Faith and Works

I'll ask you to remain standing for the reading of and hopefully arriving at greater gospel clarity.

James chapter 2 beginning at verse 14. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one.

You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? It was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works and the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. Let's pray. Lord, would you open our eyes now to behold wonderful things from your word. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

You can be seated. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes the road that leads to hell and destruction as if it were a German autobahn with no speed limit, while the road that leads to eternal salvation is like a small, obscure, backwoods dirt road that's easy to miss. One path is wide and easy and attractive. The other is narrow and hard and confining. And yet one will destroy you forever and the other one will reward you forever. The narrowness of the Christian life becomes more and more evident the closer you get to its central foundational doctrines. When it comes to doctrines like the person of Christ or the atonement or the inerrancy of Scripture or the nature of the triune God, to get it slightly wrong is to get it damnably wrong.

Why? Because narrow is the gate that leads to life and few there be that find it. Now the good news is that when it comes to these crucially important doctrines, doctrines that we dare not misunderstand, Scripture is abundantly clear. In matters in which eternity is concerned, Scripture bends over backwards with clarity and precision. That's why it's so important in our study and understanding and affirmation of the Christian faith that we be as precise as Scripture is. Where Scripture affirms, we should affirm. Where Scripture denies, we should deny. Where Scripture is ambiguous, and there are places where Scripture is ambiguous, we should be ambiguous. Where Scripture is clear and precise, we should be just as clear and precise and no more. Our text this morning bumps into one of these doctrines of the Christian faith that is so central that to get it slightly wrong is to get it heretically wrong. And yet we find the Bible to be crystal clear in its precision in handling this subject.

The Bible tells us without a doubt where the ditches are on the side of this narrow pathway. The subject James is dealing with is the relationship between faith and works. More specifically, James is dealing with just one of the two ditches that people are prone to fall into when it comes to their understanding of the relationship between faith and works. The thing is, when you talk about one doctrinal ditch of error, people in their zeal to avoid that ditch often swerve to the other side of the road and fall into another ditch. We want to avoid both errors, which is to say we want to be as precise and as narrow as Scripture is but no more. Now, because we are navigating an exceptionally narrow stretch of the Christian road this morning, I'm going to have to spend a good amount of time, I'm afraid, addressing what James is not saying.

In other words, pointing out the ditches. But I hope that doesn't cause us to miss what James is saying. And so let me just state very clearly at the outset what James' main point is. As clearly as I can, James is telling us in these verses that when it comes to saving faith, obedience matters. When it comes to saving faith, faith that really does save, obedience matters. Obedience to God in the Christian life is an essential companion to true saving faith.

That's the point of the text. James has already warned us in his letter against the danger of hearing without doing, being hearers of the Word only and not doers of the Word. Well, now he's going to warn about the danger of speaking without doing, of professing the faith without living out the faith. It's a misunderstanding of the relationship between faith and works. This is one of the dangers we face on the narrow road to life.

So we need to listen and learn and heed the warning this morning. James begins first by describing a false faith that cannot save, a false faith that cannot save. Verse 14 says, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? Now the Greek language has a fun little feature that English doesn't have. In Greek you can ask a rhetorical question and phrase it in such a way that it has to be answered in the negative.

The answer is embedded in the way you ask the question. James uses that feature here. He asks a question in verse 14 that can only be answered with a definitive, no, faith without works cannot save a person.

So right out of the gate James throws down the gauntlet. He rejects the notion that mere faith in God without obedience to God is true saving faith at all. Now one's faith, he says, if it is real, must be accompanied by works of obedience to God. Now we are Protestants. We are reformed Protestants. That means we protest the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by works. We affirm the five solas of the Protestant Reformation, one of which is sola fide, justification by faith alone. You've heard that time and time again if you've been at Grace Church for any length of time. Paul says it over and over in his writings. Romans 3.28, Paul says, we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Ephesians 2.8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, not a result of works lest any man should boast. Romans 4.5, to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

But we have a problem, it would seem, because not only do we affirm justification by faith alone, we also affirm sola scriptura, that scripture alone is authoritative and sufficient and free from any error or contradiction. So how then can Paul say faith alone and James says faith plus works and yet our doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture be kept intact? Well, the key to dealing with this apparent contradiction between Paul and James lies in understanding that they are using the same words but with different meanings and realizing that they're each addressing two entirely different ditches, two entirely different errors. Paul is addressing a misunderstanding of how a person gets saved. James is addressing a misunderstanding of how a person demonstrates that they're saved.

