Sunday Service on James 2 by Andrew Rappaport

And that brings me to just announce that we do have Andrew Rappaport here to bring the Word of God to us today. He is with Striving for Eternity Ministries. He was here doing our training last year in October for our evangelism conference, and he has a table with some resources at the back that he would like you to buy, and I would like you to buy them too.

Reading James 2:14-26 on Faith and Works

Turn your Bibles to the book of James, to chapter 2. We're going to read the passage that Andrew's going to be preaching out of, James chapter 2, and we're going to read verses 14 through the end of the chapter.

This is the passage that deals with the relationship between saving faith and good works, James chapter 2. We'll start reading at the beginning in verse 14 and read through the end of the chapter. 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, demons also believe and 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. We stand with me as we pray. Our gracious God, we thank you that you are faithful and just and merciful and great and.

True.

You are our rock, our redeemer, our comforter, our friend, our guide, our kinsman redeemer. You are all of these things to your people, and we thank you for the grace that you have shown us in making us your children and your people.

We thank you for the grace that has been extended to turn us from our sins and to redeem us, to grant us the faith to believe, to open our eyes that we may behold Christ and see him as wonderful and precious and alluring.

We thank you that you've drawn us to your son, that we may have eternal life. You've delivered us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. We thank you that all of this is your gift to us by a living and saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in all that he has done on our behalf.

We give you praise for these things. We thank you for these things, and we ask that you may empower us and strengthen us to worship you in a way that you are worthy to be worshiped. Help us to lift our voices and sing.

Help us to lift our hearts to you in adoration, worship, and praise that you, our great God, our great triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may be glorified amongst us in the presence of your people, both now and forever.

We ask this in the name of Christ our Lord, amen.

Conference Thanks and Upcoming Events

Well, good morning.

Good morning.

It is a blessing to be with you guys again. I really enjoyed the conference this weekend. If you were here this weekend, I know you were blessed. At the sake of getting myself in trouble with your pastor, I'm going to say some nice things about him.

You know, it's not easy putting on a conference like we had this weekend, and just really the amount of time and energy that he puts in. I organize conferences. I know what it takes. I told him this last night.

There's people who I could tell right off the bat because of my podcasts and stuff, I could tell who prepares for interviews and who doesn't very quickly. He is well prepared for the speakers that come.

I know from being, last time being the speaker, and then I got to see it now on the other side to see, I know he puts in a lot of time and energy into the people that he has come to know a lot about them, and it shows, and it's, you know, the time and energy he puts into every detail really adds to the whole conference, and it really was a blessing to be able to be here and to enjoy it.

And if you weren't here, what were you thinking? Okay, Scott Klusendorf is going to be coming in the fall.

Don't miss it.

If you don't know Scott, he really is, he deals a lot with pro-life issues, but not just pro-life issues, and you'd really be blessed, so you do not want to miss that. So I would strongly suggest you be here.

And I know next year will be Paul Taylor. If you don't know with him, it'll be the 40th anniversary of Mount St. Helens, and that's where he works, out at Mount St. Helens. And he's just a blessed brother, so you really want to make sure that you sign up and get involved in those conferences.

James 2 in Context: Genuine Faith and False Faith

So I would like to...basically I've been working through a passage of Scripture that we just heard read, because I've been noticing a lot of...well, a lot of Roman Catholics would believe that you have to work your way to heaven.

Unfortunately, I've been noticing that there's a lot of Christians, people that claim to be Christians, that have also been promoting this same thing. I do a live apologetic show, and so we get a lot of people that call in with questions, and, okay, sometimes challenges.

And we've been dealing with this issue a lot with people that say they're born-again believers, which makes you wonder what they're being taught. And so I've been working through James chapter 2 on the issue that's addressed here.

So why don't we begin with a word of prayer, and then dig into this passage. Lord, as we come to Your Word and we see what James speaks on, we realize that there are some who think Your Word has contradictions, but You, being the author of this Word, cannot.

Lie.

Because of Your integrity, we know we can trust it. Because of Your nature, we know it cannot have contradictions. And so we look to Your Word and we want to dig in because we realize there may be apparent contradictions that we might see, and there's times we must dig in to understand.

Lord, may You give us a heart's desire to know Your Word better. I ask, Lord, that no one would enter this building and leave the same way, that every one of us, whether it be through the praising of You in song, whether it be the worship to You in the reading of Your Word or the proclamation of Your Word or even in the fellowship, that in all of this, we would leave this building more in awe of You, lifting Your name up on our lips, that we would be amazed that You have anything to do with us, that we would be like, say, with the psalmist, what is man that You are mindful of him?

