GALATIANS 3:3 AMP*
“Are you so foolish and senseless? Having begun [your new life by faith] with the Spirit, are you now being perfected and reaching spiritual maturity by the flesh [that is, by your own works and efforts to keep the Law]?”
The Christian church has always struggled to get the balance right between faith and works.The book of Romans is a great book on “faith” while James is a great book on “works”.We need to study both Romans and James if we want to be properly balanced Christians. The difficulty with faith and works is this: we come into the Christian life by depending on the death of Christ on Calvary as sufficient ground for our salvation. Then when we learn the principles of Christian living we turn from dependency on Christ to dependency works. This was the great problem in the Galatian churches and it is still a problem in the church today. Bringing forth the fruit of repentance by good works is important, but we are not to depend on works for our salvation. We tend to focus more on works than faith because we can see what we are doing and assess it or measure it. Faith is different. It requires of us a degree of helplessness. However, if we are to know God better, then faith must be seen as the primary virtue. We are saved by faith alone (sola fide). We are saved to good works but we are not saved by good works.
