Perhaps some of you Facebook users have seen some posts like these recently.
[Show Facebook posts]
There are also some similar emails that make the rounds from time to time as well – you know the ones where a person claims to love Jesus and challenges you to forward the email to your friends. My favorites are the ones that promise that if you forward it to at least 10 of your friends you’ll get a special blessing from God.
Obviously James didn’t have to deal with Facebook back in the mid first century when he wrote his letter. But he did have to deal with those who had what I’m going to refer to this morning as “Facebook faith.” Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to James chapter 2 and I’ll begin reading this morning in verse 14.
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 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 also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
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? 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.
(James 2:14-26 ESV)
James continues on a theme here that we have already found throughout his letter – the idea that becoming a mature disciple of Jesus requires that we become doers and not just hearers of God’s Word. But in many ways this passage is really the heart of the letter because it gets right down to the matters of the heart.
James and Paul
I don’t want to take a whole lot of our time with it, but many of you are probably aware that in some circles, this passage is one of the most controversial in the entire Bible. That is because there is a widely held belief that James is contradicting Paul and the other New Testament writers who taught that salvation is by faith, not by works. Although he later removed the comment from his preface to the Book of James, Martin Luther once called it the “epistle of straw” because he erroneously believed that was the case. As we’ll see this morning, a closer look at what James wrote will reveal that not only does James not contradict Paul; he actually complements Paul’s teaching.
In effect Paul and James stand back to back defending the gospel against two different attackers:
• Paul is primarily writing to Gentiles, many of whom were not yet followers of Jesus, and who were being taught a kind of legalistic salvation in which they were told they first had to observe the Jewish law before they could become a follower of Jesus. So his focus was on the fact that salvation is not dependent on man’s works, but rather on the grace of God.
• James was writing to Jewish believers, some of whom had perhaps even taken Paul’s teaching out of context and held to a libertine salvation that required them only to claim they were followers of Jesus without the need for a change in lifestyle that would demonstrate the genuineness of their faith. So his focus was on the need for a mature faith that is demonstrated by the way a person lives.
But in reality, both James and Paul taught that no one is saved by works, but at the same time no one is saved without producing works. Let’s look quickly at a familiar passage from Paul’s writing that will demonstrate that truth and then we’ll spend the rest of our time examining James’ teaching in this passage.
Probably all of us are familiar with this passage:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
(Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV)
Paul’s unmistakable teaching is that salvation is through faith which we receive as a gift from God, not as a result of works. But how many of you know what the very next verse says? [Wait for answers.]
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
(Ephesians 2:10 ESV)
Paul, just like James, teaches that if the faith that results in salvation is genuine it will produce good works.
Now that we’ve cleared up that common misunderstanding, let’s move on and take a closer look at our passage in James.
In this passage, James describes two kinds of faith:
• The first is what I’m going to call “Facebook faith”. I think you’ll be able to see why I’ve given it that title as we examine what James has written in this section. James calls that kind of faith “dead” faith or “useless” faith and reveals that kind of faith does not lead to salvation.
• The second kind of faith is a genuine faith that produces good works. it is that kind of faith that produces salvation so that is obviously the kind of faith that we want operating in our lives.
In order for us to make an accurate evaluation of our own personal faith we need to take time to get a good understanding of what both kinds of faith look like. We’ll begin with…
“Facebook” faith
This kind of faith is characterized by two actions that we can identify by looking at the verbs in the passage. I’m going to enlist your help in identifying those actions. Look first in verses 14-18. In those verses there is one verb that is repeated 3 times that reveals the first action that characterizes this “Facebook” faith.
[Wait for answers].
That’s right – it’s the verb “say” or “says”. So we can conclude first of all that this kind of faith is…
• A faith characterized by words
In verses 14-16, James asks a series of three questions. The grammatical structure in the underlying Greek indicates that a negative answer is expected to each of these three questions. James begins this section with the question “What good is it…?” and ends with a similar question, “...what good is that?” The implication is that the kind of faith that he is describing here is of no good. As he’ll describe it in verses 17 and 26, it is dead. Or as he’ll describe it in verse 20, it is useless.
In verse 14, he also asks, “Can that faith save him?” Unfortunately, the KJV and a few other English translations omit the word “that” in their translation and that may very well be part of the reason that some have concluded that James is somehow teaching here that salvation is secured by works rather than faith. But James is clearly referring here to the specific type of faith that he is describing in this section – that which I have termed “Facebook faith.” And the implication is that that kind of faith cannot save a person.
So far, we’ve identified that this kind of faith is characterized by mere words. This kind of person claims that he has faith. In today’s culture, these are the people that are making the kind of posts on Facebook that we looked at earlier or sending out those chain emails. There is certainly nothing inherently wrong with proclaiming one’s faith in Jesus like that, but if that is the extent of a person’s faith, it is clearly inadequate for salvation.
James goes on to point out why this kind of faith is inadequate with a hypothetical example of a brother or sister who is lacking the basic necessities of life – food and clothing. When the person with “Facebook faith” comes along, he or she merely responds with words, but takes no action to remedy the situation. The implication is that this person has the ability to help the brother or sister in need, but fails to do anything about it.
