All right. To begin this passage, you fill in the name, but I’ll tell you the story of the person James is talking about here. I suspect he’s one that we all have known. He makes a clear profession of faith in Christ. If you ask, he’ll tell you, “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” You ask, he will tell you he’s been born again. If you ask, he will tell you he’s trusting Christ alone for his salvation. If you ask him, if you were to die today and stand before God and he were to ask you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” he would answer, “Because Christ stood in my place and he’s my Savior.” He has the right creed. He has an impressive profession of faith. He has the right doctrine.
And, in fact, he attended church for a while. And then, suddenly, he’s not. And then you talk to him—oh yeah, “I’m still saved, and I’m still trusting in Christ. This church thing isn’t for me.” And not just the church thing, but life in general hasn’t really changed much. And after you look back over him over the past six months or a year or whatever, you say, “Whatever this happened, this flash-in-the-pan thing that was a profession of faith, nothing seems to be different.” So the question then is, is he a Christian or isn’t he?
Now, of course, we are all evangelicals, and we can do one better than that. We’re Calvinists. We know that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. That’s our whole defining hope. We summarize it with some solas: solus Christus, Christ alone. He did all the work that saves. And it comes to us sola gratia, by grace alone, not by works. And it comes to us through faith alone, not through works. And all of that is to God alone be the glory. And that’s our whole hope.
So then, is this guy that I’ve just described, that James is talking about here, is he an example then of a man who’s been saved by grace? No works, just grace. And believing in sola gratia, like we do, grace alone, these words of James in chapter 2, verses 14 and following can really be stunning. Verse 14: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith and does not have works, can that faith save him?” Or verse 24, at the end of the passage: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Well, it gets your attention, particularly if you’re a Calvinist. It’s not by faith alone, or is it?
And notice how James asks the question in verse 14. “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith and does not have works? Can that faith save him?” He kind of asks the same question twice. What good is it? And then, can that faith save him? And in fact, the way this is worded in the original, it’s that kind of faith can’t save him, can it? It anticipates a negative answer. We’re sharing this in common. We all know that kind of faith doesn’t save, right? And so he asks it that way, and that’s why I think in the NIV it translates as “if a man claims to have faith.” We have it here, “the man says he has faith.” So he says he has faith. He’s made a profession of faith in Christ, but doesn’t have works. Is he a genuine Christian?
Well, that’s the theme of the entire paragraph here. Verse 17 says it again: “faith by itself without works is dead.” Verse 20: “faith without works is useless.” Verse 26: “faith without works is dead.” It’s hard to miss the point. And very famously, and I’m sure you’ve heard this, Martin Luther saw it and he was startled by it and couldn’t figure a way to make this right. And so he banished the epistle of James to the back of the canon, sort of a secondary status kind of a thing. He called it very famously an “epistle of straw” or a “right strawy epistle.” This doesn’t have the boldness of grace that we find in Paul.
And still today, we have those kinds of discussions: James versus Paul. I’ve heard that brought up here in discussion as well from some who were here at the time. James versus Paul. James says one thing, Paul says the opposite. Two different things going on here. Or in terms of contemporary discussion, what’s called the “new perspective,” they grab ahold of the other side and they’ll say, “See there, works do play a role in the ground of our justification.” I suspect if I had announced my title as “Justification: Not by Faith Alone,” I wouldn’t have been able to preach this evening.
But what do we do with a passage like this? James is the oldest book in the New Testament, the first one written, and yet it deals with a very contemporary problem: the claim to the new birth and yet without real conversion. It’s a huge controversy at various times in the history of the church. Recently, back in the ’80s and ’90s, this was a huge controversy in evangelicalism. John MacArthur led the way with a couple of books and then some others as well joined in this idea that you can be a Christian without being converted. That’s the question of James 2 verses 14 through the end of the chapter. Is it possible to be saved without being converted? That’s what it comes down to. And it’s pretty clear what James’ answer is.
Now, it’s more than a curious theological question. There are huge implications to it. It has eternal significance for every one of us. True religion is all about faith, and the Christian gospel is all about grace, and all about faith, and it’s all about Christ alone. But as it’s been said since the Reformation, the faith by which we are justified is not alone. It works. The faith by which we are justified is not alone. It works. And that in sum is what James is saying in this passage. And in fact, as we’ve already seen, that in fact is the theme of James’ letter. He’s writing to tell us that real faith has earmarks. There are ways you can tell if it’s genuine. You can tell it by a transformed life. And he brings up one practical example after another, and that’s the letter of James, to show how faith works. Here we come to the heart of his letter, where he addresses that question head-on. A faith without works, can it save? What good is it?
