14 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. 18 But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” 19 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. 20 But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,” and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
14-17
The name, Edmund Burke may or may not be a familiar one to most of us here. Burke was an eighteenth century British philosopher-turned writer, whose works centered on philosophy and the politics of his day.
It is probably more likely that some of us might be more familiar with a statement he made. “All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
He had a valid point and I’m sure it was well taken by many in the context of his times and has been since. But when we take this philosophical assertion and examine it in light of the message of James relating to faith and works, it seems to me that we would be brought to realize and pressed to admit that in desperate and needy times the man who does nothing cannot be legitimately defined as ‘good’.
Although our text verses begin at 14 today, let’s not allow James’ theme to be forgotten. He has just decried the favoritism and show of personal preference that glad-hands the wealthy and influential yet despises the lowly. So as we progress let’s remind ourselves that James is addressing the church. Us.
And we can hardly forget, can we, when he continues on and says, ‘brethren’, and challenges the brethren with “What use is it, … if someone says he has faith but he has no works?”
In this context, realizing that he was addressing believers in Christ and therefore believers in Christ in every age and therefore addressing us, it behooves us to note that he is not asking this question of people afraid to fight, or unable to step up to some daunting challenge.
He’s pointing to the poor wretch over there in the corner who needs simply the most basic of human provision, and saying, ‘where is your great faith, when this one goes unhelped and uncared-for?’
You yourself are barely worthy to attend the assembly! You don’t even rate a seat up front! You’re back here in the back row with your little footstool, turning your nose up at the brother of lesser status and lesser means, maybe a little dirty, maybe a little smelly, maybe with a past that you see as more than a little bit sullied, and you make him sit in the dirt and won’t lift a finger to help him up even to your own lowly level, and you speak of faith?
Where’s your faith? Faith in what? Faith in whom? In Christ? In Jesus who burned Himself out from sunup to sundown, feeding and giving water and touching and blessing and giving hope?
In how many church buildings across our great land, American believers, are there people devoid of the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, starving for the bread of Life, going without the water that springs up to eternal life, because there is no profit in all that for the leadership, nor the exercise of working faith among the members?
In the stories of literature, many of which make it to the stage and screen, we’re often given the picture of the lone hero, alone primarily because no one will stand with him. I think of titles such as “High Noon”, “Norma Rae”, “Walking Tall” and so on… when we think of stories like these or sit watching them or reading them in a book, we might hate the bad guys; might even feel a little fear in empathy for the hero, because of the ruthlessness and ferocious behavior of the evil enemy. But we only feel loathing and disgust for the so-called ‘good’ people who, knowing what needs to be done, hide and watch because they are not willing to pay the price of doing good.
When I consider the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10 it occurs to me that whenever I hear that story anew I have very little thought for the robbers who committed the crime, because I am so focused, as Jesus was focused in the telling, on the heartless cowards who take a wide berth around the injured man and just leave him there in the dirt and the hot sun and go their merry way.
These were so-called ‘men of faith’. One identified as a priest and one as a Levite. But James wants to know how he is supposed to believe in this faith they profess, if it remains dormant, invisible, unaffecting.
“You’re useless!” He declares. These were the pre-political correctness days.
Don’t talk to me of faith, and sing your songs with your goofy happy grin and closed eyes and uplifted chin and hands like you and God are just enjoying your own special little bonding time, when you’re unwilling to give a dollar, or lift a finger, or speak the good news of the gospel to the dead and dying all around you.
Faith? Show me! Show me!
John Calvin, wrote, “It is faith alone that justifies, but faith that justifies can never be alone.”
And in pressing the point home that a person is saved by faith alone and not by works we need to be careful to give equal stress to the point that true justification will issue in works that demonstrate the God-life within.
18-19
In verses 18 and 19 we have a couple of statements tossed in by James that require a pause for reflection in order to be appropriately impacted by the truth therein.
The first part is pretty familiar to most of us. It is batted about every time the works vs faith debate is stirred back up.
“…show me your faith without the works and I will show you my faith by my works”
The verse is quick-drawn like a six-shooter by legalist and liberalist alike; misapplied, misunderstood, twisted and tweaked, the simplicity of it missed entirely because the debaters are more focused on winning their argument than doing justice to scripture.
James’ point, as I say, is simple. It’s a challenge. You cannot demonstrate faith apart from works. Faith is invisible. Without some manifestation of it working in the life it is only an empty profession, nothing more.
I can say I have clairvoyance, until you ask me what is going to happen tomorrow, or an hour from now, or ten minutes from now.
As the old adage goes; the proof is in the pudding.
It’s the next verse that I think is the tell-all, when James makes the shocking statement that demons believe in God. Well, should it be shocking? They originally were in Heaven and were cast out with their master, so why would we be surprised that they believe?
We shouldn’t. But when it comes suddenly in the course of a discussion on saving faith and subsequent works it makes us sit up straight and blink a little, doesn’t it?
