Thoughts on James 2

Today’s reading: Numbers 21; James 2

I want to talk about the infamous faith and works section of James 2 this morning.

One issue I see a lot, especially in Evangelical circles, is that teaching or discussing this passage becomes just about arguing why it’s not teaching justification by works and then they call it a day and move on as though James included it just so we could have some rousing debate and not because there was something in it we need to stop and consider. 

To be honest, I think a lot of the consternation around this passage comes from the “once saved always saved” view of salvation that is so prominent in Evangelical churches and denominations. I’ve discussed in a few past posts, like in Hebrews and I think Colossians, why I lean away from this view, but if you take this perspective, James 2 can cause some headaches. You have to deal with questions like, 

• If someone prays for salvation and really means it, but never has any works, will they go to heaven?
• If someone prays for salvation and has works that accompany it, but then walks away from the Lord (and now has no works), are they still saved?
• If someone prays the sinner’s prayer and has no works, but then later starts taking it seriously and trying to follow the Lord, adding in works, were they not really saved before and do they need to pray the prayer again now for it to count?
• Etc.

Now, that said, I do still fall in the same camp that salvation is by faith alone apart from our works. There are enough passages that say this explicitly throughout the New Testament that one passage seemingly to the contrary is not enough to negate that clear teaching. So how should we understand what James is saying here?

There are three important points we need to recognize in understanding what James is saying:

1. Most scholars agree that James is written in the genre of Jewish wisdom literature (like Proverbs), and in that genre you state broad generalizations as fact, even though they may not always hold true (I would call them “truisms”). Take this example from Proverbs 26:4-5, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” So which is it, should you answer a fool according to his folly or not? This isn’t a mistake by the author not realizing he contradicted himself in back-to-back sentences, this is Jewish wisdom literature communicating wisdom in broad statements that are generally true. As far as James goes, that means we should take what he is saying as generally true, and not get bogged down in the implications for edge cases like, “What if a person is comatose and can hear/think but not move or speak, but they hear the gospel and accept it? Is that faith necessarily unable to save them because they can’t accompany it with works?” That is simply not what James is getting at, so our interpretation of this passage doesn’t have to account for every weird edge case, it just needs to be “generally true” because we are discussing wisdom literature.
2. James’ primary concern here is about how other people will know your faith is genuine. Faith is an internal thing between you and the Lord, with no visible manifestation, so if I am going to recognize whether or not you have faith, it has to be based on the effect of that faith rather than on the faith itself. We see that this is his concern both in how he starts by talking about how intention without action doesn’t benefit other people, and then explicitly when he gets into the, “Show me your faith…” section of this passage.
   That said, while I think this helps us understand what James is saying, if you disagree, that’s fine. If we understand this as wisdom literature, I think we can still agree on what James is saying even if his concern is not how others will know, but is the actual genuineness of the faith itself.
3. James is expressly not replacing faith with works. Simply by the way he formulates his statements, he makes it clear that faith is what saves. He says that it is faith that is what saves, but it is works which evidence the kind of faith that saves. So regardless of anything else, James is not teaching works-based salvation here, and he is not contradicting other New Testament authors who clearly say that salvation is by faith apart from works, but is instead teaching that the kind of faith that brings about salvation should also result in accompanying works.

So if we consider what James is saying based on these three points, then he is saying that it is generally true that a person with genuine saving faith will evidence that faith by works. And is there any among us who would argue that?

I really like the way I once heard Dr. Michael Heiser illustrate this point by substituting other things in for faith and works. One example he gave was substituting in love and kind gestures. Love and kind gestures are not the same thing. You can do a kind gesture for someone you don’t love, but if you said you loved someone and never did a kind gesture for them, I would question whether you actually love them, or at least question what you mean by love. Kind gestures do not generate love, and kind gestures cannot replace love, but if you love someone, we should generally expect to see that evidenced by kind gestures. In the same way, works do not generate faith, and works cannot replace faith, but if you have faith, we should generally expect to see that evidenced by works.