Can A Faith Without Works Save Anyone?
So he raises the question then, let’s walk our way through here, verse 14. “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” And now that’s the thought that carries us through the entire passage. Can a faith without works save anyone? So that’s the theme that we’re dealing with now through the passage.
Verses 15 and 16, he offers a simple illustration to make the point. “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace and be warmed and be filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” All right, so you have a brother or sister who says, “You know, we’re out of money, we’re out of food, I can’t feed the kids, can’t pay the heating bill.” And you say, “I’ll pray for you, brother.” Or worse yet, “Good luck.” The person who does that, is his faith—is that person any different from the person without faith? That’s James’ question.
Well, that actually takes us back to chapter 1. You’ll see verse 27 where he addressed this before. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” If our faith has made no more difference than just letting a guy go with his hunger and his need and letting our brother or sister sit in want without helping them, what kind of faith is that? And so verses 15 and 16 then give us just that sample case.
Faith By Itself, If It Does Not Have Works, Is Dead
When we come to verse 17, James states his thesis. “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Well, there it is. You don’t have to have six theological degrees to get the point. Faith by itself, faith alone, by itself, if it doesn’t have works, is dead. Now, we’ve got to be careful how to understand this, though. James is not discounting faith. He’s not saying faith doesn’t matter. He’s not saying you can be saved by works alone. He’s discounting a certain kind of faith. And that is a kind of faith that has no works. A faith that doesn’t produce anything and doesn’t change the life. So he’s contrasting here a professed faith which is barren and therefore useless, with a genuine faith which produces works and therefore proves to be genuine. Genuine faith, he tells us, may be expressed with the mouth, of course, but it doesn’t stop there. Genuine faith shows itself in the rest of life.
And that’s what he comes to then in verse 18. “Someone will say, ‘You have faith, I have works.'” James does not say here, “Forget faith, it’s works that count.” Notice what he says. “Someone will say, ‘You have faith, I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works. I will show you my faith by my works.'” That’s driving his theme here. Genuine faith demonstrates itself by works. So the faith by which we are justified, the faith alone by which we are justified, is not alone. It’s a faith that works.
Very simple as James is, he gives us then some illustrations. Verse 19, he illustrates this with the demons of all things. Verse 17: “You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder.” Do you ever consider that the demons have a very orthodox faith? There’s not an atheist among them. We have that marvelous scene in the Gospels, you remember, when this man is demon-possessed, and Jesus shows up, and the demons scream, and they’re afraid. “Oh, what are you doing here? Did you come here to torment us before the time?” Now think about that. Here are the demons acknowledging who Jesus is. They’re acknowledging his deity, his lordship. They’re evidently acknowledging eternal punishment. They have a very orthodox faith. You expect to see any demons in heaven? That’s James’ point here. There must be something more to be said. There can be full acceptance of truth, assent to truth. And yet if that faith is not a faith that produces works, what good is it? Now this illustration doesn’t walk on all fours. There are other reasons, of course, problems with the demons and all of that. But James’ point is well served and it’s just this: they believe, they believe, they make assent to propositional truth, theological statements, they believe them. But they’re not saved. So also with that person who professes to have faith, but no works. So his illustration is extreme maybe, but it makes the point.
Faith Was Completed By His Works
His next illustration, verses 20 to 23. Now we come from demons to Abraham. “Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works? And the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ He was called a friend of God.”
So he’s referring here back to Genesis chapter 22, of course, the famous event in the life of Abraham. God commands Abraham to take his son Isaac up Mount Moriah and offer him in sacrifice. The Lord ends up intervening, of course, as you remember, but Abraham obeyed God, was willing to go through with it. Now was there any doubt about the genuineness of Abraham’s faith after Genesis 22? After Mount Moriah? Of course not. Why? Well, he demonstrated his faith. That’s James’ point. He made his faith—notice the statement, verse 22—”faith was completed by his works.” His faith was finished. It showed itself. It proved itself. How? By his works.
Now notice here already, before we get to the difficult verse that’s next, James is not saying faith doesn’t matter. He’s not saying you’re saved by works. He’s saying Abraham’s faith, by which he was justified, was completed by his works, was demonstrated to be true by his works. So that then takes us to verse 24, the most startling verse in the whole passage. “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone?” What, James? You ever get to read something in the Bible and say, “Why would you say that? Why would you say that, James? A man is justified by works and not by faith alone?” Would Paul say such a thing?