We’ve taken this kind of faith to a whole new level in our culture. It is certainly prevalent outside of the body of Christ. Whenever some kind of tragedy or catastrophe occurs, what do we always hear people say? [Wait for answers]. That’s right; it’s something like “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” I’m going to address the prayer part of that in a moment, but what do our thoughts do to help the people in need? Absolutely nothing! But frankly, that’s probably what we should expect from unbelievers.
But this kind of Facebook faith can also be a problem in the church. And I know I’ve certainly been guilty here myself. When we see someone in need, how easy is it for us to say. “I’ll pray for you.” Now sometimes that is really all we can do in that situation, but how many times do we actually follow through and pray for the other person like we’ve promised we would do?
But in at least some of those cases there is probably some practical action that we can take to help meet that need beyond just our words. And when we fail to do that, we are merely exercising “Facebook faith” which is dead and useless.
Let’s move on and see if we can identify the second action that characterizes this “Facebook faith”. In verse 19, we find another verb – it’s actually used twice in this verse. What is that verb?
[Wait for answers]
That’s right – it’s the verb “believe”.
We’ll develop this more in a moment, but for now, we can say that “Facebook faith” is…
• A faith characterized by intellect and emotion
Once again James give us an illustration that helps us to understand the kind of faith that is inadequate for salvation – that of the demons.
It may very well be that James was thinking here of the times that Jesus had healed those who were possessed by demons during His earthly ministry. In many of those accounts we find that the demons had an intellectual understanding of who Jesus was and they even feared Him. Let’s look briefly at a couple of those passages:
And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
(Matthew 8:29 ESV)
“Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
(Luke 4:34 ESV)
These demons certainly knew who Jesus was. They referred to Him as the “Son of God” or as the “Holy One of God”. They even feared Him because they understood that they were headed for everlasting torment some day. So they do have a degree of faith, but that kind of faith is obviously inadequate for salvation. Unlike men, who have the opportunity to repent of their sins and receive the grace of God, these demons sealed their fate when they joined the one third of the angels who chose to rebel against God and follow Satan.
I have no doubt that many of the people who post about their faith on Facebook or send out similar emails understand who Jesus is and what He has done on their behalf by dying on the cross for their sins. And in some cases, because of their fear of eternal punishment, they may have even prayed a prayer in which they confessed their sins and asked Jesus to be their savior. I know that because I was once one of those people.
I know I’ve shared this with many of you before, but when I was a student at the University of Arizona, I was enjoying the nice weather out on the mall one day when someone came by and sat down and explained the gospel to me. And at the end of the presentation he asked me if I would like to pray and receive Jesus into my life. Because I thought I had a pretty good understanding of who Jesus was and what He had done for me and because I did have a fear of eternal punishment, I prayed that prayer.
Fortunately, I later came to realize that the kind of faith I had exercised that day was completely inadequate. It was merely a faith of words, of intellectual assent to a set of facts and some emotion. And because I had absolutely no intention of altering my life as a result of the decision I made that day, nothing really changed in my life.
Let me just say that I am thankful for that young man. I’m sure that he was very sincere in what he was doing that day, but probably just too immature in his own faith to recognize that all he was really doing was to give me a false sense of assurance about my eternal fate. But God certainly used him that day as part of the process that would eventually lead me to exercise the kind of genuine faith that James writes about in the last part of this section.
So let’s see what James has to teach us about…
Genuine faith
Someone once said that faith is like calories – you can’t see them, but you sure can see the results. So instead of trying to describe what genuine faith is like, James gives us two pictures that show the results of genuine faith. And the two examples he gives us couldn’t be more different:
• Abraham was a man; Rahab was a woman
• Abraham was a Hebrew, Rahab was a Gentile
• Abraham was a noble Chaldean; Rahab was a despised Canaanite
• Abraham was a man of good moral character; Rahab was a prostitute
• Abraham was at the top of the social order; Rahab was at the bottom
• And yet both Abraham and Rahab are included in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 and both are included in the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11.
James uses these two contrasting examples to show us that it is possible for every person to have the kind of genuine faith we see exhibited here.
Since James gives much more attention to the example of Abraham and uses that to illustrate his main point, we’ll follow his lead and spend most of our time there. And based on what we learn about Abraham, we can summarize genuine faith like this:
• Genuine faith that results in justification before God, will be demonstrated in a way that it results in justification before men
“Justification”, and the related verb “to justify” from which it is derived, are a couple of those theological words that we use a lot, sometimes without really understanding their meaning. So let’s begin here with an accurate definition.
“to justify” =
“to deem to be right” or “to declare to be righteous”
“justification” =
“the act of pronouncing righteous”
In verse 21, James claims that Abraham was “justified by works” when he offered Isaac on the altar. This is one of the verses that some attempt to use to prove that James is contradicting the teaching of Paul. They cite a passage from Romans 4 where Paul also uses Abraham as an example to illustrate the point he is making:
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
(Romans 4:1-3 ESV)
Paul is using this illustration to reinforce his argument in the previous chapter which he summarizes like this:
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
(Romans 3:28 ESV)
It’s pretty easy to see how people come to the conclusion that James is contradicting Paul. Paul writes that “one is justified by faith apart from works” and James writes that Abrahams was “justified by works.”
