Putting Sola Fide to rest...

"For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified."

Romans 2:13

Not sanctified (made holy) by actions, but justified (saved).  But how is this?  Does faith have no part?  Are we merely to "do the stuff" to be saved?

"For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

2 Peter 1:5-8

Peter and Paul, those two stalwart pillars of the Church, show us the way.  Faith is the base, the root of everything, and grows with the support of goodness and knowledge, into action, which is LOVE.  Love is a verb and a noun.  In truth, the noun and verb cannot be separated, because love by it's very nature is a movement, an action.   Works are love, rooted in faith, or they are nothing.  Faith alone is as those who merely hear the law.  It's not enough.  TRUE faith is action, it's being God's hands in the world.  Joan of Arc showed me this.  In her trial, she was asked if God sent her to raise the seige of Orleans, and she said yes.  The inquisitor asked if God wasn't powerful enough to raise the seize on His own.  She responded  "In the name of God! The soldiers will fight and God will give the victory!"

God worked through her, as He desire to work through each of us - our job is to cooperate and be willing vessels.