What About Faith and Good Works?
An Answer to the Skeptic
James 2:18-20
Preached by Pastor Tony Miano
Pico Canyon Community Church
April 8, 2001
Introduction: A couple of weeks ago I talked about the way James weaved a courtroom drama throughout his writing, in the first half of chapter two. Last week we also saw what could be described as part of a court trial. James made his prima fascia case for justification by faith alone. He did so by showing his readers that the evidence for their salvation by faith would by the good works that they did as a result of that faith. He made the point that sincere words, in and of themselves, are not evidence of a genuine faith in Christ.
Let’s read the passage again, together, beginning in verse fourteen.
Our focus this morning is going to be on verses 18-20. In this section of James’ letter, we see an objection stated (v. 18a), the objection challenged (vv. 18b-19), and the objector confronted (v. 20). The courtroom drama continues with James anticipating his readers reacting in a way very common to court trials—“I object!”
Unlike a lot of my fellow deputies, I really enjoyed testifying in court. I hated the idea of sitting around all day after working the graveyard shift, only to have the district attorney tell me the case would be postponed until the following day. But I really enjoyed taking the stand.
I enjoyed testifying because I really liked sparring with the defense attorneys. Some of the defense attorneys—not many—but some, were easy to get along with. They understood that the banter in the courtroom was not to be taken personal. Each side had their job to do in order to win their case.
I was able to have the kind of relationship with some of the defense attorneys that was cordial, even friendly, before and after the trial, and strictly adversarial during the trial. One tactic I liked to use before the trial started, when the suspect’s attorney was someone I was friendly with, was to sit down next to the defense attorney who would be sitting next to his or her client. I would shake his hand, ask him about the family, compliment his tie, and then get up and walk away, giving the suspect a very friendly smile. It really messed with their mind. One time, after doing this, as soon as the judge entered the courtroom, the suspect jumped out of his seat and demanded a new attorney because the one he had was a friend of the deputy who arrested him.
During the trial, the relationship between officer and defense attorney is, as I said, adversarial. The gloves come off and each side fights to win their case. One tactic commonly used by defense attorneys is to try to get the testifying officer to either change his testimony or become upset. Polls have shown that over 50% of perspective jurors believe that police officers are lying whenever they take the stand. If an attorney can get an officer to do or say something on the stand to support this opinion, he has won his case, whether or not his client actually committed the crime.
I remember one public defender, one whom I did not have a cordial relationship with, who I had several opportunities to spar with in court. He fit into most of the negative stereotypes you can think of to describe defense attorneys. He had the only suit in the courtroom that was cheaper than my own. He thought of himself as the next Clarence Darrow or F. Lee Bailey. He would even approach the witness stand with his chest out and his hands gripping his lapels. He was quite a sight.
Several summers ago, I had a case in which a drunk driver almost ran me and several other deputies over as we were working bike patrol. The kid was high on marijuana, he failed the field sobriety tests, his blood tested positive, and there were half dozen witnesses. It should have been an open and shut case—but not for Mr. Darrow-Bailey.
His entire case hinged on a small box on my report that talked about street lighting. I indicated that there were lights on the street. The attorney asked me if I wrote that information in my report. I said that I did. He asked me if I was sure there were lights. The way he asked told me he wanted to fight about this. I repeated my answer.
Then, in classic melodramatic form, the attorney yelled, “Ah-ha!” He pulled a set of photographs from his jacket pocket, showed them to the district attorney, and then smugly sat them down in front of me. They were photographs of the area where I arrested his client. He asked me if I saw any streetlights. I said, “No.”
“So, did you lie in your report deputy?” He asked. “No, sir.” I answered. Then I pulled my own set of pictures out of my uniform pocket. “You see, sir,” I said, “You took your pictures at such an angle as to hide the lights behind the row of trees. Maybe my pictures will give you a more accurate view of the scene. You see—there are the trees.”
The attorney yelled, “I object! You can’t allow these photos into evidence!” The judge, who by this time was finding it difficult not to laugh, asked the attorney, “Are you objecting to the deputies photos or your own? Your objection is overruled.”
