Faith: True or False?

The Bible tells us in the book of James that faith without works is dead. At first glance, it seems to contradict the Apostle Paul's teaching that no one is justified by their works.

So how are these two ideas reconciled? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches the important distinction between deeds done for salvation and deeds done as a result of salvation. We're looking at James chapter 2. It's important to remind one another, as we saw last time, that the contrast that James is addressing here is not a contrast between faith and deeds. It is rather a contrast between true faith and false faith—a true faith which James shows is linked inseparably to good deeds, and a false faith which James points out is one that is barren and useless. This distinction, this contrast, is a crucial contrast, because on it hinges matters not only of time but also of eternity.

And therefore, the challenge that is presented in the question of verse 14 is one to which we need to pay most careful attention. Look at his question, What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Here's the individual who is making big boasts and big claims about their understanding of faith. But in actual fact, they are good on words, and they are absent in deeds.

Their lips have much to say. Their lives have little to show. They have belief without behavior. They espouse a creed, but there is no accompanying conduct. And James is making it quite plain that a sincere claim to have faith is not necessarily synonymous with a sincere faith. We can be sincere in our claim and yet be sincerely wrong. Hence the nature of this passage. In verses 15 and 16, he underscores the useless nature of such a claim when he says, Let me illustrate this for you, the futility of mere words seeking to alter the circumstances of the needy. The poor will not thank us for our kind wishes, nor will God thank us for just simply saying that we have faith. If wishes were horses, then beggars would riot. But they don't.

They don't, because wishes cannot transform the circumstances. That's the illustration he provides. You might just as well do nothing as stand there and make such statements. And then in verse 17, the application of his illustration. In the same way, he says, faith by itself—lonely faith—is dead. Now, James would have had access to a number of occasions when Jesus his brother was the teacher. We know, of course, that James, through much of Jesus' life, did not believe that Jesus was who he said he was, and it was only after the reality of the resurrection that he came to believe himself. But he would not have been unfamiliar with the clarity of Jesus' teaching, and not least of all in this kind of area. So, for example, he may well have, as a reference point, Matthew chapter 25, where Jesus, in the second half of that chapter, speaks about the separation of the sheep and the goats.

So it's a very straightforward picture, isn't it? Anybody could understand what Jesus was saying. They would routinely have known that experience, either by doing it themselves, from the realm of shepherding, or as a result of seeing it take place in the course of a week.

But what Jesus goes on to point out is that those who enter into his kingdom will be those who have done certain things. And this is what he says. I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came and visited me. And then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry? When did we see you as a stranger, invite you into our houses?

Or when did you need clothes, and we gave you clothes? And the king will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. And then he flips to the other side, and he says, And the people who will be separated from me and cast into hell will be those who saw people needy, and so on, and did nothing about it at all. It's a staggering statement. It's a somewhat chilling statement, isn't it? James says, Faith by itself, lonely faith, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Now, of course, it would be possible for us to jump to a false conclusion on the strength of Matthew chapter 25 and also on the basis of James 2 17. And some do.

And this is how they understand it. They say, Well, I read Matthew chapter 25, and apparently the way that you get to heaven is by giving clothes to people that don't have clothes, or by welcoming them into your home if they don't have a place to stay, and so on. Because that's what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 25, isn't it?

Yes. But it's the same person who, when a religious almsgiving gentleman by the name of Nicodemus came to see Jesus under the cover of darkness, that Jesus said to Nicodemus, I tell you the truth, you will never see the kingdom of God or enter the kingdom of God unless you are born again. In other words, that which is referenced in Matthew 25 is not the ground of entry into heaven. For that ground of entry into heaven is the work of Jesus. But those deeds are evidence of the fact that a man or a woman has been made new by the work of Jesus. So that is why you see what James is doing is of such pressing importance. He is making it clear that the presence of these deeds cannot be used to argue the presence of faith, but the absence of these deeds may be used to argue the absence of faith. It is very, very possible to collapse a biblical understanding of the gospel into an amalgam of charity and morality. And indeed, the history of the church and the history of organizations bears testimony to what happens when an individual or an organization or a church congregation or a denomination takes, as it were, its focus from the work of Christ on the cross in the gospel and attaches it to that which emerges from that truth but dare not supplant that truth.

