Welcome back to our Bible study on the book of James. Great to have you with us again.
I’m Lori Brown and I’ll be your host today.
We’ll be looking at chapter 2 verses 14 through 26 for this session. And last week we covered the concept of being impartial when we’re interfacing with people and not judging people based on their poverty or their riches and instead literally treating everyone equally.
And on the heels of that teaching, James launches into this famous section on faith without works is dead.
So let’s read through this section of Scripture here, chapter 2, verses 14 through 26.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill. So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
But someone will say, you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith, apart from works, and I, by my works, will show you faith. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is worthless Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and by works faith was brought to completion. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
That’s the end of verse 26.
So James actually bookends this piece of scripture with this idea that faith without works is dead. He starts in verse 14. If someone claims to have faith but doesn’t have works, that faith cannot save. Can it?
And then he ends with verse 26, so faith then, without works, is dead.
And the first thing that James actually makes a connection here with between faith and works in verse 14 is serving the poor.
James actually sees serving the poor as an outward expression of faith. The primary expression of faith.
He writes, what if a brother or sister is naked and lacks food and you say to them, go in peace and you don’t give them any food?
What’s the good of that, he says?
Faith all alone, standing all by itself, if there’s no activity of that faith, if there’s nothing that shows up in the world because of that faith, then that faith is dead.
Last week we talked about the Hebrew word elumah and the Greek word pistis, and both of these words encapsulate an action of doing.
The belief is twofold. It’s faith and action in one word.
Those of us with the English language, we hold those as two separate words. There’s faith over here and then there’s works over there.
But in that Hebrew context of elumah, it’s like belief and the doing of the belief are so intertwined you can’t separate them out.
And that’s what James is talking about here.
He’s like, how would I know your faith exists except if I see it exhibited in the world? It only makes sense that if I have some belief in something, that the belief would show up somewhere. And it doesn’t have to be even faith-based.
It could be something like animal cruelty. So if I don’t believe in animal cruelty, I might become a vegetarian, I might volunteer at an animal shelter, I might take in rescue dogs, I might even refuse to buy cosmetics that are created with animal testing.
Whatever it is, you should see some outward manifestation of that belief that I’m against animal cruelty when I say I’m against it.
And so James is like, hey, you just can’t run around saying you have faith. There should be something that happens in the society where we can see your faith in action.
And not just in society, but also in your community of faith. This should be growing in your community of faith.
These are really what I like to call activities of daily living, the actions of our daily lives, the way we are living our lives day in and day out. It doesn’t mean you have to make big statements or start big ambitious projects or movements so everyone can see your faith in action.
James is really talking about how we tame our tongue, changing how we speak to one another, how we treat people with impartiality, changing our behavior towards one another, showing genuine love towards one another. Day in and day out.
And that’s much harder to do than to start a big project that everybody can see. No grand gestures required here. Just the slow, patient walk of becoming like Christ in everything that we do.
James continues in verse 18, and he uses a rhetorical device here where he’s going to act like he’s got an imaginary debate partner, an imaginary sparring partner. This is called an interlocutor. And you might have heard that word before.
James starts an imaginary sparring match with this interlocutor. And it’s as though the hearers of this letter can listen in on James’s conversation with his imaginary debate partner.
And so it starts in verse 18 where James writes, Some will say you have faith and I have works. Show me, imaginary sparring partner, Show me your faith apart from works, and I, by my works, will show you my faith.
You, my imaginary sparring partner, believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe, and they shudder.
James is building a case here.
It’s like, look, even the demons believe in God, yet they have no outward manifestation of their belief in God. They don’t change their allegiance. They don’t act that belief out in the world. They’re still aligned with the devil.
So it’s got to be more than just faith that’s alive and working.
And James continues in verse 20 with his imaginary sparring partner.
Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is worthless?
And then James goes on to talk about how Abraham was justified, was made righteous, by his works when he offered up Isaac on the altar. Abraham put feet to his faith. He took action.
James also talks about Rahab, who was made righteous by her works.
They both had belief and action. Abraham is known as the father of faith. You can’t get a better moniker than that.
Rahab had far less credentials than that. She was a Canaanite. She was a woman. She wasn’t even part of the Jewish people, the chosen people. And yet here she was, as James writes, justified by works when she welcomed the messengers.
This is just a great example of God’s impartiality. God offers saving grace to all, period.
Both of these examples really show how people are made righteous by what they did because their actions resulted from the deep faith inside them.
Their faith and their actions were part and parcel of the same thing, just like that word elumah in the Hebrew or pistis in the Greek.
Their faith showed up in the world.
Now James isn’t advocating here for going out and just doing good works of charity. That’s not what he’s advocating for at all.
He’s advocating for a much more holistic understanding of what faith is.
And when faith has grabbed hold of us, when we put our faith in Christ, and when we say, I’m aligned with Jesus, when we do that, then we should see an outgrowth of that faith in the world.
There’s always been some who feel like there’s this tension between what Paul was writing about saved by faith and then what James was writing when he says faith without works is dead.
In Galatians 2:16, Paul writes, We have come to believe in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
Both Paul and James are using the term works, but in two different ways.
Paul means works of the law, things like circumcision, keeping the old law. That’s the works that Paul is referring to.
He’s saying, those are not the works that are going to save you. You can’t rely on those works. There’s no path to salvation through those works alone.
Those are not the works that James is referring to. James is referring to works of charity. Really, good deeds is what he’s talking about that come out of your life because you have faith in God.
Paul is saying you’re saved by faith and not by the works of the law, the old law.
James is saying if you have faith, works of charity will be a natural result of that faith.
Do you see the difference there?
I don’t think Paul and James contradict each other at all. Paul and James are just two authors in two different contexts, and they’re using the term works differently. The whole point of our faith is that it would touch the world and bring about God’s kingdom on this earth.
We pray this in the Lord’s Prayer, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
God gives us faith in order to bring about the kingdom on this earth.
Our faith is not just for ourselves. It is for us collectively. That is why our faith will lead to good works if we truly love God and want to serve God and want to be on this journey with Jesus.
We do want to have a living faith, a faith that is alive here and now, one that is seen and expressed by good deeds, which are a natural outflow of that living faith.
I want to be on this journey with Jesus, and as we are on this journey, we should start to see good deeds as a natural byproduct of our faith.
Those are the kinds of works that James talks about
Throughout the entire letter of James, James is arguing for consistency, for integrity between what we say and what we do.
It was a word for an early and struggling and persecuted and persevering church 2,000 years ago.
It is a word for us today as well.
Let’s let our lives shine with integrity.
Let’s let our faith show our love for God in the way we live our lives, day in and day out, and in the way we love one another.
Okay, friends, that wraps up Chapter 2.
Stay tuned for Chapter 3 coming up next!
Thanks.
