[Put up picture of me on screen.]
Let me tell you a little bit about that man in the photo. He was 40 years old when that picture was taken. He was 20 months sober at the time. Well … “sober” is not the right word. He was a dry drunk” … which means that he hadn’t picked up a drink in 20 months, but his mind and his heart were in as much pain as they were the day he put down the bottle and the joint. And, without his anesthetic, without his daily self-induced oblivion, every day was another day in living hell … and he was hanging on by his fingernails. Everyone in the recovery community were talking bets on how long he could endure such agony before he either went back to the oblivion of booze and drugs … or killed himself.
The man in that photo was me … and I was to the point that I was going to kill myself. I was in the middle of a divorce … living in a tiny trailer in a rundown trailer park on the edge of town … no future … no hope … no drugs … no alcohol … no friends … no point in going on as far as I could see. I didn’t want to drink or drug because it was only a temporary fix. Sure, I’d get relief … oblivion … for awhile. But then I’d come out of it and there would be reality staring me in the face … again … and then I’d have to get high or drunk and check out … again .. only to come out of it … to have the horror of my life staring in the face … again … and getting drunk and high … an endless cycle until … permanent oblivion. So why drag it out?
Suicide seemed my only option … my only way of this this living hell that I had been living in for so long. I had it all planned out. I’d run a hose from the exhaust of my car into the bathroom of my tiny trailer … start the car … get in the bath tub … down a quart of Jack Daniels … pass out … never wake up … lights out … tout fini … no more pain … just eternal oblivion. I had the plan … now all I needed was the courage to follow through and make it happen. I mean, I was right there. I was gonna do it.
And then …
I’ll never forget that day … Friday, March 18, 1994. I remember it as clear as that photo … walking along Archer Road in Gainesville, Florida. It was a clear, cool, blue day. Cars going by. I-75 up ahead … Butler Plaza across the road … a field and an apartment to my left. I was going over my plans of suicide … again … when it happened …
He touched me!
[Sing verse 1 and refrain of “He Touched Me”]
“Shackled by a heavy burden,
neath a load of guilt and shame,
then the hand of Jesus touched me,
and now I am no longer the same.
He touched me,
O He touched me,
and O the joy that floods my soul!
Something happened,
and now I know,
He touched me and made me whole” (p. 367 of the UMC hymnal).
I’ll try to describe what happened to me there by the side of the road, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to capture that moment in words for as long as I live. It was like God spoke to me and touched me … like He spoke to my heart and touched my heart. I felt a powerful sense of His Presence … only I didn’t know what it was at the time. I just felt like I was covered by God … that He was beside me … all around me … in me … I can’t describe it. And then He asked me a question: “Since you’re through with your life … since you want to end your life … why not give it back to me?” And it stopped me right in my tracks!
Yeah! Why not?! Why not give my life back to God? Why not see what He can do with it? He certainly can’t or won’t mess it up as bad as I did, that’s for sure. I remember saying out loud: “Sure, God, you can have it back … it’s a deal!”
I gave my life back to God that afternoon on the side of Archer Road. I felt the clouds part in my soul and light and love pour into me. My heart was so … I can’t describe it … but it felt like God was holding it in His hands and it was going to burst. And I heard Him say: “You’ll never regret it and you’ll never look back” … and I never have!
Nothing had changed that day. My problems hadn’t changed. They didn’t must magically disappear. The world hadn’t changed. The only thing that had changed was me. I felt joy … I felt peace … I felt hope … and everyone who knew me and were expecting me to either relapse or kill myself saw the change too. It was like night and day … and they all asked me what happened, and I told them:
[Sing verse 2 of “He Touched Me”]
“Since I met this blessed Savior,
Since He cleansed and made me whole,
I will never cease to praise Him;
I’ll shout it while eternity rolls.
He touched me,
O He touched me,
and O the joy that floods my soul!
Something happened,
and now I know,
He touched me and made me whole” (p. 367 of the UMC hymnal).
“Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command on you today,” says the Lord, “but if [your servant] says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear lobe into the door, and he shall be your slave forever’” (Deuteronomy 15:15-17).
Once an indentured servant worked off his debt, he was … by law … free to go. But ... if that servant loved his master … he had the choice of staying and serving that master for the rest of his life … and that’s what I did. I didn’t push an awl through my ear, but I did go to the mall and have my ear pierced as a symbol and reminder of my life-long bond and commitment to my Lord and Master Jesus Christ. I was told to stop wearing my earring when I became a pastor. I’ll put it back in one day.
