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.
