| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
James 2: Show Me
Larry Kirkpatrick
Published on LastGenerationTheology.org on 2006-02-10 16:13Z
James 2.1-13 Respect of Persons
Yaacov continues urges Christians to relate to others on the basis of right principles. We are not to esteem the rich more than the poor. We are not to bend how we relate to others on the basis of their socioeconomic success or failure. If Christ came and had all the riches of the universe, and laid them aside to save us, and to live a life where He was so poor that He had nowhere of His own wherewith to lay His head, then it is clear that we must beware of valuing people on the basis of their apparent wealth. Christ had all wealth, but might have had to sit in the cheap seats.
In the church we are a brotherhood; none is to have the preference. God has chosen the poor of this world rich in faith. To the poor is the privilege of living by faith. The well to do can as well, but his risk is that he will have things more easily settled, he will have less necessity for and thus less opportunity for, the development of faith.
Verse six challenges us. Do we despise the poor? Isn’t it true? When you see the beggar standing on the freeway off-ramp with his cardboard scrap that says “Broke and Homeless, anything will help,” are you not inclined to think of how hard you’ve worked to get what you have, and to wonder if he is a scam artist? Be honest. And he may be. But you don’t know. Sometimes we need to pray, Lord, help me not to despise another.
Pam was in a parking lot last week and a lady came up and asked for a quarter from her to make a phone call. Well, she almost never carries change like that. (Besides that, we never give cash money in a case like that.) But a minute later she realized she had her cell phone and so she walked back over to the person and offered to make a phone call for her on her cellphone. But the person who had asked for money to make a phone call just walked away and said, “No, don&rdsquo;t bother.” It sure leads you to wonder whether she wanted cash money more than the phone call she claimed the cash money was for. But while we are wary, let us plead with God that He will help us not to despise others.
Verses six and seven suggest that there is a class of people who prefer to litigate and have the dollars to do it. They blaspheme God’s name by unnecessarily opening up their unresolved differences with their brethren before the world.
What is the royal law according to Scripture? We always say it is the Ten Commandments based on verse 11. But verse eight also shows us that it is the Ten Commandments applied. The first table offers man’s duty to God and the second, his duty to his fellow man. Loving your neighbor as yourself is part of the summary of the second table.
The royal law has to do with our relation to God, since God is our King. But our King’s design is that we would be a kingdom of kings (Revelation 1:6). All are to be kings. Our rank is equal. Then to have respect of persons is a violation of God’s order. (Keep in mind that role differentiation is in God’s order, and failure to recognize it where God has ordained it is also rebellion against God.)
Verse 12 says for us to speak and to behave as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. This is an interesting concept, a “law” of “liberty.” Is that how people are thinking of the law? In the common Christian economy, the law is viewed as a bad thing. Yaacov’s connection of law and liberty has a very Judaic ring to it and clashes with the Western Christian view. The word for law (torah is very similar to the Hebrew root for river, or that which flows (yorah). Law is a good thing. It is in the Western, bifurcated, jurisprudence-oriented view of things that law takes on the negative connotation.
James 2:14 Does Faith Alone Save?
At verse 14 we arrive at the key challenges in this chapter: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?” Let’s think about it closely.
How does it benefit yourself or others to argue that you have faith while you do not have corresponding works? Yaacov asks, Can faith save you? Yaacov harmonizes with the rest of Scripture in its call for action, not just words. And really, there are some who will have no objection to this. But it is right where Yaacov asks “Can his faith save him?” that West parts with East. Why? Simply for this reason, that many in Evangelical Christianity do have a problem with Yaacov’s theology.
You don’t even ask such a thing. Everyone knows we are saved by faith alone.
Everyone but Yaacov—and Shaul, and Yohann, and Moshe, and Shamuel, and Yoel, and so forth. In fact, there is only one place in the Bible where we find the words “faith” and “alone” in the same verse is here (James 2:17). But the emphasis here is on faith and works going together—decidedly not on faith bifurcated from works.
James 2:15-17 Faith Without works is Dead
Yaacov gives a concrete example for us. “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”
What good have the words done if someone legitimately in need has not been helped? The words are empty. Just as empty as if one has claimed to belong to Christ but refused to surrender to Christ. In the first case the words were empty and so the one in need did not depart in peace. In the case of the latter, it is the very same. The words were not true. Christ still was not Lord or Savior. The relationship proclaimed was unreal, empty, a vanity, a mirage, a false oasis.
Notice, both times Yaacov has asked what is the benefit? What doth it profit? It produces no evidence of its reality. Yaacov therefore offers a test. Unless evidence is produced, he is not ready to recognize the claim of spiritual legitimacy. It is not that he lacks faith in God; it is just the opposite. Because he believes so strongly that faith works, that the real article leaves behind an unmistakable contrail, he pleads with the common Christian and provokes him to look for evidences in his experience of a faith that works.
At this point we also come to this line: “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” The product of an authentic faith is evidenced in the real world. For example, a real Christian will soon become known for the distinctive behaviors that accompany the fruit of the Spirit. “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance” will be a living reality in a person (Galatians 5:22, 23). Such a person has become a character witness for God and a “truth in advertising” witness for Christ. Yaacov is talking about evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, but he is very concrete. Faith work itself out in blessing to others.
