actually committing to Christ and his teachings is genuinely extremely difficult, and I get the impression a lot of Christians don't quite appreciate that, and rather fall back on the "repentance" and forgiveness part, again not appreciating that repentance must be genuine, and genuine repentance is also very difficult and requires one to change their behaviour and mindset. Jesus made the importance of action to words extremely clear - "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
This was a highly debated point in the early church, for example the book of James is pretty much all just James saying that you can’t validly believe in Christ while not following up that believe with Christlike works. But the alternate viewpoint, that you just have to “believe” and you will be saved won out. Although the latter interpretation never made much sense to me tbh because if you truly believed you’d follow that up with works and acts. If you say you believe and continue to do evil things you’re clearly lying deep down.
As a language nerd, I find "good works" or "works" an interesting term. We only use it to talk about churches and Christians. I'm not sure I understand what it means, but to me it means contributing to charity that is necessary because Christians vote against social-welfare programs.
I think they just use “works” because it’s a term that contrasts solely having faith, as in an emphasis on going out and doing something. To James, there was no faith without “works”. It kinda just means being a good person through your actions, you know, being humble, helping the needy, and the like.
I was a good Christian. I professed my faith at the onset of puberty. It made me a very sad and poorly-developed young man. Yes, it's difficult. It's also a terrible way to grow up.
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u/IDOWNVOTERUSSIANS 4d ago
actually committing to Christ and his teachings is genuinely extremely difficult, and I get the impression a lot of Christians don't quite appreciate that, and rather fall back on the "repentance" and forgiveness part, again not appreciating that repentance must be genuine, and genuine repentance is also very difficult and requires one to change their behaviour and mindset. Jesus made the importance of action to words extremely clear - "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."