The demons believe? In a sense. But not in saving faith. So the real shocker is that James is implying that just because you believe in God doesn’t mean you are exercising saving faith.
The daily profession of the orthodox Jew is Deuteronomy 6:4
“Hear O Israel! the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”
James’ original reading audience is primarily if not entirely converted Jews. So in another of his politically correct utterances he says in essence, ‘You declare your belief daily in the one true God, and you aren’t saying anything the demons can’t say, unless your declaration is backed up by works in keeping with repentance and true spiritual birth’.
John the Baptist understood and preached the truth of this when he admonished the Pharisees that it was not enough to claim Abraham as their father; that their lives must bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Matt 3:8,9
Mental assent to the existence of God and the content of the Bible means nothing by itself. Fear of God and His wrath and the coming judgment mean absolutely nothing as just an emotional reaction to revealed truth.
The demons believe and tremble. Big deal. Do you believe and tremble? Are you emotionally stirred when you hear the word preached and you are confronted with messages regarding righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come? Big deal. That sort of preaching frightened Felix also, as recorded for us in Acts 24:25 and he even called Paul back often to listen to him. But in the end it did him no good, being rejected by him time and again until Paul was no longer available and his message was no longer available and Felix’s heart was hardened against the gospel forever.
I’m not certain I’m ready to come along side John MacArthur with everything he says here, but in his commentary on James he states the following:
“As far as factual doctrine is concerned demons are monotheists, all of whom know and believe there is one true God. They also are very much aware that Scripture is God’s Word, that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, that salvation is by grace through faith (that’s the part I would have to have him clarify for me), that Jesus died, was buried, and raised to atone for the sins of the world, and that He ascended to heaven and is now seated at His Father’s right hand. They know quite well that there is a literal heaven and a literal hell... But all of that orthodox knowledge, divinely and eternally significant as it is, cannot save them. They know the truth about God, Christ and the Spirit, but hate it and them.” The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – James – Moody Press 1998 pg 131 (parenthesis mine)
Faith that does not issue in God-appointed works is barren. It is empty. Skipping forward to verse 20 momentarily, we see that for the fourth time in this portion James declares undemonstrated faith to be useless.
Some translations use the word ‘dead’.
Where the orthodox Jews fell short is that they daily declared God to be the one true God, with Deuteronomy 6:4, but they forgot to apply the next verse to their hearts and lives.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Orthodox knowledge of God and even fear of Him because of revealed truth is useless apart from love for Him, because it is love for God that will bring forth the fruit of faith, which is good works prepared by God before hand for us to walk in them (Eph 2:10).
20-26
As we come to this final section and to verse 20 I repeat that James has now indicated for the fourth time in only 7 verses that faith apart from works is not really saving, biblical faith at all, but empty and useless. He says it in verse 14 when he asks the rhetorical question, ‘what use is it?’, then again in verses 16 and 17 and now here.
James is a preacher after my own heart. He cuts straight to the heart of the matter and he doesn’t leave his reader, especially the one wanting to debate him, with any misgivings about where he stands.
Note his tone of sarcasm in verse 19. “You believe that God is one. You do well.” He’s basically saying, ‘ok, you know something the demons know, and that knowledge isn’t helping them one bit, is it?’
Then here in verse 20 there can be no mistake about how he views the one who is full of religious rhetoric but there is no substance there. “…are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?”
Keep in mind that this letter was written very early in the life of the church. These were Jews by birth, and although converted to faith in Christ and learning and growing in their new life in Him, many of them undoubtedly still harbored a great deal of pride in their Jewishness and their Abrahamic lineage.
So where John the Baptist warned the Jews not to rest on that fact as their source of acceptance with God, James uses it as a tool to make his point with them about faith and works.
You can glance down at the Bible that I know you have open on your lap or near you, as you should whenever you are listening to a man preach, and see for yourself that in verse 21 he brings up the event that they are all sharply aware of, when Abraham offered up his son Isaac on the mountain.
But having done that I want you to continue on to verse 22 and let’s let our focus linger there for a few minutes.
"You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; "
This, I think, is the sentence that should put all debate concerning faith vs works to bed.
In truth, there should never be the word ‘versus’ between the words faith and works, because they are each other’s cause and effect.
Listen. “…faith was working with his works…”. Can it be clearer than that? Could there be a clearer statement describing the relationship between true, biblical, saving faith and the resulting fruit of good and Godly works?
Was Abraham justified by faith alone? Yes! Romans 4:13-16
“For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation. For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.”
But while justification is by faith alone, faith that justifies is never alone. It issues in good works!
It was faith that brought Abraham and his son to the mountain.
It was faith that caused Abraham to tell his attendants that both he and his son would return.
It was faith that tied his son’s hands and laid him on the altar.
It was faith that raised the knife; and if God had not intervened, beloved, faith would have plunged the knife into the heart of Isaac.
