Living Faith B

Works support the reality of saving faith. Where you have a man who has imputed righteousness, you have a man who has manifest righteousness. Where you have a man who is made just before God, you have a man who will be made just before men. Where you have a man who has received righteousness, you have a man who will show that righteousness. It shocks society whenever this happens, a parent taking the life of his or her child.

Nothing seems more horrific or unloving. And yet there was one man in Scripture who was willing to sacrifice his son, and it turned out to be not only a great act of love, but perhaps the greatest example of complete trust in God. We'll study that man named Abraham today, and one other hero of the faith, as John MacArthur looks at the difference between living faith and dead faith. His current study on grace to you is titled, Show Me Your Faith. And now with the lesson, here's John.

It is possible to believe in God, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to affirm the cross and the resurrection, and never be delivered from sin and never be given eternal life. That is what James would call dead faith. James has shown us what dead faith is, now he wants to show us by contrast what living faith is. Now to make his point of what really constitutes living faith, he uses three illustrations. Number one is Abraham, and this goes from verse 21 to 24. Let's begin at verse 21. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

Now immediately everything in us that's evangelical goes, hold it right there. Justified by works? What does it mean to be justified?

It means to be considered right with God. You mean to say Abraham was considered to be right with God by works? You cannot be justified by works before God. You say, well, then what does James mean? When it says here in James, was not Abraham, our father, justified by works?

Listen to this. Abraham was justified by faith before God, but he was justified by works before men. You see the difference? That's the whole point James is making. Works are the only way his faith can be seen and verified as real saving faith by himself or any other man. Paul was emphasizing justification before God. James is emphasizing the vindication of a man's claim to salvation before others. So it was at Ur of the Chaldees and in the walk of faith that Abraham exhibited that God saw his faith and imputed to him righteousness.

But notice what James says. He identifies very specifically when Abraham was justified by works. He says it was when he offered Isaac his son on the altar. That's when the whole world could see the reality of his faith. And he having been justified before God already was now justified before men. The watching world could perceive the reality of his faith. Go back to Genesis chapter 22 and let's look briefly at that record. Genesis chapter 22. It came to pass after these things that God did test Abraham. Very important. This is a test.

A test of what? It's a test of Abraham's faith in order to demonstrate its reality, its genuineness. He said to him, Abraham, he said, Here I am. He said, Take now your son. He rubs it in. Your only son rubs it in again whom you love. Take your son, your only son, the son you love. Go to the land of Moriah and get this, offer him therefore a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I'll tell you about.

Absolutely unbelievable. Abraham knows this. He knows that God has made him a promise. And God made him a promise years ago.

By this time Isaac is maybe 10 to 15 years old. This is nearly 50 years after he first believed God. And he's been walking in this promise all these years, somewhere between 40 and 50 years. And God's been saying, Your seed will be as the sands of the sea and as the stars of heaven and I'll make out of your loins a great nation and whoever blesses them will be blessed and whoever curses them will be cursed. And Abraham for years is believing this even though he has no daughter, he has no son, he has no child, he's married to an old lady who's barren. Finally God gives him a child when he's 100 years old, now 10 years later or 15 when he's between 110 and 115 and all he has to look at regarding this promise of a seed as wide as the sand of the sea is one measly kid.

And now God comes to him and says take that kid to Mount Moriah and kill him. And everything he knows about the covenant keeping character of God is violated in his mind. And everything he knows about God's standard of sacrifice is violated because God has never required human sacrifice, never permitted it.

It's murder. How can God reverse himself? How can God be ungod? How can God contradict everything about his nature that I know to be true? God says take your son and offer him as a sacrifice.

But there's never been a human sacrifice. But he's the promise you made. What about your nature? What about your truthfulness? What about your faithfulness? This will violate everything I know to be true about you.

This will destroy your reputation. What does he do? Does he argue with God? No. Here is the evidence of his faith.

No questions asked. God up early in the morning, verse 3, saddled his ass, took two of his young men with him. Isaac his son cut the wood for the burnt offering, rose up, went to the place which God had told him.

Off they go. Couple young men, Isaac and the beast of burden carrying the wood. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, saw the place afar off. Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the ass. I and the lad will go yonder and worship. Mark this in your Bible and come again to you. There's his faith.

How's he going to do that? God says go kill the son. He says I'll be back and so will he.

We'll come back. Did he believe that? Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac his son, took the fire in his hand and a knife and they went both of them together. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, this will tear your heart out.

