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What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.18
But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds."Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20
You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.25
In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
There was an article in The Readers’ Digest some time back by Claire Safran. It was a deeply moving story about seventy-nine year old Clara Hale and the drug-addicted infants she cares for in her home in Harlem.
In an old bentwood rocker, she soothes a hurting child.
"I love you and God loves you," she promises. "Your mother loves you too, but she’s sick right now, like you are." She coaxes the baby to nurse at a bottle. She bathes the child, croons softly, tries a little patty-cake game.
"After a while, maybe you get a smile," she tells a visitor. So you know the baby’s trying too. You keep loving it — and you wait."
The title of this moving story is Mama Hale and Her Little Angels. It tells of Clara Hale, who has spent a lifetime caring for other women’s children. In a fifth-floor walkup, she raised forty foster children as well as three of her own. And now she operates a place called Hale House, a unique haven in the heart of the drug darkness of New York. At the time the article was written, she had cared for 487 babies of addicts. Since then, there have been hundreds more.
Mama Hale would understand what James talked about — "Having a Faith that Works" — a description of practical Christianity. She puts love into practice.
I like what Dr. Hans Kung, the brilliant Roman Catholic theologian from Germany, said: "Whoever preaches one half of the gospel is no less a heretic than the person who preaches the other half of the gospel."
That is the temptation of every preacher — to preach one half of the gospel. That is the tightrope we walk, preaching a gospel of either faith alone, or of works alone. James is an unequivocal champion of works. He minces no words. Listen to him in these verses:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 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.
This is the primary emphasis of James entire epistle. We must be doers of the Word and not hearers only. This has caused this particular book of the Bible problems over the years. Martin Luther called it an "epistle of straw." Luther was calling his church back to the core of the Gospel: Justification by grace through faith. He lived at a time in church history when sin was winked at and forgiveness could be bought. "Faith alone" was his battle cry, and he felt that James was undercutting that core of the Gospel by contending that salvation also had to do with works.
And in this last century and a half we also see a battle between two perspectives. One group of theologians has emphasized works over and above faith. Often they are called the liberal wing of the church and they are often criticized because they seem to focus upon social action at the expense of personal salvation. And at the other side of the spectrum are some evangelicals and fundamentalists who are often criticized for emphasizing personal salvation without caring about the physical needs of people and their pain and suffering. This battle pits mission organization against mission organization, denomination against denomination. Churches sometimes split over this battle over priorities.
Well what is the answer? Is it sufficient to live a good life? Is it enough simply to do our best to help others? Do our good works qualify us as Christians? If we obey the Golden Rule is that our ticket into heaven? I don’t think most of us would say so, and I would agree with you. The Bible says our good works are not good enough, that we need to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
On the other hand, there are some people who are so committed to preserving the gospel of "faith alone" that they separate the roles of Christ. They place Christ in a box by saying that He only comes to the sinner as Savior and makes no claims of Lordship; that it is only after we become Christian that the Lordship of Christ has any claim on our life. The bottom line of that belief is that it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior by simple intellectual affirmation — by saying yes in our mind to four spiritual laws, or a belief in a plan of salvation, and defer until later, or worse never, the claims of Christ in the transformation of life. This leads people to believe that their behavior has no relationship to their spiritual life.
Therefore, there would be nothing different in the behavior of a Christian and a non-Christian. Their lifestyles would be the same. One third of our nation’s population claims to be "born again." Think of that — one third of all Americans! Do you think our nation would be drowning in drugs, wallowing in pornography, allowing millions to go hungry and live without shelter, abusing children — do you think we would be in the mess we are in if one third of us were really Christians, living as Jesus would have us live?
"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."
Aren’t we mocking the Gospel when we reduce its requirements to simply believing that Christ died for our sins — and all He requires of us is to agree to that? Isn’t there more to Christianity than just intellectual agreement that Christ died for our sins? I think so. Faith demands action as well.
The great preacher, C.H. Spurgeon used this illustration to describe faith. Suppose there is a fire on the third floor of a house, and a child is trapped in a room there. A huge, strong man stands on the ground beneath the window where the child’s face appears, and he calls, "Jump! Drop into my arms!" It is one type of faith, Spurgeon would say, to know that the man is there. It is another type of faith which acknowledges that he is a strong man; but the essence of true faith lies in trusting him fully and dropping into his arms. Only in that way could the child be saved. And so it is with the sinner and Christ. Faith demands some action on our part. Mere intellectual agreement is not enough.
Now let’s take a look at this passage from James. As we look closely at this passage from James we realize that he is not asking whether works without faith can save us. But rather, whether a dead faith, one that produces no change and no transformation, can save us, and he answers no.