You are a great and holy God. Lord, we are so unworthy of being called Your children, and yet You sought fit to take us who were once Your enemy and call us Your child. It's an amazing thing, Lord. We ask that Your Word would be, by the power of the Holy Spirit, brought to illuminate our minds that we would have an understanding of it, an application of it, that we would glorify You at this time, in Christ's name, amen.

Paul, James, and the Meaning of Justification

Well, there are some people that look at this passage in James that was read, and they come to think that there must be contradictions in the Bible, because it just seems that what was read here and what we hear from Paul just seem to be different.

When we look at what Paul says, just looking at the book of Romans, Paul says in Romans 3 .20, therefore, the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. In Romans 3 .28, he says, therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

4 .3, he says, for what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness, and then two verses later he says, but to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

Chapter 5 verse 1, he says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace from God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It sounds like Paul is saying that we're saved by faith, and yet so many people think here that when we look at what James says, it sure looks as if James is saying that we're saved by works.

He's saying that if you have faith without works, he calls it dead. And so many people focus on verse 18, which says, but if someone says, you shall have faith and I shall have works, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

And they love that verse because they think that that says that you must have works with faith to be saved. And that's actually true, and it's not. Because the thing is that the first thing we have to understand is that our language sometimes is, well, not so precise.

What does it mean to be saved? Now, many of you are thinking of that time when you were once an enemy of God, and God redeemed you, he justified you, and you now became a child of God. The Holy Spirit indwelled you.

All these things that happened, and we think of that moment in time in our past, for some of us, that we were saved, and we speak of it that way. But that's not the only way the Bible speaks of the word saved and salvation.

You see, because it says not only at that point are we saved, but it also refers to saved as that process of sanctification, that process after we're regenerated that continues until the moment we die, where we're being made more saint-like.

Now, some of you look a lot more saint-like than me, I understand, but we all are in a progression, and we should all be looking more saint-like, in other words, the word saint, if you're here for Sunday school, it is to be sanctified or set apart.

We should be looking holy. God should be making us look more and more like Jesus Christ. You say, well, I don't feel that way. Well, as you continue with your walk, I hope that you look more like Christ today than you did maybe five or ten years ago.

If you've been going on for 5, 10, 15 years and you're not looking more like Christ, maybe you got to go back to that first stage. But when we talk about salvation, that also includes that process of sanctification that happens after what we sometimes say is when we got saved.

So saved is also a thing that's current. It's a present thing. It's also actually used as a future. See, salvation is also refers to that moment we die and we're glorified. Suddenly we no longer have the body of sin.

We can't wait for that day, can't we? Oh, that's great. A great thing to look forward to. You know what's even better to look forward to than being in a body without sin, without aches and pains? Seeing Christ.

That's what we should, as believers, be looking forward to. But when we talk about being saved, all three of those are in play. So you have to ask when we see this idea of faith and salvation, what's being spoken of?

Well, if you pay attention to the book of James, which I hope you do, and you look, the first thing, especially if you were here in the last hour, is you would want to first know what's the purpose of a book, because that's going to help you in understanding.

The book.

Now, James has an audience. In the very first chapter, he says that he is writing to the twelve tribes scattered.

Abroad.

Now, that refers to the nation of Israel who was in Jerusalem, and James was the pastor of Jerusalem, and they fled, and they're basically having some questions as they've gone because of the persecution to these other areas, and James is writing to encourage his flock.

And the overarching theme of this book is what does genuine faith look like? He actually gives you thirteen different tests of how to identify genuine faith. How do you use your tongue, your language?

How do you use your money? Do you show favoritism? And here he's dealing with one of works. Now, as we look at this test, we have to remember the overarching thing James wants us to realize is that he wants these believers to know how to identify true faith from false faith.

And there is a difference. There are people who will be walking the streets, they sit in churches, they claim that they are believers, and on the day of judgment, they're going to hear what Jesus says in Matthew 7, 21 to 23, I never knew you, because they had a false faith.

And James doesn't want any to have a false faith. He wants them to be able to examine themselves to say, is the faith that I claim genuine? Because I think the worst thing, the harshest thing is to live a life thinking you're a only to realize you are serving yourself all along and be cast out.

And James doesn't want that. Now, though many use this, especially the Roman Catholics, use this verse to try to justify that works salvation is necessary, and they try to say that there may be some sort of contradiction here.

They see, if you look in verse 24, he says, you see that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. And they say, see, it's not faith alone. Or in verse 26 where he says, for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

And they say, see, that must be a contradiction between Paul and James, and great men have struggled with this. You know, Martin Luther actually coming out of the Catholic Church struggled with this so much he wouldn't include the book of James in his translation because he was so indoctrinated with the Catholic view that he couldn't reconcile it with what he read in Romans and said, there's got to be something here.

