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The Great Controversy
though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save
him? ... Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered
Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his
works, and by works was faith made perfect? ... Ye see then how that
by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.”
James 2:14-24
.
The testimony of the word of God is against this ensnaring doctrine
of faith without works. It is not faith that claims the favor of Heaven
without complying with the conditions upon which mercy is to be
granted, it is presumption; for genuine faith has its foundation in the
promises and provisions of the Scriptures.
Let none deceive themselves with the belief that they can become
holy while willfully violating one of God’s requirements. The com-
mission of a known sin silences the witnessing voice of the Spirit and
separates the soul from God. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” And
“whosoever sinneth [transgresseth the law] hath not seen Him, neither
known Him.”
1 John 3:6
. Though John in his epistles dwells so fully
upon love, yet he does not hesitate to reveal the true character of that
class who claim to be sanctified while living in transgression of the
law of God. “He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His com-
mandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth
His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected.”
1 John 2:4, 5
.
Here is the test of every man’s profession. We cannot accord holiness
to any man without bringing him to the measurement of God’s only
standard of holiness in heaven and in earth. If men feel no weight of
the moral law, if they belittle and make light of God’s precepts, if they
break one of the least of these commandments, and teach men so, they
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shall be of no esteem in the sight of Heaven, and we may know that
their claims are without foundation.
And the claim to be without sin is, in itself, evidence that he
who makes this claim is far from holy. It is because he has no true
conception of the infinite purity and holiness of God or of what they
must become who shall be in harmony with His character; because he
has no true conception of the purity and exalted loveliness of Jesus,
and the malignity and evil of sin, that man can regard himself as holy.
The greater the distance between himself and Christ, and the more
inadequate his conceptions of the divine character and requirements,
the more righteous he appears in his own eyes.