The district attorney took the judge’s cue and began to accuse the defense attorney of fabricating evidence. It got pretty ugly after that. Needless to say, we won the case. In the story I just shared with you, we see a set of circumstances similar to what we will be studying today. In my courtroom story, there was an objection stated, the objection challenged and eventually overruled, and, finally, the objector confronted.
The Objection Stated
Verse eighteen, for many centuries, has been considered to be one of the most difficult verses in the New Testament to translate and explain. Boy, did that boost my confidence when I learned that. To give you an idea of how difficult a verse it is—there are no less than five textual problems, with as many as five solutions given by theologians, for each problem.
Don’t worry. You can stop rolling your eyes. We’re not going to go over all of the issues. I share this with you to once again remind you that although God’s Word is readable, relevant, and practical, we still have to have a great deal of commitment, discernment, and tenacity if we are going to rightly understand the truth God’s Word contains.
II Timothy 2:15, Paul writes to Timothy, his young student and friend, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” Just as James teaches so well in this letter, that we should not take our faith in Christ lightly, neither should we take lightly our study of God’s Word.
Again, in the first half of verse eighteen we read, “But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’” Here we have the objection stated. One of the challenges in understanding this verse is determining whom James is referring to when he writes, “someone.”
Part of the difficulty in translating not only this phrase, but the entire verse, is the way the original Greek texts were written. The ancient Greek texts of the Bible were written in all capital letters, with no spaces between words, and no punctuation marks. Those were all added later when scribes made copies of the manuscripts. Although God inspired every word of Scripture, a comma or position of a quotation mark is not. With that said—our confidence and faith in the inerrancy of Scripture comes from our understanding of God’s sovereignty, not from the placement of a colon or period.
As I’ve said before—James is a good teacher. Good teachers are able to anticipate future questions or arguments from their students as they are teaching. A good teacher not only knows what he is saying at the moment, but is able to defend what he is teaching, having already formed his defense by anticipating what direction the attack on his teaching will come. That’s what we see James doing here in the first half of the verse when he writes, “someone may well [or will] say.”
At the same time, a good teacher needs to defend his position and refute the error of the student without embarrassing or humiliating the student in the process. A student who is made to feel stupid is not very likely to continue asking questions. So it will be interesting to see how James manages to avoid humiliating his readers, even though he finishes this passage by referring to the objector as a “foolish fellow.”
When James says, “But someone may well say,” the “someone” can best be described as an imaginary objector. James, wanting to remain humble, and teachable himself, pulls himself back from the front of the discussion so that he does not become the focus. His imaginary objector is one who would contradict James’ teaching on the relationship between faith and good works, and a useless and a genuine faith.
In this imaginary argument, the objector isn’t talking directly to James, but as one who could be a leader beside James who is addressing the congregation. It’s almost as if James is being challenged in the form of a casual, public debate.
In my study of this passage—and believe me, I wrestled long and hard over this one—I found that the best way to clearly understand what James is writing here is to change the pronouns in the phrase “You have faith and I have works.” If we change “you” to “one,” and “I” to “another,” the fog begins to lift a little bit on the interpretation. We would read it this way. “One has faith and another has works.”
Let’s tie in what James is saying at the beginning of verse eighteen with what he wrote in the previous passage. Remember, the point James made in verses fourteen to seventeen was that a mere profession of faith without works that confirm the genuineness of that faith is useless.
Now if we add to James’ point our interpretation of the first phrase in verse eighteen, the flow should go something like this. “If your faith is one of the mind and the lips, and you have no good works to show for it, that kind of faith is useless and not genuine. But I’m sure an objector will make the argument, ‘Look. What’s the big deal? It doesn’t matter if one says they have faith and another says they have works because we’re all Christians.’”
By understanding what James is saying this way, we can see that the objector has “what we call a laissez-faire, ‘live and let live,’ ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ attitude regarding faith and works” (Hughes, p. 110). James’ imaginary objector is holding up faith and good works as completely separate entities of equal value that point to the same thing. And the issue isn’t that important to him.