And we'll look at that some more in a moment. But first I want to point out that Paul and James are using the word faith in two very distinct ways. When Paul says that a person is justified by faith alone, Paul's referring to genuine, true, saving faith. When James uses the word here in this passage before us today, he's using the same Greek word that Paul uses but with a very important qualification. And we see that qualification in the word that there in verse 14. James isn't asking if faith alone can save a person.

Of course it can. True saving faith will always save. No, what James is asking is can that faith save him and what sort of faith is that?

The kind that claims to be genuine but lacks the distinguishing mark of genuine faith. In other words, it's a false faith James is referring to. And so the obvious answer to the question, can this false faith save anyone, is no, it cannot. James is not saying that faith does not save. He's saying that the faith this person claims to have, a faith that has no works, cannot save. It's not contradicting Paul at all. We're going to see in a moment that Paul and James also use the word justification in very distinct ways. But first, notice James' illustration of how useless this false faith is. Verse 15, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

So if you run into a friend who just found out he lost his job, his car was repossessed and his only winter coat is still inside the house that the bank just foreclosed on, snow is coming, he hasn't eaten in three days, and you were to say to your friend, wow, good luck with that. Your well wishes are useless. They're pointless. They're even hurtful. Those words won't clothe or feed the man.

They won't keep him warm and protected from the elements. They're useless words just like the false faith that bears no fruit. It's useless. It cannot save because it is not real. Verse 17, so also faith by itself if it does not have works. In other words, this false sort of faith, this workless faith is dead. So how does a person even come to this point where they're relying on a faith that isn't real? How does one come to think their faith can save when it can't?

James addresses that next in verses 18 and 19. He tells us that there can be a misunderstanding of the nature of saving faith, a misunderstanding of the nature of saving faith, and he tells us that this misunderstanding leads to a dead faith. This misunderstanding has to do with an incorrect separating of or divorcing of faith from obedience. Whenever we try to separate two things that are inseparable, we're going to end up with a distortion, a caricature, a perversion that's way out of balance, and that sort of thing happens when we treat faith and works as if they're incompatible, as if they're at odds with each other.

Look with me at verse 18. Someone will say, you have faith and I have works. So embedded in that objection is a misunderstanding, an incorrect separation of faith and works. The hypothetical objection is raised that faith and works are really just a matter of personal gifting or of temperament. God gives some people the gift of faith and other people the gift of works and to each his own. James' point is that since faith and works are inseparable, because remember there is no saving faith apart from works of obedience, then both faith and good works must be true of every Christian. It isn't a matter of gifting.

It isn't a matter of your personality profile. No, genuine saving faith will always be accompanied by genuine works of obedience in every Christian. Otherwise, that person's faith is just a pretense. You know, this misunderstanding of the nature of saving faith, this separating of faith and works can occur in one of two directions. You can overemphasize the importance of faith to the neglect of works or you can overemphasize the importance of works to the neglect of faith.

Now, I don't want us to fall off the narrow path in either direction, so let's think about both of these errors for just a moment. And I think we can summarize each of these errors by associating them with a couple of commonly held, commonly quoted proverbs. The first proverb is, let go and let God. Let go and let God. You all know that that isn't in the Bible, right?

We've all heard it. Perhaps many of us have even spoken it as words of advice to people. Just let go and let God.

Quit trying so hard. Quit worrying about what you're doing or not doing and let God take care of it. Now, I would love that life philosophy if it weren't for the fact that James is warning us here not to live by that philosophy. A fatalistic faith that sees no need for hardworking obedience is as helpful as telling a homeless person, good luck. It's an overemphasis on faith to the neglect of good works.

