James Chapter 2, Verses 14-26

It is good to be with you again this morning. For those of you who might be distracted and concerned, yes, the pulpit has been restored to its proper place, and all is well up here. I certainly feel much more at home when everything is exactly where it needs to be, and it's nice to have the pastor back as well.

And it was a wonderful opportunity yesterday afternoon to spend some time celebrating the 25 years that the pastor has been filling this pulpit. I'd like you to turn with me to, again, the Epistle of James, and this morning we will be looking at James Chapter 2.

James 2 and the Misuse of Faith and Works

James Chapter 2, we began looking last week at this little epistle, and I attempted at that time to sort of prepare you for some of the difficult work we will do together as a people this morning. Not that the passage is unclear, but that the passage we're dealing with today is probably one of the most straightforward exhortations to living a consistent Christian life in all of Scripture.

There are no punches pulled, so to speak, in what the Apostle says to us in James Chapter 2. But most of the time, the thrust of this passage is lost upon us, because most of us, when we think about this passage, think about how the passage has been misused.

So what I would like to do this morning is ask you to, in essence, work with me. For the first few moments, I'd like to address the fact that all of us, at some time or another probably, if we've ever tried to share our faith with anyone who has embraced a work salvation system, all of us have had to, in some way, shape, or form, address James Chapter 2, especially verses 20 or 24.

We've all heard it. I hear it all the time, over and over again. I hear people misusing this passage, and so, unfortunately, it's difficult for us to lay aside that issue and to hear what James is really saying.

So what I'd like to do in the first few minutes is to simply address why it is that James Chapter 2, beginning about verse 14 through the end of the chapter, is not in any way, shape, or form a passage that has anything to do with contradicting what the Apostle Paul said, has nothing to do with overthrowing the preaching of justification by faith, that the context of the two are completely different.

Let's deal with that, and then I'm going to ask you to do your best to simply lay that conflict aside, to just move it aside, so that we can then listen to what James is really saying and pray that God would really press upon us the very important message that is contained in these verses.

But let's first look at the chapter, let's remind ourselves of the context, and remember what is said here in James Chapter 2. My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.

For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes and say, you sit here in a good place, and you say to the poor man, you stand over there, sit down by my footstool, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motive?

Listen, my beloved brethren, did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heir of the kingdom which he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court?

Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law, according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.

But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not commit murder.

Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty, for judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy.

Mercy triumphs over judgment. What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food 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?

Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. 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. You believe that God is one.

You do well. The demons also believe in shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?

You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected. 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.

You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. 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? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

Faith Without Works Is Dead

Now we saw last week that James decries those situations in the Christian life that simply shouldn't be. In fact, in chapter 3, he uses the phrase when talking about the mouth that brings forth both blessing and cursing.

He says, Brethren, these things ought not to be this way. And in chapter 1, he talked about the hearer of the word of God who is not an effectual doer of the word of God, and he likened him to the person who looks in the mirror and forgets when he goes away what kind of a person he was.

There shouldn't be such a thing as a person who really hears the word of God but doesn't do the word of God. There is something unnatural about that. The same contrast is brought out here in chapter 2, the same contrast of how a person should never be just a hearer but needs to be a hearer and a doer is here brought out.

But here are the words is the person who has faith but does not have works just as it is unnatural to hear and not do. It is unnatural, James says, to have faith and not have deeds, have works that are commensurate with that faith.

The vast difference in the context between what James is addressing and what the Apostle Paul addresses as to how a man becomes right with God should be enough for us to recognize that we should not be confused by what James says.

All through this epistle, James is talking about the reality of Christian living. He's not talking about how a person is made right before God in point of fact, he's talking about the absolute necessity for a consistency to exist between what we say and what we do.

In this passage, when we talk about a person who says, I have faith, he is the one who claims to have faith. Well, a person who says, I have faith in Jesus Christ, James is saying, if you really do, then there needs to be a consistency between that claim and the actions that that mark your very existence.

And so from the very beginning, we see that there is no reason to place this passage of scripture in contrast with any other. The context are completely different, and James is not ever addressing the issue of how one becomes right with God.

He's talking about how one lives the Christian life. And so I'd like to suggest we do something to help us put that whole controversy of justification aside and to just hear what James is saying, because you see, James is talking to Christians.

