One of the missing parts of our understanding of conversion centres on the matter of moral change. As evangelical people, particularly if we are reformed soteriologically, we rightly reckon salvation to be by grace, through faith, in Christ to the glory of God. We are adamant that works can and do play no part in our being saved. All rightly and properly so.

But there is something that makes many of us so scared of any whiff of works-righteousness that we go a bit further. Not only do works play no part in our being saved, but they really have no role to play at all. Certainly there has been something of saved by grace but kept by works in evangelical waters over the years. The view that, yes Jesus saves, but it’s up to you to keep your faith once he’s laid hold of you. There has rightly been a push back on that kind of thinking too. We are just saved by grace, we are kept and preserved by God’s grace too. Our faith doesn’t depend on us.

And yet, that same appropriate pushback leads some to therefore cheapen grace altogether. If work play no part in salvation, and we’re not kept by our works either, then what makes a person a Christian? They rightly answer: God does. God makes people alive by a work of his grace and God keeps them alive by his grace. But that leads them to eschew works altogether. If it is all of grace, then our works don’t matter at all. A moral change, a behavioural change, is immaterial – it is all of grace, after all.

The upshot of that is there are many people who say they are Christian, who are affirmed by churches as saved, who show zero evidence of saving faith beyond simply saying it is so. A right and proper focus on grace causes some to deny the need for works to be present at all. They rightly understand we’re neither saved nor kept by our works. But they wrongly reckon that the Holy Spirit taking up residence in a person and making them holy will have zero impact on a person so far as holy thinking and behaviour is concerned. How can the almighty, holy God take up residence within a person, make them his temple, and NOT make them meaningfully change morally? That doesn’t make sense.

When we say works play not part in our salvation nor in keeping us walking with Jesus, that is true. We are not saved by works nor kept by them. But we cannot deny that the God who saves his people, will not change them. We cannot deny that a holy God will not make us more holy. We cannot deny that a spiritual change in us will not be evidenced by a moral change in us.

All of which is to say, when people convert, we ought to look for moral change. Simply saying, ‘I am a believer’ or ‘I trust in Jesus’ or even explaining the gospel is not, of itself, evidence of genuine belief. True belief is attended by moral change. Not total change all at once – growth takes time; a lifetime – but moral change nonetheless. There will be a desire not just to say ‘Jesus is Lord’, but some evidence that we meaningfully now want to live that way. It will change us morally on some level.

Works, of course, do not save. Works do not keep us either. Salvation is, indeed, all of grace. But the grace of God at work, and the Holy Spirit taking up residence in our hearts, cannot fail to do anything other than produce moral change. Works don’t save, but they do evidence the grace that saves. Behaviour change isn’t what saves, but when we’re saved it can’t do other than change our behaviour.