A Living Faith Evidenced in Works of Obedience: Part 3 (James 2:14–26)

For part 1, click here. For part 2, click here.

In the previous posts we’ve placed this passage in the larger context of James’ argument and in the larger context of the theology of both Paul and James. And we began unfolding James’ argument in the first part of the passage. In this post we’ll wrap up James’ argument and make some brief application.

Genuine Saving Faith Must be Evidenced by Works (James 2:20-25)

This brings us back to James’ main argument that faith without works is useless. Genuine saving Faith must be evidenced by works. And this can be proven to be scriptural teaching through the examples of both Abraham and Rahab.

This also brings us to the most difficult phrase in the passage, especially when comparing it (out of context) with Paul’s claims. On the surface it seems to be a direct contradiction:

· “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24 cf. 2:21)

· “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

We all know that the same word can have a different meaning based on a different context. And this can be readily demonstrated in this case. A person may justify himself, meaning that he is making excuses. Onlookers recognize that such a person is guilty. But a person may also justify himself, meaning that he proves himself to be innocent. Onlookers recognize the righteousness or guiltlessness of such a vindicated person. A person may also be justified in the sense of being cleared of all charges—not because of innocence but because of payment. Onlookers are to reckon the person innocent due to a declaration of innocence (imputed to that person’s account).

At salvation we needed imputed righteousness. We were guilty and needed the substitutionary payment and righteousness of Christ placed onto our account. And this is received by faith alone apart from works as Paul argues in Romans 3–4. Paul speaks of justification in terms of its forensic cause.

After salvation, we will and ought to demonstrate a practical righteousness. That’s because the necessary effect of salvation must be to transform us. And we must vindicate or prove (justify) that such transformation (regeneration) has genuinely taken place by resultant works (sanctification). James speaks of justification in terms of the showcased proof.

Two commentators helpfully clarify this point:

“Paul refers to the initial declaration of a sinner’s innocence before God; James to the ultimate verdict of innocence pronounced over a person at the last judgment.”¹

The point of James’s argument here clearly does not imply a forensic declaration of justification; rather, he is pointing to the divine vindication of the righteous nature of his character, manifested by the deeds flowing from his faith.²

In James, “Justified by works” (James 2:21, 24) = vindicated = the proof that it is real. This comports with many other Scriptures (Matthew 12:37; John 8:31–32; 1 John 2:3–6; 4:12; Galatians 5:6). Such genuine faith is “not by faith alone” (James 2:24) = a bogus faith that is counterfeit by nature in that it fails to produce works. Abraham proves this out since his faith had to be “completed by his works” (James 2:22) = brought about its intended goal/fulfilled what was begun (cf. Gen. 15:6; Gen. 22:12, 15–18). Even in the narrative about Abraham you should be able to discern two different aspects of the term righteousness: ethical practical righteousness (sanctification/new life lived out) or forensic legal standing. In Genesis 15:6 it is forensic but that is fulfilled and thus justifies/vindicated a person through the practical ethical righteousness of works.

Whether it’s the most respected Jewish patriarch or the lowest despised prostitute, faith demonstrated in action justifies one as a genuine believer in God. How would the Israelites know that Rahab chose to side with God as a believer apart from her actions to hide and protect them? It’s obvious she had to prove her faith/words were genuine by her actions. The same is true for anyone who claims to believe.

James teaches that faith brings about internal transformation (James 1:18, 21)—such faith is tested and passing the test justifies or vindicates the genuineness of that faith (James 1:12).

Concluding Summary (James 2:26)

James concludes with a clear illustration: just as a body is lifeless without the spirit animating it, so also is faith dead and lifeless when there is no evidence that it is animating our works. There’s no such thing as a living person without the spirit. There’s no such thing as a living faith without the evidence of that life in one’s works.

Application:

I believe we are living in an age when a common error has cropped up in an overreaction to legalism—many claim to bask in the freedom of grace and the comforts of the legal realities of justification. This error is not unique to our time; it was addressed by James. And we can use the book of James to address this error today.

The book of James is perhaps the earliest epistle of the New Testament, and it is filled with references to the Sermon on the Mount. It seems that Jesus’ correction to the Pharisees’ works-based righteousness was being misconstrued by early Christians as if the point was that works no longer mattered. James is intent on correcting such a misconstrued application of Jesus’ teaching. Hiebert explains:

This treatment was apparently necessitated by the tendency of some of the readers to go from one extreme to the other. Before their conversion to Christianity, these Jewish Christian believers had shared the prevailing Jewish emphasis upon the efficacy of works; after they saw and accepted the evangelical message that salvation is by grace through faith without meritorious works, they went to the opposite extreme. They were now prone to assume that works were not needed at all.³

James’s theology of the relationship between faith and works is vital for revitalizing the church today. Our works/obedience matters as evidence of a genuine faith. The church has been overtaken by dead orthodoxy; its shift toward deeper doctrine can be appreciated, but its apathy toward concrete applications and deriding such obedience as legalism is appalling. My personal observation (having graduated from undergrad in 2005 and from seminary in 2009) is that my generation has been highly influenced by organizations like The Gospel Coalition, which touted being gospel-centered as opposed to being hung up on peripheral issues (as if sanctification and holiness or Christian living and ethics are peripheral). However, what was being touted was a truncated gospel: the gospel = justification (the legal realities). In fact, the gospel includes regeneration and the resultant evidence of sanctification. This does not lead to confusing law and gospel as long as one recognizes that the necessity of sanctification functions as the evidence and not the basis or means of salvation. However, too many began to eschew all concrete applications of holiness and calls to avoid worldliness as externalization, pharisaism, and legalism. No doubt examples abound of human traditions and personal opinions being conflated with biblical authority. And such must be rejected. Nevertheless, connecting straightforward discernment between objective behavior with biblical principles is not external legalism (see Eph. 5:1-18).

Shockingly, in recent years conservative evangelicals (and former fundamentalists highly influenced by them) have filled the void by becoming the most legalistic social justice warriors around. If you don’t embrace their politics (which are now called gospel issues) and their presumption of what it means to love your neighbor according to their definitions and applications conflated with their own assumed conclusions (their progressive platforms to accommodate a godless culture), then you don’t have the gospel.

In response, one must carefully query—by what standard are you judging what it means to justly love one’s neighbor? Too many are imbibing or accommodating the standard of expressive individualism common to the godless society around them—the psychological therapeutic authenticity of the victimology and identity politics of a godless culture (see Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self). Too many are jumping from a biblical principle (love your neighbor) to poor situational analysis (what it actually means to love one’s neighbor). The bait-and-switch is that they define and describe what loving one’s neighbor would look like not from a biblically robust situational analysis but from a coopting of the presumptions of a godless culture.

Faith must be evidenced by works. But those works must be directed by God’s Word not by the redefined virtues of the ethic of the New Left.

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Kevin Collins has served as a junior high youth leader in Michigan, a missionary in Singapore, a Christian School teacher in Utah, and a Bible writer for the BJU Press. He currently works for American Church Group of South Carolina.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

1. Moo, James, 141. One must carefully recognize that this vindication at the final judgment is a vindication based on grace alone through faith alone evidenced by one’s works, which prove the genuineness of that faith. The vindication at the final judgement is not based on works. See John Piper, The Future of Justification where he refutes N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul. [↩]
2. Hiebert, James, 171. [↩]
3. Hiebert, James, 158. [↩]