And it could happen as easily here at Parkside Church as anywhere else. Verse 18, someone will say, You have faith and I have deeds. And James is going to say, No, we're not going to be able to play that game.

We're not going to be able to separate them from one another. Now, the idea of faith being simply an orthodox ascent to certain truths is also dealt with in the nineteenth verse. You believe there's one God?

That's jolly good. But even the demons believe that, and they shudder. James, again, would have known that when Jesus came into an area, oftentimes it was the demons who were able to identify him. And James is pointing out, You can have an orthodox understanding of the Godhead, but you won't be any better than the demons if you do. So in other words, information plus a little perspiration is not the same as the transformation that God brings about when he gives us birth through the Word of his truth and turns his people into those who are producing firstfruits. That's verse 18.

We needn't stray very far from it. In chapter 1, he chose to give us birth—and that's God's initiative, remember? Through the Word of truth, that's God's instrument, that we might be kind of firstfruits of all he created. That's God's intention.

He produces this in us. So James is tackling the individual who says, Well, I actually have an orthodox view. I do believe there is a God. Well, that's very good. And I even actually believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

That's also very good. But you haven't even got beyond the demons' classroom yet. And the person may be prepared to say, And not only do I believe in a God and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but I also believe that it is very important to do certain things like feeding people and giving clothes to folks who are cold at night. All of that put together is not what James is referencing here in terms of saving faith. You see, what the Bible makes clear to us is that we're not in need of an educator.

We're in need of a Savior. There is an educational dimension to coming to saving faith, insofar as there are propositions that are laid out for us in the Bible that are to be believed. But the believing of those propositions is not to be equated with genuine saving faith, because it is possible to believe propositions intellectually without consenting to the impact of those propositions in our lives.

And we know that from easy illustrations throughout every aspect of our days. There's no intellectual road to God, in the sense that we can simply decide to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get there. No, we need God to do what only God can do, and that is to wake us up to our need of a Savior, which is very different from being wakened up to an interest in a deity, or being concerned to acknowledge that there is an existence of a superpower, or that there is some great unmoved mover at the origin of the universe, or that we're prepared to give credence to the idea of a prophet who roamed at the Galilean hillsides.

We can do all of that and yet still have no notion of what it means to have our sins forgiven, to have our lives invaded by the expulsive power of a new affection, to be convinced within our hearts that God is who he claimed to be, and so on. There is great potential for a lonely faith. And a lonely faith, says James, is a dead faith. It is no good. It is dangerous.

It is unhelpful. It will take a man or woman eventually into hell. That's why it's so significant. Now, he says, what I'd like to do at this point is call a couple of witnesses in defense of my thesis. And so he's going to call, first of all, Abraham.

That won't be a surprise. He's the daddy of them all, as it were, we might say—so well known for his place in biblical history. And then he's going to call Rahab the prostitute, which is a little more surprising, an unlikely illustration. What is he doing in this? Well, he's destroying the pretense of those who imagine that simply their declaring of a belief without evidence in their lives is saving faith. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Let me call two witnesses. First of all, let me call Abraham. Wasn't our ancestor Abram considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? And he goes all the way through to the staggering statement in verse 24, You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

He's justified by what he does and not by faith alone. What are we going to do with this? Well, let me answer the question for you, and then we can unpack it now and at a later time. Two things will be helpful in tackling what is an apparent but not a contradiction. Number one, recognizing that what Paul is dealing with in Romans is different from what James is dealing with in James.

They're coming from two different starting points. Paul is starting from the point, or he's pointing out, that works have no value in bringing a man or a woman into a relationship with Jesus. So those who would come along and say, Well, I did this and I did this and I did that, would God accept me on the basis of that? And Paul says, No, it wouldn't be possible for you. It could never be good enough or do enough in order to be accepted by God.

Therefore, you'll never be accepted by God on account of what you do. James is not at that point. James is picking up the people who profess to have come to a knowledge of Jesus. And James is insisting that a genuine awareness of who Jesus is and what he has done will be evidenced in good deeds, and that those good deeds are not the ground of our acceptance with God, but that they are the evidence of our acceptance with God. So again, we ended last time in Ephesians 2. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one should boast.