My father, he said, here I am my son. He said behold the fire in the wood but where's the lamb? For a burnt offering. And Abraham said to my son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.

So they both went together. He believed in his heart that whatever the sacrifice would ultimately be, God would provide it. They came to the place where God had told him. Abraham built an altar, laid the wood in order. And I can't imagine the scene behind these two words bound Isaac. I don't know whether Isaac just said, here I am, tie me up.

Or whether there was a little bit of discussion or whether there was a fight. But anyway, laid him on the altar. Stretched forth his hand, took the knife ready to plunge into the heart of his son. Angel of the Lord stopped him, cried out of heaven. Abraham, Abraham, he said, here I am.

And he stopped. And you remember the rest of the story, there was a ram caught in the thicket, they sacrificed the ram and away they went. Jehovah Jireh, the Lord provides. In Hebrews chapter 11, you know what it says? It says Abraham went all the way, put Isaac on the altar, tied him up, got ready to start the fire, got the knife up to plunge it in his heart because he believed in the God who could raise the dead. He believed that he would take Isaac, take his life, Isaac would come to life, they would come back again and go home. He believed in the God of resurrection to the degree that he was willing to sacrifice the life of his son because he was so strong in faith that God would raise him from the dead. You say, why did he believe that God would raise him from the dead? Because he believed so unalterably in the character of God. That God was a covenant keeping God who under no circumstance could ever violate his promise. And that God was a God who when he said he would do something would indeed do it.

And everything was based on the life of Isaac. And James says that is where Abraham was justified by works before all the watching world. Yes, justified by faith in believing God and justified by works in this greatest act of human sacrifice on his part.

I don't mean the sacrifice of Isaac, I mean the sacrifice of Abraham. He was a man of great faith all through his life but it reached the pinnacle here. Now mark this, he wasn't a perfect man. His faith was so weak he lied about Sarah when he was in Egypt to protect her, right? His faith was so weak that he stupidly went in and had a baby with a handmade Hagar, committed adultery and produced Ishmael who fathered the Arabs and that's always been a thorn in the side of the people of God. No, he wasn't a perfect man.

But there was in his life a pattern of believing God that culminated in this incredible act of trust where he would have taken the life of his son believing God would raise him from the dead though there had never been a resurrection to that point. So Paul is saying yes he was justified by grace through faith as recorded in Genesis 15 and James is saying yes he was justified before men in Genesis 22 some 40 plus years later. By the way, just to support that perspective, the aorist indicative verb was justified has two general meanings and I did a study of this because I was curious about it.

When it says in verse 21 he was justified by works, the word justified has two general meanings. Number one, it means to acquit or to treat as righteous. Number two, it means to vindicate, to show or to demonstrate as righteous.

How interesting. Definition number one is what Paul uses in Romans 4. He was acquitted, treated and described as righteous. Definition number two is what James uses. He was vindicated, shown and demonstrated to be righteous in the act of a willingness to sacrifice his son.

So he concludes in verse 22. Look at it. Do you see then how faith was cooperating with his works?

Do you see that? There's no antagonism beloved, that's the point. There's no argument.

There's no debate. Works support the reality of saving faith. Where you have a man who has imputed righteousness, you have a man who has manifest righteousness. Where you have a man who is made just before God, you have a man who will be made just before men. Where you have a man who has received righteousness, you have a man who will show that righteousness. That's what Paul and James put together. And the end of verse 22, by works, was faith brought to its goal, brought to its end, brought to its fullness.

That's the idea of the made perfect. It isn't that salvation was imperfect. It isn't that it's faith plus works to be saved. It isn't that the faith is part of it and then later on the works are part of the salvation. It's like a tree.

A tree is a tree and a tree is a tree that is alive and it has all the principles of life, but it isn't perfected until it bears fruit. Faith then reaches its goal in works. Justification before God is manifest in justification before men. Not only was Abraham's faith fulfilled in his works, but look at verse 23. And the Scripture was also fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. And there, as I said, he quoted Genesis 15, 6. The reality of that truth was demonstrated now, made manifest. The Scripture said Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness. The Scripture said that and now what the Scripture said has been made visible in his works, demonstrated. Righteousness was put to his account and righteousness was declared. The word fulfilled does not make this a prophecy. It's a very broad word.

It has broad possibilities. It simply means that that which was true about Abraham was brought to fruition, brought to fulfillment. And anyone, I say it again, genuinely saved will demonstrate it in life behavior. And a wonderful result came about.

