Today’s
epistle reading from James is really almost two separate readings. The first is from verses 1-10, where it talks
about the sin of particularity. The sin
of showing favoritism, or looking down on certain people who would come into
your church because they aren’t dressed properly, or have purple hair, or
whatever. The other starts at verse 14,
which talks about the relationship between faith and good works. The first portion is something worth talking
about, but for the sake of time, today we are going to focus on the second.
As
you might have seen in your bulletins, the theme for today’s sermon is “Good
Works are Good Things.” This might seem
like an obvious thing, but that’s not always the case. Since the days of Martin Luther himself, the
church that bears his name has been accused of rejecting good works. Even today, the Lutheran church gets charged
with saying that what you do, how you live your life, doesn’t matter. But that’s just not true. That charge from others, or that wrong understanding
among people within our church, comes from a wrong understanding of what we
mean, of what Scripture means, when we speak of salvation by faith alone.
First,
we need to define what faith is. As we
go here, we need to keep in mind that despite what some claim, James is not
contradicting Paul. He’s addressing a
different problem. Paul in his letters
primarily deals with the struggle against self-righteousness. James on the other hand, is dealing with the
opposite problem. He’s dealing with apathy,
a lack of zeal
Faith, as James is
seeking to establish here, goes beyond head knowledge. It’s more that recognizing or asserting that
God exists. It’s more than agreeing with
the statement that there is only one God.
It even goes beyond acknowledging that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of
God. If we look at verse 19 of James 2,
he writes “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!”
We see this truth in the
gospels. When Jesus comes across demons
in the gospels, they call out his identity.
When Jesus encounters a possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum, the
demon says, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to
destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
Demons can confess the intellectual
knowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, can know who he is, what he has
done…but they are not saved. They do not
have saving faith. They agree with the
facts, but they don’t hold to them with hope.
They recognize who Jesus is, but it makes no difference to them either
way. They acknowledge who he is, but
they nevertheless reject him.
Hebrews chapter 11 defines faith as
the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. It’s more than just saying that Jesus is the
Son of God, it’s believing and trusting that he is Lord, that his death on the
cross was for the forgiveness of sins, that his resurrection from the dead won
for us the promise of eternal life. And
then having that faith, living with that hope and confidence, how we live our
lives is changed. We are called to turn
away from our old sinful ways and walk in his marvelous light. As Paul says, now that we have this knowledge
of the gospel, now that we have been set free from our bondage to sin and given
the gift of the gospel, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means!
No way! Now that we have this
faith, now that we have this promise of forgiveness and salvation, we go forth
and do good works.
To say that Christians aren’t
required to do good works flies directly in the face of Scripture. Flies directly in the face of Jesus
himself. Jesus himself said, just to
pick a few, “Pick up your cross and follow me.
Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Let your light shine
before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in
heaven. This is my commandment, that you
love one another.”
A
saving faith goes hand in hand with doing good works. It means following God’s commands. To claim faith in Jesus but to reject and
ignore his commands, commands like “Take and eat, this is my body; take and
drink, this is my blood. Do this in
remembrance of me.” makes you a hypocrite.
That’s a word that gets misapplied a lot today. A hypocrite is not simply a person who says
one thing and then can be found guilty of doing otherwise. That simply makes someone a sinner. A hypocrite is one who claims to worship God
with their lips, but who’s life and actions testify otherwise. A hypocrite is one who claims Jesus as Lord
but continues living unrepentant of their sin.
Scripture is clear. Good works, striving
to turn away from sin in word and deed, must accompany true faith.
And
yet Scripture is equally as clear that it is faith alone that saves. This is of course most clearly stated in
Ephesians 2:8-9. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is
not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can
boast.” In Acts 16, when the Philippian
jailer asked Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved, what was their
answer? “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and
you will be saved—you and your household.”
Paul again in Romans 3:28 says, “For we maintain that a person is
justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” And in Galatians 2:21, ““I do not
nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then
Christ died needlessly.” The list goes on and on.
