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FAITH AND WORKS

James 2:14–26

My brothers, what use is it if a man claims to have faith and has no deeds to show? Are you going to claim that his faith is able to save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear, and if they have not enough for their daily food, and if one of you says to them ‘Go in peace! Be warmed and fed!’ and yet does not give them the essentials of bodily existence, what use is that? So, if faith too has no deeds to show, by itself it is dead.

But someone may well say: ‘Have you faith?’ My answer is: ‘I have deeds. Show me your faith apart from your deeds, and I will show you my faith by means of my deeds.’ You say that you believe that there is one God. Excellent! The demons also believe the same thing – and shudder in terror.

Do you wish for proof, you empty creature, that faith without deeds is ineffective? Was not our father Abraham proved righteous in virtue of deeds when he was ready to offer Isaac his own son upon the altar? You see how his faith co-operated with his deeds and how his faith was completed by his deeds, and so there was fulfilled the passage of Scripture which says: ‘Abraham believed in God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, for he was called the friend of God.’ You see that it is by deeds that a man is proved righteous, and not only by faith.

In the same way, was Rahab the harlot not also proved righteous by deeds, when she received the messengers and sent them away by another way? For just as the body without breath is dead, so faith without works is dead.

THIS is a passage which we must take as a whole before we look at it in parts, for it is so often used in an attempt to show that James and Paul held completely different views. It is apparently Paul’s emphasis that we are saved by faith alone and that deeds do not come into the process at all. ‘For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law’ (Romans 3:28). ‘A person is justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ . . . because no one will be justified by the works of the law’ (Galatians 2:16). It is often argued that James is not simply differing from Paul but is flatly contradicting him. This is a matter we must investigate.

(1) We begin by noting that James’ emphasis is in fact a universal New Testament emphasis. It was the preaching of John the Baptist that men and women should prove the reality of their repentance by the excellence of their deeds (Matthew 3:8; Luke 3:8). It was Jesus’ preaching that people should so live that the world might see their good works and give the glory to God (Matthew 5:16). He insisted that it was by their fruits that men and women must be known and that a faith which expressed itself in words only could never take the place of one which expressed itself in the doing of the will of God (Matthew 7:15–21).

Nor is this emphasis missing from Paul himself. Apart from anything else, there can be few teachers who have ever stressed the ethical effect of Christianity as Paul does. However doctrinal and theological his letters may be, they never fail to end with a section in which the expression of Christianity in deeds is insisted upon. Apart from that general custom, Paul repeatedly makes clear the importance he attaches to deeds as part of the Christian life. He speaks of God who will render to all according to their works (Romans 2:6). He insists that we shall all give account of ourselves to God (Romans 14:12). He urges people to put off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light (Romans 13:12). We shall all receive our own reward according to our labour (1 Corinthians 3:8). We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that everyone may receive good or evil, according to what he or she has done in the body (2 Corinthians 5:10). Christians have to put off the old nature and all its deeds (Colossians 3:9).

The fact that Christianity must be demonstrated ethically is an essential part of the Christian faith throughout the New Testament.

(2) The fact remains that James reads as if his views disagreed with those of Paul – for, in spite of all that we have said, Paul’s main emphasis is upon grace and faith and James’ upon action and works. But this must be said – what James is condemning is not Paulinism but a distortion of it. The essential Pauline position in one sentence was: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved’ (Acts 16:31). But, clearly, the significance we attach to this demand will entirely depend on the meaning we attach to believe. There are two kinds of belief.

There is belief which is purely intellectual. For instance, I believe that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides; and, if I had to, I could prove it – but it makes no difference to my life and living. I accept it, but it has no effect upon me.

There is another kind of belief. I believe that five and five make ten, and, therefore, I will resolutely refuse to pay more than ten pounds or ten dollars for two items marked at half that sum. I take that fact not only into my mind but also into my life and action.

What James is arguing against is the first kind of belief, the acceptance of a fact without allowing it to have any influence upon life. The devils are intellectually convinced of the existence of God; they, in fact, tremble before him, but their belief does not alter them in the slightest. What Paul held was the second kind of belief. For him, to believe in Jesus meant to take that belief into every section of life and to live by it.