The hallmark of a good slave or servant is what? Obedience! If I love my mater … which I do … if I trust my master … which I do ... if I have faith in my master … which I do … then I’m going to go where He tells me to go … and I’m going to do what He tells me to do … and it has been my experience that when I trust my master, when I go where He sends me, when I do what He tells me to do, amazing things just keep happening. And I believe that the Apostle James is using Abraham and Rehab to make this point. They were obedient to God and that obedience came from their experience and their absolute trust and faith in God. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?” James asks in verse 21. “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus, the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned 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” (v. 21-24).
Abraham is revered as a man of great faith who enjoyed a close relationship with God. In Genesis 15, we read of God’s promise to the patriarch concerning his future and a son. God promised him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in Heaven … and James quotes Genesis 15:6: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord, and [God] accounted it to [Abraham] for righteousness.
Abraham’s story demonstrates that we are justified by faith alone … no doubt about it … but our faith is never alone. It is always accompanied by works. When Abraham was told by God to take the son of promise, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and prepare to sacrifice him on the altar, Abraham did what God told him to do!
“In his life,” says New Testament scholar Simon Kistemacker “Abraham had shown trust and confidence in God by traveling to the promised land, waiting decades for his promised son, Isaac, and finally demonstrating his obedience by being willing to sacrifice Him. The supreme test was not so much in his traveling or waiting,” says Kistemacker, “but in preparing to sacrifice Isaac. Killing his own son meant the promise would end. But as the writer of Hebrews sums up, ‘Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the death’” (Hebrews 11:19).
If Abraham said “I believe God” but refused to obey God’s command, then James is saying that Abraham had no faith at all. We are justified by faith. We are not saved by faith plus works but we are saved by a faith that does works.
While it may seem like James is contradicting Paul’s teaching, he is not. “They are not antagonists facing each other with crossed swords,” says author Alexander Ross. “They stand back to back, confronting different foes of the gospel.” Paul was attacking the belief that works were necessary for salvation. James was attacking verbal faith that did not produce godliness in a person’s life. They both agreed that works were the proof of salvation and not the path to salvation.
“We cannot gain God’s commendation by presenting Him … as Cain desired … the works of our hands,” says author Frederick F. Stevenson. “Faith alone is [God’s] requirement: The sole condition upon which He justifies the ungodly. Such faith,” says Stevenson, “always goes hand-in-hand with obedience. It is ever fruitful. Relationship to God never leaves the life unchanged.” Let me repeat that: “Relationship to God never leaves the life unchanged. Men and women of God will manifest that fact in godly acts. Faith ever finds expression in works … works of faith, not the mere doing of good. What these works should be in individual lives,” says Stevenson, “God will reveal in each case.”
James makes a giant leap from Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, to a prostitute named “Rahab.” The great theologian John Calvin believed that James put together “two persons so different in their character in order more clearly to show that no one, whatever may have been his or her condition, nation, or class in society, has ever been counted righteous without good works.”
“Likewise,” asks James, “was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road?” Rahab believed in God. “I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are faint-hearted 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 Ammorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Joshua 2:9-11).
Rahab knew enough about God to trust Him and fear Him … but that was also true for everyone else in Jericho, I’m sure. The difference, according to James, is 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. “But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho” (Joshua 6:25).
Rehab’s works were very different from Abraham’s, but they had the same effect. They proved that she had a living, working faith … that she was a woman of spiritual integrity. The Bible doesn’t say, but I doubt very much she went back to her old profession, do you? And when God touches you, you become a new creation. “The old one is gone, the new has come!” (2nd Corinthians 5:17).
When we become Christians, our values change … our priorities change … our morals change … our desires change. And if our priorities, our morals, our desires change, then it’s obvious that our behavior changes too, amen? If you say that you’re a Christian, but your priorities are the same … your morals are the same … your desires are the same … your behavior is the same … then James is saying that there is no way that you have been touched by Jesus. You cannot be touched by Jesus and not be changed. If a person has truly been born anew, that person’s life will be changed, and that change will express itself in the way that person thinks and acts.
Jesus was once approached by a ruler, a religious man, who asked Jesus: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). “You know the commandments,” says Jesus. “You shall not commit adultery, murder, steal, bar false witness, honor your mother and father” (v. 20). The ruler replied: “I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus looked at him and loved him. “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But when the ruler heard this, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions (Mark 10:17-23; Luke 18:18-25). He had not been touched by Jesus. How do we know?
