Not Saved THAT Far?

Compassionate works are kind of...important

“Genuine holiness,” says Frederick Coutts, “will find its expression in unrewarded service to the last, the least and the lost.”

E. Stanley Jones writes of a Brahman from India attending a meeting where Christians were glowingly describing how Christ had saved them. "You people say you are saved," declared the Brahman. "So am I. As Christ has saved you, so Krishna has saved me."

The missionary in charge of the meeting replied, "I am very glad to hear that you are saved—very glad indeed. Now we are going down to the outcaste quarters and are going to see what we can do for these poor people. We will sit on their beds and in their houses and will share their lives to help them. Will you join us?"

The Brahman looked down and said, "Well, sahib, I am saved, but I am not saved that far."[i]

In our new book titled The Doctrine of Good Works (McCall, Friedeman, Friedeman) we suggest that modern Christianity in the West struggles with what a friend from India once described as “audio-visual problems.” He said that “what the world sees us talking about (the audio) they don’t see us doing (the visual).”

He makes a great point, of course.

I have come to think that good works are a reflection of a working God, first, but then it is also a great evangelistic strategy ) ”Let your light so shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify the Father in heaven.”

And note: See your good works; not just see the good works you fund with your pocketbook (as important as that is!). We have got to get in those rooms where the pained are and love.

[i] E. Stanley Jones, Christ of the Round Table, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1928), 96.