James 2:14-17 – “The Man and His Arm”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁴My brothers, what [is] the profit if someone should claim to have faith but not have works? That faith would not be able to save him. ¹⁵If a brother or sister becomes poorly clad and lacking the daily sustenance, ¹⁶but someone from you (pl.) says to them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and be filled,” but you (pl.) should not give to them the necessities of the body, what [is] the profit? ¹⁷Even so, that faith is dead according to itself, if it should not have works.

There are a lot of thoughts I could record regarding these verses, but one in particular stands out to me. These verses, as we’ve discussed before are a theological battleground. However, I would suggest they only become a battleground for people who would unnaturally separate faith and works. Certainly there is a sense in which we must separate the two, “for by the works of the law shall no man be justified” (Gal 3:11). Rather “By grace you are saved through faith … not of works …” (Eph 2:8,9). But having established that faith itself is the root of salvation, we then are free to see that that root bears fruit.

It is sort of like studying a man throwing a ball. One may say he throws the ball with his arm. Someone else says the man throws the ball. So does he throw it or does his arm? Let’s cut off his arm and study it and then perhaps we can decide which it is. Do you see how foolish the discussion is? We can accurately say that in fact the ball is propelled by the man’s arm, but it is ludicrous to even discuss the throwing of a ball somehow separated from the man himself. There are some things which can and should be studied separately. If someone wants to be an ophthalmologist, they study eyes. If someone else wants to be a podiatrist, they study feet. Fine. But a study of genuine faith invariably must include a consideration of works. Like the man and his arm, they are organically inseparable.

I say all that because I want to record the one point that stands out to me from this passage, and that is this: Because of what genuine faith is, it cannot not produce works. Genuine faith is not assent to a creed, acknowledgment of certain “beliefs,” association with a particular group, or any of the things we are more than happy to accept. Nicodemus “believed” but he still didn’t “get it.” And what was Jesus advice to him? “Except a man be born again, he will not see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Born again. Even in those familiar words is the key to this whole discussion. To be genuinely saved, to come into genuine faith, is to be born … again. To be born is to be alive. And to be alive is to breathe and move. Even a comatose person’s body still moves. The heart beats, the lungs breathe, the blood flows. When the graphs all flat line, when there ceases to be detectable movement, what do we conclude? The person has died. If we can catch them quickly and do CPR or hit them with defibrillators, perhaps we can revive them. But we’d better do it quickly!

Born again. Every Easter I am excited by the thought that, in a sense, the whole point of Christianity is resurrection. The whole point is life from the dead! In a sense, I came to Christ because I was so tired of dying. I wanted to live. And what a life He has given me! “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

To have genuine faith is to live. This is what Ezekiel spoke of:

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes …” (36:26-27).

To understand all of this is to see the folly of unnaturally separating faith and works. It is genuine faith that saves us and faith alone, but that faith itself is a living thing, a living thing that imparts life, a living thing that means the very Spirit of Christ Himself takes up residence in our hearts. If you push a stone into the ground what will happen? Nothing, of course. But what if instead you pushed a seed? A seed is a seed. It is, in a sense, not a tree. But the seed is a living thing. Give it earth, water, and warmth, and suddenly a tree grows! But why? Because the seed itself was a living thing. So genuine faith is life itself. It brings life. It is life. And so those who “have” it live!

And as Paul noted in Galatians 2 (quoted above), it is Christ who lives in me. It is His life I am living. …Which brings us back to our text. Could Jesus ever see a person poorly clad and hungry and say, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled,” and walk away? No. Then neither can I. Oh, I can, and perhaps James is acknowledging that even born again people are capable of crass insensitivity. But his point is that such behavior is completely out of character for people indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus. Born-again people have Jesus living in them. In the long run, they cannot be happy unless they let Him live through them.

I am so, so, so glad all of this is true. It is so exciting to have this life that lives in me, this life that wants to live, that wants to live Jesus, that wants to see the world through His eyes, to have His heart, to sincerely try to be His hands, His feet, His mouth to the people He places around me. … And to actually have the power to see it happen! Not because I make it happen but because I am indwelt by the very 3^rd Person of the Trinity and His life lives in me. I so enjoy the freedom of just letting Him live and then enjoying the love and joy and peace that comes with His life.

I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else, but all of this is why to me, the whole discussion of faith without works is really ludicrous. It’s not a matter of “adding” works to faith. It is a matter that genuine faith is alive -- to have genuine faith is to be alive. And to be alive is to move. Faith in Jesus is to be alive in Him, to have Him alive in me. And the “works” that naturally follow are simply the “moving” of His life in me.

All of this is how it is possible that “faith alone saves” but “faith that saves is never alone.” The two belong together … like the man and his arm!