It seems today that more and more areas of doctrine are looked at as “not that important.” There are those who think that the more we focus on doctrine, the less loving we appear to the unbeliever. A believer is often times considered to be judgmental if he or she doesn’t automatically take someone at his or her word, especially when it comes to a profession of faith.
Sadly, many people are told today, whether in church or at rallies, or on television, that all they must do is believe in Jesus to be saved. So the person rationalizes that in their heads and thinks to themselves, “Yeh, I can do that. I can believe in Jesus.” And that’s what they respond to—a call by man to an intellectual belief. They pray a prayer and think, “Cool! I’m fixed. Now I can call myself a Christian. See—I’m not that bad after all.”
Yet, as we talked about last week, there is no change in their heart or their behavior. You see—no one told them that becoming a Christian means not just acknowledging Jesus Christ as their Savior, but also making Him Lord of their life. That does not happen until you confess your sins with genuine repentance and commit everything you are to Him.
Becoming a Christian isn’t simply choosing to believe in Jesus. As we will see in the next verse, there are others who do that who are definitely not Christians. It is submitting to Christ’s authority in your life; and that is only possible because, through God’s irresistible grace, His Holy Spirit has moved on your heart, calling you to Himself. Salvation is completely about God’s wonderful grace, not about our works, and not about our intellectual beliefs.
The Objection Challenged
Having used an imaginary opponent to illustrate an objection to his teaching about faith and works, let’s take a look at how James challenges the objection. In the second half of verse eighteen we read, “Show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
R. Kent Hughes describes James response to the objection as an explosion. James directly challenges the assertion of the objector. He is very specific. James’ objector represents anyone who would hold to the idea that faith and works are separate things. He is telling the objector to “show” him his faith without any works. The word “show” can be better understood as “demonstrate” or “exhibit.” James is calling for a “definite act” (Hiebert, p. 166). And it is through these definite acts that we give evidence to the fact that faith and works are inseparable. They are not joined together in the salvation of the sinner. Rather, they are joined together in the witness, testimony and confirmation of the genuineness of the sinner’s salvation.
Jesus shared this view, this important truth, in His own teaching. Turn to Matthew 13. We’re going to look at the explanation for the Parable of the Sower. Starting in verse 18 we read, “Hear then the parable of the sower.”
“Whenever anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in the heart. This is the one on whom the seed was sown beside the road” (v. 19).
The person here is one who has heard the Word of God, but Satan convinces them that they’re not that bad. Their own pride deludes them into thinking they do not need salvation. People who fall into this category hear the Word but they never come to the reality, in their heart, that they must repent of their sins to be saved.
“The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away” (vv. 20, 21).
The person here, unlike the first person described, is quick to respond to the message. But we can see by the outcome that their acceptance is shallow. I really appreciate what John MacArthur wrote about this verse.
He wrote, “Sometimes shallow acceptance of the gospel is encouraged by shallow evangelism that holds out the blessing of salvation but hides the costs—such as repenting of sin, dying to self, and turning from the old life.”
“When people are encouraged to walk down the aisle, raise their hand, or sign a card without coming to grips with the full claims of Christ, they are in great danger of becoming further from Christ than they were before they heard the message. They may become insulated from true salvation by a false profession of faith” (MacArthur, p. 358).
I don’t often mention the names of those in the ministry with whom I disagree. The reason is that I always want to be sure that we are focusing on God’s Word and not on the controversies of the day. But there are times when false teaching needs to be confronted. In Paul’s letter to Titus he wrote, “For the overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:7-9).
One of the worst examples of shallow evangelism comes from the teaching of Robert Schuller, of the Crystal Cathedral. In his book, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (Word: 1982), he wrote the following.
“Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be ‘God-centered,’ not ‘man-centered’” (p. 64). As Luke and I talked about this on Thursday, we wondered if Schuller forgot that the word “theology” includes the Greek word theos, which means “God.”
Schuller also said, “Sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem” (p. 14). My Bible tells me “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23). Sin is not robbing us of anything. It is missing the mark and falling short of God’s glory. No amount of self-esteem will ever change that.
Schuller wrote, “... The core of sin is a lack of self-esteem. ... Sin is psychological self-abuse . . . the most serious sin is one that causes me to say, ’I am unworthy” (p. 98).
