Salvation by Nagging

My barber told me of his first trip back to Italy after becoming an American citizen: when a state official tried to order him around as though he were still a local boy, he told the man off and declared that neither he, nor Mussolini, nor the king himself could command him at which point the official realized he was dealing with a free American, not a subject. Today, it is harder to enjoy that kind of freedom, not because men are silent, but because we have substituted talk for righteousness. Books, sermons, committees, speeches, and endless warnings fill libraries, yet accomplish little; modern man believes in salvation by nagging the notion that if we lecture, pressure, or argue enough, people will be saved or society reformed. Scripture teaches the opposite: salvation is God’s sovereign work, and true faith shows itself not in torrents of words but in obedience and fruitfulness, for “[f]aith without works is dead” and “every good tree bringeth forth good fruit.” The crisis of our age is not a lack of voices, but a lack of faith-formed lives. The question, then, is personal: do your actions reveal trust in nagging, or trust in God who alone changes men and thereby changes the world?