Faith that works
James 2:14-26
As most of you would know, Sydney Anglicans tend to get a bit of a bad write-up in the secular press. We’re derided as being bigoted, intolerant fundamentalists, by more “progressive” (read heretical) Christians. Now I’m a Sydney Anglican, and I’m proud of it, but that doesn’t mean that the conservative evangelicals don’t have areas where we fall down as Christians. One common criticism of us is that we’re so caught up in theological head-knowledge that we don’t live out our faith. That we have faith without deeds.
Often, of course, this stems from a misunderstanding of what deeds a Christian should actually be doing, According to some liberal “Christians” this should almost entirely be limited to social justice work – working with the poor and marginalised. . This sort of philanthropy without theology, this gospel-less social action is often what the secular media wants out of Christians. Don’t get me wrong - this is certainly part of what James is talking about – “looking after widows and orphans in their distress” is true religion according to 1:27. But social action is by no means all of what James is referring to. Last weekend, Richard Glover wrote an opinion piece in the SMH about the supposed take over of US politics by evangelical Christians. Now he made some very insightful points about rewarding the wealthy which James already addressed in last week’s passage. But his basic understanding was that Christianity should be all about peace and love – and that any condemnation of sin and any insistence upon any godly ways of living is outside the bounds of what Christianity should be about. His idea of Christian values, of Christian works, of Christian deeds “was all about peace and love and helping those less fortunate than oneself” - all good things – but never about avoiding sin or standing up for the gospel.
When James refers to works or deeds he is not limiting himself to social action. He is talking about living out the Word of God, the law of Scripture which says “love your neighbour” and which also says “do not murder and do not commit adultery”. And his message is that we need to live out the whole of the Word of God, not just the bits which fit in with what we like or what the world or the secular media or Richard Glover find acceptable. There’s a few Christian leaders who are darlings of the secular media, and it’s interesting the sort of people they are – Bill Crews, Tim Costello, Father Chris Riley. They’re men who aren’t known for preaching the gospel. If they weren’t attached to a church or if they didn’t have a clergyman’s title attached to the front of their name, most people wouldn’t know they were Christians at all. They’re leaders who are known for their social work. Now looking after orphans and widows in their distress is an integral part of obeying the Word of God – but it’s not the whole lot. I recently got an ad from Chris Riley’s Youth off the Streets programme that was forwarded to me as part of my position at Peakhurst High. It was about a drug education initiative. It had pictures of Father Riley wearing his dog collar all over it. But nowhere on the ad did it mention anything about Christ. So I looked up their website and read their mission statement – it said they were a non-denominational organisation which didn’t push any particular religious viewpoint. Now I’m not knocking the work of youth off the streets – they have a very positive influence in the lives of many young people. But ultimately, by not preaching the gospel and not teaching that God’s law be lived out, they’re not obeying the whole word of God. They’re not obeying the whole world of God any more than we are if we go around proselytising but refusing people food and shelter. Yet another SMH article in the last week took on this mocking tone when talking about the “compassionate conservatism” of evangelical churches, noting how assistance like food and accomodation also came with the gospel. The media criticises when evangelicals don’t give assistance – something which I might add should be criticised – but also condemn when it is given. And what are they condemning? They are condeming the obedience to all of God’s Word. They are condemning the preaching of the gospel. The Bible tells us that anyone loved by the world is probably not preaching the whole gospel – and that is unfortunately true of Chris Riley and Tim Costello. Such people, as James goes on to say in chapter 4, are indeed double-minded adulterers.
But whether media criticisms of evangelicals are accurate or not – there is still much for believers in the whole Bible to take from James 2. And that’s because the charge is to put our whole faith into action. Theological understanding and doctrinal clarity are useless if they are not accompanied by genuine repentence, genuine trust in God, genuine obedience to his Word and genuine concern for others, especially the poor and downtrodden - just as social action is useless if it does not come from genuine submission to God and his Word. It’s a massive, whole-of-life transformation that James is insisting Christians undertake.
