A sermon based upon James 2:14-26.
By Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDIV, DMin
September 26th, 2021, Flat Rock-Zion
Baptist Partnership
Series: The Book of James, 5/12
What good is it, my
brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can
faith save you?
15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks
daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, "Go in
peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their
bodily needs, what is the good of that?
17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is
dead.
18 But someone will say, "You have faith
and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my
works will show you my faith.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well.
Even the demons believe-- and shudder.
20 Do you want to be shown, you senseless
person, that faith apart from works is barren?
21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by
works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that faith was active along with
his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works.
23 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.
24 You see that a person is justified by works
and not by faith alone.
25 Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also
justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by
another road?
26 For just as the body without the spirit is
dead, so faith without works is also dead. (Jas. 2:14-26 NRS)
Some of you will remember this song
we used to sing as children in Bible School: “If
you’re happy and you know it say Amen.”
The song includes a ‘punch line’: If you’re happy and you know it, then you’re life will surely show it.’ Do you remember?
This simple children’s song serves as a
good introduction to the major concern James addresses throughout this writing. Quoting James own words, his concern goes
something like: If you ‘really believe
in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ’ (2: 1) then your life will surely
show it’ because true faith will be active along with works’ (2:
22). In other words, as the saying goes, if you ‘talk the talk’ you
must also ‘walk the walk’. This challenge already began in the last
chapter when James wrote: be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who
deceive themselves (James 1:22b). Now,
James begins with a bombshell of a question:
Can Faith Save You?
CAN FAITH SAVE
YOU? (14)
Needless to
say, for those of us who trust in Jesus Christ this question is like an earthquake. James appears, at least, to be questioning the very core of our Faith. An even more confusing statement comes later in
verse 24. It sounds as if James goes against
Paul’s own words saying: a person is justified by works and not by faith
alone (2:24).
This apparent contradiction to Paul made
Martin Luther reluctant to recommend James in his preaching and teaching. Luther
called James a ‘right strawy epistle’ improperly representing the gospel
of grace as God’s free gift. For Luther,
the gospel is best expressed by Paul, where in Romans he writes: For we hold
that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law (Rom:
3:28). Did you catch the apparent difference
here? Paul says we are justified by faith apart
from works, but James says a person is justified by works and not
by faith alone.
So, which is it? James seems to be standing alone among the New
Testament witness. As Ephesians reinforces Paul’s position: For by grace you have been saved through
faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the
result of works, so that no one may boast (2:8-9). Clearly, to Martin
Luther and still to us today, James seems to be challenging Paul and maybe even
Jesus who says ‘Your faith makes you whole’ (heals or saves (Matt. 9:22,
). To ask whether or not faith can save
sounds confusing, if not contradictory. Why
would James raise such a daring and disconcerting question? Luther did not see any solid way to resolve
this. After 500 years can we do better?
Well, the short answer is that we do see
better. Hindsight is 20/20, as they
say. The main reason Luther saw James as
a threat was because the church of his day had become a threat to the true gospel. By developing
a corrupted system of salvation being earned through obedience to Church laws
and monetary payments, Luther saw how the Church was taking the Faith backward rather
than forward. So, on April 17th,
1521 Luther shook up all of Christendom when he stood up against the absolute
power of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Luther put
his own life on the line, defying the Pope’s power, announcing before the court
in Worms: My conscience is bound by the Word of God. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.’
As a whistleblower for the gospel of grace, Luther was
excommunicated and then had to hide himself in Wartburg Castle until the Pope’s
Armies lost the political power to arrest him and put him to death.
Needless
to say, a lot has changed since that time.
As a result of the reformation, which Luther almost single handedly put
in motion, we too have been given the gospel mandate to trust in God’s
salvation that comes to us through Christ alone, through grace alone
as understood in Scripture alone because it only can come to us through faith
alone. Our salvation is indeed a
free gift of God’s amazing grace and it isn’t based upon any human work or
wisdom. Luther was right about that.
However, this question James raised about
faith and works is still in our Bible along with Paul. How can this most obvious difference between
being justified by faith alone or not by faith alone understood
as complimentary rather than contradictory?