Yet the thief on the cross, next to Jesus, recognized that he was unworthy when he said, “And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man [referring to Jesus] has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). The thief lacked self-esteem, but he possessed something of far greater value—a repentant heart. And for that, not his self-worth, he was granted, by the grace of God, eternal life.
And Schuller had this to say in a Time magazine article. “I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition” (Time, March 18, 1985).
Yet the Lord God, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel said, “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick” (Ezekiel 34:16a). If it is unchristian, as Schuller proposes, to make people aware of their sin, then why did Jesus say to the man whom he had healed from a thirty-eight year old illness, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you” (John 5:14b).
Jesus also said, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). Now, answer me this. How will the sinner come to repentance if they are not first made aware of their sin? The apostle Paul was made aware of his lost state, of his sinfulness. That’s why he could write these words to Timothy. “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (I Timothy 1:15). Was Paul suffering from a lack of self-esteem? I don’t think so.
The fear in some Christian circles to dig deep into the Word, to preach all of God’s Word, even when it gets uncomfortable, produces a shallow message, which produces shallow evangelism, which produces shallow churchgoers who, holding on to half truths and soft talk, run from the church and turn their back on Christ the moment the religious honeymoon is over and their profession of faith is challenged by persecution, hardship, or a call to obedience. These are the people who are described in Jesus’ parable as seed “sown on the rocky places.”
Turning our attention back to Matthew 13, verse 22 says, “And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”
The person here is one who hears the Word of God, makes a profession of faith, but never lets go of their love for the world. His preoccupation with his status in the world, with keeping up with the Joneses, chokes out whatever he may have heard from the Word. We have an example of this in the rich young ruler, in Matthew 19. When Jesus tells the young man to give up his love for the world, to give up his need for worldly possessions, the Scriptures tell us that “he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property” (Matt. 19:22b).
A person like this has the thorns of unbelief in their heart and they choke what they’ve heard from the Word of God like weeds choking a healthy plant. “A person who comes to church but never becomes committed to serving, who is continually preoccupied with money, career, fashions, sports, and everything but the Lord’s work is a person with a weed-infested heart” (MacArthur, p. 360).
Finally we come to the point in Jesus’ parable where he describes a person who has a genuine faith in Christ. And here is where we see how faith and good works are inseparable, which is the point James is making in the second half of verse eighteen, of chapter two.
Jesus said, “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty” (Matt. 13:23).
Unlike any of the other groups of people mentioned in the parable of the sower, the one that is sown in the good soil bears good fruit. The person with a genuine faith in Christ not only hears the Word and understands it, but they also show tangible evidence of their faith through the good fruit of their life. As a result of their faith in Christ, the good soil of their life produces a crop of fruit that includes “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” Galatians 5:23).
For those of you with green thumbs, think of it this way. You take a nice clay pot. Maybe you’ve even decorated it by painting it using stencils or something else that looks nice. You pour some Miracle Grow potting soil into the pot. You put the seed into the soil at just the right depth. You water it just right and give it enough sunlight and shade.
What do you expect to happen? What should be the inevitable outcome of the process? A plant should grow. The seed should sprout breaking through the soil, reaching for the warmth of the sun.
Now you take a second pot and you paint it. Maybe on this one you even glue some of those plastic flowers. You know the kind—the ones that look like they were once on the side of a VW van. But in this one you don’t put anything inside. The pot sits on the patio empty.
You have friends over for a barbeque on the patio and you tell all of your friends about your recent gardening experience. They look at the one plant, which by now is starting to flower, and say, “Oh, I see you’re growing flowers.”
You thank your friend very kindly and then you point to the empty pot. You ask for your friend’s opinion about your other flower. They look at the pot, look at you, look at the pot again, and ask, “What flower?” You point again to the empty pot and say, “That one. It’s in full bloom. It’s an ‘emptius pottus imaginatius.’”
Your friend looks at the empty pot again, this time for several seconds because they’re not sure whether or not you are joking, and very cautiously says to you, “Ah, there’s nothing there. There’s no flower in the pot.”