And so I want us this morning to hear him speaking to us. I'd like to suggest that you do something, and this was suggested to me, interestingly enough, by a Roman Catholic commentary. You might say, ooh, you're reading Roman Catholic?

Yes, I am. The reason I am is I am writing a book on this subject, and I need to know what everybody is saying. And I mentioned in Bible study this morning the fact that in reading one of these Roman Catholic commentaries, I discovered a man who had the willingness to say, you know what?

There's nothing in this passage whatsoever that is in any way, shape or form contradictory to Paul. James is not addressing how a person is made righteous whatsoever. He's talking about how a person should live the Christian life.

And this scholar actually went so far as to translate the word justified in a way that I think brings out the means that we can use to understand why there is no contrast here at all. I'll give you an example.

In verse 21, chapter 2, verse 21, the translation offered by this particular individual was not Abraham, our father, shown to be righteous on the basis of deed. When he offered up Isaac, his son, on the altar, he has the intestinal fortitude, shall we say, for I'm certain he's taken some heat for doing so, for recognizing that what James is talking about in the passage is not how a man is made right before God, but how a man is shown to be right before God.

How a man's faith is vindicated or shown to be real. And so I'd like to suggest that when we encounter the word works, since Paul uses the word works in the passages we're thinking of in Romans three and Romans four and Romans five in a negative way, meritorious works that men do to try to gain God's favor, and that's nowhere anywhere close to James's context.

Let's use the word deeds. And when we look at the word justification, wasn't our father Abraham justified? Let's use the understanding of shown to be justified and look again at what he says here. Laying all that argument aside, let's listen to what James says to us this morning.

Let's begin at verse 14. What use is it? My brethren, who's he talking to? He's talking to us. In his context, it was probably Jewish Christians primarily, but he's talking to people who claim to be Christians and he's asking us a question.

What use is it? My brethren, if someone claims, if someone says, I have faith, I have faith. I'm of the congregation. I'm of the believers. I'm a fellow believer. And James says, what use is it? What good is it if someone says it, but has no deeds?

You look around for the person's life and wow, there's nothing there. You examine how the person lives and you can't tell any difference between this person and the world. There's no love for the things that Christ loves.

There's no love for the things that are important to believers. James asked the question, can that faith save him? Now, if you have the New King James version of the Bible, it simply says, can faith save him?

But in the original language here, we have the use of a definite article before the word faith. And this passage is a classic example of what is called the anaphoric use of the article. The article used to point back to a previous occurrence of the word.

The word faith appears twice in this passage. If someone says he has faith, but has no works, can that faith save him? James is asking the question, can a deedless faith save? Can a faith that has no life save?

Throughout this passage, we must keep in mind that James is decrying the kind of faith that has absolutely no life. He's talking about, as he will describe it in verse 17, as a dead faith. This is the type that he's decrying.

He's decrying that person who says, but has no reality. Just as we saw, he decried the person who says, I hear, but I do not do anything about what I hear. There is a contradiction, a contrast that follows throughout this epistle.

And so he asks the question, my brethren, if someone says, I have faith, they have no deeds. They say, I believe, but there are no deeds that demonstrate this. Can that kind of faith save him? Let me give you an example.

James says, if a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 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?

What use are these words that you speak to this person? If you have with you the means to help them, why in the world open your mouth and say, go in peace, be warmed and be filled, if there is then not the provision of the need?

You see the illustration? The words are empty. Be warmed, be filled. The words have no meaning, because you're not going to provide them, even though you have the provision, with what they need. And so the words are empty words, just as the words of the one who says, oh, I have faith.

Do you have any deeds? No, but I have faith. Empty words. So he concludes that illustration by saying, even so, faith, that claim of belief, if it has no deeds, it's dead. It's dead being by itself. And notice that, at least in the New American Standard, the word being is in italics.

The way that Paul actually expresses this is literally, it is dead according to itself, being alone. There is no such thing as a living faith that is needless. There is no such thing as a living faith that is just the empty profession of words that has no corresponding reality within the heart.

So faith, that claim of faith, if it has no deeds, is dead by itself. He will use an even more striking illustration at the end of this passage that I think illustrates the exact same thing. Verse 18, but someone may well say, you have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith without these deeds, I'm sorry, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. What's being said? What is his point here? Well, it's a difficult passage. It's very difficult to translate, in fact, as to know where to put the quotation marks and so on and so forth, but its main thrust is fairly clear.

