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Martin Luther at one time called James a “right strawy epistle” because of James’ emphasis on faith plus works in James 2. But in his introduction to his commentary on Romans, Luther described faith like this: “Faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly.” Then he adds, “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”
Last week we saw how clearly Paul and James agree with each other when Paul says we are justified by faith alone and James says we are justified by faith plus works. These two gospel warriors were defending the doctrine of justification from two standpoints: Paul was explaining the basis of God accepting guilty sinners. God justifies or declares sinners righteous through faith alone in Christ alone. James was teaching that the kind of faith that is real and genuine always results in works or a changed life. Paul was refuting legalism, and James was refuting antinomianism.
TWO HERESIES THAT HAVE PLAGUED THE CHURCH
Legalism says God accepts us based on our faith plus the merits of our works. That self-righteous legalistic Pharisee in Luke 18 informed God he wasn’t like that sinful tax collector over there. He reminded God of all the good he had done: praying, fasting, giving. Meanwhile the tax collector couldn’t even look up. He beat on his chest and cried, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” Jesus said this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
In Acts 15 when God began to save Gentiles some Pharisees who believed said, “We must circumcise them and direct them to observe the law of Moses” (Acts 15:6). “No, no, no,” Peter cried, “they are saved the same way we are, through the grace of the Lord Jesus.” Paul wrote the entire book of Galatians refuting this deadly error. In Galatians 1:8 he pronounced a curse on anyone who changes the gospel by adding works. In Galatians 2:16 he says, “A man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Today many people fall into this false thinking. “If my good works outweigh my bad works, God will surely accept me. I’ve been baptized, I go to church, I help others.” Beware of legalism. Do you think your good deeds will earn favor with God? The only way God will accept you is through faith alone in Christ alone.
James, on the other hand, was mainly refuting antinomianism, or lawlessness. Antinomianism basically says you can have faith in Christ without any change in your life. It says we’re saved by grace alone and so it really doesn’t matter what you do. Here’s a professing Christian who knows a course of action is wrong but he thinks, “Hey, I’m saved by grace, once saved always saved, It really doesn’t matter what I do, God will forgive me. That’s His job.” We called this easy believism last week, meaning you can be saved without coming under the Lordship of Christ. James flat out declares that kind of faith will not save you. Antinomianism and easy believism are false teachings. They have a wrong view of grace, of faith, of regeneration, and of justification.
And this is where Paul and James join. The kind of faith that saves is a gift from God that comes out of a new heart, a new spiritual life called regeneration. Faith unites you to Jesus Christ and if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Your old way of living is passed away and now you live differently in a new way. And this new life is from God, by His grace for His glory (2 Cor. 5:17). James has a few more things to tell us to help us discern between a dead, worthless faith and a genuine, living faith that saves. Ask yourself, “Do I have a genuine, living faith, or is my faith dead, useless?”
JAMES THE BOLD
James 2:18-20, But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” 19 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. 20 But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
James gets awfully bold here about faith and works. He may be dealing with a leader in the church who is spewing false teaching. James says three things here.
First, in verse 18 – You can’t show me a genuine faith if you don’t have works. The only way you can tell if a man has faith is if he is obeying Christ.
Second, in verse 19 – If your faith hasn’t brought change into your life, your faith is no better than a demon’s faith. Even demons believe there’s only one God. Listen to these demons who begged Jesus to cast them into the pigs.
Matthew 8:29, And they cried out, saying, “What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?”
Demons talk. Demons know Jesus is the Son of God. They know they’re headed for eternal torment. And they knew it was still future. But their faith was only knowledge; it wasn’t saving. Faith without works is no better than demon faith, says James.
Third, verse 20 – James really gets up in this guy’s grille: “you foolish fellow.” There are times to be strong with words. Paul called the Galatians fools: “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1). Even Jesus called his disciples foolish for not believing the Bible. Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” James uses a word for fool that means “empty.” Sometimes people need to be shocked by the truth. There are some issues you just can’t get wrong. There are doctrines you must stand up for and even die for, times when you cannot compromise. I’m reading J. Gresham Machen’s book from 1923, Christianity and Liberalism. He rejects liberalism which says doctrine isn’t important, that we should just live like Jesus. He rejects the false teaching being promoted in liberal seminaries and churches that man is basically good and God is the Father of all people. Machen strongly affirms Christianity and liberalism are two different religions.
Like James, we must be bold and take a strong stand today on these issues of the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Bible, of the cross and eternal punishment. We must reject the whole Social Justice movement and now the Deconstruction movement. At the core of our beliefs are the doctrines of salvation and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And the nature of true faith, James says, is absolutely crucial. In verse 20 James says a faith that produces no change is useless, unproductive, and worthless. And this “foolish fellow” should have known. It’s obvious. Just look at God’s people in the Bible. They were all justified by faith alone, but never by a faith that remained alone. How do we know believers? We know by their lives. To help us understand, James gives us two examples.
ABRAHAM THE FATHER OF BELIEVERS
James 2:21-23, Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,” and he was called the friend of God.
Let’s track Abraham’s faith journey. God called him to Palestine and promised him a land, seed, and blessing. In Genesis 15 God promised him a son and seed like the stars of the heavens. That’s where the Bible says Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6). As time went by and nothing was happening with Sarah, he tried to help God out by going in to Sarah’s maid Hagar and she had Ishmael, father of the Arabs. That was a mistake. A little later, when God came to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, God said he and Sarah would have a son in their old age. Both were dead when it came to reproducing. They both laughed. But God said, “Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At this time next year Sarah will have a son!” (Genesis 18:14). Sure enough, Sarah came to Abraham one day and said, “Abraham, guess what?” “Praise God!” said Abraham, “The Lord has kept His promise!” Paul describes Abraham’s faith in Romans 4. This is surely the best description of faith in the Bible.