So Martin Luther in his struggle just said, no, this must not be inspired. What he really should have done is just taken a step back and done some study, not that he wasn't a man of study, but the thing is he didn't question the presuppositions that were drilled into him.

And sometimes we need to take a step back and examine a text of Scripture. And so as we do this, we want to look at this and see that people who try to use this to say that we are saved by works have a problem because they're using the idea of salvation.

The wrong way.

This is not speaking of, in a sense, so much of how someone gets saved, in other words, the redemption part as much as the sanctification part, what follows that regeneration.

James 2:14-18 and the Works That Follow Regeneration

Why do I say that?

Well, let's look at the first in verse 14. What good is it my brothers? So first off, who is he talking to? People who profess Christ, his brothers. But let's see if he continues with that. If someone says he has faith, okay, so now right there, is the person he's speaking to somebody who already claims to be a believer or is it someone that's looking to be a believer?

Well, it says here he says he has the faith. So he's speaking and asking the question, you have someone that claims to be a believer in Christ, but as it says here, but does not have works. He's speaking about a question that he's asking hypothetically that you have someone in the church that says that they have the same faith that you have, but their life has not changed.

At all.

They don't do the works that we would see a Christian do. And so right there is the hypothetical he wants to ask, and he's going to address this question. Now, what I find with most people that want to try to argue that this passage teaches that you can work your way to heaven, that works are necessary for salvation, the funny thing I always notice is they never, ever start in verse 14.

They always start in verse 15. Why would that be? Could it be that 15 and following is actually answering a question that's asked in verse 14? Just maybe. A funny thing called context kind of helps in understanding the Bible.

You know, sometimes you don't have to work very hard. I had a Catholic that called into our Apologetics live show just like two or three weeks ago, and literally he was like, well, the Bible says you need to be baptized to be saved.

I said, what verse is that? He gives me the verse.

I read the verse.

I said, it doesn't say that. He says, well, you have to imply. I said, no, no, no, you said the Bible says that. I don't need to imply your theology to see that. If the Bible says that, it should just say that.

I literally for an hour just kept reading the verse over and over and over. I was like, the Bible doesn't say that. I didn't really have to do very much.

It wasn't very hard for me.

I just read the Bible in context. It frustrated him a bit. Why should we read verse 14? Because verse 14 sets up the rest of this chapter. If you skip verse 14, you don't understand what he's trying to answer.

He's answering the question of a person who claims they already have faith. Now, if they claim that they already have faith, then these works can't be something to earn it, can they? Because you've already passed that point.

You see, works can't be necessary to earn the salvation if this verse is saying that they already have it. The works he's speaking here can't be works to earn it if he's speaking of someone who.

Already has it.

This is someone that proceeds after regeneration. So he says, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him? Now, the issue here is this, again, the distinction of what type of faith does the person have.

Throughout the book, he's talking about a genuine faith and a false faith, and he's giving tests for us. And the thing that we see here is he says, if a brother or sister is poorly clothed, now right off the bat what he's doing is he's giving us a way of explaining the works in extreme example, which is a good way of argumentation.

When you want to argue, and by the way, argument is not a bad thing, logically. When we talk logic, we create a logical argument. That doesn't mean you're always angry, okay? So I know in our culture, everyone thinks argument's like this bad thing.

I get into arguments all the time, and I don't yell at anybody. The thing is, is an argument is when you make a, you're going to basically make a premise, you're going to give support, and you're going to have a conclusion.

Kids do this all the time with parents, right? We all did this with our parents. You want to go somewhere? You give a reason why you want to go?

You give the support. I cleaned my room.

I'll be back before dinner.

Can I go?

Right?

So you have an argument. Now, sometimes that turns into a different kind of argument, but what you have here in his argument is he's now giving the support for what kind of works he's speaking of. He's giving an extreme example, which is a great way to make an argument, because when you take the extreme, we were talking last night at dinner about an article that someone wrote trying to make an example of abortion, I'm trying to remember the name of that article, why to legalize murder, or murder for hire.

Why to legalize murder?

It was complete satire. Basically taking all the arguments for murdering a child in the womb for murdering a husband instead, and they use the same arguments, and say, well, we should just legalize this.

Of course, Justin Peters and I were kind of thinking like afterwards, like we're searching online for how to legalize murder for hire just before we leave for the Philippines tomorrow. If we are not back in the country next week, you know why.