Well, before we jump to conclusions, again, back up and then follow through and follow James’ thinking here. Verse 14: he’s not discounting faith. He’s asking what good is it if someone says he has faith and does not have works. Can that faith save him? Or, I think the NIV translates it here, “can such a faith as that save him?” And then, what kind of faith? Verse 17: “faith by itself.” That kind of faith. Faith that does not have works. Can that faith save him? That’s not the kind of faith, faith without works, that’s not the kind of faith that Abraham had. That’s the kind of faith that the demons have. You see his thinking so far? He’s not discounting faith. And then again, verse 18: “I’ll show you my faith by my works.” So we are saved by faith, yes, but it’s a faith that works.
Now, once this is clear, you immediately understand that there really is no difference between James and Paul. I like to put it this way: Paul and James are not standing face-to-face fighting each other. They’re standing back-to-back fighting off different enemies. Now, in fact, the problem that James is dealing with here is a problem that Paul touches on as well, and Paul says the very same thing that James says. We find that in several different passages; never could a person, even in Paul’s teaching, never could a person genuinely profess to be a Christian whose life has not been transformed.
So in Galatians chapter 5 and verse 6, “faith works by love.” That’s Paul. Again, Paul in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 5, where he warns us against those who have an appearance of godliness, but deny the power of it. Ephesians 2—again, this is Paul, the famous passage on salvation by grace. “By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It’s a gift of God, not by works, lest anyone should boast.” And then verse 10 we have, “we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” There it is. Paul says nothing different from James on this score.
Broadly speaking, Paul is dealing with—in the main, Paul is having to battle legalists, those who think you’re saved by your works. And Paul has to hammer away at salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. It is not by works. James is not dealing with the legalist, who thinks he’s saved by his works. He’s dealing with the antinomian, who thinks works don’t matter at all, and they have no place, and it has no bearing on my faith. Paul deals with that as well, and at that point they are agreed. In the main, they have different emphases, but again, they’re standing not face-to-face fighting each other, but back-to-back fighting off different enemies.
In other words then, James is saying what Paul would agree with, and Paul has said as well, that this “faith alone” thing must not be misunderstood and perverted to support some notion of antinomianism—that works don’t matter, that you can be saved without a changed life. And that is James’ point here exactly. So again, broadly speaking, James and Paul have different emphases, fighting off different concerns, but they agree to this point that faith that is genuine is a faith that works. And so in verse 24, I think James is being intentionally startling. It’s intentionally startling rhetoric that he uses here. Not by faith, but by works. Not by faith alone, but works also. And in that sense, he agrees with Paul.
For that matter, the Lord Jesus insisted on the same thing. “You want to follow me? Take up your cross. Every day of your life, deny yourself, acknowledge my lordship and follow me.” That’s what Jesus said. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 7, “by their fruits you will know them.” In fact, you have that dramatic passage at the end of the Sermon on the Mount where you have the house built on sand, the house built on the rock, and the house on sand is blown away by the storm, the house on the rock stands strong. And what’s the deciding factor there? We should look at that. Matthew chapter 7. Let’s start with verse 21. In verse 15 and following, he’s dealing with false prophets, but now in verses 21 and following, he deals with a false profession. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord…'” All right, there’s our profession of faith. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.” There it is. Not everyone who says “Lord,” but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. “On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”
And then his parable. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against the house and it fell and great was the fall of it.” So we have a parable here of final judgment. And the one who survives the judgment, the one whose house is built on the rock and survives the storm of judgment, is, verse 24, the one who hears these words of mine and does them. Not just the person who says, “Lord, Lord.” Well, that’s James.
Reformers have said this, and the Reformed have said it ever since. This is no impinging on the Reformed theology. This goes back to Jesus, it comes through Paul, it comes through James as well, that we’re justified by faith alone, but the faith by which we are justified is not alone.
Rahab The Prostitute
Back to James 2 then, he gives us another illustration, verse 25. James 2:25. Now we have Rahab. So we’ve had the demons, illustration number one. Illustration number two, Abraham. And now third illustration, Rahab, verse 25. “In the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?” Alright, he’s pointing back here, of course, to Joshua chapter 2 and chapter 6. You remember the story. The spies went in to explore the land and Rahab hid them in her house and protected them and let them out so that they escaped without being harmed when they were being sought by the king. James here points to that and says, “Here’s another illustration. Was she saved? What kind of faith saved her?” Well, she acknowledged their Lord. That was obvious. But how do you know that? You know it by her works. So here we have a polar opposite example from Abraham. Here we have Abraham, the man who’s known as the man of faith. And now we have Rahab, the prostitute. How do we know her faith was genuine? She made a decision at an altar call? No, because she showed her faith by her works.
