We've been going back and forth on this topic for 125 pages now and nearly three years. A wide range of posts are here, some quite insightful, many others emotional and some even bitter. Against this backdrop, I wonder if a different approach might provide illumination.
On the matter of works, I'd like to bring up someone I knew for many years, and a man of such consequence that if I were half the man he was, I would believe God would be happy with me. I'd like to write to you about the Reverend Carey Sayers.
Dr. Sayers was not a Roman Catholic priest, nor was he a Southern Baptist minister. When my family moved to Houston from Dallas, there was not a good Baptist church close by, so my father suggested we try visiting Chapelwood Methodist. The man who was officially the pastor was good at preaching sermons, but we came to know and respect the Associate Pastor there, Carey Sayers. Sayers was there in 1948 when the church was founded, with just 13 original members. By the time we arrived, the church had grown to several thousand members, and by the time Dr. Sayers retired in 1998, Chapelwood had over five thousand members.
Ordinarily this would be off-putting for me, as I have learned that when churches get larger, they often become impersonal and miss the mission of a good church. Chapelwood was different, because of Carey Sayers.
You see, Dr. Sayers made a point of reading through the attendance books that were in each pew, noting visitors and also observing if a regular member missed a week. Even after decades of the job, Dr. Sayers took it upon himself to greet every visitor and thank them for coming, and he memorized all of the members. If a regular member missed a service, Carey would stop by to see how they were doing. In this way, Dr. Sayers was often the first person to know if someone was sick or had suffered a bad life event, like losing a job or having a car accident. When my father lost his job in 1982, even though he was not a member of Chapelwood (my dad went to South Main Baptist), Sayers quickly learned what had happened and began reaching out to contacts in Engineering that he knew.
That was the kind of man Dr Sayers was.
Sayers was also known for giving away a lot of his pay to help people. And Sayers was very good at forgetting about who he had given money to; he had no intention of asking anyone to pay him back. Sayers was so well known for giving to anyone who needed it, that when he retired in 1998, the church gave him a new truck because his old one was basically beyond repair, but they made him sign an agreement promising not to give away the truck or sell it so he could give away the money from it.
When I went to Baylor I was baptized at Calvary Baptist Church. When Dr. Sayers learned about his, he congratulated me and wished me the best, and assured me I was still welcome still a member at Chapelwood.
Now I wrote those things for several reasons. First, putting it simply, I deeply respect Dr. Sayers as a friend, as a Christian leader and as a minister in the best sense of the word. I believe that there are a great many such people in the various churches, and as Christ knows His flock, I do not count it my place to judge whether someone is or is not in Christ, but trust God in His decisions.
Second, as to works. If he were here Dr. Sayers would confirm that nothing he did had even the slightest merit in his Salvation: That, completely, was accomplished by Christ on the cross, and the Covenant granted by God.
Carey Sayers loved the Lord, and wanted to please Him. So, over the years Dr. Sayers learned as much as he could about how Jesus worked and taught, and tried to live in the way Jesus taught us to live. And over time, Sayers became more and more like Christ in how he worked, spoke and lived. The thing that struck me though, is that Dr. Sayers was not one to get into arguments. Instead, he reflected a kind of quiet joy in his life, as if he felt God's pleasure and was honored to be friends with the Lord.
To me, that's the point. Love God and honor Him by acting as he wants us to act. Love our neighbor as well as we can, and always try to improve on both counts. Obviously, anyone who knows me knows how poorly I do a job of being a Christian at times, but I have tried to get better at it, and I have been blessed to know some people who are very strong in their relationship with God. And in my experience, they all did good works for the simple reason that they loved the Lord.
That's a condition we should all hope to experience, I believe. And I celebrate anyone who has such a relationship with the Lord, as I hope you do also.
