Faith and Deeds
Dr. James Smith
James 2:14-28
2 April 2006
Listen to this sermon.
This morning we come to one of the most famous and controversial passages in the entire New Testament . . . the issue of faith and works.
And one of the biggest reasons why this passage has been both misunderstood and avoided by Christians is because of the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. (Whom we will be studying in our new Adult Ed. series).
Luther, as you may know, was no great fan of the Epistle of James. In fact, he down right hated it, because 500 years ago, it was used by many in the Roman Catholic Church to say that a person could be justified in God’s eyes through their good works.
And it was while reading Paul’s Epistle to the Romans that he was “hit by a ton of bricks” . . . we are justified in God’s sight by faith in Jesus Christ.
If it had been a different time and place, Luther probably would have felt differently about James, but Luther lived in what I commonly tell my students as “the armpit of church history.”
Luther is frequently quoted as calling the Book of James . . . “an epistle of straw.” In addition, he had serious reservations about whether or not it should even be in our Bibles. However, he was in no real position to exclude it.
Later students and scholars in Luther’s tradition, thankfully have come to have a greater sympathy for this extremely practical book on Christian living.
Commenting on Luther, the great New Testament scholar, Johann Gottfried Herder noted 120 years ago, “If James is an epistle “of straw,” then there is within that straw a very hearty, firm, nourishing, but as yet uninterpreted and unthrashed grain.”
Since then, Christians have been less suspicious about the message of James, particularly his discussion of “faith & works.”
Many students and scholars of the Scriptures today (including myself), are of the opinion that in the past, James was frequently taken out of context and his message was distorted by trying to place him in opposition to Paul.
And perhaps the simplest way of stating it goes like this . . . James’ whole point was never that our works are substitute for our faith, but that works reveal our faith.
After all, can you see or touch faith? Obviously it is a deeply spiritual and somewhat intangible thing.
Good works and deeds, that the Bible consistently calls the followers of Jesus Christ to, are tangible witnesses to a true and living faith. They function as that mirror that we found in James 1:12. They are reflections that show who and what we really are in Christ.
It is in this moral framework that makes James such a practical and challenging teacher for each one of us.
For both Greco-Roman and as well as Jewish teachers in the ancient world, the unity between attitudes and actions or faith and works was simply obvious. They didn’t split or dissect them as we are in the habit of in today’s world.
Again, people commonly say that they believe in one thing or another, but make them “put their money where their mouth is” and then see what happens.
James clearly tells us that true faith has nothing to do with mere intellectual assent. And we all have probably seen examples of people who say they have faith, but their deeds or life say the opposite.
When I was growing up, I helped my father to plant the family fruit orchard in Michigan. Today, it has nearly 100 trees, most of them are apple and pear trees.
One of the first trees that I ever planted was a dwarf apple tree . . . or at least that’s what it was supposed to be. It grew to be the biggest tree in the orchard, but there was one small problem . . . it never produced one single apple.
For the life of me, as a kid, I couldn’t figure it out. So I decided to take the words of Jesus literally in Luke 13:6-9. Remember the story of the man who had a fig tree planted in his vineyard?
For 3 years he looked for fruit but found none, so he told his vineyard keeper to cut it down. But keeper said he would fertilize it for a year and if it still didn’t bear fruit, he would cut it down.
Well, I fertilized that apple tree, but it still produced no apples. But I didn’t have the courage to cut it down. Besides it suddenly died anyway and never produced one single apple in its miserable life . . . it was a useless apple tree.
James is simply following Jesus. After all, Jesus said, “A tree is known by its fruit” (Mt. 12:33) and “Every tree that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Mt. 7:18).
A Christian who bears no fruit in the form of good works and deeds is dead. And beyond that James gives a rather graphic example that shows that such a “faith” is not only a sham, but it is morally reprehensible.
In verse 15, he asks a hypothetical (or perhaps not so hypothetical) question.
“What if a fellow believer is lacking the basic essentials in life, such as food and clothing and one of you ‘spiritualizes’ the situation.”
“Oh praise the Lord, brother, God answers prayer . . . Don’t worry sister, God cares for His children,” but you could immediately help them. What religious garbage!
And it was for this reason, that every Jewish synagogue in James’ day had a “benevolent fund” to meet emergency needs with no questions asked.
After all, it’s not about talking some talk, it’s about walking the walk! And how many people have been turned off to the gospel by empty religious babble, void of any practical value?
Furthermore, James says “the demons believe and shudder” and yet there are many who claim to believe and yet do not shudder at pain and misery that so many other family members in the body of Christ have to endure.
I don’t know about you, but I find it personally convicting that there are times when the demons belief and fear of God exceeds mine . . . absolutely disgusting, as well as painfully convicting.
But that’s James at his finest. He knows exactly how to get under our skin, in order to test whether or not our faith is real or not.
And so, James points out that the faith that does not bear any fruit is for all practical purposes, essentially dead. And this is particularly striking given the images that he offers us in this passage.
If our profession of faith does not come to life in the form of concrete actions then those who are naked and hungry will die.
And to this he adds examples of godly hospitality in the form of Abraham and Rahab. He points out that Abraham obeyed God’s shocking and confusing command to sacrifice his only son. (Which of course, God stopped him, but Abraham did not know that He would do that).
He also, points out that a prostitute can demonstrate faith by concrete actions in the form of Rahab, who protected God’s people in the days of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan. (A very unusual and striking image of a female example in the Bible.)
So what shall we say then? . . . to use a very Pauline phrase. Well, James and Paul are not discussing the same things after all.
They were using the same words in different ways. James wants to make clear that true faith in Jesus Christ naturally produces deeds and works that Jesus Himself did.
Do we honestly think that Paul thought otherwise? Paul, on the other hand, was writing to a different audience . . . to a non-Jewish/Gentile audience and whose interests and concerns could be quite different at times.
So in the end, we should view James and Paul as “two sides of the same coin” or better yet as two brothers in the faith who were passionately committed and who were both martyred because they wanted nothing more than for people (both Jews & Gentiles) to come to a true and living faith in Jesus Christ.
Let’s Pray