Then what does he say in the very next verse? For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, so that they are the evidence of, not the ground of. But James is saying, I don't want to hear from you folks just rabbiting on about what you believe and telling me things that stir around in your heads.

Lonely faith is dead faith. The other thing that we need to recognize—and with this we must stop—is that James and Paul are using justification in two different ways. The verb dikayo is used in the majority of times in the way that most of us have been taught to understand it—in terms of being declared righteous, not being made righteous, all right? That justification in that sense is the opposite of condemnation—that in condemnation we are declared guilty, in being justified we are declared not guilty. But those who are declared not guilty still know themselves to be wretched sinners.

How, then, can those who are sinful people be declared not guilty? On the strength not of anything done by them, not actually of anything done in them, but on the strength of something done for them, so that our acceptance before God is an account of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished? And indeed, until we understand that use of the verb to justify, most of us will make a complete shambles of trying to understand what James is doing here. So why don't I just end by at least making an attempt to make sure that we understand what Paul is doing with justify, and then we'll come back to what James is doing with justify. Turn to Romans chapter 3 for just a moment.

I'm going to take you on a whistle-stop tour of a few verses. In Romans, Paul is explaining, chapter 1, that we have exchanged the glory of God. In chapter 3, he's explaining that we have fallen short of the glory of God. And our predicament is such that in verse 19, now, we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

And here we are. No one will be declared righteous in his sight—declared righteous in his sight. Notice, by observing the law, rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. And then in verse 21, he explains how it could possibly be that those who have exchanged the glory and fallen short of God's glory may come, as he mentions it in Romans 5, to rejoice in the hope of glory.

How is this possible? Because, verse 21 and 3, a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known, and this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. To all who believe. To all who cast themselves consenting on Christ. What this makes perfectly plain is that you can never be so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace, and none of us could ever be so good that we are beyond the need of God's grace.

That's Jerry Bridges. So it covers us all, doesn't it? It covers the person who's sitting here this morning and whose life, as they look back on it, is a royal shambles, who feel that they have blotted their copybook so severely, who have marred their lives, who have turned their back on God, who have destroyed things, who have wasted his time and wasted their time and invaded others' lives and harmed them and hated God, and they say, There is no possibility for me.

Look in here. To all who believe. To all who believe, you are not so bad as to be beyond his reach. And then the spotlight spins around and catches the smug and the self-confident and the religious and the people who are so secure in their own goodness, and shakes us up and says, Listen here. You're not good enough to get into heaven without a Savior.

You will on that day have only one defense. You will only have one plea that you may enter, and that plea is Christ. Jesus paid it all. He did it.

And I look to him. The wonder of justification by faith is that God has brought into time his great assize, so that when a man or a woman comes to rest in the work of Jesus, that man or woman need never, ever fear that God will go and muck around and rake around in that which he has forgiven. We need never fear that the penalty will be reintroduced.

It is forever and for all time. He will discipline us. The work of God in sanctification is an ongoing work. But the work of God in justification is a finished work. That's why there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

Does that describe you? In Christ Jesus. Not interested in Christ Jesus, but in him. Because you have cast yourself upon him, caught up in the arms of his mercy. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to his cross, and I bear it no more.

That's the issue. And my dear friends, if you do not have that conviction within your heart, if God does not bring it to you, despite all of the assailing of the evil one against you, then you'll probably need to get down on your knees and cry, God, be merciful to me, the sinner! And he will save all who believe, and he will bring you into an experience of genuine expressions of his wonderful love and grace. Well, we left Abraham kind of hanging.

We'll come back to him. The presence of good deeds in our life can't be our only argument for the presence of real faith, but the absence of deeds can be a strong argument for the absence of true faith. We're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. Alistair also explained today that you can never be so bad that you're beyond the reach of God's grace, and you can't be so good that you're beyond the need for God's grace. Well, this encouragement and this warning are a part of the lessons found in the book that we want to recommend to you today, a book for young children titled Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2. This tells the story of Christiana, a girl who, along with her brothers, navigates a host of challenges on her way to the celestial city. Your children will enjoy this captivating allegory that teaches about the tests and trials of the Christian life. Request your copy of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2 when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine. What could a highly respected, devoutly religious, spiritual forefather possibly have in common with a woman of ill repute? We will find out tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.