The Canadian Church is really good at making sure that people understand that our relationship with God is totally about our faith. Nothing we do makes us good enough for God – it’s by faith alone that we are saved, through God’s grace. And this is true, right and good.

And yet, many of Jesus parables, and much of the New Testament writing also states that true faith is demonstrated by caring for the hurting people and places of this world.

In Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25, He speaks about what it will be like when He returns. Jesus says that it’s the people who clothed the naked, fed the hungry and cared for the poor that will be welcomed into the Kingdom of God, and the ones who ignored the needy will be left out.

Jesus even went as far to say that the way we care for those in need is how we treat God Himself.

Those are massive words for us to wrestle with as individual believers as well as a church. But, those words should help us bring balance to the conversation of how salvation is by faith in Christ alone, AND how “faith without works, is dead.” (James 2:26)