A friend of mine at UBBC remarked last Sunday that to figure out Paul’s letter to the Romans, you have to “wade through so much Lutheran bullshit.”

I love that phrase, with all apologies to actual Lutherans, who may or may not hold to the biblical interpretation it denotes. The “bullshit” my friend has in view is the idea that somehow, contra James, faith in God without works is alive or is worth something. This friend tends not to like Paul and sees Romans as Paul thinking out loud and thus confusing things. (My friend is not alone in making a remark along those lines.)

In a bid to both correct my friend and the Lutherans he imagines, allow me to say that Paul is plenty clear about this matter and is never, ever saying that faith without works is alive. On the contrary, behold the reasons he puts forward just in Romans alone that God gives us His grace in the Messiah Jesus:

• “…through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in behalf of His name” (Romans 1:5).
• “[G]race abounded all the more, so that…grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (5:20-21).
• “We have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
• “We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin would be rendered powerless, so that we would no longer be enslaved by sin” (6:6).
• “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life” (Romans 6:22).
• “My brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in regard to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God" (Romans 7:4).
• “You…have been shown mercy…oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!…therefore…present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God” (Romans 11:30,33; 12:1).
• “[N]ot one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (14:7-9).
• “…according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now has been disclosed, and through the Scriptures of the prophets, in accordance with the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith” (Romans 16:25-26).

And in Paul’s other correspondence:

• “For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
• “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
• “[T]he love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose on their behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
• “…who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age” (Galatians 1:4).
• “[What] counts [is] faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
• “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).
• “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, eager for good deeds” (Titus 2:11-14).

What is the relationship that Paul wants us to understand between grace, faith, and good works? The words I bolded above telegraph the answer: We are saved by God’s grace (i.e., gift) through our faith (i.e., through believing Him about His gift or through Jesus’ faithfulness—or both) so that we do good works.

(See also the Paul-adjacent Hebrews 9:14 and 1 Peter 2:21-25, not to mention the liters of ink Paul spills simply telling Jesus-followers how to act and what to do.)

James may have be arguing with Paul’s hearers, including many Lutherans, Calvinists and evangelicals among us today, but he is not arguing with Paul himself. According to Paul, we can be—no, ought to be—both amazed at God’s grace and therefore diligent to pay God back. God’s grace is freely, undeservedly, surprisingly, extravagantly, and purely benevolently given and it obligates us to grateful good works in response.

In the above, I’m just repeating an important takeaway from John M. G. Barclay’s Paul and the Gift or its lay reduction Paul and the Power of Grace, whose thesis I had Gemini reduce and polemicize as follows:

“Modern Christianity has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of ‘grace’ by projecting a modern, Western, ‘no-strings-attached’ fantasy onto the ancient world. Furthermore, modern scholars have flattened the explosive nature of Paul’s theology. God’s grace is undeniably free, but it is entirely obligatory; it requires a radical return, and its distribution shattered every existing Jewish and Roman system of social worth.”