Not Just a Show Horse

In a book I read some time ago, the author was reflecting on a time when they had recently been elected to an office. They noted all the various promises and commitments they had made during their campaign, and then said that after being elected they needed to move from being show horses to being workhorses. I couldn’t help but think about the application of this principle in Christian and church life.

We read in James 2:14-17, “14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

By the examples and teachings of James that followed these words and others seen throughout Scripture, we know that to be a working Christian we need to give to the needy generously, we need to sacrifice willingly, and we need to be ready to risk worldly loss to see God’s will accomplished. There is no such thing as a dormant faith, as an unconscious faith, as a hibernating or comatose faith. Faith is either active and moving, or it is without any evidence of life and therefore without life. We are to be working followers of Christ.