1) The statement begins with “In Christ Jesus…” which indicates to me that Paul isn’t trying to make a statement about Salvation (in context, he’s speaking to Christians about *their* faith)–which you might say is the process of moving from “not in Christ Jesus” to “in Christ Jesus”. Here Paul is talking about life *in Christ Jesus.*

2) What is the difference between saying that faith “works” through love, or that faith “expresses itself” through love? Practically speaking, how are people going to interpret those two statements any differently? Both mean, roughly, “I have confidence in Christ and that causes me”–you might say “energizes me”–”to love people.”

3) Even if my first point isn’t true, and Paul were trying to make a point about salvation, it still doesn’t make “working through” or “expressing itself through” mean any different from each other on a functional level, and it still depends upon the reader to decide whether Paul is saying that Salvation is dependent upon the *faith* that “works through love”, or upon the “working through love” that faith does.

I mean no offence when I give my opinion that the only problem here is that we have come to the place in western Christianity where buzz words like “work” and “obedience” have become saturated with negative connotations and saddled with unnecessary meanings. Obviously, love does stuff. You do things because you love someone. Obviously, faith does stuff. You do things because you have faith in someone. Does it make it any better or worse for me to say “love expresses itself” or “love works”–”faith expresses itself” or “faith works”? –I don’t know why we can’t just let Paul say that, without assuming he’s trying to lay down a soteriological edict.

Granted, the evangelical and/or lightly churched audiences that read most of these Bibles probably already have the dichotomy in their heads, and the translators are probably avoiding the word “works” to prevent cognitive dissonance. Sort of the same way translations avoid saying that God “repented,” since repentance in our churchy language means “to feel sorry for committing sin.”