What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless. Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.” You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless? Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God. So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone. Rahab the prostitute is another example. She was shown to be right with God by her actions when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works. James 2:14-26
October 31st each year sets
up a dichotomy of directions. On one
hand there is Halloween, the witches’ brew, goblins, and scary movies. The other is Reformation Day, a celebration of
Martin Luther’s nailing the 95 Theses of Faith to the church door at Wittenberg,
Germany in 1517, which led to the Protestant break with the Catholic
church. Luther’s rallying cry was Faith
Alone, a strong agreement with Paul the apostle, that we are saved by
faith, not our works.[1] A seeming contradiction is
apostle James’ need for “works” to validate our faith. Which is right? Short answer is both; it
just depends on whom you ask.
Paul’s admonition about faith
alone was intended for Jewish ears, where “faith” was all about
doing…keeping the law…paying tithes…unending lists of do’s and don’ts. Paul’s theme was to beef up the heart, put
some pulse back in faith arteries.
James, however, was speaking to a different
group, people who preferred to sit in a puddle of faith while the suffering of
humanity made a detour around their do-nothing cesspool. Resting in faith-alone was a prophylactic against
doing anything worthwhile (or strenuous) was using God’s cross as an excuse for
lazy Christianity.
The result of the debate is that both
Paul and James were spot-on; they were the two ends of a full-throated
salvation argument. To settle in either
our good deeds or our good faith is death.
Without faith we can do nothing holy; without good deeds our (so-called)
faith is a either a sham or self-delusion.
Genuine faith is always evidenced in good works, and Godly works will
always point people to the cross.
For You Today
There’s a good reason God kept Paul and
James in the New Testament. There are those
of us who need to develop a little meat of works to flesh out our bones of
faith…as well as those whose works-without-end need a fresh wind of faith to put
some backbone of conviction in what we do.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky
Road; have a blessed day!
Title image: Pixabay.com W Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For other posts on James 2 see: Faith and Works and
Picking Up the Trowel
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