It's another way of saying, show me your faith apart from your works. And that misunderstanding is indicative of a faith that's dead and cannot save. The other imbalance can be represented by a different proverb, one that's, again, often quoted but also isn't in the Bible, and it's this. God helps those who help themselves, not in the Bible. If the first error, let go and let God, is an emphasis on faith to the neglect of works, then this error, this imbalance, is an overemphasis on works to the neglect of faith. It says God's not going to do anything for you unless you put forth a little effort.

He's got to at least see you trying before he'll give you the time of day. Again, it's not in the Bible. It's not true. It's an emphasis on works that denies grace. Notice that Paul in Romans and Galatians and Ephesians is addressing the second imbalance, which is too much works emphasis, not enough faith emphasis. Paul is addressing legalism. But James is addressing the first imbalance, too much faith, not enough obedience emphasis.

James is addressing antinomianism, lawlessness. One theologian said, Whenever people rely on their religious activities for salvation, Paul's powerful plea for a radical commitment of the whole person to Christ must be vigorously proclaimed. But when faith has been turned into nothing more than a verbal commitment to certain doctrines, James' understanding of faith as an active, vigorous obedience must be forcefully reasserted.

Folks, the path that leads to life is a narrow one, and we dare not stray off that path either to the left or to the right. Well, since James is dealing with only one of these two potential errors, he gives an example of the absurdity, the uselessness of faith without works in verse 19. Verse 19 says, You believe that God is one, you do well, but even the demons believe and shudder. This is a reference to the Shema, a foundational confession of the Jews in the Old Testament, and this confession is echoed in the creeds and confessions of the New Testament church.

It's an acknowledgment that God is real, He exists, and that there is only one God, the triune God who is revealed to us in Holy Scripture. If you don't believe that there is a God and that there is only one God, the God of Scripture, then you're certainly not a Christian. You can't even remotely be called a person of faith without this most basic, credal affirmation. But then we see James' point when he says, But even the demons believe that. They believe in the God of the Bible. Demons have an orthodox view of God and they even shudder over it. Their recognition of God's person and nature is so poignant and real to them that they quake in fear to think of it.

But demons aren't saved. You see, you can have an orthodox faith. You can memorize and confess the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. You can memorize the larger catechism if you want to and still not be one inch closer to heaven or to being right with God.

Why? Because a faith that is a mere profession of truth is not a faith that saves. Orthodoxy without orthopraxy is useless. In other words, right doctrine without right practice is a right waste of time.

It's useless. We are correct in our evangelism to point out that genuine saving faith is not a matter of merely accepting the facts about Jesus. And James 2.19 is our go-to verse for correcting this misperception. Perhaps the typical evangelical says something like this.

I know I've said this before. It's not enough to just know about Jesus. You have to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Or perhaps we say it's not enough just to believe that Jesus rose, died and rose again for your sin. You must trust and rest in the fact that he died for you.

And all of that is true. But I noticed something in my study last week that I had not noticed before. James here says it quite differently than we typically do in our evangelizing. James is saying it's not enough to just know about Jesus and accept the facts of the gospel. You must demonstrate the genuineness of your faith through obedience. Faith, real faith, is visible in the behavior and choices and values of the person who is truly, savingly united to Christ. We've made evidence of faith, I'm afraid, a very subjective thing.

Probably from fear of legalism. We tell folks, make sure your faith is genuine by analyzing your feelings and emotions towards Christ. But we dare not tell them to analyze their love for Christ by their actual obedience to him.