And then one more illustration, verse 26, and that’s the human body. “As the body, apart from the spirit, is dead, so also faith, apart from works, is dead.” A man is healthy, goes up to bed, falls asleep, doesn’t wake up. They have to carry him out. What’s the difference between before he went to bed and when they carried him out? What’s the difference? No spirit. Spirit has departed from the body. The body’s dead. And that’s James’ point with regard to faith. The faith without works is dead like a corpse.
Did you know that there is a kind of faith that doesn’t save? That’s what we’re looking at here, isn’t it? There’s a kind of faith that doesn’t save. We find this in James 2 here. What good is a faith that doesn’t work? Verse 14: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith and doesn’t have works? Can that faith save him?” No, it can’t. Verse 17: “So also faith by itself, if it doesn’t have works, it’s dead.” Verse 18: “I’ll show you my faith by my works.” It proves faith.
Theologians call it spurious faith. We like to come up with educated sounding expressions to capture it. Spurious faith. A faith that was made, but it wasn’t genuine. It’s a disingenuous faith. It’s spurious. Whatever profession they made, it wasn’t the kind that saves. And you’ll remember you see that in the life of Jesus as well. We saw it in Matthew 7. Many will say to me in that day, “Lord, Lord,” but no, they didn’t do the works of my Father in heaven. We see it in John chapter 8. Jesus is preaching to the crowds. Many believed on him. Ah, great, they’re saved, right? Many believed on him. That’s around verse 31. Jesus says, “If you continue in my words, then you’re my disciples.” And then just a breath later, he’s calling them sons of the devil. There’s a faith that doesn’t save. We see it in Acts chapter 8, Simon Magus. He believed when he heard the preaching. And then when Peter shows up, you remember, tells him to take his money and go there with it. There’s a kind of faith that does not save. And that’s James’ concern here. Genuine saving faith is, yes, yes, yes, yes, it is faith in Christ alone to save. But it is a faith that shows itself by a transformed life because the gospel promises not only acceptance before God and justification, the gospel promises transformation as well.
Examine The Faith That We Profess
Now what James does not answer here, which you would really, really like him to answer, what he does not answer here is the question: how many good works are necessary to show that faith is genuine? Wouldn’t you love to have an answer to that? He doesn’t answer the question here. He’s clearly not a perfectionist because he tells us a few verses later in chapter 3 that “in many things we all stumble.” So he’s not talking about perfectionism. But we’re left to surmise. And all we can say is that so long as a person is not showing the fruit of faith, we have no reason to believe that profession of faith is genuine. Where’s that line crossed? When can I know? I don’t know. I don’t have to know. God knows. He’ll take care of that in the judgment. But what I should know is that so long as a faith does not have works to show itself genuine, we’d be presumptuous to assume that it is genuine. Because faith, saving faith, works.
Now then that raises another question about this passage, and that’s this. What is James intending to accomplish in this passage? What’s his goal? Why did he write this? I can only think of really one answer, maybe some secondary and tertiary answers that go with it, but it seems to me that James is writing this just to stop us up short—to make us examine the faith that we profess. Has it resulted in a changed life? Is there fruit? Are there works to show the genuineness of our faith? That surely is his point here in writing to his congregation here, to stop them up short and so now to stop us up short and consider that genuine saving faith shows itself to be real by works. And so we must never presume that this grace thing and this faith thing requires nothing of us. It’s not works in order to be saved. Mark it well. But it is works that demonstrate the reality of faith.
I’ve probably said this before, my heart goes out to Christians who struggle with assurance of salvation and I certainly don’t want to add a burden to that to anybody. My heart goes out to people, Christians, genuine Christians who struggle with assurance. But I sometimes am more concerned with those who never doubt, despite the fact that there is no evidence and no ongoing fruit of what genuine faith should look like. That’s what James is aiming at here. This religion thing is more than just a profession of faith. The whole theme of the letter, and now we’re at the heart of the letter, the whole theme of James’ letter is to say, faith shows itself by works. And that must concern us as well.
And for that matter, Paul is still with James on that as well. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves to see if you be in the faith or if you be reprobate.” How do you examine yourselves? Does my faith work? Amen. Let’s pray.