Little bit about faith, works, righteousness, and who wins treasure.
Luke 12:32-40; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; Psalm 33:12-22; Genesis 15:1-6
This week, Jesus is wrapping up the conversation he’s having about making sure God comes before stuff that we started looking at last week, but he’s now making it more general. In particular, I want to focus on two things: “Do not be afraid… for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom,” and “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Both of these statements are saying exactly the same thing, but from a different direction: When you trust God, everything you really need is given to you. That doesn’t mean that we’ll have everything we want, but our needs will be provided for and we’ll have the most important thing of all – the kingdom of God.
This is something we sometimes have a hard time with, so luckily for us God gives us the “Hebrews Hall of Fame”, specifically a fellow you may have heard of once or twice named Abraham (even though at this point he was still just Abram). God showed up on his doorstep one day in Ur, telling him to pack up his stuff, leave everything he knew, and march off to a place called Canaan. He ended up taking a side trek to Egypt during a famine, where he lied to Pharaoh to avoid getting killed. Then he and his nephew Lot had a fight, so Lot left, only to get captured by the kings of Shinar, Ellasar, and Elam, then Abram had to save him.
So, in the course of 3 chapters, Abram had had a rough time of it. So God showed up again and said, “Don’t be afraid, Abram. Remember that I’m protecting you and that I’m the most important thing in your life.” Abram was a little disappointed, because while God promised him that he would be a great nation with many descendants, he had no children. God then repeated his promise and, now for the important part, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Hebrews repeats this: Abraham obeyed God through faith, trusted that his wife would have his child. As the writer states, “They were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.” Abraham trusted God that, no matter what happened, God would fulfill his promise and continue to watch over him. He had faith.
But what is faith? What does it really look like for God to be our treasure, to live in God’s kingdom? The answer is best found in the letter of James. We Lutherans often have a misunderstanding about James, because, to be honest, Martin Luther once said something he later considered stupid. Luther wrote once, and only once, that James is an “epistle of straw”, and people have been jumping on this quote for a long time. However, he never said it again, and he even praised the book of James for his description of God’s law.
But there’s always been a misconception about James, namely people misread it to think that James is saying that good works are required for salvation, though that’s not what James says at all. The quote in question is from James 2:14-24,26
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone… As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
It’s a mouthful, I know, but here’s Luther’s summary: “Faith is living, restless thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith.”
It’s not that Abraham trusted God, but he acted on that trust. That’s what it is for God to be our treasure – to live in his kingdom. When our faith and the way we live our lives are in sync, that’s when we know our hearts are seeking after God, our treasure. That’s when we know that we are citizens of his kingdom, with nothing to fear.