How interestingly brother James put it when he said that faith without works is dead. It brings to mind the proverb that it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. Well, we kings of the New Covenant have no works left to do at all, thanks to Jesus, and God has revealed everything to us by His Spirit. Only one work is left, and when you do it, faith stays alive. So what is this work?

In the New Covenant we are encouraged to look at Christ, so that things become clear. So let’s look: Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Heb.12:2); next, in Him we live and move and have our being (there are the works,Act.17:28); and it is no longer we who live, but Christ, and we live by the faith of the Son of God (Gal.2:20; this is how the KJV renders it literally: “by the faith of the Son of God”). Faith works! And how do we make it dead? When we act ourselves. We kill faith by our own efforts; it is as the Lord said, that we make the word of God of no effect through our tradition. Jesus said that our work is to believe in Him (Jhn.6:29), or, as one modern Russian translation puts it, “to trust” Him. So let faith (Jesus in us) act, so that it stays alive. “Without Me you can do nothing” (Jhn.15:5). And, as was said above, we live by the faith of Jesus. When we trust the Lord in one situation or another, we do the works that please God without even noticing, and this brings life! When we were sinners, whatever works we did would not have brought us salvation, that is, the end of those works is death. But now that God has made us righteous before Himself, our fruit is holiness, that is, life (a living faith). Only let us not, having been clothed, be found naked; that is, God has clothed us in the garments of righteousness, but we don’t believe it and, like the “foolish Galatians”, try to add our own efforts to our salvation, when everything is already done. But it is written: “For by it the elders obtained a good testimony” (Heb.11:2; one modern Russian translation even says: “God loved the ancients for such faith”), and clearly this is speaking of a different faith, a living one, since God approved it. It is when you believe that some things exist even though we do not see them (verse 1). So what do we need to do for faith to stay alive? Trust, believe the Lord, get to know Him and abide in rest! But if you look at yourself, and look for works, and so on… then I sincerely feel sorry for you. I like to say: “It’s not about us, it’s about Jesus!”