No matter how much you insist, no matter how strong a profession you may make to your friend, the evidence shows that there is no flower, because there is no plant. And there is no plant because there was never a seed in the pot to take root and grow. The same is true about our relationship with Christ. If you truly have one, the inevitable and expected proof of that relationship will be evidenced by your deeds. Something is going to grow out of this faith of yours.
I heard a story of an old boatman who painted the word “faith” on one oar of his boat and “works” on the other. He was asked his reason for this. In answer, he slipped the oar with “faith” into the water and rowed. The boat, of course, made a very tight circle. Returning to the dock, the boatman then said, “Now, let’s try ‘works’ without ‘faith’ and see what happens. The oar marked “works” was put in place and the boatman began rowing with just the “works” oar. Again the boat went into a tight circle but in the opposite direction.
When the boatman again returned to the wharf, he interpreted his experiment in these strong and convincing words, “You see, to make a passage across the lake, one needs both oars working simultaneously in order to keep the boat in a straight and narrow way. If one does not have the use of both oars, he makes no progress either across the lake or as a Christian.”
For the person already saved by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, faith and works are inseparable. Not wanting his readers to be at all confused, James takes his already vivid challenge one step further. And we find that in verse nineteen. “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” In this verse, James is literally comparing the faith of his imaginary objector to that of demons. He begins by summarizing the objector’s view about God.
Now, here there is a slight difference between the NASB and the NIV. As we have read, the NASB says, “God is one.” In the NIV, however, as well as in the KJV and a host of other translations, we read, “There is one God.” The NIV translation seems to emphasize that there is only one God. But the NASB seems to place its emphasis on the fact that there is unity in God. Which is James referring to here? Both are true statements. There is one God and He is united in three persons—the mystery of the Trinity.
Since both are true statements, does it matter which one we decide James is using here? Yes it does—and here’s why. If we consider the context—and we should always do that, and we keep in mind the kind of people to whom James was writing—namely the Jewish believers and those professing to be believers, then it is better to understand that James is making a reference to the unity between the Father and the Son. James, by saying “God is one,” is affirming the fact that Jesus Christ and God the Father are one in nature, power, and authority.
Jesus proclaimed the same truth when He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). In holding to and proclaiming this truth, both Jesus and James affirmed the great Jewish confession known as the Shema. We find in Deuteronomy 6:4. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” Even though the Jews who denied that Jesus was the Son of God did not believe or understand that Jesus was the embodiment of this great Old Testament truth, that made the confession no less true.
So, what James is saying here is that not only do those who make a profession of faith believe that there is only one God, they also believe that Jesus Christ and the Father are one. The churchgoer in James’ time, after hearing or reading these words, may draw the conclusion that they are definitely Christians for believing this way.
I can see churchgoers today coming to the same conclusion. “After all,” someone even here might think, “The Muslims believe there is one God. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe there is one God. There are other religions that believe there is one God. Even Shirley MacLaine believes in one god. Unfortunately, she thinks she is him. But I take it a step further than they do. I believe that Jesus is God.” James, at this point, can probably picture his readers nodding their heads in agreement—kind of like I saw some of you do. They believe that God is one. They believe Jesus and the Father are one.
James gets his readers to nod a little more emphatically when he says, “You do well.” Underneath James’ straight face and words of apparent encouragement is a slight tone of sarcasm. Watch what he does.
Now that he has his objector, the person who insists that faith doesn’t have to have any kind of deeds to prove its genuineness, at a point of agreement with James—as if he were saying, “That’s right James. You see…I told you we were on the same page”—James says something that not only stops the objectors head from nodding, but also probably draws a loud gasp from the person. James says, “The demons also believe, and shudder.”
What is James saying here? Well, first of all, he’s not putting down the objector’s profession. It is good to believe that there is one God and that God is one, that Jesus and the Father are one. By saying that “the demons also believe, and shudder,” James is attacking a merely verbal profession of faith. “”The demons perfectly illustrate the [utter] poverty of verbal profession in and of itself” (Moo, p. 131).