The claim is made, I have faith. You have faith. I have works. The challenge that is made is this, show me. I'm reminded this morning the great controversy that began yesterday at the lunch slash dinner for Pastor and Roxy.

The great controversy, is that really Roxy? And this is going to be brewing for quite some time, I can tell, especially amongst the ladies in the church. So today we were looking at the picture and Roxy reminded me, well, you know what state I'm from.

I said, the show me state? You're right. Well, this is a somewhat of an indication that James may have visited that state himself. Why? Show me. Show me your faith apart from deeds. There's the challenge.

And this is important to understanding the whole thing. All through this, James is talking about this idea of action and now he's saying, show me something. You can talk me to death. You can talk me to death.

You can say, I have faith, I have faith, I have faith, show me, show me your faith apart from deeds. Now, how do you do that? Can't be done. Can't be done. Think of the people that you know in whose life you have seen faith.

It wasn't always necessarily just the going out and doing things. It was how they responded to situations. It's how they lived their lives. It's how they responded to tragedy and difficulty. That's where you saw their faith was in what they did, how they responded and how they ministered to others.

You see, the challenge is given there. Show me your faith apart from deeds. That's the challenge that cannot be met. And you see, that's the challenge that determines between the person who has a real and living faith and the person who doesn't.

We know that in the church, we see people coming through the door. And over the years, and I've only been here 10 years, which is much less time than some of the rest of you have been here. But over that period of time, I've seen folks come in and you can tell pretty much, pretty much early on that folks come in and they're very impressed themselves.

They're very impressed with theological knowledge and they can argue fine points of theology with you. And boy, they want you to be very impressed with them too. Here's a test that you can sort of apply.

Show me your faith, not by what comes out of your mouth, by what you simply say. Show me your faith apart from deeds. Let's see how you can do that. You can't do it. It's not possible. But notice the response to this is, and I will show, I will demonstrate, I will prove the existence of my faith, how?

By my deeds. That's how we show it to one another. That's not how we show it to God, but we show it to one another. That's how we show it to each other within the fellowship and that's how we show it to those outside the faith as well, because I'm going to tell you something, the world is sick of a Christianity that says a lot and does nothing.

The world is sick of a Christianity that says, I love Jesus, but as we live our lives, all we do is wrestle around with the rest of the world and the muck and the mire. How do we show living faith? By our deeds.

He says, you believe there are those who have a confession. You believe God is one. You're an Orthodox person. You're not like those pagans out there that confess that there's many gods and things like that.

And there are lots of people who say, yes, I'm Orthodox. I can quote the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. I can do it backwards and do it in multiple languages. Aren't I wonderful? James says, you believe God's one, you do well.

But, by the way, the demons believe when they shudder. You see, your belief in that, if it doesn't have any correspondence to what's in here, if your belief in one God does not then result in your worship of that one God and your desire to be conformed to what he would have you to be, what good is it?

Even the demons know there's only one true God. Doesn't save them. Demons believe, but they shudder as a result, James says. Then we come to the passage that I've said many times. I think my Mormon friends memorized this one long before John 3 .16 or anything else.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard it said that Paul said this. So very rarely are people telling me on the basis of a close examination of the book of James what they think it means. But are you willing to know?

Are you willing to be informed? Oh foolish man, literally it means, oh empty man. He's talking to someone who's empty, has no inner reality to their outward profession. That's what James is talking about here.

You empty man, are you willing to know that faith, separate from, apart from deeds is what? Well, some translations say dead. And that would be consistent with what's said in verse 17. That would be consistent with what's said in verse 26.

But in reality, the earliest manuscripts say useless. And I think there's a strong argument to be made for this word on the basis of the text. Why? Because the fact that the word here is actually made up of taking the root of the word work or deed and putting the letter in front of it that negates it.

For example, when we talk about a person who is a believer in God, we call him a theist. What's a person who doesn't believe in God? An atheist, a person who claims they have knowledge is a Gnostic, a person who claims not to be able to have knowledge of them agnostic.

That little a negates what comes after it. Well, what is done with this word is you take the word, the root for the word work, and you put an a on the front of it and you come up with this idea of something that is deedless, useless, empty, worthless.

And that's what James says, faith separated from, apart from deeds, it's useless. It has no worth. It produces nothing. And he's saying you empty man, don't you realize that your profession is as empty as you are?