The key to reconciling these two ideas is found in verses 22 and 23 in our passage in James. Let’s look at those verses again:
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.
James certainly does not discount the importance of faith here. In fact, He quotes the same verse from Genesis that Paul quotes in Romans 4:
Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
James just takes this one step further than Paul did because he is writing to a different audience with a different purpose. He reveals that Abraham’s faith was “completed” by his works. We’ve already seen that word several times in James. It is a word that indicates fullness or maturity.
In Genesis 15, when Abraham believed God, he was justified, or declared righteous, before God because of his faith. That justification before God was not a result of anything that Abraham did. Paul makes that point in Romans 4 when he points out that if Abraham would have been justified by his works he would have had nothing to boast about “before God.”
But that was just the beginning of a process which saw Abraham’s faith become completed through the things that he did. That faith came to its “fulfillment” 30 or 40 years later when Abraham demonstrated his faith by taking his son Isaac, the son that God promised would be the offspring through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and placing him on the altar.
If any of you have been watching “The Bible” series on the History Channel, the way they portrayed Abraham’s response to God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, is completely inaccurate. Abraham did not argue with God. He didn’t ask God, “Haven’t I already done enough to prove my faith?”
As we see in Hebrews 11, Abraham was willing to offer up Isaac because He trusted completely in the character of God who had made a promise to him that his offspring through Isaac would be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. He believed that even if he killed his son, God would keep his promise, even if it required Him to raise Isaac from the dead. And then he acted on that belief.
Those actions didn’t justify him one bit in the eyes of God. His faith had already done that 30 or 40 years earlier. But over that time period Abraham’s faith had continued to mature as he consistently acted in a way that was consistent with that faith. So when God knew that his faith was mature enough, He instructed Abraham to demonstrate that faith through an act that would justify Abraham – declare him to be righteous - before men. That is the justification that James is referring to here.
The same is true for Rahab. If you go back to Joshua 2 and 6 and read her account, you’ll see that she began with “Facebook faith.” She knew enough about God to trust Him and to fear Him. But that was also true of a lot of the other people there in Jericho. The difference was that Rahab was able to take the next step and turn her faith into action. It was her faith that justified her before God, but it was her actions that justified her before men to such a degree that the account of her faith remains in the Scriptures to this day.
The Bible clearly teaches that when God imparts new life to a formerly dead sinner, that new life and the saving faith that God grants will inevitably manifest itself in a life of good works. That message is consistent throughout the Bible – Old Testament and New Testament. And it is a message that is consistent among all the New Testament authors, including both James and Paul. And, most important of all, it is a message that is found consistently in the teaching of Jesus, including the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
(Matthew 7:21 ESV)
“Facebook faith” that consists only of words, intellectual assent to a set of facts, and emotion is not enough. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that some of my Facebook friends have nothing more than that “Facebook faith.” In some cases that’s pretty evident just from their other Facebook posts. Here are a few examples of posts from some of the same people who have also posted about their faith in Jesus.
[Show posts]
I know most of these seem pretty harmless. But what they indicate is that some of these people who profess to have faith in Jesus are also hanging on to faith in other people, religions or ways of life.
But what is even more upsetting than these posts is the way that some of these people are living their lives. Obviously, I’m in no position to know whether their professed faith in Jesus is genuine. Only Jesus knows their hearts. But based on what I see, my heart mourns for these people because there is just no evidence of genuine faith in their lives.
What kind of faith do you have in your life? Is it merely “Facebook faith” that is evident only in what you say and believe? Perhaps you’re one of those people who prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come into your life, maybe even many years ago. But if you’re honest, you’d have to say that you did like I did back in college and tried to make Jesus your Savior without also making Him your Lord. And so your life really hasn’t changed much at all.
Perhaps you even come to church regularly and read your Bible every day, but your life doesn’t bear any evidence at all that your faith is being manifest in a way that others can see that it is genuine. As James makes clear, that kind of faith is dead and useless and it won’t save you.
If that’s the case, my prayer is that God’s Word and His Holy Spirit will convict you of the need to move beyond that kind of superficial faith and also make Jesus your Lord by putting Him in control of your life and living a life of obedience to Him that will result in being justified before men as well as before God. If there is anything that we can do to help you in the process of developing that kind of genuine, mature faith, please let me or one of the elders know. We would consider it a great privilege to do what we can to help you in that process.
I’m optimistic that many more of us this morning have a more genuine faith that is being brought to maturity as we live a life that is consistent with God’s Word. Obviously that doesn’t mean that we never sin or that we do that perfectly. But it does mean that our heart’s desire is to make Jesus our Lord by following Him and being obedient to His Word. If that describes your faith this morning, then you need to thank God for that kind of faith because it is not something that you can generate on your own. You need to thank God that He who began a good work in you is bringing it to maturity.
