While all Christians are called to live faithfully, salvation is completely the work of God alone. Just as sometimes children disobey their parents and are disciplined accordingly, God disciplines us because we are his beloved children in Christ and our status never changes, and he will use our failures to teach us through the work of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

God’s children can get confused regarding the difference between faith and faithfulness. They know they have faith—knowledge of God’s salvation in Christ, assent to that glorious truth, and a hearty trust in Christ their Savior—but they may also worry about whether they are being faithful—true to God, a devoted follower of Christ.

What are we to make of Jesus’ words, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. 24:13), and do we need a certain amount of faithfulness to endure to the end?

We can’t truly rest in Christ if our eternal hope depends on our own personal faithfulness.

Some people think that God saves us by grace through faith in Christ but we must be obedient—faithful—to keep God’s grace fully. In other words, we need to do something in addition to Jesus’ finished work on our behalf to be saved and have eternal life. Yet, if this were true, no one could truly have peace in Christ in this life because the final outcome would depend on their own personal faithfulness, and these words below that Jesus spoke wouldn’t make sense:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28)

Mercifully, the Bible teaches that salvation comes from outside of us through the work of Christ, not from anything we do (for some examples, see Rom. 5:1; 6–8; 15–17; Rom. 8:1–11; 2 Cor. 3:4–5; 5:17; Eph. 2:8–9; Titus 3:4–7).

The fruit of the Holy Spirit is evidence of a person’s adoption into God’s family in Christ.

When James writes about the relationship between faith and works in the second chapter of his epistle, he is referring to the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of believers:

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (James 2:18)

These works that show faith does nothing to save a person; rather, works are evidence of a person’s adoption into God’s family in Christ. All believers bear the fruit of the Spirit because they are branches attached to the vine of Christ (John 15:4–5; Gal. 5:22–23; Col. 1:10).

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