James 2:14-26
Amen. Turn in your copy of God’s
word to James chapter two. We’ll carry on through the end
of the year and into the new year in the book of James. James chapter two verses 14 through
26 will be our reading tonight. Some of you are aware that James
was one of the books that had trouble getting into the canon,
at least from a human perspective. It was already part of the Bible
in God’s mind, but it was often rejected because of this particular
passage. In fact, a thousand or so years
later, Martin Luther would call it the epistle of straw. He did
not like its what he thought was his errant view of justification
by faith. He will explain more of that
this evening. But for our reading, we want
to begin at verse 14. James, the brother of our Lord
Jesus, the servant of God, says this to us. What good is it,
my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have
works? Can that faith save him? If a
brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and
one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm and filled without
giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it
does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have
faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from
your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe
that God is one. You do well. Even the demons
believe and shudder. 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, and he was called a friend of God. You see that
a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And 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? For as the body
apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith. apart from works
is dead. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. There’s three ways. I think it’s helpful for us to
think about how we live our Christian life. You’re going to think for
a second, this sounds a little unorthodox, but hang with me.
We’re to love God, brain, heart and hands. And that’s the summary
of God’s law. Hear all Israel, you shall love
the Lord your God with all your mind and heart and soul and strength.
Jesus echoed that commandment in the gospel of Mark. And so
just think of your life before God, brain, heart, and hands. Now us reformed folk, we don’t
mind the loving God with our mind part, right? We got our
catechism, we’re five point Calvinist, right? We know our theology,
we got that down part, and we march around, you know, all brainy-like. We’re good at that. Then our
Pentecostal brethren in the faith, they’re the heart, right? They’re
woo-woo, rah-rah. They let it all hang out, as
we say. They’re better at that than us. And then there’s our
liberal friends. Their hands are always out to
serve. Right? And so, so there are some people
they’re good at kind of hand religion doing. There are people
that are good at heart religion, jumping up and down as it were.
Then there’s those of us who are good at thinking. And the
Bible says to us, we should be good at all three. And it begins
with the heart. It begins with the mind. Sorry
about that. Get that clear. It begins with
the mind. It sinks into the heart. and then it produces fruit in
our hands. We should be good at mind, heart,
and hands. And James is gonna say to us
tonight in our study, faith plus works makes for a good Christian
life. In our first study of chapter
two, we did last week, we looked at the sin against the poor people.
which was sliding them in the fellowship, snubbing them, giving
them lesser honor in the assembly. Tonight, we want to look at ignoring
the basic needs of the poor among us. Now we need a little bit
of a glossary here to help us understand the passage. I remember getting through some
of those hard literature classes in high school and college with
those little yellow books. You know what they were called?
The CliffsNotes, that’s right. So we need CliffsNotes. We need
to think about the word faith, the word works, the word justification,
and the word salvation. Let’s work backwards through
them for just a moment. When the Bible speaks of salvation,
it goes with the word that we often use here in the South,
are you saved? To be saved is to have salvation. And there are two aspects to
salvation. There’s God saves you now, and
there is a future aspect to your salvation. God is gonna come
from heaven and take us to be with him where he is, to live
with him in his presence forever in the new heavens, the new earth
and the new Jerusalem. So being saved has a now and
a not yet component. And so James tonight is gonna
talk a lot about the not yet component. Then there’s the word
justification. We like to say a good way to
remember that is God sees me just as if I’ve never sinned
and just as if I’ve always obeyed. Justification is that legal declaration
by God where he declares you righteous in his sight because
the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to you or credited
to your account and you receive it by faith. And then there’s
the word works, good works. We do good works, things that
are commanded by God for his glory, for the good of others,
but we do it out of a heart that has already been changed, already
been transformed. We do not do good works to achieve
salvation. Our good works, even at their
best, are tainted. No, worse than that, they are
riddled with sin and would not be accepted by God. And so our
good works are works done from a righteous heart, from a changed
life. We do these things to please
God and to serve others. And then there’s the word faith.
Faith is the instrument of salvation. It is by faith in Jesus Christ
that we are saved. We receive Jesus, we rest in
him alone for our salvation. And so this glossary will help
us pick through this passage. Now one thing we gotta get out
of the way. Is this a passage where Paul and James are at odds
with each other? And the answer to that is no.