You who claim something, but don't have the inner reality. Your claim means nothing. It's useless. You want an example, Abraham, our father, again, a good illustration that just like Paul talks about Abraham as our father here, James is talking about Abraham as our father.

What about Abraham? He says, was not Abraham, our father shown to be righteous on the basis of deeds when he offered Isaac, his son upon the altar? Now immediately someone will say, no, you can't take verse 21 that way.

You can't take this as a demonstration, a vindication of Abraham's faith because there wasn't anybody there to see it. That is most often the response that is given. Now you, you're trying to get around something here because you see there wasn't anybody to see Abraham offering Isaac upon the altar.

I beg to differ with you on two grounds. First of all, there was somebody there. Let's not forget someone named Isaac, but there is also somebody else there. All of us. You see, Abraham becomes to us the example of the living out of the faith that was his, the faith that made him right with God.

Back in Genesis 15, James is now saying that same faith continued on from James chapter 15 and it was just as real in James chapter 22 and he demonstrated that he was righteous on the basis of his deeds because he obeyed God.

He obeyed God and he did what God commanded him to do and his obedience demonstrated that the faith he had back then had indeed justified him in God's sight and now it's vindicated, it's demonstrated to be real years later when he obeys God and offers Isaac upon the altar in Genesis 22.

You see, he said it back then, but his deeds were consistent with it. Even many years later, he was shown to be righteous on the basis of the deeds that he did and you want another reason why I say there was more than just Isaac there, that this is for all of us.

Let's look at the very next word, so we see. We see. Here it says, you see the new American centerpieces of King James. The point is that there is a perception, a seeing. We see it through the scriptures.

We see it through the recording of us, for us in the scriptures. We see something. There is a reason why these things happen in the Old Testament. This is the same thing Paul said, these things are written for our instruction.

We see something. What do we see? Well we read in scripture in Genesis 15 that Abraham had faith and he believed God and he believed the promises and credit to him is righteousness. But we can't see into Abraham's heart and so we see by what he does many years later.

We see that his faith verse 22 faith was working together with his deeds. There was a in the literal word here is where we get the word synergy, a union, a working together that faith that he had back in Genesis 15 working together with his deeds and as a result of those deeds, his faith is brought to perfection.

His faith is perfected, completed. It's not just empty words for Abraham. When we can, when we say Abraham had real faith, we can prove it. It wasn't just a shadow. It wasn't just something. It wasn't one of those situations where we, we look back over our lives and we think of people that we've known and many years have passed since we've known them.

And we can actually say, well, you know, that, that fellow there, he was for real, he is for real. There was a consistency between what he said and how he lived and you know what, it's still there. But then we know others.

That consistency was never there then, and it's not there today. We can look back over our lives and see things like that. We can see in Abraham the consistency, his faith and his deeds work together, and that perfected his faith.

And then he can then say, and the scripture was fulfilled, which says Abram believed in God and was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. And you might go, well, wait a minute, that's Paul's passage.

That's Paul's key passage. Yes, it is. But Paul doesn't say anything about fulfillment. You see, fulfillment for James in this passage is the fulfillment of, he had faith, he was reckoned righteous then, but that faith is fulfilled in what happens here.

You see, James is using the passage in a completely different way than Paul does. Paul's talking about what happened back there in Genesis 15. How is it that a sinner can be made right with God? James is saying you have faith back then, but now we see that that faith really is true and saving faith by what Abraham does.

And you notice something, I'm not sure how the King James does this, but the New American right there uses large capital letters to show quotations from the Old Testament, and you can see up to the last phrase of verse 23 that it's in caps.

But then it says, and he was called the friend of God. And you might ask yourself the question, hmm, where was he called the friend of God? That phrase itself doesn't appear in the Old Testament. That phrase doesn't appear in the Old Testament.

It does appear in intertestamental Jewish writings. It was a part of Jewish thought that Abraham was the friend of God, why? Because Abraham did the things that God asked him to do. Abraham lived in such a way that he demonstrated that he and God were as friends, walking down the same road together.

It was in Judaism that Abraham was called the friend of God, because it was recognized that there was a consistency in his life that made his profession real. So when James says, you see, he uses a different word than he used back in verse 22, but it doesn't really have much of a difference in meaning.