Before we take issue with James, we need to take a look at the similarity between the passage in James we are looking at today, and Jesus’ parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25. This is the only time Jesus told us what judgment would be like. Do you remember the parable? When the Son of Man comes in his glory and gathers before him all the nations of the world, he will separate the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. He will say to those at his right hand — the sheep:
Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.
That was a surprise to both the righteous and the unrighteous, because neither knew when they had done that sort of thing for Jesus.
"When," they asked, "when did we see you hungry?"
His response to their question is unforgettable: "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."
There is nothing here about believing the right things, nothing about right doctrine, or the right church to belong to.
I think of Linus and his sister, Lucy, in Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip.
Linus says to Lucy, "You think you are smart just because you are older than I am."
Lucy gets up and walks off, but Linus follows, saying, "You just happened to be born first! You were just lucky!" Then he screams, "I didn’t ask to be born second." And in the final frame, he yells in despair, "I didn’t even get a chance to fill out an application!"
At one church I joined some years ago, in order to become a member you had to appear before the deacon board. You had to make application and then prove yourself to the board by saying the right words. But when it comes to the Final Judgment, there are no applications to fill out; and at that time our words will be insufficient. The conditions have been predetermined by Jesus Christ, and that is what James is trying to get across to us.
So James’ question is not whether works without faith can save us, but whether faith without works, faith without transformation can save. From this we can discover some new affirmations.
First, there is no salvation without discipleship. What do I mean by that? I mean it is not enough to claim Jesus as Savior, we must allow him to be Lord as well. We must surrender to him.
Verses 18 and 19 give us a startling revelation: "But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder."
Even demons know there is a God; even demons know Jesus is real; even demons that Jesus is the Son of God sent by God to save all who believe in Him. The difference between demons and Christians is not knowledge; the difference is that Christians faithfully submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ and become His disciples.
Second, an emphasis on Christian faith that does not include faithfulness to Christ’s call to walk in newness of life is a distortion of the Gospel. What do I mean by that? I mean the same thing James was saying in our Scripture lesson. I mean that the kind of faith that does not give attention to ethical issues — to telling the truth, seeking to live morally clean lives, shunning evil, fighting personal immorality and social injustice, feeding the hungry, caring for the needy, seeking the lost, suffering for those the world has said no to — that kind of faith, a faith that does not give attention to these issues, is dead.
Third, a faith that emphasizes ethics and good works as a means of salvation is a false faith. Now does that sound contradictory to what I have just been saying? What do I mean by that? I mean that ethics and good works do not save us, but they are the expression of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit within us.
A person who claims to have faith without works is like a person who puts all their effort into building the foundation of a house and never builds anything on that foundation. But a person who displays great works but has no faith is like a person who builds their house on sand without any foundation.
That brings me to as a good definition of practical Christianity as you will find. It comes from Paul and it is this: Faith working in love.
That comes from Galatians 5:6: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love."
One translator translates it this way: "Faith which expresses itself in love." The New English Bible says: "Faith active in love." Paul is saying that when God comes to judge us, the question is not going to be whether we were obedient to the law. The question is going to be whether, in the revelation of God’s love expressed ultimately in his crucified son, we have turned to Him in faith. And when there is a testing of that faith, it will not involve the doctrinal positions to which we have given intellectual assent, but whether out faith expressed itself in love.
A minister was talking to a professing Christian and asked him if he was active in a local church. The man responded, "No, but the dying thief on the cross wasn’t active in any church and yet he was still accepted." The minister then asked if he was baptized. The man responded, "The dying thief on the cross was not baptized and he still made it to heaven." The minister then asked if he had partaken of the Lord’s Table. The man responded, "No, but the dying thief didn’t either, and Christ still received him."
The minister then commented: "The only difference between you and the dying thief is that he was dying in his belief, and you are dead in yours."
Our response to God’s love is to be more than simple belief. It is to be a belief so strong it calls us to action. So I use Paul’s words as a graphic description of what James is calling for: Faith working in love.
Going back to Mama Hale, who has taken care of so many outcast children, she says, "The ones who worry her most are the toddlers who arrive scruffy and neglected."
The article about her goes on to say, "Against the disorder of the world they will return to someday, she teaches them a sense of order. Regular meals and bedtimes. A clean house and clothes."
"Be honest," Mama says, "Be smart," she urges. Lulling a six-month old baby to sleep she says, "One day when you go to college..."
"They don’t always know what I am saying," she says, "but they know I love them." That is part of her "gift," as she calls it, her secret for saving children and saving their lives.
On her bedroom door is another part of her message, a small sign that says, "You can make it."
Well they can — and we can too — when faith works in love.
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