Wayne Hancock Ministries Int’l

🧐I’ve been thinking about this over the last few months—where people will use grace as an excuse for not showing any fruit from their salvation. After all, a tree will be known by its fruit.

Salvation produces works. Works don’t produce salvation.

You can’t earn salvation through church attendance, good works, morality, giving money, serving others, or trying harder. Salvation is the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Our good works, as admirable as they might be, don’t earn us salvation.

The Bible says:

“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.” — Ephesians 2:8–9 (NKJV)

But then the very next verse says:

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” — Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)

Good works are not the root of salvation — they are the fruit of it.

An apple tree doesn’t struggle to prove it’s an apple tree. In time, it simply bears apples. In the very same way, a life truly changed by Jesus will begin to produce evidence of His work in their hearts.

That evidence can look like turning away from sin, developing a hunger for God’s Word, gathering with other believers when possible, forgiving, loving others more deeply, becoming convicted over things that never bothered you before, desiring holiness, wanting to serve others, worshipping Jesus sincerely, and truly wanting to obey Christ instead of constantly resisting Him. None of those things save us — but they are evidence that Jesus is truly changing us from the inside out. There will be righteous fruit on the tree of your salvation.

James said:

“Faith without works is dead.” — James 2:26 (NKJV)

James was not teaching works-based salvation. He was teaching that real faith can be seen. The works will be the fruit.

We are not saved by our works. But if salvation never produces any fruit, any genuine transformation, any desire for Jesus whatsoever, then we should honestly examine whether the faith is genuine or counterfeit.

Jesus never called us to religious works based performance. He called us to be born again.

And when that truly happens… the fruit always grows and is produced through our daily lives.