But what is that doing? That satire is making an argument by going to the extreme, right? Take the extreme case, something that people would be like, there's no way anybody would ever say that, and using the same argument.

So with that in mind, this is what James does. He's taking an extreme case that the believers would be like, there is no way that this would ever happen. So what's his case? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of them says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

Now, as we look at this, this idea that we have here of where it says in some translations naked or being poorly clothed, I think poorly clothed is better. It's not the idea of being completely naked.

It's the idea of being insufficiently clothed, not having enough to keep yourself warm. The idea of needing of food or not being filled, not having or lacking in what ESV says daily food, in New King James, I think it's destitute of daily food.

It's the idea of not that you're completely starved to death, but that you have an insufficient amount that you're malnutritious, that you are barely getting by. So the thing is, you picture someone that is saying, here's someone that I call a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ, and they're barely clothed, they're barely eating, they're barely getting by, and I'm saying, go in peace, be warmed and filled.

They can't be warmed because they don't have sufficient clothing. They can't be filled because they don't have sufficient food. So the thing he's saying is there is nobody in a situation like that that has genuine faith that would walk and say, go in peace.

They would take care of that need. So he's saying here if there's somebody in need, where they're in desperate need, a believer that has the Spirit of God in them would never just walk away. It's an extrema case.

Basically, what would happen in their culture would be a little bit different than our culture. Okay, I'm from the New York area. Okay, when we see homeless, we just keep going. And they're all, by the way, they all claim to be Christian.

They do. It's amazing.

Almost every homeless guy I know is a believer. He just can't explain the gospel. He doesn't understand the basics. But you know, it's amazing. They know who's going to give for them, right? They know which group of people are going to be the ones to give.

Who is it that's the first one in when all these natural disasters happen? It's usually the Christians. The world knows that. But this is a culture where it was a requirement. It was part of the culture to take care of those less fortunate, to take care of those in need.

Actually, in Acts chapter 6, if you're familiar, it was a cause of quite a dissension within the church because what ended up happening was that there were these Hellenistic Jews, those are kind of Greek Jews, let's call them the liberal Jews.

They were the Jews that didn't speak Hebrew, so they were looked down upon. And then you had the Hebrew Jews, you know, the more religious ones. So you had a distinction going on where the widows, the Greek Jewish widows were not being cared for.

They had a need. And it became such an issue. It was like, no, as a church, we take care of the need.

Why?

Because in the Jewish culture, that's exactly what was part of the synagogue. See, in the synagogue, that's what they would do. They would take care of the poor within the synagogue, within their community.

They would take care of the widows. That's why the church was doing that. So by the way, who came up with the welfare system? It wasn't the government. It probably would run better if the church still ran it.

I'm just saying. But the thing that you see here is that he's giving an example that every Jewish person would say there is no way that would ever happen. So he goes to the extreme. And so he's saying that if somebody is saying that they are a believer in Jesus Christ, they have faith, and they can walk to their brother or sister who's poorly clothed, poorly fed, and say, hey, go in peace, be warmed and filled.

He says, so what good is that? They're not taking care of their brother. So basically what that's saying is they would say that that's not someone who is showing.

Love.

That's not someone who's taking care. Those are the works that should naturally follow someone that is a believer. So he says, so also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Now keep in mind, this is the faith not leading to salvation, right?

Because he's saying they're brothers. They claim to have the faith. They claim to be a brother or sister in Christ. So this can't be a faith that brings you into faith. This is a faith that you'd already have if you have faith.

So this is what we call the sanctification. These are the works that are done in sanctification. One of the things you'll notice, if you ever study world religions or cults, you will often find a confusion between regeneration and sanctification.

Regeneration again is that part where someone was once dead in their sins, became alive to Christ when the Spirit indwells them, they're now justified before God. Sanctification being that process of works that occurs where, by the way, who does the works?

Scripture says God does the works through us. Do you know when we do good works as a Christian, we can't even take credit for that? Because Scripture says God does that. So that's the works being spoken of here, the works that make us more in the image of.

God.

And so we see here in verses 14 to 16, there is a reason for faith and works. And the reason for faith and works is to show us or to reveal to us what genuine faith looks.

Like.

Genuine faith looks like someone who sees someone in need and gives. Some of us, by the way, have a pride problem. We don't receive gifts so well. Some of you know my history, but my wife and I met because I was, at the time, or just before we met, I was homeless and had no food.

You know what's funny about that? I was in charge of the deacon's fund in church. I had $5 ,000 in the bank that I was going to shop right to get gift cards for people in need. I was going without food.

You want to talk about pride problems? My wife gave me four groceries. She wasn't my wife at the time, obviously, but when we met and she found out I was hungry, she didn't think. There was no question.