James’ message in this passage is not really very complicated. If your faith is not accompanied by action, then your faith is dead, you have no real faith at all. It’s really just common sense, as we can see from his first illustration in vss. 15-16 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? If I see someone in serious need – lying on the ground with a gaping wound in their chest crying out for help – and I go up to him and say “oh, that’s terrible I hope you get better” and then walk away until his pleas fade into the background, then that shows that my comment about him getting better was at best insincere and at worst maliciously sarcastic. My actions demonstrate the genuineness of my faith.
Clearly there was a school of thought in the early church that some had the gift of faith and others had the gift of works - 18But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." But James declares there is no such separation – you need to have both – “I will show you my faith by what I do”.
When explaining faith to my students I use this story. I apologise my re-using this same old analogy which I think Owen alluded to a few weeks, but I think it so deftly illustrates James point in this passage that it deserves another mention. It’s about the 19th century tight-rope walker Blondin. He set a wire right across Niagara Falls. While a large crowd looked on he walked across and back. He wheeled a wheelbarrow across and back. He put a large sack of potatoes in it and wheeled it across and then went backward on the return journey. By this stage the crowd were cheering and clapping. So Blondin said to them: “do you think I can do it with a person in the wheelbarrow?” And the crowd cried yes, yes, you can do anything! And so Blondin called for volunteers. And at that point the crowd went strangely silent and not a single person came forward. They might have said they had faith, but when asked to put it into action, it withered away. It was shown for what it was – dead faith, non-existent faith. It’s the sort of faith that demons have – intellectual assent which is heartless, useless and empty. Faith, according to James, is dead if it is not accompanied by action.
What problems could anyone have with that teaching? And yet, over the centuries, many Christians have demonstrated deep issues with this passage. The great reformer Martin Luther described James as an epistle of straw because of this very teaching and at one point wanted it removed from the Bible. Why? Well, it’s because reading certain verses without understanding the word usage and the purpose of the letter seems to undermine the doctrine of salvation by faith alone – a doctrine which Luther quite rightly fought for.
And I can certainly see where Luther was coming from. 2:24 says “You see a man is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” Compare that with Romans 3:28 where Paul says “For we maintain that man is justified by faith apart from observing the law” or Ephesians 2:8-9 where he states “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.”
On the surface, James and Paul seem to contradict each other. However, James and Paul are using words differently because they are addressing entirely different concerns.
In James, the words faith and belief (they are the same in Greek) mean a simple intellectual assent –someone saying “yes, I think that’s true”. So when vs. 18 says “you have faith” and vs. 19 says that the demons believe that, the words are derived from the same root – it could have just as easily said “and the demons have faith that”. It’s talking about just believing something to be true in your head.
Paul, on the other hand, uses the word faith to mean something deeper. To Paul, it denotes trust and dependence. Similarly, James uses works (or deeds – again they are the same word in Greek) to mean the action of living out your faith, whereas Paul refers to the works of the OT Law.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, James and Paul are correcting two very different misunderstandings. James is again stressing the concept that Christians must put God’s Word into practice. Don’t just listen – do! He’s writing against the hypocrisy of some who claim to believe in Christ, but don’t live a life in keeping with the gospel. To those people he has a warning – that sort of empty, dead faith won’t save you, because it’s no faith at all.
On the other hand, Paul is correcting people who think that they can earn their way to heaven by obeying the law. They’re the sort of person who has the air of self-righteousness about them and boasts that they are good enough for God – sort of like the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector who go up to the temple to pray in Luke 18. You’re not saved by works, so you can’t boast, says Paul. Instead, it’s God’s grace made effective through faith that saves you.
So, James and Paul are addressing different concerns but even then their messages converge in the end. In Romans 8, Paul explains how we can tell if someone is really, genuinely a child of God indwelt by the Spirit. It’s by looking at their actions, at their works – just like genuine faith is demonstrated by deeds.
But we also see this convergence in their references to Abraham. Many of you might know the story – Isaac is Abraham’s promised son whom he has had in his old age. This is the son Abraham waited years for, against the odds yet always trusting in God’s promise. Furthermore, this is the son through whom God will fulfill his promise to give Abraham many descendants – more than the stars in the sky. And then God tells Abraham to take Isaac and kill him. Abraham is no doubt concerned, distraught, confused – and yet he obeys God. He and Isaac walk to the site where the sacrifice is to be made, Abraham has his knife poised, ready to kill his son, then an angel of the LORD stops him and provides a ram instead.