James, on the other hand, makes the evidence for genuine saving faith quite objective. He says if your actions are incongruent with the faith you profess, your faith isn't real. Even Jesus has some harsh words to say to those who claim to have known him, but who are actually professing a false faith. And in condemning these false professors, he identifies them not in terms of their lack of relationship, personal relationship with him, but in terms of their disobedience. In Matthew 7, he says, Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

I never knew you. So a disobedient faith is a false faith and a false faith is a useless faith because it cannot save. But thirdly and finally, James demonstrates for us what true faith, saving faith, justifying faith is. And he does so by pointing us to the conversions of two representative Christians, one who is at the top of the proverbial food chain of faith and one who is at the bottom. But both of these lives demonstrate the sincerity of their faith in the same way, that the trueness, the authenticity of their faith is demonstrated by works. The first example, of course, is the faith of Abraham.

Now, this is an obvious choice for James to hold up as a model. I mean, after all, Abraham is the father of us all. He's the patriarch with whom God initiates the covenant of grace. And so it stands to reason that Abraham's faith would be the quintessential example of what true saving faith looks like. How then does Abraham exemplify true faith? Look at verse 21. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works, and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And there it is, verse 24, the verse that makes Presbyterian Calvinists squirm.

But you know, it shouldn't make us squirm. Scripture is not a slave to our theological system. Our theological system as a slave ought to be a slave to Scripture. And if Scripture says something, we have no need to shy away from it, to downplay it, to be embarrassed by it, to explain it away. If all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for us, then our goal should be to have zero problem verses.

We should seek to so understand and harmonize every word, every sentence, every concept in Scripture so that there is nothing in God's Word that is out of bounds, off the table, swept under the carpet. If there appears to be a contradiction, we can by faith trust that the contradiction lies in our understanding, not in God's Word. But that being said, there is a fairly simple resolution to the apparent contradiction between Paul and James with regard to justification.

I've already mentioned the fact that they're each addressing different errors. Paul is dealing with how a person gets saved. James is dealing with how a person demonstrates that they're saved. But another piece of the puzzle has to do with the definition of justification.

The Greek word and even the English word for justify has a range of meanings. You see, words are not like numbers. Numbers have fixed values.

They never change. One will always be one and nothing except one. Words, on the other hand, can have different nuances, sometimes even different meanings, depending on the context in which they're used. The word justify is like that. It can refer to being acquitted, to being declared innocent of some wrongdoing, and this is the way we typically use the word and think of the word in the context of theology. To say a sinner is justified before God in this sense means that a sinner is absolved, declared not guilty.

He's treated as if he is innocent of ever having committed sin. That's how we think of justification typically. But the word justify can also refer to a vindication of some sort, a demonstration or defense of why something is warranted. A parent might say to a child, I don't have to justify why I'm not letting you play in the road.

In other words, I don't have to prove to you that playing in the road is a bad idea. To justify in this sense has to do with giving evidence that something is true. So the one use refers to an acquittal that's declared.

The other use refers to a vindication that's demonstrated. Paul speaks of justification in the first sense of the word as a legal declaration of righteousness. James here is speaking of justification in the second sense as a visible demonstration of righteousness. Paul's use describes one standing before God. James' use describes one standing before other people.

It's making your faith visible. In the case of Abraham, he was justified in the first sense long before he offered Isaac on the altar. Genesis 15 describes that moment when God came to Abraham and he put him in a deep sleep and he established a covenant with him that was full of rich and sweet promises. Genesis 15, 6 then says that Abraham believed the Lord in that moment and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness, that is as justification. Years later, after Isaac was born and half grown, Abraham was justified in the second sense of the word when he responded in obedience to God's command to sacrifice Isaac. In that moment on Mount Moriah, Abraham's actions, his works demonstrated his faith and thereby proved, vindicated his justification in the first sense that he had been given by God years earlier. He was justified in the first sense by faith alone. He was justified in the second sense for all to see by faith and works as his obedience verified and vindicated his profession of faith. If you were in Christ right now, you were justified by faith alone at the moment of your conversion. But there is coming a day when your justification by faith in Christ, which occurred in the private recesses of your spirit before God, will be made manifest and visible to all. The profession of faith you claim to have made will be justified, vindicated, proven, established beyond a shadow of a doubt on the last day. What James is telling us is that the vindication, the proof, the evidence, the fruit of the genuineness of your faith will be the obedience that you have demonstrated throughout the course of your life. That obedience is not the cause of your justification.