Look at the end of verse 23. He was called the friend of God. He was called a co-partner with the Holy One.

What a thought. What a dignity. What an honor and what a joy. Because his faith was manifest and proven to be real, he entered into that wonderful arena of people who are called the friend of God. You say, who are the friends of God? Jesus put it this way in John 15. You are my friends.

If you do whatsoever, I commend you. You're a friend of God. That's a title reserved for people who obey God, who obey his word. As John Calvin put it, faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.

Never. So James then simply says in verse 24, summing it up, you see then that by works a man is justified also and not by faith only. That's only part of it. It's not enough to just have faith. There must be faith and the resultant works. So we can say it this way, that by works a man is vindicated, not by faith only. So Abraham is a classic illustration of salvation by faith before God and salvation made evident before men. The second illustration in verse 25, in like manner. I love those words. That's a knockout punch.

One word in the Greek, homoios. In the same way as Abraham also, was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she had received the messengers and sent them out another way? In like manner. Didn't this woman of the worst kind demonstrate her true salvation by what she did?

Was not the harlot justified by works? Now listen very carefully. Again, you must make the same twofold feature in understanding this very important account.

Just briefly, I want to touch base with it. I don't want you to spend a lot of time on it because we don't have the time, but let me just mention to you from Joshua chapter 2 a couple of things about the story of Rahab. Rahab was a harlot living in Jericho.

She ran an inn and inns were brothels and she had women in her inn to sleep with men and that was how she made her living. So into the land has come the wonderful people of God in mass and they are there because God's going to give them Canaan. They arrive at Jericho. They're obviously going to take Jericho. They send some spies in to spy out the city and see what's there.

The spies go in. They stay in an inn. The inn is owned by Rahab. Rahab is a harlot. They're not there for those purposes.

They're simply there to lodge. This woman then takes in these spies. When she gets the spies there and obviously finds out who they are, verse 9, she said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that your terror is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you, for we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Zion and Og whom you utterly destroyed.

And as soon as we heard these things, our heart did melt. Neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you, for listen, the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath. Now when that woman believed that, she was justified before God. She believed that God was the true God. She believed that God was the God of miracles who had led His people out of Egypt. She believed that God was the God of power who had defeated the Amorite kings. She believed all she knew about God, the true God, and it was imputed to her for righteousness. In that point, she was justified by her faith. That faith justification was then made manifest, James says, verse 25, when she received the messengers and sent them out another way to protect them from the soldiers who would have taken their life.

So again, it's the same idea. This woman believed the truth, then it was imputed to her for righteousness by her faith, and then that righteousness was vindicated by the action she took to save the life of those spies. By the way, you remember what she did? She told a lie, didn't she?

People say, was that right? Well, of course it wasn't right, but she's a pagan coming out of a pagan culture with pagan ethics who doesn't understand the premium God puts on truth. She's working with whatever knowledge she's got.

It's very limited. She's got a little paganism still mixed up with her true faith, not unlike all the rest of us. And her ethics are the ethics of a corrupt, vile, degraded, debauched, Canaanite society about to be wiped out by God. So we don't justify the lies she told. She did that as a part of her own environmental understanding because she was a victim of the fallenness of her own nature.

The time would come when she would understand the value that God puts on truth and she would trust in God instead of in her own ability to get out of things. But here was a woman, basically, who was in the pit of moral muck. She sold her body for sexual favors as a Canaanite.

She had succumbed to the prevailing immorality of her environment. She believes in the true God. It's accounted to her for righteousness.

Now watch this. When given the opportunity, the only opportunity she ever had in her life to do something to demonstrate her faith in God, she put her life on the line. If she had been found out, it would have cost her her life. She hid the spies and the flax on the roof. She let them escape. She told the guys that came to find them that they weren't there. She told them how to escape. The whole thing, she protected herself, put a cord in the window, said, when you come back, save me and my family.

We want to be a part of the community of people that worship the true God. She demonstrated her faith by works. Her lie was unnecessary. Who knows what God might have done to spare her if she hadn't done that. Now I want to conclude these two illustrations.

Listen carefully. What kind of works vindicate true salvation? Going to church? No, it doesn't say that she went over and worshiped God. It doesn't say of Abraham that he built an altar and worshiped God.

In both cases, the visible vindication of their justification was putting their life and their dreams and their hopes on the line. That is the kind of work that I believe God wants us to understand is demonstrated in true faith. It isn't that you went to church, read a Bible, sang a song. It is that you are so supremely committed to God that you would sacrifice your hopes and dreams and ambitions and yes, you would risk your own life to be true to your faith.