She said, here's someone that confesses to be a brother in Christ in need. She went out and got groceries.

Why?

That's the natural thing to do. And so you end up seeing that that reveals the genuine faith, the way we behave toward one another. Now this is following a passage, if you look at the first half of James 2, where he's talking about favoritism, about people who come in the church and you start showing favoritism toward one versus the other.

And now he's going in and saying, well, wasn't that exactly what you'd have here, favoritism? If you can say that someone's a believer, you're a believer in Christ, you see someone else that you say is a believer in Christ, they're in desperate need, and you could just say, hey, I got the resources, but see ya.

By the way, I should say that my pride was so, I wasn't going to take the groceries for.

My wife.

She knew me so well, having just met me for like two, three days, she left a verse, Acts 2, 44 and 45, and it fits in very well to this, because Acts 2, 44 and 45 says, talks about them selling all that they had to give to those in need.

So after Peter preaches the gospel, many people get saved, what's the first thing they do? They sell their possessions to give to those in need. That's the natural response. That's what James is saying.

James would have been at that church in Jerusalem where that happened. He would have understood that. This is like this extreme example. You would never believe that someone has genuine faith if they can walk past someone they say is a brother and say, be warmed and filled.

You see, so right off the bat, we have to recognize this is not talking about regeneration. Now it is, but it isn't. It is because the person is claiming they are regenerate, and the question is, are they?

That's the question that James is asking. Is this person truly regenerate who says they have faith, but does not have works? That is the question that he's actually asking in our vernacular, and he's basically going to answer no.

Why?

Because works proceed from regeneration. There's a relationship. We'll see this in verses 17 to 18. There's a relationship between faith and works. In 17 and 18, it says, Can any of you see my faith? No, you can't, can you?

And I can't see yours. I mean, boy, wouldn't it be easy if like God just, you know, for all of his elect children, he just put a big E right on their forehead. I mean, it'd make evangelism so much easier, right?

You just walk up to a guy with an E on his head, hey, do you believe in Christ?

Not yet?

Okay, well, let me tell you about him. I mean, I could just ignore all the others, right? It'd be so much easier if we could just see that, but we can't. What can we see? Well, we see the fruits of regeneration.

John MacArthur always says, Sometimes it does take time. Years ago in church, we had a young man who came to church. I admit we were a little bit concerned. He liked a young lady in the church who was single.

By the way, single girls, never trust guys. Just trust your dads.

They know better.

Just saying. Because they know what guys are willing to do.

Anything.

And this guy was willing to do anything. This was a guy you would never have questioned. I mean, this guy came to church, and from day one, he professed that he got saved that first week in church. He never missed church.

In three years, he never missed church. He was there for Sunday school. He was there for morning worship. He was there for evening worship. He was there for midweek Bible study. He attended everything.

He was looking to serve in any way, even when this girl wasn't around. Amazing thing, it was announced that she was getting married. And we never saw him again in church. Now, I'm not the kind of guy you want to ask for accountability if you really don't want accountability.

He made that mistake. He wanted me to keep him accountable. So one night, he went back to work at the bar where he used to work before. He professed to be a believer. And the thing you don't want to see at 3 in the morning after getting off a night of work at a bar is me sitting by your car.

And that's exactly what he saw. And he admitted to me. I said, what are you doing? He said, you know, I'll be honest. I just thought if I acted like a Christian, I can get Suzanne. Now, he seemed like he had all the works, but given enough time, it was revealed he was not a believer.

His fruit didn't pan out. And that's all we can look at. Really, what James is telling us to do is to be fruit inspectors. We have to be careful with that. You know, because not all of us grow at the same rate.

You know? I mean, all of us would love to be as mature and humble as Justin and never complain about anything like ever. Sorry, I put you on the spot. He's going to hate me for that. Not all of us can have the maturity that your pastor has.

We're all going to grow at different rates. But the reality is that we should be growing. If we're not growing, if there's no continuing of, maybe it's just small steps. But James is saying if there's nothing, there's no works, then you have to question whether there was a regeneration that occurred prior.

You have to question the regeneration if you don't see the works that follow regeneration. There is a process we see in Scripture of maturity. There is unhealthy growth, and there's healthy growth for believers.

There's some churches that just feed milk. Paul talks about this, right? They should be eating the meat by now. They're like babies that just are fed milk. And so what you end up seeing is that that is unhealthy.

We had a woman in our church years ago who adopted a child. A single mother kept this child in a crib and just gave this boy a bottle of milk. You say, what's the big deal? He was five years old, still in a crib, still eating just milk.