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Originally Posted by Jay
...in the past I used to totally ignore the book of James. However recently I have been appreciating this passage from James 2:14-18, which I think touches on this matter nicely....
2:14 What is the profit, my brothers, if anyone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
2:15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and lacks daily food,
2:16 And any one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, yet you do not give them the necessities of the body, what is the profit?
2:17 So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead in itself.
2:18 But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works
So taken as a whole the Bible is balanced on this. But I think the LC and denominations are not balanced on this point. I think they're both too much one way or the other. The denominations neglect the exercise of the spirit to contact God, and the LC neglects the works which glorify God
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And to your point, "Cry out, and shout, O inhabitant of Zion" is a command and surely on Pentecost they were, else the city would not have gathered (Acts 2:6). But the feeding of the poor followed. They are integrated into a whole experience.
Paul writes in Roman's 4:11, that circumcision was a sign of faith, not a dead work of human good intentions. "He [Abraham] received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being circumcised..." Likewise, Paul expected some sign from the gentile churches that their faith had some substance or merit. But the works themselves were never the point. Faith was the point. It always was, and remains the same
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Originally Posted by Jay
.. Many times I've read him say that all we need is the spirit and all we need to do is take care of the spirit. In a sense this is sorta true, but clearly there's much more to the Christian life than just that.
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That's right. "All we need to do is 'x'" is oversimplification. You can end up specializing in obscurity and missing the basics.