FAITH BY
ITSELF…IS DEAD (17)
Interestingly, what James says about works
is also implied in Ephesians and by Paul too.
Right after it says that we are
saved by grace through faith, this is qualified in the very next verse: For
we are ...created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (2:10). Did you catch that? Just like James says true faith does not
stand alone but is accompanied with good works, Ephesians also asserts
that these good works are what God has planned and purposed for us all
along as the right way of life and living. Also, in Romans, the apostle Paul made it
clear that faith in Jesus Christ means dying from an old life of sin and being
raised to new life, becoming servants to righteousness (Rom 6: 1ff) which results
in presenting ‘our bodies as living sacrifices’ that in ways that are acceptable
to God (Rom. 12: 1-2). Paul goes on to
put detail to how living in God’s love and grace means displaying a sacrificial
love (12:9) that overcomes evil with good (12:21) by doing good. This good we are called to do is
particularly Christian because it follows Jesus’ pattern to do good to
strangers and even enemies too (Rom 12:20), not just fellow saints (Rom. 12:13).
In the classic Broadway musical My Fair
Lady, Eliza Doolittle sings in exasperation to her would-be beloved boyfriend
Freddy: “Don’t talk of stars burning above, if you’re in love, show me!” Eliza and James, along with Paul too could
be singing in a trio here. The tune is
this: true faith, like true love, is
evident in what a person does. Eliza is
fed up with Freddy talking all the time, as if love were fully expressed in
words alone. So too with James, who
seems fed up with any claim that faith floats free of actual embodied deeds. True faith when it truly reflects the love of
God in Jesus Christ, will result in good works that do actually do good, not just
talk about it.
In this passage, what James is saying points
us directly to the most necessary relationship between saving faith as a living
faith which is proven with works. Good
works are the only way to be assured that we believe and trust in Jesus Christ because
of how we serve Jesus by doing the good
Jesus would do. James un is not saying against Paul that good
works earn our salvation nor do good works contradict the gift of God’s free
grace. No, what James means is that good
works are the only way faith can be qualified and clarified as being true faith
because faith has transform our minds (Rom 12:2) and redeemed our lives and by guiding
our actions (Eph 5:16).
This is the point James was making when he gave
his example about a brother or sister in need (2:15). If you only talk or give good wishes, your
faith should be called into question.
Faith, James says, is only proved by the good we do when good is being
required from us from us in a particular situation. If faith does not result in good works, as
it should and does, it isn’t a living faith, but it’s dead (2:16).
Can you see, it isn’t faith that James is
questioning. James isn’t questioning how
faith saves us, but whether or not we have the kind of faith that saves.
James is
questioning a very serious misunderstanding that had developed in the church of
his day and he wants to correct that misunderstanding. Thus, James is clarifying Paul and not
contradicting him. James clarifies
that any kind of belief in Jesus that fails to act in faith to follow
Jesus by doing good ( Acts 10:38) is an empty, dead, and lifeless belief that
will not save. As a warning, James says directly
and bluntly: So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (17). His ultimate example is that even the devils
have belief which stays alone and by itself, but it
does them no real good. This kind of belief is not saving faith. Mere belief about Jesus will, which people
have about Jesus, because it
isn’t a true faith in Jesus, and will eventually die as being no faith
at all, because it has no works.
A PERSON IS
JUSTIFIED BY WORKS (24)
This warning from James about counterfeit
faith must not be understood as making
faith unnecessary, unimportant, or unessential. No, James says ‘By my works I show you my
faith’ (2: 18). Again, good work
don’t save us or remove the necessity of salvation by faith, but works prove or
show that we have faith. Even when we do good, we are still saved by
grace, through faith, as a gift of God, and not of works. However, what James has clarified is that a
genuine, living faith will result in good works, which prove true faith, but
don’t earn salvation.
