If You Would Enter Life, Keep the Commandments

When Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "If you would enter life, keep the commandments," was He preaching a works gospel?

Which image is right? Faith alone? Obedience alone? Or faith and obedience together?

If your faith isn’t producing a desire to obey the Law of God, i.e. be righteous, your faith is dead and ingenuine.

Mainstream Christianity claims we are saved by faith alone; however, you will not find any verse in scripture saying salvation is “by faith alone.” While it’s true that if we have no faith, we cannot be saved, the same is true that if we have no works (obedience, righteousness, fruit), we cannot be saved, for then we fall into the category of lawless.

And on the other hand, for those who deny their need for God’s grace and boast in their own good deeds, no amount of dead works or so-called obedience to the Law will save them, for they are without faith, and no one can perfectly keep the Law. They are like a house on sinking sand.

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

James 2:26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Romans 2:6-10 He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

Matthew 7:23 And then I will say to them I never knew you! Depart from Me, those working lawlessness!

Matthew 3:10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

When Paul speaks in Galatians of those who were fallen from grace, it was because they believed salvation came through circumcision, that unless a man was physically circumcised, he was not saved. They believed this because they were without faith. They clung to their own works to save them, rather than the grace of God.

Galatians 5:4,5 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

The law can do nothing except remind us of our sin and thus our need for grace.

Romans 3:28,31 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law ... Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

1 John 2:3-6 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

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