Because of this example from Abraham, you see that a man is shown to be righteous. On the basis of deeds and not by faith only. Because you see, I can say over and over and over again, I believe, I believe, I believe, but I cannot show that unless I live it.

In the same way, he says, was not Rahab the harlot also shown to be righteous? On the basis of deeds when she received the messengers or the scouts, the spies, and sent them out by another way? She had said she had faith.

The scripture talks about the fact that she knew the God of Israel, but she acted in a way that was consistent with her saying, I know that the God of Israel is a powerful God. So he gives another example.

It says, Rahab the harlot, she was also shown to be righteous on the basis of what she did when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way. So what do all these illustrations come to?

For just, James says, as the body, the soma, the physical body, just as the body without the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from deeds is dead. Why? Because it's empty. There's nothing there. The vitalizing principle isn't there.

Now is he saying that it's deeds that makes faith alive? No, that's not what he's saying. A body, if it is to be a living body, if it is to be, if we're to be a human being, we need to have the soma and we need to have the spirit.

That's the way it's supposed to be. Faith, if it's going to be real faith, has to be faith that has a demonstration to it, that has deeds to it. There's no such thing, really, as far as having real existence, as a faith that does not have deeds.

That really doesn't exist. Oh, you say, well, I hear people all the time. Yeah, I know, but that's not really faith. That's not really faith any more than a body without a spirit is truly a human being.

In just the same way, there's no such thing as really hearing the Word without doing the Word. You see the consistency all through the passage? So with that in mind, with these things in mind, let's step back one more time and ask ourselves the question, what use is it, my brethren, of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, if we say with all of our might, we have faith, we have faith, we have faith, if when we leave this place, we do not act and live in such a way that gives reality to the claim that we make.

People would say, you know, if y 'all would just sort of change your emphasis just a little bit, you could attract a lot more people. If y 'all just wouldn't be so practical in applying the Word of God, if you'd maybe skip over a few of those sections that are a little bit hard, they're a little bit tough, you could fill the place.

Hey, maybe we'd go to two services, you know, that'd be, that'd be, Pastor Fry just fainted. Maybe, you know, that'd be something really cool to do, you know, and maybe we could find out which of those pews back there in the back section actually can hold people, you know, which one's Creek and so on and so forth.

Maybe we could find out if you just sort of back off on some of those things. But what use is it? We have to take these passages seriously. People ask us, why do you emphasize this constant reminder that we need to be conformed to the image of God and our behavior and our thinking and the way that we consider and make decisions in our lives has to be consistent with the Lordship of Christ and the desire to be obedient to Him.

Why do you emphasize that so much? Because the New Testament does. And because, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be the empty man, the foolish fellow of verse 20. I don't want to be the person who has nothing but words and nothing beyond that.

And there certainly is a commitment on the part of the elders of this church that at the very least, as Paul says, I am innocent of the blood of every man. Why? Because I proclaim the whole counsel of God to you.

And that means we're going to warn every Christian. The Bible says, examine yourselves, test yourselves and ask yourself the question, what use is it when we look at our lives? I'm not saying are we sinlessly perfect.

I'm not saying do we walk in here this morning and not realize that we had that angry word and we were impatient in that way and all those things. What I'm asking is, are we concerned about that? When we look back over our lives, is there a godly concern that says, Lord, I see that area.

I see that that attitude that was mine. And I want to have deeds, Father. I want to have deeds not to try to merit something from you because I know I can't do that. But Father, I want my faith to be a living faith.

And I want it to grow. And I want in my workplace and in the home and in the school or wherever it might be, I don't want to be that foolish fellow. I don't want to be that empty Christian. I want my faith to matter.

I want it to change me. Is that our desire? Is that what we want? It needs to be what we want. Because when that is truly our desire, then not only do we become bold witnesses to others, do we become bold in sharing the gospel with others, but there is that wonderful consistency in our lives that gives a foundation to our proclamation and honors and glorifies God.

The church in our day needs to hear what James has to say. The church in our day needs to hear the warning. We've heard the words, ah, you talk a good talk. We've heard people saying that. But here is James' version of it.

And we know, we know that our work in this world in evangelizing and spreading the gospel has been made much more difficult by the fact that there are so many out there who've never heard these words, or if they have, they've ignored them.

And they keep saying, I believe, I believe, I believe. And yet they give an example to the world of someone who has absolutely no connection between the professed faith and the life that would bring honor and glory to Christ.