with each other. You either have both, or neither. If you count works as faith, you have neither. If you have a faith that develops from a relationship with the Creator, you will have an abundance of both.
Next: Sin, Righteousness, and Salvation
David Levin