James 2:14 – “All Day Every Day”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

¹⁴My brothers, what [is] the profit if someone should claim to have faith but not have works? That faith would not be able to save him.

In this verse, I believe James is continuing his consideration of “religion which God approves.” I would suggest that such a subject is very important to genuinely born-again people – not because they fear being disapproved but because they deeply love the Lord and want very much to understand those things that make Him happy.

That being said, I think there is one important point we can make while camped on this verse. Before discussing that, however, I want to acknowledge that this verse is one of the theological battlefields of the centuries. This verse in particular and the discussion which follows would seem on first pass to contradict salvation by faith alone. The discussion has been billed as a conflict between James and Paul.

Here’s what I think: Back in 1:25, we pointed out the words: “But whosoever looketh into the perfect law …,” with the idea being one stooping down to peer at something, and that idea being contrasted with someone glancing in a mirror and promptly forgetting what they saw. I noted then, in order to really understand God’s Word, there needs to be stooping down and peering. The Scriptures may seem to say a lot of things on a passing glance, but our admonition is to be “rightly dividing” (“correctly handling”). All that said, personally I don’t think there is any reason to even suggest a conflict between James and Paul. Even Martin Luther, who early in life called the book of James an “epistle of straw” later on, after having studied and matured himself, acknowledged its value.

There are mountains of commentary on this very discussion but suffice it for me to make one quote:

“Paul wrote Galatians to deal with the error of adding some outward work, such as circumcision, to faith alone for salvation. James wrote this text to confront the problem of those who profess to believe in Christ, but do not have any fruit to show for it. If we lose sight of this, we will err” (Steven J. Cole).

Some of the battle may have been encouraged by the old KJV translation, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?” The translation of the last question, “Can faith save him?” seems to turn Sola Fide on its ear. However (and once again, hundreds before me have pointed this out), the KJV failed to acknowledge an article attached to the Greek word for faith, so that a better translation is something like, “Can that faith save him?” or “Can such faith save him?” To include the emphasis of the article shows that James is not tackling faith itself but rather “that faith,” a faith that someone claims to have yet has no works to show for it.

That is one last exegetical point I wish to make, that what is at issue here is not faith but rather the fact that someone “says” he has faith. That same thought occurred back in 1:26, where James considered a person who “seems to be religious.” Unfortunately all of this is a very necessary discussion, since everywhere faith goes it will always find false adherents. Faith has always found many who “draw near Me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from Me.” As Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven.” He said, “By their fruits you will know them."

And so this whole discussion is necessary, the matter of faith and works. Clearly, as someone has said, “Faith alone saves but faith that saves is never alone.”

Now, back to my “one important point we can make while camped on this verse:” I think it is worthwhile to pause and consider what “works” He’s talking about. This is a point where I think we need to set aside whatever pre-conceived notions we may have and let the Lord Himself tell us what He means.

What would most of us think of when we hear those words, “Faith without works is dead?” What would we immediately presume are “works?” I would suggest our minds go immediately to “church work,” or what we call “ministry.” At minimum it would mean something like teaching Sunday School or perhaps even going to the mission field. It might mean trimming the bushes around the church building. Perhaps when we think of “works” that accompany salvation, we think of regular church attendance and carrying one’s Bible, of living a “separated” lifestyle, wearing certain clothes, not listening to certain music, etc. If someone has stumbled across these feeble thoughts, pause and consider the question – really, down deep in your heart, what do you think of when you see the word “works” in this verse?

Now look around the text and, in fact, the Bible itself. What “works” has James already called attention to? He started with learning to “Consider it pure joy, … whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He’s mentioned “bridling your tongue.” Then he very specifically held up “looking after orphans and widows in their distress.” He’s just come off a discussion of avoiding favoritism toward other people. And, reading ahead, the very specific illustration he will use is the problem of a “brother or sister without clothes and daily food.” My mind goes back to Isaiah 58 and the Lord’s words, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice … to set the oppressed free … to share your food with the hungry …?” When Jesus commends His people, the “sheep on His right,” what He commends is “When I was hungry, you fed me …”

Here would be my observation: when the Lord thinks about “works” He’s thinking of the real day to day issues of loving Him and loving others. Learning to see joy in trials is something very personal and very private, something that develops between our heart and His in the quietness of our own lives. Learning to bridle our tongues doesn’t just happen in a church building. It is something that starts as soon as I wake up and bears on how I speak to my wife and children as we all get up and go to work and school. It bears heavily on how I talk to and about people all day at work and how I talk to the cashier at the grocery store on my way home. The love of “caring for orphans and widows in their distress” is a work that means all day every day I’m trying to be sensitive and observant to see people in their very real needs and to do whatever I can to help them.

