There are so many admonitions to moral life in the New Testament, and I always struggled with the thought that it was just one more way of telling believers to straighten up and fly right.

But in seeming opposition we are also told believers walk “in newness of life”.

And even in seasoned Christians there is the tendency to slide back into moralism and self effort.

I conclude then the place we are to work to get ourselves back into is the place where are hearts were, and are changed: the place of rest. Continual waiting on God, conscious dependence, and a calculated determination to trust Him regardless of my emotional landscape. When we are told to “reckon ourselves dead” (Romans 6), I believe we are being told to get back to that place.

Changed hearts are what should produce a changed life. Good works flow best out of hearts that are humbled by the decision to look to Him for justification.

This is the point made in the book of James. At first blush it seems to run against what Paul in the book of Romans tells us when he describes how we’re justified by faith and not works while James tells us that faith without works is dead. Yet I think what James is telling us here is that works are not what justifies, but rather are the proof of the life that is justified by faith; proof that the heart is in practical fact being changed.