That would be the error of legalism. But it most certainly does accompany and flow from your justification, so much so that if it's not present in your life, then saving faith isn't present in your life. If a sledgehammer has been swung through a glass tabletop, there will be shards of glass all over the floor. The shattered glass did not cause the sledgehammer to swing, but if there is no shattered glass, there was no sledgehammer.

You see the relationship now. Our good works do not cause our justification, but if there are no good works, there has been no saving faith. Folks, when it comes to saving faith, obedience matters.

Now listen very quickly as we wrap this up. There are those who are amazingly virtuous in their behavior and reputation, but who share no part in Christ. Their good works are devoid of faith. That's not the error that James is addressing. But I don't want you to go home thinking it's not a potential error.

It certainly is. Faith without works is not a saving faith, but neither is worked without faith. Don't think that just because your life is free of addiction or crime or public scandal that your heart is squeaky clean before the Lord. If your virtue is not growing in the soil of absolute and desperate reliance upon Christ, then it really is not virtue at all. James is not trying to feed a self-righteous spirit. He's trying to kill a lazy, careless spirit.

But both of those dangers are real. But now we need to wrap this up, and I love how James concludes. He points us to a harlot, a prostitute, and one who is not even a descendant of Abraham. She's Canaanite. And yet James says that Rahab the harlot had her faith proven, vindicated, justified in the very same way that Abraham the patriarch's faith was proven through obedience and submission to the God of heaven. Abraham the hero, Rahab the harlot, both patriarch and prostitute, are declared righteous on the basis of works that sprung out of their faith in Christ. And brothers and sisters, we can hear in both of these examples of faith the clear sound of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You see, Abraham was a pagan from Ur.

Rahab was a harlot from Jericho. The saving faith that they demonstrated wasn't caused or even initiated by their obedience. God saved them while they were in sin.

While they were still enemies of God, he saved them, but God's salvation of them was so complete that it made them and it makes us new creations. It makes us something we weren't before. And part of that newness is an undeniable, imperfect, but vindicating faith that obeys. So what should we do with this doctrine that says obedience matters in the Christian life? Well, at the very least, I think we should examine ourselves to see if we're truly in the faith. If your life is one of stubborn rebellion against God and that doesn't grieve your soul, your faith is a pretense and you ought to stop pretending. If, on the other hand, you are looking to Christ to save you and yet there is a battle going on in your heart and mind and will, perhaps even long-standing habitual sin, you know it's there, you hate it.

Well, then you need to be reminded of a couple of things this morning. First, you need to be reminded that this justifying obedience of which James speaks is never a perfect obedience. Abraham lied and committed adultery. Rahab was a prostitute from the wrong side of the Jericho wall. Lot got drunk and committed incest. Gideon crafted and worshiped idols.

Samson loved foreign women. David murdered a man to cover up his sin. Folks, genuine faith will always display the genuine fruit of obedience, but that fruit will never be perfect this side of glory. So don't lose heart, Christian. Just keep fighting sin, fleeing from temptation, resisting the devil, and running hard after the Lord. But then secondly, I would encourage all believers in our lifelong pursuit of an obedient faith to know and meditate upon Romans 6, 7, and 8 frequently and deeply. These three chapters, perhaps more than any others in Scripture, teach us how to fight sin without becoming legalists and how to rest in Christ without becoming lawless. The truths of Romans 6 through 8 ought to be our best friends on the narrow road that leads to life. When it comes to saving faith, obedience matters. So stay in the Word, be encouraged by the Word, and obey the Word.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for the truths you've spoken to us today. Now help us, Holy Spirit, to be doers of what we've heard and not forgetful hearers. Lord Jesus, thank you that even though we have failed and will fail again, you are our advocate, and you will never let go of us. We praise you, God, for your faithfulness, and we thank you for loving the likes of us. In Jesus' name, amen.