Those are the kinds of things the Lord says He means. The things we call “ministry” may in fact be works of love, but I would suggest there is great danger in automatically equating those things with the love Jesus longs to see in us. And I would go on to suggest there is perhaps even greater danger in limiting our definition of “works” to those ideas of “church ministry,” of mentally “checking off the list” when we’ve done those things. I’ve simply known too many people who may have been great “servants” at church but didn’t  have a drop of love in their hearts.

We believers need so desperately to see our faith as something we live all day every day everywhere we go. It isn’t something that happens at the church building. We talk about taking the Gospel to the lost and yet every single person sitting in the pews spends all day every day in that world, rubbing elbows with those very people “we’re trying to reach.” That’s why Jesus told us to “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven” (Matt 5:16). That is why someone might “come and ask you a reason of the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15), because they actually see in your day to day life something truly different about you.

It is a sad commentary that “faith without works is dead” – to think that someone can actually believe they have faith, can think they actually have a relationship with God, and yet one day hear Him say, “Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.” But I think, practically speaking, it is just as serious for believers to fail to realize just how simple and day-to-day are the kind of “works” that accompany salvation. The “works” which accompany salvation all come down to love, and love is something we live … all day every day.

Everyone who’s dying knows that all that ever really mattered in life was relationships. The wonderful thing about knowing God is that He helps us see that while we’re still quite alive. I don’t think He at all intends to scare us with “faith without works is dead.” Rather He wants to encourage us that the love we know down deep in our hearts is most important … really is!

May we all live in the joy of His love and may it flow out of our blood-bought hearts into the people He places around us … all day every day.

James 2:8-13 – “Mirrors and Windows”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸You (pl.) do well if you (pl.) really keep [the] royal law according to the Scripture, “You (sing.) shall love your neighbor as yourself,” ⁹but if you (pl.) are showing favoritism, you (pl.) are working sin, being ones convicted by that law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps that whole law but stumbles in one [point] has become liable to all. ¹¹For the One saying, “Do not commit adultery,” also says, “Do not murder,” but, if you (sing.) do not commit adultery but do murder, you (sing.) have become a transgressor of [the] law. ¹²Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged through [the] law of freedom, ¹³for the judgment without mercy [will be given] to those not practicing mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

These verses are of course a continuation from vv1-7 and complete this discussion of the unjust usher and the problem of favoritism. Verses 8-11 are clear enough to me but I’m not 100% sure I yet understand vv12&13. Nevertheless I’m going to go ahead and record my thoughts -- sometimes it’s a good idea to at least record what I do think is clear and then, every once in a while, it all begins to make sense as I type and pull it all together. It’s also always possible that a particular truth is still beyond my current maturity and I’ll just need to be content with what I do learn and then expect to come back some (wiser) day and find that it makes perfect sense!

Along with many commentators, it appears to me that James is actually anticipating the argument that someone may say, “But honoring the rich man is being loving, isn’t it?” James responds that, if you really are doing something out of love, that is great; but what about the poor man? Your disdain for him rather exposes your motives as favoritism rather than love.

Here’s what I think is happening: James particularly refers to “the royal law found in Scripture.” It is the “love your neighbor as yourself” which is a quotation of Deut 19:18. Calling anything “the royal law” is a unique appellation in the Bible. What is he talking about? I personally think he’s talking very specifically about this command to love. He’s calling it, in particular, “the royal law” as it is the command which sums all else. It, in a sense, “reigns” over all the other laws.

Jesus of course said that on these two commands, to love God and love people, “hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:40). He had said in the Sermon on the Mount, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 7:12). In Romans 13:9,10, Paul says, “…and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” In Galatians 5:6 he says, “…The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love” and then continues in verse 14, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Finally, Jesus specifically left us with, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

James is acknowledging that, if in fact, their motive is to keep this “royal” law, then they are certainly doing well. We can take the same encouragement with us. Whatever we may be doing, if we can honestly say we’re trying to live God’s law of love, we’re doing well. We may find later that we could have done it better, could have done it wiser, etc., but at least we can be assured that, if we sincerely did it in love, we “did well.”

The problem of course is our amazing capacity for self-deception, to which James has already alluded three times in his book (1:16,22,&26). Then add to that the problem that even born-again people so easily revert to legalism when they’re judging their own motives. What I mean is that by the Spirit we’ve been freed to live not by “rules” but by the far greater standard of knowing God’s heart. When life is about the “rules” then we start thinking we can pick and choose, that as long as I can say I’m keeping a rule in one place, I can conveniently forget that I’m breaking it somewhere else. That was apparently a very standard approach for the Jewish religious community of James’ day and certainly hasn’t changed at all in 2000 years! It seems that is exactly what James thinks is happening in this passage. The usher can justify his behavior by emphasizing how loving he is being to the rich man, while conveniently disregarding how he’s treating the poor man.