This is what James says about the incident: 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God’s friend. The phrase that appears in vs. 23 is a direct quote from Genesis – Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. James’ argument is this – it was the work of sacrificing Isaac that made Abraham’s belief genuine. It showed he really did have faith. So it was Abraham’s belief, a belief given credibility by his actions that caused him to be justified before God.
Paul also refers to Abraham in Romans 4:18-22. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be." 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--since he was about a hundred years old--and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22 This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness."
Paul’s general point is that Abraham was declared righteous by faith, not by observing the Law. On the surface, it may seem that James and Paul are using the same text to prove different points, but look carefully at vs. 20. Why was it credited to him as righteousness? Because he was fully persuaded, his faith was strengthened, he didn’t waver, he didn’t doubt. And how do we know he didn’t doubt – because he gave glory to God and was prepared to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to his Lord.
(pause). Well, let’s try to draw some of these threads together. We started by discussing what these deeds, these works that James is talking about actually are. The world sees them as purely social action and blind acceptance. But we know that the work that God wants of us is to wholly and completely submit to him. To listen to his word and to put it into action. To look after the poor and to avoid being polluted by the world. That’s the great call that God has given us who trust him.
Then we went on to deal with that great concept in vs. 24, that “a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone”. But we all thought it was God’s grace alone which saved us? But eventually we found that both James and Paul are reinforcing the same truths. They are addressing different concerns and use different language, but they ultimately have the same message. It is faith that saves, not the Law. But this faith is only genuine if we see it in action.
The works that James talks about don’t earn us justification. To think that would be a complete misreading of vs. 24. After all, James has already said earlier in chapter 2 that anyone who breaks part of the law breaks the whole law – and who can keep all of it’s 613 commandments and prohibitions? And as we’ll see in chapter 4, he encourages us sinners to come humbly before God and receive His grace.
There’s a Christian website out there called “gracenotworks.com”. It’s got some great things on it. And it’s got a great name, hasn’t it? But in the end, it’s only a half-truth. What both James and Paul say is that the Christian life is not about faith and not works. It’s about a faith that energises us to good works, that makes us zealous for obedience to God. If we say we are the grace people and not the good works people, we are committing the same mistake that James condemns in vs. 18. We’ve turned a half truth into a whole truth. And when you do that, you make it into an untruth.
Luther was so hung up about this passage because he thought that vs. 24 meant that we can earn our justification by works – and that sort of heresy is always a danger. But that is not what James is saying at all. We are justified by works only in the sense that they make our faith complete. We don’t earn salvation by works – so we can’t boast about anything, but we must have works to be saved. And why must we have works? Because works show that we really do have faith.
God’s grace that works through faith does two things to us – It changes our position before God, and it transforms our lives. Positional grace justifies us before God, moves us from being objects of his wrath to being objects of his mercy. But in changing your position, God also changes you. His grace is transformational, and that’s the grace and faith that James focuses on here. God makes you a new person, he re-creates you, he purifies you. That is faith that works, works real change in people’s lives.
John Calvin, another great reformer, said this: “We are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone.” If it is alone, as James says, then it is a dead faith.
Well, at school one of the things the kids pick up on most is hypocrisy. They’re not allowed to use mobile phones in class at all, so when I accidentally left mine on and it went off, I didn’t hear the end of it for weeks. Of course, they never seem to pick up on their own hypocrisy, but that’s another matter. In James 2, we’re reminded and warned that hypocrisy is not an option for the Christian. We often talk about ungodly behaviour undermining the proclamation of the gospel – and it certainly does that. But even more importantly, if our faith is not accompanied by deeds then our very salvation is in jeopardy. Our inheritance in heaven is at risk.
The challenge for you us then is this: don’t be double-minded people who claim to have faith but ignore part of all of the Word of God. The world loves Christian hypocrites because it can point and laugh. Don’t give them the opportunity. This is not a requirement for perfection – and James acknowledges our sin and God’s mercy throughout his letter. But it is a call to have a living, transforming, vibrant faith. Be doers and preachers of the gospel, not just listeners. Have a genuine faith that is made complete by what you do. And moreover, let’s respond to the mercy and grace we have received in Jesus Christ by living for him, by obeying him and by glorifying him in our lives.
