Why should something like love or faith be a work.
You have to realize that in Christian teaching and debate the word "works" has become laden down with a whole set of ideas and theology that the original word simply does not have.
Some people bristle and revolt at the word as representing the very heart of a legalistic attempt to earn heaven.
Others immediately latch on as a way to fight a compromising and passive idea that a Christian can live "any old way they want."
The word in the original just means at its base an "action," and from there can have several nuances like a manifestation, accomplishment or task.
But if we say that any action automatically is an attempt to merit heaven, than any act of the will including simply the reception of a gift becomes itself a form of attempting self-merit. That is, even just the bare acceptance of a gift must be trying to earn it.
And if you were consistent in your logic here, you would have to completely eliminate all human free will in the name of grace. After all, what could possibly be more gracious than us literally do nothing at all, and God literally doing everything?
But every person who believes in free will knows that cannot be true. So what do some do? They sort of make a little "one time exception" but keep the basic idea that contradicts their exception. They literally want to eat their cake and have it too.
Now a one tiny little itty-bitty mini-work can be somehow exempted from the term work, because they do not like the theologically laden word "work" to be allowed to be used at all, for any reason.
But remember—work is just an action—and if grace means no action is taken, human will is out of the picture; if taking a gift earns the gift, literally even just a bare yes to grace somehow merits heaven. That is, if—IF—we stay logically consistent and don't allow ourselves to double speak.
But there is a strange temptation surrounding double speak, because if I like certain aspect of both sides of a dichotomy, both sides of a position that contradict each other, and I want to keep a little of each even though I know they are not really compatible, I can play little mental games and just simply start double speaking—in one situation when I like it, I say A, in another situation when I don't like it, I say NOT A, and it just depends on the framework. Then I say they are "compatible" even though they directly logically contradict, then I say anyone is "misrepresenting" me whenever anyone calls out my inconsistency.
And thus a stronghold is born.
Now we can allow "works" when we want to, say they are not really works, and no long require ourselves to be logically consistent.
But Scripture has a lot to say about works, and it's not all negative, it's not all "works bad." Jesus directly tells Blood-bought saints that he will judge them by their works, and he knows their works to the point their very salvation is in jeopardy, in the beginning of Revelation. And I will, for now, ignore the irrational pretzels that are woven to try to get out of that one, lol.
And a person will accuse you of "pitting James against Paul," if you don't simply assume "their" version of works. So the word "works" gets blacklisted and hijacked and laden with ideas that don't necessarily accompany it. If you even breathe the word "works" then you are subverting all forms of grace and the gift of the Cross providing our merit for us.
But this is them simply framing the narrative, bringing in their presuppositions and acting like they are the only game in town.
We cannot simply assume works only has one meaning.
We cannot simply assume works always is something negative.
When Paul speaks of works he is always framing it in the context on a specific kind of works, a certain kind of action.
We need to shatter the religious stereotype of what "works" has come to mean and go back to the original sources, and back to Scripture, which tells us that even Christian believers trusting in the Cross WILL be judged by their works—and sometimes condemned.
Grace has never once meant passivity, nor an abdication of responsibilty, nor the elimination of human free choice.
It's time to take back the Biblical meaning of Grace and Works from the hands of those who are twisting it and painting their own narrative.