I think that there are times when pride can creep into our faith and we begin to think more of ourselves than we should. A case in point is how we think of demons in the spirit world. We picture them as bumbling half-wits like Beetlejuice. Or (now I didn’t see the movie) we can think of them as one was portrayed in Adam Sandler’s latest flick where he plays a demon by the name of “Little Nicky.” I think there is one scene in the movie where Sandler steps in front of a bus.
Although the believer need not fear them, we should be mindful of the fact that they operate in the spirit realm where we are limited to the physical. They are not all knowing, but they know more than we do.
They are able to indwell and control animals (Mark 5:2-5, 11-13). They are able to influence the thoughts and actions of believers and unbelievers (Matt. 4:24; 8:16, 28, 33; Eph. 6:12; I Tim. 4:1-3). And as we see in verse nineteen, “they know Jesus Christ to be God” (Chafer/Walvoord, p. 159). They are well aware that salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone, but that knowledge certainly doesn’t make a demon a Christian—does it?
James makes the point that demons, like the person who merely professes a faith in Christ, have only an intellectual knowledge of the truth that doesn’t translate to genuine faith resulting in salvation. But look at how the demons react to their knowledge of the truth—“they shudder.”
The Greek word translated here as “shudder” is found nowhere else in the New Testament. In addition to “shudder,” it also means, “to bristle, shiver, or tremble” (Vine, p. 1039). You’ve heard someone say that they were frightened to the point that their hair stood up on the back of their neck. This is what we can picture here.
What James is saying here is that at least the demons have enough sense to tremble with fear at the thought of being separated from God for all eternity and tormented in hell. The person who makes a mere verbal profession of faith can be so deluded by the idea that their claims are sufficient, they fail to realize that a faith of the lips and not of the heart will result in the same end as the demons—and it’s not heaven.
The Objector Confronted
Having explained the inevitable objection of some, and then challenged that objection in a very emphatic way, we see him confront the imaginary objector in verse 20. “But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?”
The phrase “but are you willing to recognize,” can be said several different ways to make the same point. We can read it this way. “Don’t you understand?” Or, “Will you recognize?” Or, “Do you want to be shown?” It’s as if James is asking the objector if he needs further proof that what James is telling him is true. This verse, instead of looking back to what James just said, actually looks forward to what he is going to say in the final six verses of the chapter, where he gives examples of genuine, living faith.
But before he does that, he addresses his readers, in general, by taking his imaginary objector by the shoulders, looking him in the eye and saying, “you foolish fellow.” James addresses the person as one whose “stubborn, hard-hearted ignorance” (Moo, p. 132) is keeping him from not just knowing the truth, but living the truth.
When James calls the objector foolish, he is not calling him stupid. He is saying that he is empty and shallow when it comes to his faith. The reason James can draw that conclusion is seen in the last phrase of verse twenty. Anyone who claims to have faith, when his or her version of faith produces nothing useful or spiritually profitable, believes in something that is empty and shallow.
Martin Luther once said, “The true, living faith, which the Holy Spirit instills into the heart, simply cannot be idle.” That is the point James is making throughout chapter two, and certainly in the verses we’ve studied today.
If we are truly followers of Christ, truly His disciples, we are not going to be couch potato Christians. If our faith is genuine it will be a working faith. We will not look at fellowship and study as drudgery. We will not have our hearts focused on the things of this world. We will not see church as an inconvenience. We will not pride ourselves in how spiritual we are by how little we do. We will not have to be asked or begged to serve. We will not assume that God is going to overlook our sin because we consider ourselves to be good most of the time.
If our faith is genuine it will be a working faith. We will be looking for opportunities to share our faith with those who do not know Christ. We will be looking for ways to serve one another and the church. We will be looking for ways to cultivate our relationship with Christ through the study of His Word and through worship that is focused on Him and not ourselves. We will worship Him in spirit and in truth. We will repent when we are stubborn, hard-hearted, or ignorant and our lives will be fruitful in keeping with that repentance. We will shudder at the idea of having an empty or shallow relationship with Christ, which, in reality, is no relationship at all.
May each of our lives forever reflect a faith that works—not for salvation, but because of our salvation in Christ.
