The first series of complaints made by Habakkuk concerned
what he saw inside the city, the sin of his own people. The Lord's response was that He was bringing
judgment for the things the prophet had seen, and that judgment was coming in
the form of the Chaldeans who would destroy Judah. After this word is received, the prophet
says, "I will take my stand at my watchpost and
station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me…" He is now looking not into the city but
outside concerning what God will say about the Chaldeans because he now sees
their rapacious wickedness on the city and the Lord's people. The woes pronounced concern the Chaldeans in
this passage. They are the idolaters,
the ones who have ravaged and plundered for their own fame and financial
gain.
Does what we do in this life matter? I thought that salvation was by faith alone,
just like Habakkuk had said, the just shall live by faith. The prophet was right, Paul was right, Jesus
was right, Martin Luther and the other reformers were right, salvation is by
faith alone, faith in Jesus alone, but the life of faith is the revealer of
faith. Jesus tells this story (is it a
parable or story - there is nothing to tell us it is parable, Jesus reveals the
identity of the party, not, a certain man, but Lazarus) about the great divide
of eternity and that one is in torment while the other is at "Abraham's
side." The conversation is between
the rich man (his name is not in the Lamb's book of life) and Abraham, the
father of faith. Certainly it is an
interesting twist, would we expect Abraham to be the interlocutor? At any rate, Lazarus had "done"
nothing, had indeed suffered much and the rich man had done nothing either but
he was in a position to have done so and he failed to love his neighbor. Our faith calls us to action, not
inaction.
James was not Martin Luther's favorite book
in the Bible. Once he referred to it as
an "epistle of straw." His
problem was that it seemed that James wanted to add works to faith and Luther
would have nothing added to faith. That having
been said, Luther wrote it in his first edition of the preface to James and
removed it himself from subsequent editions.
He also wrote, 'Faith, is a living, restless
thing. It cannot be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works,
there must be something amiss with faith.'
Indeed our faith is amiss if we have no external proof that it
exists. It would be like claiming to
know how to read without ever actually reading anything. God could simply have declared His love for
the world via a prophet but He sent His Son to die on a cross to proclaim it
and seal it. We know He loves us because
He actively declared it.
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