That's the issue. Jesus put it this way. If you're not willing to take up your cross and what was that?

An emblem of death, an emblem of painful death, an emblem of excruciating death and follow me, you're not worthy to be my disciple. The issue is not do you go to church? Do you read your Bible?

Do you have a little spiritual activity? The issue is when it comes down to the crux of why you live and what is valuable, your faith in God is more valuable to you than everything you hold most dear. And you'll put your own life on the line.

You'll put all your dreams and hopes on the line because you have such implicit and total trust in Him. That's the issue. That's the kind of evidence that is monumental. Don't tell me a person's faith is real because they come to Bible study.

You don't know that. See them in the vortex of a life choice. Yes, it's in the vortex of the dire decisions of life where hopes and dreams and destiny and ambition and life itself is on the line that true faith always reveals itself. And the fact of the matter is if you never get into that vortex, sad to say, some people might go through the world self-deceived until the very time they meet the Lord.

What a tragedy. And James then concludes with a final analogy. Abraham, Rahab, and finally the analogy of a corpse, very vivid. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Just as even so, hosper hutas. Just as even so, it's an analogy. And in both cases, if the second member is missing, the result is death. If the spirit is missing from the body, death. If works are missing from faith, death. A body without life is putrid. It has absolutely no value. And so is belief without behavior.

Just as dead. So James is really saying, look at yourself. What about you? Do you have a belief without behavior? Do you believe but not obey? Do you say you believe?

Are you orthodox but you don't long to serve God? You don't love Him to the point where whatever it may cost you, you're willing to pay that price because He is supremely dear to you? Do you say you love Him?

Do you say you care about Him? Do you say you believe in Him but do you love sin? Do you court unrighteousness? Or do you loathe evil, loathe pride, seek humility? Is your faith useless or is it saving faith? That's the question James wants to ask. The test of living faith is in the direst moment of life's exigencies when everything is at the crossroads. Do you choose to honor God no matter what the cost? Abraham did.

Rahab did. Their faith was alive. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The lesson you just heard is part of John's series on how salvation should visibly transform your life.

It's titled Show Me Your Faith. John, today you ran down a list of questions that we need to ask ourselves to see if our faith is living or dead, and I'm wondering, what would you say to a person who answers yes to some of the questions but no to others? Is there an intermediate zone between living faith and dead faith? No. There's no purgatorial faith.

You're either alive or dead, and that's pretty clear. But again, what we were talking about and what you're referring to is questions like, do you confess your belief in Christ? You either say yes or no. You either believe in Christ or you don't. Do you believe the word of God but not have any interest in obeying the word of God?

You can answer that. Do you long to serve God? Do you want to please him? Do you confess your love for Christ? Do you court unrighteousness or do you hate unrighteousness? And I'm thinking about it in your own heart.

These questions are just black and white questions. Of course you don't perfectly obey. Of course you don't perfectly serve God. Of course you don't perfectly love Christ. Of course you don't perfectly follow the path of righteousness. But it's not about perfection.

It's about direction. Real living faith is driven in the direction of God and Christ and righteousness and love and service and obedience. This is the foundation of your own understanding of where you stand with God. So I encourage you to review the vital biblical truth in these messages again. The MP3s are free to download at our website, the series we've been doing, Show Me Your Faith.

For those of you who would rather have CDs, we have a two-CD album we'll send you reasonably priced. This is a great series to give someone struggling with the issue or assurance of salvation. The title again, Show Me Your Faith, available exclusively from Grace to You. Yes, and friend, this series will help you rejoice in trials and proclaim the gospel without fear and honor the Lord in any circumstance. Simply put, it will help you develop a true and living faith. To order John's study titled, Show Me Your Faith, contact us today.

The CD album is reasonably priced and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or you can shop online at GTY.org. Also keep in mind you can download the lessons from Show Me Your Faith free of charge in MP3 or transcript format at GTY.org. And if you're looking for more resources on the nature of saving faith or any other topic, let me encourage you to visit our website. We have thousands of free resources that can teach you how to honor God in the gray areas of life or equip you to serve your church or show you how to follow God's design for the family and much more. You can read blog articles or follow along with the MacArthur Daily Bibles reading plan and you can download any of John's more than 3500 sermons.

Again, all of those resources and more are free at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and make sure you are here tomorrow for a special Q&A where John answers questions from his home church, maybe even a question that you have. Join us Friday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.