A few days later, Jesus enters to the city of Jericho and meets another very rich man … a tax collector by the name of Zacchaeus. After throwing Jesus a lavish dinner party, he stands up and announces: “Look … half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much” (Luke 19:8). He didn’t have to be asked … he had been touched by the Lord. Another time, Jesus was walking along when He saw a man named Matthew sitting at a tax booth. “Come, follow me,” said Jesus, and Matthew got up, left everything, and followed Him (Luke 5:17; Matthew 9:19).
Talk is cheap … it’s easy, says James. “If a brother or sister is naked and lack daily food, and if one of you says to them ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” … more accurately translated … “faith by itself, if it has no works, is a corpse” (v. 17).
A lawyer once stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus asked him: “What is written in the law?” He answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” “You have given the right answer, do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Do you remember Jesus’ reply? He tells them the parable of “The Good Samaritan.”
When the priest sees the beaten man on the side of the road, what does he do? He crosses the road. He has not been touched by God. The Levite, who leads worship and takes care of the Temple, what did he do when he saw the beaten man on the side of the road? Nothing! Was he touched by God? James would say “no” … and so would I.
Who was touched by God? A Samaritan, who in the eyes of the Jews worshipped God on the wrong day on the wrong mountain, but who was moved by pity and actually stopped and took care of this stranger, bandaging his wounds and then taking him to an inn and providing for his care.
Actions or works may not create faith but they can reveal the substance and form of a person’s faith. To me, works is our faith made visible. “But the things that come out of a person’ mouth,” and I would add ‘actions,’ “comes from the heart,” says Jesus (Matthew 15:18). Later on, James makes this observation: “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? (James 3:11-12).
Verse 26 is James’ summary statement: “For just as a body without the spirit is dead” … a corpse … “so faith without works is also dead” … a corpse. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” cries Jesus. “For you are like white washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but on the inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27-28). “An inactive faith,” says New Testament professor D. Edmond Hiebert, “entombed in an intellectually approved creed, is of no more value than a corpse. A saving faith is an active faith.”
“You believe that God is one,” says James, “you do well. Even the demons believe and shutter” (v. 19). When I read this, I think of “Legions” … the demoniac living in the cemetery. When Jesus appeared, the demons shouted: “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29). According to James, there are no atheists among the demons. They tremble and shutter and bristle when they think of the one true God. The demons always recognized Jesus’ deity and spoke respectfully. And yet, when Jesus touched the demoniac, the demons fled and the man was healed. And when you are touched by God you want to drive an awl through your ear and serve him. As Jesus was getting ready to leave, the man who was possessed by demons begged Him that he might go with Him. But Jesus refused, and said to him: “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy He has shown you” (Mark 5:18-19).
Faith without works is dead … a corpse. If I build a bridge, we can all stand around and admire it … comment on the care, the skill, the craftsmanship that went in to it … the engineering. But talk is cheap, amen? Eventually we have to step out on to that bridge. Until then, we know nothing. Will the bridge hold us? We can speculate all we want but eventually we have to take that first step onto the bridge and prove our faith. When we step out in faith … then we see, then we know … and our faith is magnified, yes? When people see us on the bridge … then they see us restored to our right minds, like the Demoniac … they watch as we turn our lives around … like Matthew and Zacchaeus did … and guess what? Perhaps they will step out on that bridge of faith with us and pray that God will touch their hearts, their minds.
Many of the articles and commentaries that I read claim that James 2:14-26 is one of the hardest passages of Bible to interpret. By that I think they mean … not translate, so much … as to live up to … to live into.
If you claim to be a Christian, a disciple, a follower of Christ, then this passage should catch you by the hair and by the heart and pull you up and cause you to pause, to reflect, to take a really, really, good look at yourself. Even Martin Luther, who called James’ letter an “epistle of straw,” once wrote: “Oh, it is a living, quick, mighty thing, this faith … It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question could be asked it does them, and is always doing then. He who does not these good works is a man without faith. Yea,” says Luther, “it is impossible to separate works from faith, as impossible to separate burning and shining from fire.”
In one of his sermons, Charles Spurgeon reminded his congregation that a Christian “serves his Lord simply out of gratitude; he has no salvation, no heaven to lose. … Now, out of love to the God who chose him, and who gave so great a price for his redemption, he desires to lay out himself entirely to his master’s service. The child of God,” Spurgeon reminds us, “works not for life, but from life; he does not work to be saved, he works because he is saved”
Let us pray …