Romans 4:19-21, Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; 20 yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, 21 and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.
How did Abraham believe? He looked to God’s promise and refused to waver or stagger in unbelief. He grew strong in faith, and by believing God he gave glory to God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote. “Faith is to believe God solely because He is God. Nothing glorifies God more than this; nothing is so insulting to God as not to believe His Word.”
Right on time, God brought laughter into Abraham and Sarah’s home. Isaac means “laughter.” How Abraham delighted in this son of his old age. This was the seed God had promised. Isaac was the son of promise. Abraham so enjoyed this young fellow. They probably spent time together walking, hunting, fishing, and talking around the fire and looking up at those stars in the heavens. Suddenly in Genesis 22:1 Abraham heard God’s call again, “Abraham!” He quickly replied, “Here I am.” Now God is about to give Abraham the test of his life.
What’s the hardest test you’ve ever had? I remember setting out to shoot Tilly the cat. I don’t remember why, but I remember the event. I put some distance between us. Tilly looked at me and I looked at Tilly through the sights of the gun. Let’s just say Tilly’s look won! I lowered the gun. Well, here is a test for Abraham and God gave no options. “Take your only son whom you deeply love to Moriah and offer him there as burnt offering on the mountain I tell you.”
Surely this was the greatest test of Abraham’s life and his faith was working with his works (vs. 22) as they walked to Mt. Moriah. They took the wood and fire and Abraham and Isaac walked together up that mountain to the place of sacrifice. He told his servants, “We will return to you.” Abraham was willing to sacrifice his most beloved possession in this world to the glory of God. You know the rest of the story. Dear Isaac trusted his father and his father trusted his God. Abraham knew Isaac was the promised seed. Hebrews 11:19 says Abraham considered God was able to raise the dead! He built the altar, secured Isaac on it, and prepared to plunge the knife into his beloved son’s chest. Suddenly Abraham heard the sweetest words of his life. God said, “Abraham, Abraham, do not kill him.” God provided a ram caught in the thicket to substitute for Isaac. That ram certainly represented Christ being nailed to the cross for us. And God didn’t hold back slaying His only beloved Son in the place of sinners.
Abraham passed the greatest test of his life, giving glory to God. In verse 23 Abraham was called the friend of God. Could there possibly be a more wonderful, awesome title than “the friend of God.” Abraham proved his faith by his works.
RAHAB THE MOST UNLIKELY BELIEVER
James 2:25-26, In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
James is brilliant here. Under the inspiration of the Spirit he told us of the most honored Old Testament patriarch Abraham. And now, right beside him he tells us o the most unlikely believer – a Gentile, a prostitute, who lived in the first city God destroyed in the promised land. This gives hope to all of us for as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “Such were some of you.”
Joshua sent two men to spy out Jericho. They sneaked into the city and found Rahab’s place. She received them and hid them behind some flax. When soldiers came looking for them, she told them they had left and exclaimed, “Pursue them quickly!” (Joshua 2:5). Then she confessed her faith in Israel’s God to the two spies.
Joshua 2:8-9,11b, Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, 9 and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you…. For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.”
The spies promised protection for her and her family if she tied a scarlet rope in her window. Then she let them down by that scarlet rope and apparently left it hanging from her window in the wall. When Israel came to attack, she gathered her family into her home. When the walls crashed down, only her home remained secure. Peter says we believers are kept or protected by the power of God through faith to a salvation ready to be revealed (1 Peter 1:5). Rahab and her family were saved. She had believed the Word of God just like Abraham did. And that faith totally changed her life. She risked her life as well as her family’s lives by hiding those spies and sending them out another way!
But what about Rahab’s lie? God didn’t save her because she was perfect. God saved her by a faith that demonstrated it was genuine and living by her works. Hers was no dead faith! Not only that, Rahab appears three times in the New Testament, including in Matthew’s genealogy in the line of the Messiah (Matthew 1:5).
FAITH ALONE OR FAITH PLUS WORKS?
James 2:26, For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
So is it faith alone or faith plus works? The answer is “yes!” The great question you must ask yourself is, “How can I, a guilty sinner, be accepted by a perfectly righteous God?” The answer is, by faith alone in Christ alone. God punished your sins in Christ on that cross. And God imputes or places Christ’s perfect righteousness to your account so God declares you “Righteous!” We’re justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that remains alone.
SO WHAT?
Warren Wiersbe has a list of excellent questions in his commentary on James at this point. Let me challenge your heart with just a few.
Have you ever been concerned about your sin and realized you were under the wrath of God?
Have you truly understood the good news of Christ dying and rising again in your place?
Have you trusted in Christ alone for your salvation? Do you today enjoy a living relationship with Him through the Word and His Spirit in your life?
Has there been a change in your life? Do you have a desire to learn and grow in knowing God’s Word? Can others tell you are different, that you are a new person in Christ?
You may be uncertain about your salvation. You may be like that father in Mark 9:24 who cried out to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.” Today, cry out from your heart, “Lord, I do believe.” Then walk with God by faith, like Abraham and Rahab, obeying your Lord and Savior.