Paul and James met. I’m sure they discussed theology
because that’s what theologians do when they get together. They
do other things. But I’m sure they discussed,
and I’m sure that they agree that salvation, that justification
is by faith alone. We have no doubt of that in our
mind from the scriptures, but they’re speaking. Say for example,
Paul in Romans, Paul in Galatians, Paul in other places, they’re
speaking, James here to the scattered Jewish Christians, the Christians
who’ve come to faith and are scattered all around the world,
they’re speaking to different problems in different church
settings. And I think what you’ll see tonight in our passage is
Paul, or I’m sorry, James, I’m gonna get myself mixed up here,
is gonna say what John Calvin so well summarized when he said,
a faith that justifies is never alone, it’s always accompanied
by good works. Or we might say our creed, our
confession, better have conduct that matches it. Or as we like
to say in the South, We walk the walk, or we talk the talk,
but we also walk the walk. So we want to see what it means
to prove ourselves, not in the sight of God, but to demonstrate
our righteousness before others through our good works. This passage has four arguments,
you might say, for things that James presents to help us think
through faith and works. The first thing you see from
the pen of James, from the lips of God, you find in verses 14
through 17, and he presents two hypotheticals. What good is it,
my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have
works? And he goes on to say, can that
faith save him? And then he gives a question.
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed, lacking in daily food,
and one of you says, go in peace, be warm, be filled without giving
him the things needed for the body. What good is that? So faith
by itself, if it does not have works is dead. There’s these two hypotheticals
here. It’s a question. And the answer
is, no, it’s not good to have faith, but no works. In fact, verse 17 is a very conclusive
statement. If you have faith by itself and
it does not have works, that faith is spiritually deficient,
it is dead. It is dead in the sight of God. Now, he’s appealing here to folks
who have a lot of the Jewish mindset. It was a form of Jewish
piety to help the poor. Remember Boaz. He told his harvesters,
don’t collect at all. Follow the laws of the land.
Leave a little around the edges so the poor, particularly Ruth,
might glean and be fed. Those types of principles and
practices were very often found in the life of Jewish piety. And so this was something that
would spark their interest. It would immediately get their
attention. But he also gives another strong thing for this
audience to think about. Do you walk by a person who does
not have daily needs? Now, we’re not talking people
here who are broke. You know, they spent their last
penny because they went to Chipotle. They spent their last dime because
they swung through Starbucks. or they got a high cable bill.
These are people who are down and out, they are poor, they
are destitute, and if there is not help given, they may not
make it through the night. These are the people we hear
about on the news when the cold snap comes, who need to go in
and find shelter, they need a warm meal, they need a warm set of
clothes. And he’s saying, and you basically walk past and say,
shalom. Peace be with you, God be with
you, the Lord be with you, the Lord bless you. You know, our
good Christianese, right? Be warm, be fed. And he says,
what good is that? That’s the first section of this
passage. The second section comes in verses
18 through 20. And James gives us an imaginary
opponent. He says, someone, Maybe the Holy
Spirit’s convicting you and you’re the someone. Someone will say,
you have faith and I have works. You show me your faith apart
from works, I’ll show you my faith by my works. And then again, he appeals to
the audience. You believe that God is one,
you do well. Hear O Israel, the Lord your
God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
mind, soul and strength. That was the thing recited by the folks in
our audience every single day. And he says, whoop-dee-doo, the
demons believe. They believe and they even shudder. Do you want to be shown, you
foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? And then
he’s gonna come to the granddaddy of them all. He’s gonna pull
the Abraham, right? Verse 21. says this, was not Abraham our
father justified by works? When he offered up Isaac, his
son on the altar, you see that faith was active along with his
works or the faith was completed by his works. And the scripture
was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, it was counted
to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of
God. Boy, you’ve pulled the granddaddy
of all arguments when you get out Father Abraham. There’s no
getting around this argument. It’s the big one. And then he
gives sort of an opposite argument versus 24 to 25. You see that
a person is justified by works and not faith alone in the same
way was not also Rahab. not the father of faith, but
Rahab the prostitute. She was justified by works when
she received the messengers, that’s at Jericho, and sent them
out by another way. She confessed her faith in Yahweh,
and then she demonstrated her good works. She demonstrated
that her righteousness was right by her action towards the spies. Abraham believed God. It was
counted to him as righteousness. And then when God said, sacrifice
your son, your only son, Isaac, the one whom you love, he went
on the journey. He went up the mountain. He laid
the altar. He was prepared to put the knife.
into the chest of his son because he believed, as Hebrews tells
us, that God could raise the child of promise back from the
dead. He showed his righteousness by
his good works. He showed his faith by his obedience
to almighty God. And so do we show, do we demonstrate
to the watching world that we are the righteousness of Christ?