All this brings up the question of its opposite. What is a dead faith? Are not the words “dead” and “faith” in irreconcilable contradiction?
A dead faith is also a demonstration. It is a claim and it has its markers too. Whereas a working faith gives unmistakable evidence of its reality, a dead faith gives unmistakable signs of its reality. It says “Here is a claim.” But in this case, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance” are not present. In their absence, the only kind of works that are left have the stink of death upon them. They are the works of the flesh: “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like” (Galatians 5:19-21). Therefore we can see that dead faith is not without its identifying marks.
Verbalized religion stands alone from acted-out religion. The first is not hard to find; the second is much less common.
James 2.18-20 Show Me
Yaacov has a challenge to make. “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works” (verse 18). Yaacov says, if you want to demonstrate what faith does, do what faith does. He points out that mere acknowledgment of facts need not lead to the exercise of faith. The fallen angels accept the reality of God and Christ and Holy Spirit. But they do not exercise faith in them. Their knowledge of their true existence and of their power causes them to tremble.
Yaacov comes out plainly at this point and says that the one claiming faith apart from his works is a “vain,” or empty man. Since there are no works of faith evident, the man is an empty man. Each of us are either empty men and women or men and women of faith. We are vain or we are showing our faith by our works through a working faith.
James 2:19-24 Isaac offered
Yaacov moves again to concrete examples, this time Abraham. He describes Abraham offering Isaac on Mount Moriah in response to the command of God. Verse 22 discusses what happened: “Faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect.” He emphasizes that faith must have an outlet, must become activated, must be seen in more than just theory.
Now notice something truly fascinating here. When was it that Abraham was asked to offer up his son in sacrifice? That comes out of Genesis 22, doesn’t it? In fact, Isaac is now about 20 years old, so this would be twenty years later than the promise mentioned in James 2:23. If you look up that verse (that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness,” you won’t find it in Genesis 22, but further back in Genesis 15:6.
Back then, Abraham had been asking God if he would ever have a son. So James cites these two parts of Abraham’s experience; twenty years apart! And it is only then that he says “faith wrought with his [Abraham’s] works, and by works was faith made perfect.” Finally comes the declaration in James 2:23, “and the Scripture was fulfilled, which saith, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.’”
Did you see the significance? When was the Scripture fulfilled that said that Abraham was imputed as righteous? Genesis 15:6 said that when God promised him a son, he [Abraham] believed Him, and he was imputed as righteous. But Yaacov reminds us that it was two decades later when Abraham faced the test of faith and passed that “the Scripture was fulfilled,” that said he believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.
Yaacov points, not to a moment in time in Abraham’s experience, but to years and years of walking, growing, believing, acting, doing. This, he says, is how “faith wrought with his works,” and by works was made perfect. Yaacov is pointing to what we have often called sanctification—the work of a what? A lifetime. But this is all explanation for his question back in 21 where he said, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” In other words, did Abraham talk about the fact that he would be willing to give up his son, or did he take him up, onto the mountain and then raise the knife above him, ready to follow the command of God?
Abraham showed that his faith was alive and that he trusted God fully, and that if your faith does not work it is not true faith but some other cheap counterfeit. So in verse 24 he states his position plainly: “by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” Our works vindicate the reality of our faith. They show that it is real.
James 2:25, 26 Rahab
One last example is given in this chapter: Rahab. Listen:
Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Israel is invading Canaan at last. Two spies come to Yericho to do some reconnaissance. But they must hide. Where? They wind up in the house of Rahab the harlot. The authorities come for them there but Rahab hides them and tells the soldiers looking for them that they “went that away!” They are able to escape and in exchange for hiding them Rahab and her family are kept from harm when the Israelites invade and take the city.Some have made a mistake here and thought that Rahab’s apparent lie to the soldiers justifies a situational approach to ethics. But remember. Rahab was a heathen harlot. She never very little about the ins and outs of ethical reasoning. What she did know was that the God of Israel was mightier than any of her fellow Yerichoite’s supposed deities. She believed that the God of the Hebrews was real and that He was going to prevail. She cast her lot on this God’s side rather than the local religions. She exercised faith.
God met her where she was at. He is in the business of saving, restoring, transforming people. When they live up to all the light that they have, He mights them right there. In her primitive faith she was saved because she completely surrendered to God according to the light she had. In other words, she lived what she believed. And that was good enough for God.
This brings us to the last sentence of this chapter and the final illustration: “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” A human body without the breath of life breathed into it by God, is dead. John tells us of Christ that “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). Jesus is our source of life. He is the empowering agency behind our faith, our works. While we must be unequivocal in recognizing that our works do not earn us our salvation, we must be equally definite that the great need in our life is a faith that works (Galatians 5:6). Only Christ can make this faith a reality in us. The gospel not only talks about change but includes it.
Since salvation is transformative, more than a legal matter, we need to be not only acquitted but healed. Only a faith that works will bring this kind of change. That is why much of what is being preached in the world today is mere Kool-aid, sugar water, plastic, phony counterfeit. Yaacov calls us to something stronger, something more definite, something that means more to our hearts and minds. We must trust in God and watch Him work. The result will be evidence that God is good. The result will be evidence that God changes His people. The result will be evidence that faith works. LGT