Creflo Dollar - Does Faith Require Works? - Part 2
We grew up in tradition where tradition said do good in order to get good, and if you do bad you’re gonna get bad. That is the way of the law and the Old Covenant, the old agreement, but under this new agreement, his mercy showed up, man. Thank God for it. Titus 3 and 5 says, «Not by works of righteousness,» hmm. «Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy,» he what?
Now, you know what mercy is? Mercy is the bad you deserve you don’t get. So, God saved you because of his mercy. As crazy as all of us were, his mercy could look past your crazy and save you and offer you a gift of salvation. Now, some of y’all think y’all got got on salvation. The Bible says no man comes to the Father unless he’s drawn by him. God knows how to draw you to him. I don’t care how crazy you act, I don’t care how much weed you smoke, how much sex you have, how much lying you do. I don’t care all that stuff, how crooked you are, how crazy, your crooked self is sitting in this church today trying to figure out why you sitting here in this church listening to Creflo Dollar. Not everybody, but I know a bunch of crooked, crazy folks that come and I don’t know why they came.
I do now, because God knows how to draw you. You done found a spot somewhere in the World Dome where you’re sitting there by yourself because everything you have tried has not worked, and now God is drawing you by his mercy because he loves you and he’s got a plan for you and he has wired you a certain way and you will fulfill the plan that he has for your life. Well, the Lord gotta use me in order to make this. Listen, I’m hearing some crazy, wonderfully-crazy testimonies of people being drawn by God, ain’t nobody in there. I heard testimony of a guy who got in his truck and he looked to the right and wasn’t nobody there, and all of a sudden he was just hungry to get born again and he gave his life to Jesus. He didn’t even know how, he just said, «Jesus, save me right now».
I’m telling you, don’t you worry about your relatives. Don’t you worry about your children. God knows how to save your relatives and your children. Okay, let’s calm down because the lips don’t sound sweet when I’m hollering and screaming like that, but I just know about this, you know? He saved us by his mercy, «By the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit».
Now, and then Ephesians 9 says this, so you didn’t bring anything. He says, «Not of works, lest any man should boast». You have nothing to boast about. And then Romans 3 and 10, this is so cool, Romans 3 and 10 and then move on down to verse 23, look at what he says. He says, «As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one». And this is a reference from the Old Testament, that without Jesus nobody’s righteous anyway. Nobody’s righteous in their own self before Jesus came, all right? And look at verse 23, Romans 3:23, «For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God». This is amazing to me that Christian people, we still hadn’t gotten that. «All have sinned and come short of the glory of God».
There are actually some people that when they start learning more of God’s Word, they put themselves in a position where somehow they feel like they are in perfection and they got it all whipped and they say… you become more judgmental when you think you got it all together. The Bible talks about being tenderhearted, but you become more judgmental when you think you have it all together and you ain’t got it all together. All right, so maybe you pretty much got the big ten together, but them other 603 are wearing your tail out. Okay, so you don’t commit adultery and you don’t steal and you don’t cheat and you don’t, you know, you don’t do none of the big ten, okay, but you mean and you’re deceptive and you call yourself speaking faith but you’re lying, you exaggerate, let’s say, you exaggerate.
The Bible says be kind one to another, tenderhearting, forgiving one another. You’re still holding stuff, so don’t play that. Everybody in the house got an issue. That’s first base, that’s where you gotta start. All right, listen, we’re growing, we don’t have the same issues we used to have, we don’t do the same thing we used to do, but up until Jesus comes you got an issue. You got an issue. Some of your issues might be, all right, you just, you know, your temper, you ain’t got no temperance. You don’t have no self-control. You nice until you’re not. And some of y’all what we call nice nasty. Everybody got an issue. You’re moody, you know, «Leave me alone, I don’t wanna talk to nobody till I get my coffee».
That’s an issue. That’s an issue. «Don’t say nothing to me, I ain’t had my coffee yet now. If I cuss you out now, don’t blink, I done told you». What I’m saying is, there’s work that still needs to be done to all of us. I don’t care how long you’ve been saved, I don’t care how much you’ve learned, and you still may have an amazing, wonderful, intimate relationship with Jesus, but the reason why you have that relationship with Jesus is so he can be with you every day to help you work out stuff because you don’t mature and grow when you’re in church, it’s a living faith. It’s like I’m gonna live with you today, Lord, and help me when I need help. You ain’t asking God to help you for no reason at all.
