James 2 vv 14-26
Don’t just sit there. Do something!
My dearest Sally,
I love you more than anything else in the whole world. I would climb the highest mountain just to be with you. I would walk across the hottest desert just to be with you. I would swim the deepest ocean just to be with you. Nothing can separate us and our love. Your beloved Michael.
P.S. See you Saturday night if it does not rain.
Do you ever feel that your Christian faith is a bit like Michael’s love for Sally? You can talk a good talk but does your walk match up? You can think big things but are you failing to do the small things that would really help people around you? Are you singing the greatest worship songs to God but somehow failing to connect with the truths they proclaim? Believe me, today’s talk is for you. And in case you are wondering: Yes, it is as much for me as it is for you.
Don’t just sit there – do something! That’s the title that Andrew has given this portion of James that we are looking at today. And that is exactly the response that James was seeking from his intended audience. He was speaking to a community of Christians, mostly of Jewish origin who were delighted to have thrown off the cultural burdens and baggage that had been imposed on them by the Jewish religious elite. There were endless rituals where the deep meaning God had originally intended had been obscured by tradition and hypocrisy.
Christians, in contrast, were free. They knew that what saved them wasn’t carrying out rituals and sacrifices. No, they were saved by faith in God’s Son Jesus. They were forgiven by accepting Jesus’ death on the cross as payment for their sins.
Yet some of them were beginning to over-use the payment Jesus had made. Sure, they were Christians. But they certainly did not live lives that would be honouring to God. Unlike many of their Jewish neighbours who were trying to live by impossible rules in an attempt to please God.
James wrote this letter to speak into the lives of Christians who acted as if the grace of God was a cheap commodity that they could call upon whenever and as often they sinned. James wanted to see Christians living lives that honoured God in every way because he felt that was the appropriate response to the relationship they had with God.
It’s in this context that we should look at James chapter 2 verses 14 onwards. James asks us, “What good is it, my fellow Christians, if a man claims to have faith but does not act on his faith?”
To answer his question, James picks up a thread that Dave McDougall discussed with us just last Sunday. Dave urged us to have eye surgery so that we could look at people without favouritism. Our eye surgery would allow us to look at a rich man and a poor man who came to our church and make no distinction between them in how we treated them.
In the passage we are looking at this week, let’s look at the man on whom James focuses his attention. He’s a poor man visiting our church, probably a Christian as well but clearly suffering from a bad hangover from the current stock price meltdown. He has no clothes apart from the smelly ones he has on. And he’s hungry because he has no food.
How do you think James would expect us to act towards this man? Well, if his expectation of us is as low as the expectation he has of the Christians around him, he would mimic us as we waved farewell to our poor brother at the door. We’d be saying “Have a nice day, brother. See you back in church next Sunday.” And then we would turn around and walk away. Which is sort of the modern equivalent of what James accuses his audience of doing: they share the traditional Jewish greeting “Keep warm and well fed” but they do nothing about his physical needs.
James is unequivocal about this sort of behaviour. In verse 17 he says, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead. Workless faith is worthless faith. Or to cast it in its opposite form, the genuine expression of true faith is Christian action.
Obviously, not everybody agreed with him. James records one of the dissenting voices in verse 18: “You have faith, I have deeds.” In other words, I don’t need your faith because I do good things and those good things will stand me in good stead when I meet God.
I grew up in New Delhi, India. I went to a Catholic boy’s school which was right in the centre of the city. Near the school was a very large gurudwara, or temple for Sikhs. Every single day, turbaned Sikh men, accompanied by women in traditional dress, would feed every person who came to the gurudwara at lunch time. They still do. You don’t have to be a Sikh to get a full plate of food. You don’t have to pay a penny. In a city with a lot of poverty, it is a fantastic gift. Some people would look at Christians and question their faith when there seemed to be no similar deeds on offer.
How often have you heard people say, “I know he’s not a Christian but in his behaviour he’s more Christian than the Christians who go to my church.” What exactly should Christians behave like? Let me tell you that in India everybody knows how to identify a Christian. In the Bollywood films that were popular when I was a kid, every film had a villain who was trying to pinch the good guy’s woman. But this villain would already have a girl-friend who would wear a short skirt, drink alcohol, sleep around and answer to the name of Mary or Helen or Debbie because she was a Christian.
As Christians we would reject that stereotype and so would James. But he also rejects the view that in some way faith and deeds are alternative ways to reach God. If you have deeds without faith, that’s useless. If you have faith without deeds, that’s useless as well. For example, in verse 19, demons share one characteristic with Christians – they believe there is one God. But does it do them any good? No, they shudder with that belief, but it cannot save them.
