"Christianity, too, judges itself by practice. We thus confront a constant challenge in this regard. The whole revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob incessantly comes back to the point that those who know God's commandments will live. Practice the commandments; the Lord demands this... A radical distinction arises between hearing and doing; there are those who hear but do not do (Ezekial 33:31). Jesus takes up the decisive importance of practice in almost the same terms. True believers are those who hear and practice what they hear (Luke 8:21)... Paul incessantly insists on the critical importance of practice. It is not for nothing that each of his epistles culminates in a lengthy admonition showing that practice is the visible _expression of faith, of fidelity to Jesus... The context is essential here... we are saved by grace, not by works. Hence we cannot glorify works. Yet doing them is indispensible, for they are prepared in advance by God, they are in [God's] 'plan', and we are created to do them. God does not do them; we have this responsibility... If Christians are not conformed in their lives to the truth, there is no truth... this makes us see that in not being what Christ demands, we render all revelation false, illusory, ideological, imaginary, and non-salvific... We have to admit that there is an imeasurable distance between all that we have read in the Bible and the practice of the church and of Christians."
Jacques Ellul (emphasis his)
Recent Comments