06/16/2026
Weekly Reflection
On Friday of this week we read John 14:21-24:
The Lord said to his disciples, "He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered him, "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me."
Salvation is not a trophy we get for being good, but a participation in God Himself. So often we think about salvation like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, the anvil hits the cartoon cat and a translucent, winged version of it floats upward with a halo, then sits on a cloud playing a harp. For the Orthodox, this would be closer to our understanding of hell than heaven! This is static, there is no movement, no Theosis. In this passage, Christ talks to His disciples about salvation, which is not laid out as the function of a checklist of sins vs good deeds, which God then looks at after death, nor as a function of belief. Salvation is a participation in God, it is our love for God and God’s love for us working together to transfigure us eternally to becoming more and more like Him, this is synergia, our working together with God for our salvation. Admittedly, in this process we do very little. I have heard a beautiful analogy for the way that synergia function. If you look around the room you are in and see a lamp, imagine all of the effort, industry, and infrastructure it took to get that lamp into that room. From the mining of the materials; the building of roads, factories, and stores; the discovery and harnessing of electricity; the power plant and the lines that bring electricity to the room; the cars and trucks; and on and on. Without all of this, that lamp would not be in the room. The lamp would stay forever off in the room, however, unless you flip one switch. Salvation has been accomplished by God through the Incarnation, but we must “flip the switch,” so to speak, we must take part in the restoration of our nature accomplished by God, we must participate in our salvation.
How do we do this? Christ here says that it is through the keeping of His commandments. We see a similar understanding in 1 John 2: 3-4: “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” Even those who think to themselves that they “know Him,” that is, those who have an academic belief in God, they do not love Him or actually know Him, their belief in God is not unto salvation, but an empty thing. St John goes on to connect this keeping of the commandments with our love for others as well. In 1 John 2:9-11, he says: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” The way that we interact with other people is a function of our love for God, our keeping of the commandments. But how can we understand this in the context of passages like Romans, that imply that the works of the law, the commandments, are unimportant, and that it is faith which saves?
This becomes more clear if we look at Romans 4:4-6:
τῷ δὲ ἐργαζομένῳ ὁ μισθὸς οὐ λογίζεται κατὰ χάριν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ ὀφείλημα· τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ, πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην, καθάπερ καὶ Δαυῒδ λέγει τὸν μακαρισμὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ᾧ ὁ Θεὸς λογίζεται δικαιοσύνην χωρὶς ἔργων·
This passage is normally translated:
“Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.”
This translation, and most translations, suffer from a fundamental flaw in understanding the word πίστις “faith” here. In the above translation, taken from the NKJV version, the term is treated as if “faith” is to be understood as “believe.” This creates the dichotomy that either one performs works of the law, or one believes in Jesus Christ. While πίστις can have the meaning of “belief” in an academic sense, as in one’s understanding of Christ’s existence, His identity as God, and His saving Incarnation, this is not the best understanding for this term here (though this would be a good translation in, for example, the passage from the Epistle of St. James above). Here, and really throughout the Epistle to the Romans, a better translation is “faithfulness.” It is not a dichotomy between belief in Christ and works, but faithfulness to Christ, and slavery to the law.
A better translation might read:
“To the one who does works, wages are not reckoned according to Grace, but according to debt; but to the one not performing works, being faithful to the One who makes the impious righteous, faithfulness is reckoned as righteousness; just as David said concerning the blessedness of the man whom God reckons as righteous, beyond the works of the law.”
Those who do “works,” that is, “works of the law” are attempting to gain for themselves a reward from God according to their own will, a reward that they wish for themselves. In this way, they pervert the law, treating it as a means to an end. Ultimately, they have transformed what should be a way to approach God, into a type of idolatrous relationship, akin to the “do ut des” relationship the pagans have with their gods in sacrifice. When Christ rebukes the Pharisees, it is this approach to the law, which He is criticizing. He says:
“’The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’” (Matthew 23:1-7)
Christ does not tell the people not to follow the law, or that the law has passed away. Very much the opposite, He tells them to obey the Pharisees and do what they say. He criticizes, rather, the way that they follow the law themselves. Christ says that, on the one hand they “will not move...with one of their fingers” the laws which they demand others to do, but that they do “their works...to be seen by men.” They are not obeying the law in order to exist within a proper relationship with God, but because they love the honor and respect they gain within society for their seeming piety.
What, then does it look like to be faithful to Christ, not to be a slave to nomolatria? Christ tells us a little further on in Matthew:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cu**in, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.” (Matthew 23:23)
Justice, mercy, faith, these are the “weightier matters of the law,” they are the things which the Pharisees refused to touch, rather only doing those things which would be seen, and from which they would derive that which they wanted, fame, glory, and accolades. These are the things, which a Christian must focus on in order to be faithful to Christ, but not without also doing those other parts of the law, like tithing the mint and dill.
Faith and works are not opposed to one another, faith is not an intellectual assent, or even a mindful remembrance of Christ, rather faith is better understood as an action in and of itself, as faithfulness, being true to Christ in every aspect of our life. The dichotomy of faith and works is better understood as how we approach the way we live our life, do we do good deeds in order to gain praise and accolades from others? Do we try to bind God to ourselves to do our will by doing good things? Do we act hypocritically, like the Pharisees, by doing that which is easy, like tithing mint and dill, while not doing the more difficult, like treating others like icons of Christ? By remaining faithful, works become not works, but part of our relationship with God.
