What works? (James 5:16)

 What in this world "works"? Life in Christ "works". Faith "works". Prayer "works".

They "work out"-----in the final analysis "recommend themselves," "justify themselves." They ARE effective, operative, and promising. Ultimately they ARE what's happening on the plan of reality, what's THERE.

And we are...who? We are the summoned, every day, every moment, to have a part, to participate, play a role in what, alone, in the final analysis, has meaning. This is an indescribable honor. It is Christ Jesus, alone, the Risen One our Redeemer, who has bestowed this honor.

What "works"? What "acts"? Where is there real "use"? What does Holy Scripture say about this?

James 5:16

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The words “effectual fervent” are a single participle in the Greek original: energumenè. What does that mean?

Let's look at the three other passages from the Bible containing this word, then come back to this.

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2 Corinthians 1:6

And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation which is effectual (energumenè) in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.

Is effectual = works actively in you.

Consolation (encouragement) and salvation (safety, assurance, not "redemption") realize themselves in you, as acting, productive realities, through the endurance of sufferings. In other words, it "works," because in this is found direct connection with what the living God is producing and advancing. This is to unite with the actual, concrete cause of God Himself in the world.

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Galatians 5:6

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh (energumenè) by love.

better, faith working by love.

There is no greater manifestation of faith than love. The supreme manifestation of the faith of Christ Himself was His death on the cross, for this death was the consummation of divine love to us. Faith, in every sense, works, works out, acts, substantiates itself, realizes itself: THROUGH LOVE. There is no surer verification of faith than love. If there's no love there, there's hardly faith there. Acting faith is only loving faith.

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1 Thessalonians 2:13

For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh (energumenè) also in you that believe.

In the Greek idiom (their way of formulating a thought), the way this sounds, as Paul wrote it, is something like this (even though it will be very bad English)....

....that, having received the word by hearing from us, God's, you received not the word of people, but as in fact it really is, the word of God that is acting also in you who believe.

The Word of God is an "acting" word.

In other words, Paul is jubilant that the living, active word of God Himself was able to sound and act through simple sounds uttered by his poor human lips. It is a miracle, a miracle that unimaginably transcends the limitations of those human lips. This is the ultimate reality. And Paul's exultation is only intensified by the fact that this miraculously acting word is now manifesting in the Thessalonians' lives (independent of Paul!), as evidence of the burgeoning Kingdom of the risen Christ.

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Now let's go back and look at James 5:16....

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The words “effectual fervent” are this same word, energumenè, in Greek. This prayer is acting, is concretely producing, creating something.

And in what is the "key," the "secret," the "access" to this "acting" prayer? Romans 8:26: "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for usthrough wordless groans."

Life in Christ, faith and prayer "work" because God is WORKING. Behind everything that happens, only one thing is happening: the story of God's work. And our indescribable honor is to be called into friendship with God, like Abraham, and become vessels of His work, acting as catalysts of His advancing kingdom. There is no greater glory for man than to glorify God in this way

And so, pray, pray by faith, pray by love, pray in trust in the Holy Spirit, and your prayer will be active--it will "work"--and the kingdom of Christ will concretely spread by means of you, in your life and the lives of others.

If There Had Been No Jesus

 If there had never been a Jesus of Nazareth (and excluding for the moment the utterly titanic "Butterfly Effect" that His Person represents in history, since had He never been it is most probable none of us, at least in "the West," would now exist as we do, as the fate and development of nations would have been radically different; so let's just suppose, fantastically, that Jesus had never been yet somehow the present arrangement of nations--geopolitically as well as genetically, right down to your family tree!--were still as it is now)--so as I was saying, if there had never been a Jesus of Nazareth, what is the likelihood that I would have arbitrarily opted to embrace, out of the potpourri of ancient religions, the ancient Jewish faith in their YHWH? Next to nil, I suppose. There'd be no more reason or impulse for me, intellectually, socioculturally, to "believe" in the Jewish deity (indeed, any deity) any more than I might choose to embrace the ancient gods of the Egyptians or Celts. (But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done that, either.)

Had there been no Jesus, billions of Gentiles all over the world and over the past two millenia would not be confessing faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That's just historical fact. Jesus is the concrete historical reason we've come to "Yahweh." Like nuclear weapons, which can't be un-invented once invented, so it is with this astonishing (it really is astonishing if you take a moment to contemplate it) fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies that some day "the nations" (i.e., the Gentiles) would flock to the God of Israel. Guess what. It happened. Jesus made it happen. Even if one doesn't believe in Jesus, even if one considers it an error, it's happened, and like the nuclear bomb it can't un-happen now.

The question is whether that constitutes an equally titanic "Oops!" on the part of God Himself, to have allowed such a massively false fulfillment of the prophecies to occur, a fulfillment that can never be deleted or "re-fulfilled" the "right" way. Once it's happened, it's happened.

Obviously, this is not a titanic "Oops!"

It is a terribly under-noticed, under-commented, astounding event in history. It was foretold and it happened, in ways no one could ever have anticipated. Once it's happened, it can't re-happen. Fulfillment is fulfillment, like it or not. You can't get the cat back in the bag. From a Jewish perspective that rejects Jesus, it's not like "the real Messiah" can still come and fulfill the prophecies that, oops, have already materialized. Something for our Jewish friends to contemplate deeply.

I do not think it is impious or irreverent of me to say that I'd likely never have opted to believe in the Yahweh of the Jews had there been no Jesus. For one thing, the simple fact is that I never did "opt to believe" in the Yahweh of the Jews without Jesus. So it's hardly irreverent to repeat what's already a fact. For another, God manifestly never intended for me to come to faith in Him without Jesus, and for that reason again my assertion is hardly irreverent. I am actually agreeing 100% with the manifest purpose of God.

And all of this demonstrates further what "Christocentric" really means in God's eternal redemptive purpose.

When I teach my hermeneutics course in Zaporozhye, one of my beginning provocative questions to the class is "Why do we believe in the Bible?" I usually get "theologically correct" responses like "Because it's the Word of God" (which is terribly tautological), and similarly formulated answers. I almost never get the answer I hope to get and so I almost always have to supply it: "Because of Jesus." If it weren't for Jesus, would any of us be here reading the Old Testament? Hardly. Jesus is the Magnet, the One who "will draw all people to Myself," the Door to our embrace of the God of Abraham and our fellowship with Him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

"No one comes to the Father except through Me," and "No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him." This is the astounding and unapologetic claim of Christ, a claim borne out through the millenia, both experientially and in cold, hard, historical data. No one has brought the nations of the world to Yahweh except Jesus.