Having made the meaning of saving faith
clear, as being a faith that works, James
final point is to show just how senseless it is to claim to have faith in Jesus
without doing good for others in the name of Jesus. This is exactly what James means when he
points to what Abraham the Father of all faith and Rahab, the Canaanite Prostitute,
both have in common. What they shared in
common wasn’t simply a belief about God, but they shared good works that
proved or justified their trusting faith in God by doing good works. While Abraham proved his faith by being
willing to offer his only Son back to God,
Rahab proved her faith by being willing to help Israel enter the
promised land. It was their actions
that proved the faith they both had.
This is an example, James says, if
how person is justified by their
works and not by their faith alone.
What James clarifies once more,
is that not that justification by works replaces justification by faith, but
that, as James says, faith is active along with faith and faith is completed
through good works (2: 22). This isn’t
an either/or situation, but a both/and situation. He clarifies Paul’s meaning of justification
to include works as part of being justified by faith in Jesus Christ. Just like a spirit needs a body,
James concludes, faith needs good works so it can be realized in our
lives (2:26).
Perhaps the argument James was making still
has a most practical and crucial point to make in our own day. Many people question the whole legitimacy of
having religious faith. Since it seems
that Science has all the most important answers we need, what do we need religion and faith for? That is how many people see faith—-as useless.
What James does for us is to show us how true
faith not only includes good works but also inspires good works too. Without having a moral compass we all know how
science and great human skills and technology can end up doing us more harm
than good. The recent winner of the 1
Million Pound Templeton Prize, Cambridge Professor Martin Rees has written that
if Science and technology are not used properly, wisely, and rightly, he thinks
the human race will probably not survive to long into the 2100’s. Now
that’s something to think about. Rees
doesn’t even claim to be a Christian or even to believe in God, but he attends
chapel and wonders how human works can be inspired to do the good that must be
done. He rightly wonders how? He is asking the right question.
Folks, do you see how both James and Paul,
with their twin ideals of saving faith that does good works is the greatest
need, both in the church and in the
world, and in Science too? I recall in one of my very first classes in
Seminary, watching my Church History professor put two simple categories on the
chalkboard. Remember those? On one side, he wrote ‘right belief’ or
orthodoxy, then on the other side he
wrote ‘right behavior, meaning good deeds or orthopraxy. Then he told us how the entire history of the
Christian Church has been the challenge of keeping these two sides in balance;
constantly qualifying and clarifying, just like James is doing, asking what a
Christian must believe and what a Christian must do. You can’t be a Christian or a church without
addressing and balancing these two areas.
According to a great Cambridge Scholar,
we won’t have a world without figuring out this delicate balance too.
The Christian who has a true faith, must
be concerned with both having right faith and doing right action. What James clarifies for us, or should
clarify, is how these two come together in real life. Works of love, that is doing good for others
is what legitimizes and proves that we have faith in God. Just like God’s actual display of love for us,
in saving us through faith in Jesus legitimizes and still calls us to have
faith in God, our actual faith in God’s
love and forgiveness is proven to be real in us by the good we do in the the
world.
A final
reminder of how important it is that we walk the walk and not just talk the
talk, the late Methodist pastor from
Texas, Charles Allen made James point this way to his own congregation with tongue
in cheek, quoting a statistic he had just read, which seem too awfully true not
to be shared. It went:
10% of the members cannot be
found
20%
-- never attend
25%
-- never pray
35%
-- never read the Bible
40%
-- never give financially to the church
70%
-- never attend Sunday Evening Service
75%
-- never assume any church task
85%
-- never invite anyone to church
95%
-- never win a soul to Jesus
100%
-- expect to go to Heaven!
This kind of statistic reminds me of the old black spiritual that
goes, "Everybody talkin'' about ''Heaven'' ain''t necessarily goin''
there."
Now, perhaps we can
understand better why James dared to challenge and clarify the core of
Christian Faith. Dr. William Barclay,
the great Scottish Bible Teacher, believed that James wasn’t giving us any new
truth, but he wanted to awaken us to the truth we already know, but sometimes forget or chose NOT to
follow. As Marin Luther finally
understood from James too: "Good
works do not make a good person--but a good person, that is—a person who has
faith will do good works." A
person of faith will do good works because, as James says--"Faith
without works is dead.". Amen.
Amen
No comments :
Post a Comment