Instruction is like a bottle of oil handed to you. The oil will make the mechanisms of yourself move with ease, remain healthy, and safeguard you from rust.
But holding this oil will not itself accomplish this task. It must be poured into every nook and cranny of your body and soul. To pour that oil upon the mechanisms of your body and soul, in all its complexity is to meditate on the teaching. But even this is not enough. When you pour the oil over all the gears, it will only cover what is exposed.
Rather, in all the rusted out gears, you must crank them and move them about so that as you pour, the oil works itself into the entire machine, touching, nay, liberating each component as its imperfections are exposed and touched by this saving oil. That movement is your activity, not merely appreciating the sweet smell of sound doctrine, nor pouring it unintelligibly upon yourself, but working it in, by a life of actions that correspond with the very spirit of that oil.
When the machine has liberated itself, worked in that oil, and smoothly runs, we call it virtue. You have now been healed in all senses.
For this reason, faith is not merely an intellectual adherence to content, it is a virtue, whereby our whole self is united and incarnates the very essence of faith.
For this reason, faith without works is dead, for without works the content of faith cannot be internalized.
Photo: Erwann Letue, Unsplash / PD-US