Where verses 9-11 fit in, then, is James saying, So you want to talk about law? You want to talk about keeping rules? Okay, then here you go. If it’s about rules at all, then understand that all the law is an expression of the Law-giver. If you’re going to focus on the rules, then realize they all come from the same Person and hence, to break one, you might as well have broken them all. In breaking one, you offend the Law-giver and hence have become a transgressor and guilty of all. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law and offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (v10). This business of picking and choosing may seem like a convenient ruse to justify ourselves, but it simply doesn’t work. Approaching a relationship with God like a rule-book is a hopeless endeavor.

This is where I think verses 12&13 come in: “Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged through [the] law of freedom, for the judgment without mercy [will be given] to those not practicing mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

It seems obvious to me that these two verses are wrapping up the whole passage. As I said above, I’m not sure I totally understand what is going on here, but I’ll record what I think. He could have said, “Judge others by the law that gives freedom,” but he didn’t. He said, “Thus speak and thus act as ones going to be judged by the law of freedom.” Interesting that in a context about how we judge others, he calls us to evaluate how we judge ourselves! Rather than speaking and acting like ones going to be judged by the “do this, don’t do that” kind of rules, we must live our own lives as ones under grace. I myself am not going to be judged by “do this and live” legalism.

Instead, I myself will be judged under a law of freedom, which I am thinking is just another way to say I myself will be judged under grace. If I’m correct, then essentially what James is saying in verses 12&13 is that people who haven’t shown grace will themselves be judged without it. If I judge the world under law, then I myself will be judged under law. I think James is speaking from a purely practical perspective with the belief that people who are under grace, people who experience grace, who truly know the God of grace, will themselves live under it, judge themselves by it, and then that same grace becomes the window through which they see their world. They will be merciful to others because they themselves live under mercy. “They that have been forgiven much also love much.” When a person’s life is not marked by mercy and grace to others, the apparent conclusion is that they themselves do not know grace – regardless of their professions or religious involvements.

This understanding would even explain James’ concluding axiom, “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” I’m suggesting we could just the same say, “Grace triumphs over Law!” “Mercy” I would suggest is chosen by James because it is a practical expression of grace. As he said back in 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress …” As we noted back then, real religion will express itself in observable efforts to do good to others, particularly those who desperately need it. A heart that lives itself under the constant love and mercy of the God of grace cannot help but put away its own cruel legalistic judgmentalism toward others and offer mercy instead.

We see a classic example of this in Matthew 12 where the hungry disciples snatched up a few heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, only immediately to be condemned by the Pharisees. Jesus responded, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I will have mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” (v7). The graceless Pharisees could not see the world through grace. They (conveniently) judged themselves by law and therefore judged everyone else by law. Theirs was a completely impersonal relationship with God, in reality no relationship at all. To them God was nothing but a list of rules. That being said, they could read Hosea 6:6 (which Jesus quotes), even memorize it, and yet never understand that the God who gave the Sabbath gave it from a heart of love and grace. He intended it to be understood under love and grace. He never intended that its cold legalistic observance would trump merciful treatment of other people. “I will have mercy, not sacrifice,” He said. If only they had understood this, Jesus said, they would not be condemning the guiltless. Think about it! Jesus says they (the disciples) are guiltless! The Pharisees would retort, “Guiltless?? Hardly! They’re breaking the Law!” But in fact what they were breaking was a cold dead expression of what God really intended. If only the Pharisees knew the God of the Law, they would see it all through the eyes of grace.

So what does all this teach us? We said earlier that the problem of favoritism is something much deeper than simply how the usher treats two people. We said the problem is that we are expressing our values and favoritism reveals hearts that are judging the world not through God’s eyes but through our own lusts for pleasure, possessions, and applause. I believe James concludes by revealing the problem goes even deeper than that. The problem goes as deep as how we judge ourselves! The mirror into which we peer actually becomes the window through which we see other people! The more we embrace grace and enjoy God’s love, the more we’ll see others through the eyes of grace. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

So, the unjust usher’s shameful favoritism, as bad as that is, isn’t really the problem. Looking below the surface, we discovered that he had become a “judge with evil thoughts” – his values were twisted. But it goes deeper than that. Apparently, he doesn’t spend enough time peering into the mirror of grace, sitting like Mary at Jesus’ feet, seeing himself through Jesus’ eyes. Instead the mirror into which his heart peers (which is naturally legalistic and judgmental) has become the window through which he sees these two men, one rich and one poor. He “judges” them—finding value in one and not the other. He cannot see them both through the eyes of grace because he isn’t seeing himself through those eyes.

This all just leaves me marveling at the wonder of grace. It truly is amazing. It is a very good, good thing to spend the time in the Word and in prayer, seeing ourselves under grace, seeing ourselves as under a law that sets us free. That very mirror becomes the window through which we see everyone else. 

More about Jesus would I learn!