James 2:14-17 Commentary

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.

Reconsidering the Questions of James

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” In light of what we learned by reading the entirety of James 2:14-17 the answer would have to be yes and no. Can faith save us? Absolutely. Faith is powerful. (see Matthew 9:2,22,29; 15:28; 21:21,22….we could keep going right up through the gospels but I think you’re starting to get the point). Perhaps the bigger question is, “Can faith justify us in order to give us saving grace?” Yes it can but only if that faith is placed in Jesus. It is only the name of Jesus that saves. It is only faith in Jesus that brings saving grace to the believer. The question often asked is, “How can you tell someone who believes from someone who really doesn’t?” In other words, how do we sort out those who lie with their hearts but convince us with their tongues? This is the problem that James is confronting head on. He is not arguing that we can receive justification without Jesus. How does James say our souls can be saved? Notice he never argues that our works will save our souls. Isn’t that odd. Not once through his entire letter does he argue this. Why? Because he knows that it would be a false teaching and James is very careful to not be false to the truth. He has great reverence for God’s truth. That’s why he wrote, “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21) James understands quite well that it is only through receiving Jesus that we could ever hope to save our souls. So let me amend my answer once more to the first two questions presented in James 2:14. Faith can save a person but only if that faith is alive. The way to know if that faith is alive is the ability to show, in the meekness of wisdom, that faith by your works. It is a simple test. In other words, do you have evidence that you are doing what the word of God says? Are you doers of the word or hearers only deceiving yourselves? If you do not know then that is most likely not a good sign. James has officially given us our litmus test. We now have in our hands the “Are You A Christian” test without the five easy installments of $29.99 a month. These opening questions as well as what supports them are suddenly under a harsh new light that should make us all squirm a little bit. These questions are those classic “re-examine yourself” questions that truly do separate those who are genuine from those simply looking for a social community to participate in. Yet these questions are absolutely essential and every Christian everywhere should be hitting themselves in the chest with such questions. What purpose does this serve? It helps us realize and do what it is that God demands of us. It should never leave our minds that we exist to execute God’s purpose in the world not our own private agendas.

Faith By Itself Is Dead

Dead is pretty final wouldn’t you say? We read verses in the scriptures like “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead,” and reflexively say to ourselves, “but they don’t mean like dead…dead…do they?” In the case of James 2:17 and 2:26 (which is what I quoted at the outset of this section), James used the Greek word “nekros”. Literal definitions of this word translate as lifeless, deceased, destitute of life, and inanimate, just to name a few. So James wasn’t saying that faith without works is “hemithanes” (which is the Greek word meaning half-dead…found in Luke 10:30). James was boldly pronouncing, without any intent to be misunderstood, that faith by itself is a dead, inanimate, destitute of life, thing. So I guess the line in that song “Have a little faith in me” is actually a falsehood…(I’ll admit that I did love that movie Scrooged…which just so happened to have that song as its end credits theme)………….umm………back to the commentary….. Apparently, you can’t have a little faith. You either have it or it’s dead. James doesn’t make any concessions for middle ground here. If you’ve ever heard someone say, “My faith really isn’t what it should be,” then perhaps what they’re actually saying is that their faith is dead. Or perhaps I’m being a bit brazen. I do believe that there are varying maturities of faith. You can find support for this in verses like 1 Corinthians 3:2 and Hebrews 5:12,14. In fact, let’s take a moment to consider Hebrews 5:14 for a moment. This verse says, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” I believe this verse is evidence of a person who has been sharpened by the testing of their faith. You see that their “powers of discernment” have been trained by “constant practice”. Constant practice in what? Being a doer of the word. For example, you can read all the books about playing basketball that you want but it will never do you any good until you get out there, play in a lot of games, and sharpen your skills through practical experience. This, although I admit it is kind of a goofy example, would be an illustration of taking what you learned by reading, then applying it by doing it, and through constant practice you became better at doing what the book told you to do. Granted, almost no one I know learns how to play basketball by first reading a book about it but hopefully the principle is well enough demonstrated.

So what is it that energizes faith with life? James says that it is works. In an illustration James will give us later he makes the point that faith is active along with works and faith is completed by works. This makes perfect sense when you take a moment to think about it. Here again we’re back to the notion that faith and works are absolutely essential to one another. The simple fact of the matter is that if you have truly alive faith, then works will naturally pour out of it. Your faith, if it is alive, will be a wellspring from which “doing the word of God” naturally flows out. However, if you’re the passive kind of person (like I sadly find myself sometimes being) who doesn’t really engage in doing the word God then your faith may very well be destitute of life.

Perhaps now I’ve made us all a little paranoid. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “O my goodness, I failed to do the word of God today…does that mean that my faith is dead…have I been false to God…have I ever been authentic with him…I’ve been doing good at doing the word all week but I failed today…my faith must be dead…” Listen, we all will fail at one point or another. This does not mean that our faith is dead. It means that we sinned and we need to confess then ask for forgiveness. After that we need to reconvict our hearts to delve deeply and meaningfully into the word of God so that we would know how to honor God as the sovereign creator that he is. We must praise God with every facility in our lives. I know that has become a recurrent statement with me in this commentary but I don’t believe it becomes any less true with repetition. Let us simply heed the advice of James to close this section, “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.”