And
if you want to play the “what did Jesus say?” game as though Paul’s words were
not likewise inspired by the Holy Spirit, we have John 3:16: "For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Faith alone saves. And yet, as James says, faith by itself, if
it does not have works, is dead.
It’s
important to remember that throughout chapter 2, James is contrasting two kinds
of faith. One that is alive, that leads
to godly works, and one which isn’t and doesn’t. One is true, the other is not. One saves, the other leads to eternal
damnation. Only a faith which produces
good works is a true, saving faith. Yet,
we must be careful about looking at our works as evidence or proof of our faith
or salvation. This is for two reasons.
First,
we must always remember that no one is perfect.
There’s a temptation to look around at the people you see at church and
judge how good of a Christian they really are.
There’s a temptation to judge their faithfulness based on the standards
and expectations we ourselves have set.
There’s a temptation to say that if we only see someone on Sunday
mornings, and not in one or more Bible classes during the week, that they
aren’t really living out their faith.
That if they don’t have their children in Sunday school or attending
youth events, they don’t really take their faith seriously. That if they aren’t volunteering at various
events or serving on various boards at church, they’re somehow spiritually
weak.
Do you see how
sinful this attitude is? Do you know
what they’re doing in their home? Do you
know what’s going on in their life? Do
you see their daily struggle against sin, or the charity and love that they
display elsewhere in their lives? And
yet we judge them. Look down at them, as
though we are better than them.
The
other problem with looking at works as proof of faith comes when we look at our
own lives. This again has two aspects to
it. First is that it can lead to a
despair at not being good enough.
Because when we look at what God’s law demands and then look at
ourselves…we don’t come close. Sure we
try, we strive to do better…but how much is enough? How good do I have to be, how many good works
do I have to do to know that my faith is a saving faith?
Because
that can become such a crushing, unbearable weight to carry, the other trap we
can fall into when looking to our works as proof of our faith is a
self-righteous denial of sin. Claiming
that we’re good enough. Claiming that
we’ve stopped sinning. One very
well-known, prominent television preacher once said this, “I didn't stop
sinning until I finally got it through my thick head I wasn't a sinner
anymore. All I was ever taught to say
was, ‘I, a poor, miserable sinner.’ I am not poor. I am not miserable. And I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell!” It sounds ridiculous, but I promise you it
was really said by a person with an enormous audience through various media
formats. And it shouldn’t really be all
that surprising. Because if you are
going to look to your works as proof of your salvation, and you don’t want to
conclude that you’ll never be good enough, it’s your only option.
Yet,
as James says in verse 10 of our reading for today, “Whoever keeps the whole
law but fails in just one point has become accountable for all of it.” So thanks be to God that our salvation
requires no participation on our part.
Salvation is ours solely by grace through faith. And even faith itself is not our own work,
but is the gift of God. While we were
still sinners, Christ died for us. While
we were enemies of God, Christ took our sins upon himself. While we were still far off, he called us to
himself through the water and the word.
As we’re going to talk about for the next several weeks, the grace that
grants us forgiveness and salvation is a completely undeserved gift. It is entirely apart from our works. Apart from grace, as sinners even our good
works are as filthy rags to a perfect and righteous God.
The
thing we need to wrap our heads around, and it can be difficult, I know, is
that good works are necessary for the life of a Christian, but they aren’t
necessary for the salvation of a Christian.
Or to put it another way, faith alone saves, and faith is never alone.
Faith
can never be separated from works, and works cannot be separated from faith,
because good works flow naturally from the faith God plants. It has been said that faith is like
calories. You can’t see either one, but
you see the results. Faith begins by
hearing the word of God. Then it goes to
heart, and it finds expression in your hands.
Faith alone saves,
yet as those who have been given the gift of faith, who have been given the
promise of life and salvation, who have joined to the death and resurrection of
Christ, who have been made children of the heavenly Father…we can’t help but do
good works. It is part of who we
are. It is part of what we have been
made by the grace of Christ. So go
forth, and let your light shine. Let
your faith be testified not just by your words, but by your deeds.