You know you’re gonna need help because somebody might kinda say something to you the wrong way or you feeling some kind of funny about why you didn’t get the promotion or this or somebody, you know, fired you and you wanna wreck the whole office up. You need help from the Holy Spirit every day. If you didn’t need help from the Holy Spirit every day, then Jesus wasted his blood, wasted his time, wasted everything on that cross, but he went on that cross so you can have hope that you’re going to finally get to the place where one day you’re gonna be just like him, but we ain’t there yet, he’s taking us there.
So, you ain’t got no room to be… self-righteous people look at other people measuring their selves by what other people look like. «And so, at least I didn’t do that, so». But you know, you got some secrets you ain’t told everybody about, and you living behind your secret while you’re producing this false identity of perfection, and you’re growing like everybody else. You’re being trained like everybody else. You got little issues that go up like everybody else, like, forgive me Jesus. You know, you’re like, praise the Lord, the Bible is good till somebody do something and you cuss. Oh, forgive me Lord. And so, God’s still working on your cuss. You thought you buried the book of cuss, but you pulled a couple of pages out before you put the dirt over that book.
You see, I’m gonna keep these three or four, maybe I need to keep these three or four. You can have all the rest of them cuss words, but these three and four, they come in handy every now and then. Are you listening to me? So, we need Jesus. Say this, «I need Jesus». Say this out loud, «I need a Savior». And I’m gonna need him until I depart this world or until he comes back, and that’s one thing I acknowledge every morning. I say, «God, I need you today». I need you today. I was praying over the sermon and I said I need you to be able to help me to say what you want me to say like you want me to say it and say it with sweet lips. Help me, Lord, help me.
And you walk out of the house and it don’t seem like he said nothing to you about nothing, how to say nothing or nothing like that, and you get up and you just open your mouth because you have confidence that he won’t let… thank you, excuse me, I just had a little something there. You have confidence that he’s never let you down, because you take a look back in your life and you realize when you walked in a situation in the past, it was God that showed up and turned this thing around and it’s God who showed up who filled your mouth with good things.
It was God who showed up and healed you and delivered you and opened the door for you and made a way out of no way, so you already have some experience with this Jesus, except the devil keeps telling you to say something told me. God’s been taking care of some of y’all before you ever got saved. God’s been watching over some of y’all before you ever made him Lord of your life. God has been in preparation of you walking through that door. God is going to use you. It may not look like you’re gonna be used and you may think you’re too old to be used. You better understand, don’t put no age on God. God will use you no matter who you are, no matter whether you’re a man or woman, no matter where you live at, no matter what color you are, God will use you.
You need to get yourselves ready and you need to wake up every day in preparation to be used by the Almighty God, hallelujah. All right, so the one condition for salvation is to believe in or to have faith in Jesus Christ. That’s it, that’s the one condition. How do I get saved? Believe in Jesus. But I gotta do something? No, believe in Jesus. Well, what do I do once I believe in Jesus? Get to know him. And what do I do once I get to know him? Believe in him, this ain’t hard, but we have been so accustomed to figuring out what to do that we have minimized belief. All right, follow me carefully. Go to John chapter 1 and 12 and then Acts 16:31. Let’s move on. Let’s move on, hallelujah.
John 1 and 12, «But as many as,» what? Received him, see, that’s how you get saved by faith, you received him, okay? «To them gave he,» what? Power to become what? The sons of God. To become, you’re not already, but you’re becoming. «Even to them that believe on his name». By faith you believe that you’ve received him. By faith you believe you’re the son of God. By faith you believe you’re perfect. By faith you believe, so you believe in the stance, by faith, even though it may appear that it’s not quite here yet, just keep believing.
Look at Act 16:31. Act 16:30 and 31, let’s look at 30 and 31. This is a situation where I think it was Paul and Silas that were in jail, earthquake hit, jail doors opened, they walked out, and the jailer knew he was going to be executed for letting these guys escape. And verse 30 says, «And he brought them out, and said, 'Sirs, '» here’s the jailer, «'Sirs, what must I do to be saved? ' And they responded and they said, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and then thou shall be saved, and thy house, '» the power of belief.
Look at John 6 verse 28 and 29. Dog, I feel like I’m in school with all these scriptures. Yeah, that’s fine, I mean, you know. John 6:28 and 29 in the NLT, and you’re gonna see the question here. So they replied, and this was right after the multitude of the bread and the fish, and these guys saw this miracle and they wanted to follow Jesus so they can do these miracles too. «They replied, 'We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do? '» Verse 29, «Jesus told them, 'This is the only work God wants from you, believe in the one he has sent.'»
