What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from works, and I by my works will show you faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is worthless? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and by works faith was brought to completion. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
Once again, James hits the nail on the head, especially in today’s world, in the world of my lifetime, though some might argue James is especially appropriate for any age. But there seems to be a strong tendency now and in decades preceding I think to make profession of faith and right belief the center and heart of what faith is, what is required for confirmation of faith. Maybe not as much confessional faith like in reciting the creeds as in the past, but simply agreement with the supposed right explanation of the gospel and with an emphasis that works don’t matter. Read Paul’s letters, and key passages like Ephesians 2:8-10, and we find that this is a mistake. Paul does not disagree with James, any more than James disagrees with Paul. Some might well dispute that, but I think it holds. Writers in Scripture do disagree with each other at times, is my view, and the community of faith by the Spirit needs to grapple with that. But not to get lost in the weeds here, back to the point of this post.
Faith is not merely intellectual or apologetic as in coming up with the supposed arguments for its validity. Neither is it merely confessional. None of these things are necessarily off the table depending, but by and in themselves, none of them add up to genuine faith. As James puts it, it’s not enough to believe that God is one (or that there’s one God). It’s not enough to believe that God came in Jesus and lived, taught the way to life and about the new life, died and was resurrected, ascended and sits at the right hand of power, and is to return. Add to that, churches will insist on the teaching of substitutionary atonement as a necessary belief, that God had to strike Jesus dead to forgive anyone, mistaken teaching like that. And as long as you believe in that God, in that teaching, then you’re forgiven.
It’s not like any of us have to or should imagine that we will get everything right. God’s Spirit is poured out when we believe in the message of Jesus, God’s good news in him for us and for the world, of sins forgiven and new life, redemption and reconciliation. Some in James’s day, and this is where James might have been off for a time, taught that believers in Jesus needed to be circumcised (males) for salvation. So teaching and supposedly believing the right things, what is necessary is far from foolproof. What we can say is foolproof without a doubt is loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Doing what James says needs to be done. When one sees someone wounded on the road, taking care of their needs, when one sees a brother or sister or anyone else in material need, doing the same. According to James that alone indicates genuine faith.
And James goes on to point to Abraham and Abraham’s unfathomable sacrifice of his son Isaac in obedience to God’s directive (Genesis 22). God was doing this, arguably, according to at least one scholar to indicate that sacrifice to gods is not required, to break that myth which permeated religion in that day. But whatever is the case in regard to that, the point being that we obey, we act in faith, we’re activists, even when that activity is challenged, challenging, not easy. But we move with a passion in faith to do what God calls us to do. Not some cultic hidden word, but the obvious word in Christ, to love one’s neighbor as oneself. To do good works which means acts and activities of love for others. That and that alone is how faith is expressed. Not in words, but in works, in deeds done even when such is not comfortable on one level, but with God’s help, the only thing we want to do.
Jesus community 