in tangible ways. In this particular passage, he’s
saying, as he did in the week before, how we deal with the
poor in our midst shows our faith. Do we, do we give them honor
in the assembly, in the church assembly? Now he’s saying, do
we, do we feed them? Do we clothe them? Do we help
them? And you think, well, this is, this is do-gooder. This is,
I don’t know, the liberals do this, right? We’re brain people,
right? We’re not hands people. But think
about the whole life and ministry of Jesus. As he went about the
countryside, as he went through Galilee, as he did in Jerusalem
in his ministry, he would preach the gospel, he would preach the
kingdom, but he would give down payments on the new heavens and
the new earth. He would give little deposits
of works of redemption by healing the sick. making the blind to
see, the lame to walk, the withered hands could serve again. He would even raise the dead. His speaking, but his healing
or helping ministry went together. And I know sometimes, you know,
we get a little tired of the phone ringing and the same people
asking for money. We get tired of the doorbell
ringing and it’s the same people. We get tired of coming out of
Walmart and seeing the same people, you know, standing there at the
street corner. And we even have a little, I don’t know, we analyze
it. My kids sometimes will say they’re
using a different leg today. You get it? And it wearies us. And we don’t
want to become so callous that we never see a need. Because
if we never see a need, we won’t meet a need. But we wanna be
careful that we always have a heart that beats for the truth of God,
and it beats for the people of God, and it beats for those who
need help and who need grace. Our creed, what we confess, should
follow in conduct. I don’t know about you, I’ve
talked about this a couple times lately. You should leave church
with a to-do list. not your Monday morning grocery list, not your
Monday morning go-to-work list, though I know that crosses your
mind, and I think I’ve told you about the attorney that used
to visit our church frequently. He said during a long sermon,
he could get a family settlement agreement all laid out during
the message. I’m not talking about those kind
of to-do lists. You might leave tonight and say,
I’m gonna open my eyes a little more to the needs within our
body. I’m gonna reach out to so-and-so
and pray for them in pain. I’m gonna reach out to so-and-so.
I know they lost their job six weeks ago and for sure during
Christmas, they might could use a little pocket change. You chat with so-and-so and you
figure out they had a big electric bill they can’t afford. And you
figure out ways to say, you know what, I’m gonna be attentive
to the needs of the people and I’m gonna seek to meet them.
That might be a good to-do list. Those are good conversations
to have with your family. Y’all keep your ears to the ground,
your eyes and your hearts attuned to the needs of the people of
God, and maybe even others in your sphere of influence, and
show them in tangible ways the love of God in Christ. What does
the book of Proverbs say? It says, when it is in your power
to do good, you should do it. It says that when a man waters
others, he himself is blessed, he is watered. And when we serve
others, I think it can be a wonderful thing, but here’s the best thing
it does. Here’s the best thing it does.
It shows others you are truly justified. That’s what James
is teaching. You want to prove your justification.
You want to prove your righteousness, prove it by good works that come
out of a heart changed by almighty God. What’s the old saying? He’s a
saint at church, but he’s a devil at home. Um, Maybe look for where
your life isn’t consistent. You put on airs. You know, we
come to church all buttoned up, but maybe at home we’re not so
great. Maybe in the workplace we’re not so great. I remember
bumping into somebody in the community I served down in the
Charlotte area. And I said to my neighbor, I said, so-and-so
comes to my church. Their mouth kind of dropped.
Oh, really? And I said, oh, tell me, pray
tell. This person wasn’t living consistently
like they were living in the church. And that’s a sad state
of affairs, that’s a poor witness. But one of the great blessings
of Almighty God is he takes children of Adam and turns us into the
image of Jesus Christ. And so we have opportunity to
show the fragrance of heaven the joy of knowing God and Christ,
doing good works that please God, they serve neighbor, and
they have eternal value in the eyes of Almighty God. What you
have done to the least of these, Jesus says, you have done unto
me. Let’s go to God in prayer. Our
Lord, we thank you for strong reminders from James that we
are to demonstrate our salvation, our position, in the kingdom
by the works of our hands. Lord, we do it for your glory.
We do it for others good. Lord, we always want to preach
the gospel and we always want to demonstrate it. So much has
been done for us. So give us that same kindness
that is found in Christ. Give us that same kindness as
we seek to serve others. We pray for your help and blessing
in this great endeavor. In the name of Jesus, we ask
all this. Amen.