What is the balance between faith and works?

Kevin Swanson explains in this video that legalism always seems to break down into antinomianism. Both are incorrect. Legalism is salvation by works or our own fake application of God's laws. Antinomianism involves abandoning of all God's laws.

What we need theologically is to bring these together - faith and works. We need to see them as distinct but not separate. We need to pull together a proper biblical theology, express God's law for the purposes for which it is intended, and then live by God’s law because we have been saved by grace and love Him. This is the basic theological concept that must permeate through every worship service. The world negatively affects us in so many ways and can easily distort our thinking. Accordingly, we must purge unbiblical worldviews by the faithful preaching of God's Word.

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NKJV) – “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Theologically, legalism or an externalism always seems to break down into antinomianism. Both are bad forms. The one form is a salvation by works motif or a salvation by our own fake applications of God's laws. The other is just the abandonment of all of God's laws altogether. What we need theologically is to bring these together, faith and works, see them as distinct but not separate, pull together a proper biblical theology, express the law of God for the purposes which it's intended in the worship services, and then live by God's law.

Why? Because we have been saved by grace, because we love Him, because He first loved us, and we keep His commandments. This is the basic theological construct that needs to make it into every worship service. Now, in terms of what we need to repent of, anywhere in which the world has affected us is fair game. The world affects us in the area of culture, in the area of fornication, in the area of feminism, in the area of self-centered existentialism and materialism.

These things are all over the place. They consume us in the world. And we need to purge these out of our lives by the preaching of the Word of God, by our love for Christ, by our appreciation of the kingdom of God and the world that is to come, this is really the life of faith.