Instead, James sets out to prove his thesis. And I believe that this is the pivotal passage in the whole book of James. So far, over the last few Sundays we have heard that the letter of James is full of practical advice and exhortation. Yes, it is. But for a short moment he steps away from the practical admonitions and instructions and gives evidence why he thinks Christians need to behave the way they should.
And in doing so, he wrote one of the most misunderstood sections in the Bible. Even as great a Reformation leader as Martin Luther concluded that the letter of James was an epistle of straw that was not fit to be part of the Biblical canon because of what James now writes. Let’s look at it carefully.
James has a simple thesis. Genuine faith is accompanied by good works. Spiritual works are the evidence, not the energiser, of faith. He presents us with two examples, both in the form of a question anticipating the reader’s ready agreement.
Verse 21: “Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?” You and I might think that offering one’s only son for a child sacrifice should hardly qualify as good practice, let alone be evidence for the kind of good works that accompany faith. But that ignores the context of the situation.
Abraham and Sarah, who had failed to have any children in decades of marriage, had been given the gift of a son in their old age in fulfilment of a promise God had made to them that Sarah would bear a child. Now Abraham really loves his son Isaac. Yet God asked him to sacrifice Isaac as a test of his faith. Fortunately for all of us, the child sacrifice was interrupted and God delivered a ram to be sacrificed in Isaac’s place. James says that because Abraham acted on his faith he was God’s friend.
Now the theological problem comes if we read Paul’s writing to the Romans where in chapter 4 he uses exactly the same story of Abraham and Isaac to conclude that Abraham was saved by his faith, not his actions. Paul makes it clear that it is not works that save us. We are justified by faith. Which is a jargon-y way of saying that we become God’s friends through faith, not through our actions, which no matter how good are simply not good enough to bring us into God’s holy presence.
Is Paul right or is James right? Martin Luther clearly thought that Paul was right. But Luther, for once, got the wrong end of the stick. Paul was arguing for the priority of faith. Faith comes first, everything else, including works, come afterwards. James argues for the proof of faith: the actions of a Christian prove that they have faith. Paul and James are not battling each other. A more accurate picture is that they are standing back-to-back contending with different foes.
In fact, the Bible does not stop at giving us the two different dimensions as offered by Paul and James. Peter offers a perspective that I would like to point you to. Let’s read the 2nd letter of Peter, chapter one. If you have got your bibles open to James, then just turn right. It’s a few pages on.
In verse 5, Peter says to “make every effort to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness (he’s beginning to sound a bit like James now!); and to brotherly kindness, love.”
Isn’t it interesting that Peter wants to add all these wonderful qualities like goodness, knowledge, and godliness to faith, which is his starting point? In that sense, he is fitting in really well with Paul who says that faith has priority. But as faith progresses, Peter keeps adding the kinds of Christian characteristics that James finds so appealing, like godliness, brotherly kindness and love.
Peter goes on to say that if you possess all these wonderful qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is near-sighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Remember that Peter is talking about Christians who are near-sighted and blind because they are failing to build the Christian characteristics that will make them effective and productive Christians.
So let’s get our thinking about faith and works straight. Paul tells us that faith has priority, it’s the first thing that gets us started becoming God’s friend. Peter tells us about the progression of faith: it is the opening melody in a symphony of grace that changes and changes us till we resemble Jesus. And James tells us that the way we live is the proof of our faith.
The Bible tells us about three views of faith because as fallible humans we need a rich tapestry of options before us.
Are you somebody who has never ever put your faith in God? Are you hoping that being a basically good person is going to give you the quality that will enable you to become God’s friend? Then stop trying to do the impossible. Listen well because God wants to be your friend, in the same way as he was Abraham’s friend. You can’t make it happen but he can. If you want to know how, then step forward and speak to one of the people on the prayer team here who can help you know how God will make you his friend.
Or maybe you once took the first step of faith but since then nothing has gone as you may have hoped. When Peter talked about being ineffective and unproductive and nearsighted in your faith, that struck a chord with you. Then go back to Peter and see that he wants you to add to your faith a number of items of Christian character. He wants to make you effective and productive in your faith.
Or maybe you have been a Christian a long time and you are surfing along on the maturity of your faith. But maybe James has spoken to you because the actions that are the evidence of your faith are just not so…evident. Look closely at the whole letter of James. He wants to see perseverance in our faith, compassion towards others, careful speech and contrite submission. Don’t just sit there: do something.
For all of us, there is a tremendous encouragement from Peter. He tells us that if we do all these things, like starting from faith and building up from there, we will never fall and we will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And that is the prize of faith.
