14What good is it, my
brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith
save him? 15If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in
daily food, 16and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be
warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body,
what good is that? 17So also faith by itself, if it does not have
works, is dead.
Discerning Real
Faith
How do you know if your faith is alive? In other words, what tells you that your
faith is real? If someone stopped you
on the street tomorrow and asked, “How can you tell if a person has true
faith,” would you be able to give that person an answer? Questions like these are invariably raised
when studying this portion of James letter. Verses 14-26 are, without doubt, the most controversial words in the
entire letter of James. They seem to
fly in the face of teachings such as those found in the letters of Paul. We will address that soon enough. However, I want to focus this commentary
only on what James presents. So before
we discuss any external controversy and potentially move away from the larger
point James is presenting in these verses, let’s first deal with the material
at hand. James doesn’t ask questions
like those that I asked at the beginning of this section so let’s first put
what James asks us under the microscope.
“What good is it my brothers if someone says he has faith
but does not have works? Can that faith
save him?” Reflexively answer these
questions without reading anything else. What did you come up with? Here
was my gut response: It is faith, not
works, that saves us. If works could
save us it would make the necessity of Christ non-essential. It would mean that there is something that
we can do on our own to provide saving grace to ourselves. So “can that faith save him”? Yes. Of course it can. Yet James is
going to take us down an unanticipated avenue.
“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in
daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’
without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” Reflexively answer that question while
factoring in your response to James previous questions. To be honest, if I only consider what has
been asked thus far I could see how you might find yourself thinking, “What
exactly does all this have to do with one another?” But answer this third question anyway. My gut response is this: Obviously it’s no good to wish someone in need good tidings only to turn
your back on them and not help them at all. You could help them but what you’re essentially saying is, “We hope
everything works out for you and we hope that somebody lends you a hand but
we’re not going to do it.” So what good
is that? Obviously, it’s no good at
all. Where is James going with this
elementary string of comparisons? He
ties it all together with verse 17.
“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is
dead.” The comparison made in verses 15
through 16 makes much better sense when you consider the statement put forward
in verse 17. I’m not going to step
around what James is saying with a bunch of jargon so I’m going to put this as
plain as I know how: James is saying
that faith and works cannot be separated. If either of the two are removed from the equation the whole thing comes
tumbling to the ground. Works without
faith is dead. Faith without works is
dead. The statements are
interchangeable because one doesn’t work without the other.
It is in this way that we discern real faith. If someone has genuine faith you will be
able to see it by their works. Now this
is where a tremendous amount of confusion begins to creep into the
picture. I think this is how the
confusion begins: People forget that
James tells us that you cannot separate faith from works or works from
faith. Yet still people ask questions
like, “So does that mean we are justified by works and not by faith?” Remember, you cannot separate the two
things. YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT FAITH
WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT WORKS! YOU CANNOT
TALK ABOUT WORKS WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT FAITH! James couldn’t possibly make this any clearer. This is one of those times where being very literal will help
keep you grounded in what the text is trying to tell you. Now that I feel incredibly redundant let’s
move forward.



The other night during our Sunday, pre-bedtime, family devotions we were talking about Christmas, and I shared that I would like to pray that everyone in our church and in our own family would be able to see the only true meaning of Christmas this year, and that it would outweigh everything else we do, see, or even participate in.
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