In fact, one of the most famously quoted verses from Paul in the faith vs. works conversation really makes exactly the same point as James does here. In Ephesians 2:8-9 Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Clearly, salvation is by faith alone, Paul could not be more clear on that. But Paul also doesn’t stop at verse 9. He continues on in verse 10 to say, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Yes, salvation is by faith alone, but part of the reason we are made new in Christ is for us to do the good works God has prepared for us! Paul and James are on the same page here. If you claim you have biblical faith, but have no works to accompany that faith, I don’t think you have the same definition of faith that James and Paul are using…

So what?

Like I said at the beginning, this is the part I think gets skipped over too easily in the Evangelical community today. We get so concerned with proving to others (or maybe to ourselves) that James isn’t saying salvation is earned by our works that we never stop and think about why this is here. If you think about it, the fact that this is even a conversation that has to happen tells us that James considered good works an integral part of the Christian faith, and he was not alone in that. We already saw Paul say the same thing in Ephesians, and we also see Jesus saying the same thing in the gospels as well. In Matthew 17 Jesus says that every healthy tree bears good fruit, and so you can tell the tree by its fruit.

The clear teaching of the New Testament authors is that salvation is by faith alone, but that that faith should be accompanied by works. So if you are using the fact that salvation is by faith alone to justify your lack of willingness to give your life over to God in more practical ways, you don’t understand what biblical faith is. Or if you are leaning on salvation by faith to justify your life of ongoing, unrepentant sin, you need to recognize that it was Jesus Himself, not James, who said a bad tree will bear bad fruit.

James is not saying that if you missed your bible reading this morning, watch out, because you might not be saved. But I do think, based on what James says here, that if your Christian life is characterized by a lack of works, or by a general unwillingness to do the works God has before you, this should be a serious gut check for you. Just like Paul tells the Corinthian believers he is writing to to examine themselves to see whether they are in the faith (2 Cor. 13), if you find yourself bucking at the idea that your faith should be accompanied by good works, you might want to examine yourself as well.

Jesus and the New Testament authors didn’t have any trouble holding to the fact that salvation is by faith alone, while also holding to the expectation that that faith will be accompanied by good works, and neither should we.

And this brings me to the my second takeaway from James, and that is that because this is generally true, if we don’t see works accompanying someone’s supposed faith, we should not assume that faith is genuine. Now, that doesn’t mean he is saying that I get to be the arbiter to determine someone’s salvation based on what I do or don’t see, but I think it is a huge mistake to assume someone is a believer simply because they say the right words when there is no evidence of it in their lives.

One experience that has really stuck with me along these lines was sitting around with a small group of Christians a number of years ago. We were a new ministry team and either didn’t know one another, or only knew each other in passing. As we were sitting around getting to know each other we were talking about how each of us came to faith in Christ. One of the men in that group shared how there was a stretch of time during which he really started investigating Christianity, and he’s not sure when, but somewhere in that process he was convinced and he’s been in ever since. Not only could he articulate the gospel and what he believed, but his life was very much characterized by other’s centered service for Christ. But because he didn’t have a time of praying a specific sinner’s prayer to look back on, one of the others in the group kept asking him about it as though he wasn’t sure if his faith was legitimate or not, only because he didn’t have a specific date of conversion he could point to. Other times, exactly to the contrary, I have seen situations where someone we are working with exhibits no outward signs of faith whatsoever, but someone will say, “They prayed for salvation that one time, so they’re good.”

This is exactly the opposite of what we should be taking from James. I think we potentially do people a great disservice when we just assume that, because they said a prayer that one time, they don’t need to hear the gospel or be convinced of God’s love for them. I think what James is saying is that if someone claims to be a Christian but there is no evidence for it, we should, at the very least, be suspicious of that claim, because we should expect true faith to overflow in good works that honor Christ and bring glory to God.