No. Nobody earns salvation, and we’ve never taught that anybody could. Scripture closes that door too firmly for anyone to reopen it (Titus 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9). What we do teach here at Christians in Honesdale is that the faith which saves a person is a faith that obeys God. That’s a different claim from the one this question usually has in mind.
What the Charge Would Have to Mean
Start with what the charge would have to mean. Salvation by works would mean a person stacks up enough good behavior that God ends up owing him heaven. Paul shuts that door using the language of a paycheck: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5).
A note on the Greek: Paul is using bookkeeping words here. “Counted” is logizomai, an accounting term for crediting something to someone’s account. “His due” is opheilēma, a debt. The contrast is kata charin (“according to grace”) versus kata opheilēma (“according to debt”). A paycheck is something the employer owes, and Paul’s point is that God is never in anyone’s debt. The word “counted” comes straight from the Hebrew of Genesis 15:6, where the LORD chashab, reckoned or credited, Abraham’s faith as righteousness. The Greek Old Testament Paul read translates that verb with the same logizomai. God makes the entry in the ledger. Abraham doesn’t.
A wage gets earned. A gift doesn’t. Salvation sits on the gift side of that line, and nothing anybody does drags it across. Paul is just as blunt about how any of us got in: “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). The first half of that sentence is the whole answer. Not because of works done by us.
He says it again to the Ephesians, and this time he puts both halves of our answer in one paragraph: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). Salvation is not a result of works. It is a gift, and it produces good works. Paul felt no tension between those two sentences, and neither do we.
Why People Keep Saying It Anyway
Mostly because we take the New Testament’s commands at face value, and to some ears a command attached to salvation starts sounding like a price tag. Our conviction is that a believer repents and is immersed in order to have his sins forgiven (Acts 2:38; 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21). We’re also convinced that a Christian goes on walking with God afterward instead of filing the decision away and moving on (1 John 1:7; Philippians 2:12-13).
Lay those two convictions down in a culture where “grace” and “do something” get treated as opposites, and you can see how the misreading happens on its own. But opening your hand for a gift has never been the same thing as paying for it. Nobody credits the patient with inventing the cure because he asked the doctor for it.
“But Isn’t Baptism a Work?”
This is usually the real question underneath the first one, so it deserves a direct answer. It isn’t a work in the sense Paul rules out. Look at how the New Testament describes what happens in baptism: “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12). Whose working is it? God’s. The person being baptized is the one being buried, raised, and washed. He does nothing to himself. You can’t take credit for your own burial.
A note on the Greek: The grammar says the same thing. When Peter told the crowd at Pentecost to “be baptized” (Acts 2:38), the verb is baptisthētō, a passive form. The person doesn’t baptize himself. He submits to being baptized. Something is done to him, and the “working” Colossians describes is God’s.
Notice, too, that the very sentence in Titus 3:5 that says “not because of works done by us” goes on to name “the washing of regeneration” as the way God saved us. Paul saw no contradiction there, because he never counted that washing among the works a person could boast about.
And consider how Jesus answered a crowd that wanted to know which works would please God: “Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’” (John 6:28-29). Jesus called believing a work. So the line Scripture draws can’t be between doing something and doing nothing. It falls between earning and trusting. Believing, repenting, confessing, and being baptized all sit on the trusting side. None of them puts God in anyone’s debt.
The Old Testament showed this long before. Naaman the Syrian was told to wash seven times in the Jordan to be cleansed of his leprosy. He was offended that the cure was so plain, and his own servants had to reason with him: “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” (2 Kings 5:13). “So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kings 5:14). Nobody thinks the Jordan’s water or Naaman’s effort earned the healing. God healed him. Naaman simply did what he was told, and trusted it.
What Obedience Is There For
Obedience is what trust does. It isn’t a fee, and it adds nothing to what Christ already finished. The Hebrew writer puts obedience and salvation in one sentence without a trace of embarrassment: “And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9). Notice who the source is. Not the obeying. Him.
Paul described his whole ministry the same way. He said he had received grace “to bring about the obedience of faith” among the nations (Romans 1:5; 16:26). That’s the obedience that faith produces, not obedience in place of faith.
A note on the Hebrew: The Old Testament never had to argue this point, because its language wouldn’t let the two come apart. Biblical Hebrew has no separate everyday word for “obey.” The verb is shama’, “to hear.” When God says, “Obey my voice” (Jeremiah 7:23), the Hebrew is literally “hear my voice.” It’s the same word that opens Israel’s great confession: Shema, Yisrael, “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). To a Hebrew ear, someone who “heard” God and did nothing hadn’t really heard Him at all.
That is what the accusation misses: Christ does the saving, and the person being saved answers by doing what He said.
The Two Verses People Pit Against Each Other
James wrote a line that reads like the reverse of Romans: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). Paul says a working man collects a wage instead of a gift. James says faith alone doesn’t justify. Both of them are Scripture, so we don’t get to pick one and set the other aside.
Here’s what settles it. Paul and James both quote the same verse about the same man: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3; James 2:23). Paul is fighting the idea that anyone could put God in his debt by his own record, which he elsewhere calls “works of the law” (Romans 3:28). James is fighting a faith that sits still and calls itself saved. Paul himself names the kind of faith that counts: “only faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
A note on the Greek: James says that when Abraham offered Isaac, “the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God’” (James 2:23). The word is eplērōthē, “was filled full.”
Genesis 15:6 was spoken many years before Mount Moriah (Genesis 22). James isn’t claiming that Abraham earned what God had already credited to him. He’s saying that Abraham’s faith reached its full measure when it acted. Hebrews 11:8 says the same of Abraham from the very beginning: “By faith Abraham obeyed.”
James isn’t handing anybody an invoice. He’s pulling apart two things people both call faith: agreeing that something is true, and trusting Someone enough to move. Abraham’s faith showed up on a mountain. A faith that never changes anything is an opinion with religious vocabulary attached.
If You’re Worn Out From Trying to Be Good Enough
Some people ask this question in the middle of an argument. Plenty ask it because they’re tired, and they want to know whether God keeps a running tab on them. He doesn’t. Jesus told a story about servants who had done everything asked of them, and even then the words He put in their mouths were these: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
A note on the Greek: “Unworthy” translates achreioi, literally “unprofitable.” It’s the same word used for the servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:30). The servants in Luke 17 aren’t calling themselves worthless. They’re saying that even after doing everything they were told, they’ve produced no surplus, nothing extra their master now has to pay back. That’s Romans 4 in parable form.
Nobody in that story is negotiating. Not one of them holds anything over the master’s head. That’s the posture of a Christian who understands what happened to him, and it’s the opposite of the arrogance that a works salvation would require.
Put the Passages Side by Side
Read Romans 4, then Ephesians 2, then James 2, then Titus 3, and watch how comfortably grace and obedience sit together inside one Bible. Keep one thing in mind while you read: we’re an independent congregation with no denomination or headquarters standing behind us. We can only tell you what we’ve come to from the text, never what anybody else holds. Nobody handed this down to us. Take whatever time you need with it.
Bring the Question Straight to Us
If this one has been sitting on you, we’d be glad to open the Bible and work through it at your pace, with your questions setting the order. Nothing is sold here, and nobody keeps score. Ask us for a free Bible study, read a little about who we are, or send us a note before you visit.
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You’ll find us at 416 Main Street, Suite D, Honesdale, PA 18431. Park at the rear of the building and come in through the back door.