So, the question is about God’s requirements, plural, and Jesus’s answer is that God’s requirement, singular, is that you believe in him. Now, grace is giving us something we cannot earn. Grace is gonna give us something we don’t deserve. When we get it by grace, we didn’t earn it, we don’t deserve it. Now, I think we got the basis of it. Are we’re ready to go to this area? All right, now, watch your ears, ha, ha. Romans 11 and 6 in the King James and the NLT. Grace is giving us something we cannot earn or deserve. We’re asking a question, doesn’t faith require works?
All right, look at this now. He says, «And if by grace,» if it’s by grace, if this salvation is by grace, if this deliverance and healing, if it’s by grace, «then is it no more works? If it’s grace, then is it no more works: otherwise grace is no more grace if there’s works. But if it be of works,» if the gift be of work, if grace be of work, «Then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work». Now look at this in the NLT. «And since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works». If you got what you got through God’s kindness and through his grace, then it is not by their good works. You don’t work and get a gift, you work and get earnings or payment. «For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it is».
If you add works to your faith, God’s grace won’t be what it is, and what is God’s grace? Free and undeserved, and now watch this carefully, works of any kind destroys grace. The idea is that a worker earns payment, that’s the idea, and a worker earns payment versus the recipients of grace simply receive it unearned. So, since salvation is all of grace, since soundness and preservation and safety is all of grace, it cannot be earned. You don’t earn it with your faith by adding works, you receive it with your faith by your belief and confidence.
Now, here’s a big statement. Based on Romans 11 and 6, if works shows up, it destroys grace, and if we receive it through faith but we add works to faith, then it destroys what’s been given to you by grace. Faith therefore, is a non-work. It’s a non-work. Faith cannot truly be considered a work or else it would destroy grace. Is it possible that our faith has been destroying grace? Is it possible that by adding works to grace, that grace is no more grace and that which we have made available to us by grace has been destroyed because we keep adding works to something that is a non-work? Whoo, so faith cannot truly be considered a work or else it would destroy grace.
Now, I’m gonna read something here. In Romans 4 Abraham was dependent on faith in God as opposed to any work he performed. So, let’s look at the father of faith, Romans 4, and we’re gonna look at the whole chapter. I said, God, I can’t read no whole chapter on Sunday morning. Yes, I can, because it’s just too much in here to skip. Romans 4, I’m gonna read out of the NLT, and the whole deal is, do we add works to faith? Now, I know if you’ve been a Christian for some time, I know what you’re thinking about, is that, well, but James said faith without works is dead. I’m gonna teach on James next week. James said works without faith is dead. That is not what… James did not mean add works to your faith. James said a couple of things. He said Abraham was justified by his works.
Now, Abraham was justified by his faith, so what was James saying? James was saying faith without proof coming out of you, in other words, if you’ve experienced saving faith, that you got born again through saving faith, it ought to produce some good works, fruit. He said so faith without proof of faith, which is good work fruit, so, he says saving faith will produce good works, he didn’t say add good works to faith so it can produce something. And that’s where the thing comes in in our head, well, faith without works is dead.
Well, a couple of things, it’s true, but you gotta pay attention to the context. Faith without proof that you really experience true faith without it giving birth to good works, then your faith is dead, it ain’t true faith. You got dead faith if you’re not producing good works that’s coming out of that. You understand what I’m saying? And then also, when he said Abraham was justified by his works, what he was saying was Abraham’s faith was so awesome with his God that when God told him to take his son up to the mountain and to kill him, he did that. So, he justified his faith by the fruit that he produced. See, two different things there.
All right, now, watch this, verse 1, I don’t know, maybe I ought to read my Bible… 30 years holding the Bible just like this, right? And I miss my Bible. You’re reading everything else but the Bible, computer screens and everything else. Now, y’all can put them on the screens for everybody else to read, I think I’m gonna go back old school. A little old school back and forth. All right, «Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What did he discover about being made right with God? If his good deeds had made him acceptable to God, he would have had something to boast about. But that was not God’s way. For the Scriptures tell us, 'Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.' When people work, their wages are not a gift».
See, when you get a paycheck, that ain’t no gift, you work for that. You better make it clear before you start labor, this ain’t no gift. «When people work, their wages are not a gift, but they are something that they have earned. But people are counted righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners». So, you’re not righteous because you work to be righteous, but your faith in God.