Because Abraham believed God, and he believed the promises, and he believed that God is able to raise the dead and bring into being that which does not exist!
Faith was working with his works, and because of the works faith was completed. Faith without works is incomplete, but the works that issue from faith complete it.
There can be no ‘vs’! Only ‘and’!
Now let’s move on and dig out a couple more nuggets before we finish.
Go to verse 25 and read about Rahab.
“In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?”
Just a quick trip to Joshua chapter 2 in case anyone here doesn’t know the story.
The children of Israel have been delivered from Pharaoh and Egypt and they’ve wandered in the wilderness for 40 years as a result of their unbelief. Now God has brought them once more to the land and Joshua has sent in spies to scope things out, and they came to the house of Rahab the harlot whose house was built into the city wall, as many houses were, and she has hidden them from the king’s men. Let me read just a portion to you:
"Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. “For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. “When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. "
Now I’m going to take what seems to be a rabbit trail here, but it’s really not.
I have to laugh at preachers and Bible commentators and teachers who are intent on pussyfooting around claims of scripture that go against their cultural upbringing and their personal sensitivities.
When I was going to Bible College in southern California I was asked to teach a Bible class to the young people of the church I was attending. The pastor’s teenaged son was in that class. One evening I taught from the wedding at Cana and Jesus changing the water into wine.
The next day I was called to the pastor’s office where he and his wife were waiting for me, where they wanted to set me straight and assure me that what Jesus had made was really grape juice. They also made it clear that they didn’t want me ever telling their youth that Jesus would provide the means of drunkenness and debauchery to a wedding party.
Now this isn’t a sermon about the wedding at Cana, and I won’t go on to defend my position here, but Jesus made wine, and He made very good wine.
Another one that tickles me is when I hear them preach from Isaiah 20 and Isaiah, under the Lord’s instruction, going publicly naked for three years, and they stammer and stutter around it, explaining that in those days going around in their undergarment and without their outer robe they would be considered naked, and blah, blah, blah…
And it only takes a cursory reading of that chapter in Isaiah to see that had he not been utterly devoid of any clothing, the message God was sending to the nation of Israel would have been missed entirely! Isaiah was naked! Get over it!
Then we come to Joshua 2. I can’t tell you how many commentaries I’ve seen and sermons I’ve heard where men are quick to explain that Rahab was probably an innkeeper, and that word for harlot could also mean innkeeper and that’s why the spies went there, etcetera.
Listen. The word for harlot means prostitute. Whether she ran a bed and breakfast is beside the point. Get over it. In fact, rejoice in it, because once more God’s grace is magnified.
Where these Jewish readers of James’ letter may have been filled with pride that they were descendants of Abraham, they most certainly would not have been thrilled about being given a gentile prostitute as an example of faith.
Nevertheless, there she is.
All the inhabitants of Jericho, from the king down to the lowest beggar, were scared out of their sandals at the prospect of the Israelites coming their way. They had heard all the stories of God’s provision and protection of these people, and their hearts ‘melted’ within them at the thought.
But Rahab the prostitute believed that God is God in heaven above and on earth beneath, and her belief issued in Godly works. Her faith drove her to action. And beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, she is now related to you; as sister in the faith; and not only that, but she became a physical ancestor of Jesus Christ as a result of faith working with her works and therefore being made complete!
There is a television program that some of you may be familiar with, based on the teen years of Clark Kent, also known as Superman. In the program Lex Luther has not yet become Clark’s archenemy. In one program I was struck by something Lex said to Lana Lang, who was disappointed in something Clark had done and her friendship with him was shaken.
I didn’t write it down and it may not be a precise quote, but the gist was this; that a person is not who they were the last time you saw them. They are who they have been during the entire course of your relationship.
And friend, I’m here to tell you that even if you can point back to a particular day and hour and minute when you prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to save you and come into your life that proves nothing to anyone around you. What convinces them either of the authenticity of your profession or the audacity of it is who you are every day of your life!
You say you have faith? Where’s the fruit? You don’t have to tell me, don’t answer me. I’m in the same boat. I have to check my own daily existence and answer God honestly concerning the product of my faith; whether it is there or not, whether my faith is complete or barren.
But so do you. And the safest thing you can do for your eternal soul is to honestly evaluate what you call your faith in God, and casting off all hypocrisy and self deception answer the question in your own heart of hearts; ‘is my faith working with my works and thereby being made perfect?’
I hope so. Because that is the faith that brings glory to God, that saves the sinner, that accomplishes the work of the Kingdom in this age, that demonstrates Christ’s righteousness to an unrighteous world, that brings light to the darkness, that makes the saint complete.
Not ‘faith vs works’, believer; but ‘faith and works’
May the God of heaven above and earth beneath give us grace and courage and faithfulness to live demonstrable faith in the time we have left and to His glory.
