Practical Christianity: A Faith that Works | James 2:14-26
Brian Hedges | August 12, 2018
Turn in your Bibles this morning to James, the second chapter. This summer we’ve been studying together the letter of James. This has been a 12-week series, and today we come to the last week, and I’ve saved the hardest passage for last. This is the most difficult passage in the book of James we’re looking at this morning; James 2:14-26.
This section is the reason why Martin Luther made his famous statement about James. This is what Luther said. He said, “St. James’s epistle is really an epistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”
Now, was Martin Luther right? I think as we’ve studied the letter of James together one of the things that we’ve seen, one of the things I’ve tried to show us, is that the gospel is implicit in James. James believed the gospel, he’d been changed because he’d seen his brother, Jesus of Nazareth, who’d been crucified, he had seen him raised from the dead, and it had utterly changed him, it had utterly transformed his life. Throughout this letter the gospel is assumed, the gospel is implicit, and there are times where it just kind of bleeds out of James. James talks about God’s grace, he reminds us that God gives more grace and he gives grace to the humble, he talks about God who is the Father of lights and how every good and perfect gift comes down from him and how we’ve been brought into new life through the word of truth, through the gospel.
So it’s there. The gospel is there, the grace is there, but it’s not the primary focus in James. James is a practical writer, and he writes with something of an in-your-face, kind of proverbial, in-your-face approach, where he’s constantly just pressing home to our hearts the implications of genuine faith, and he wants us to have a real faith, he wants us to have a whole faith.
But there are some difficult passages in James, and the passage we’re going to look at this morning is one of those. Martin Luther, by the way, actually took out that statement, the statement I quoted a few moments ago. That was written in 1522 and was put in his early preface to the New Testament after he had translated to German. He took it out in later editions, and probably modified his opinion of James, so it’s not quite fair to pin that to him.
The question, though, that bothered Luther, and the question we have to wrestle with this morning, is simply this: does James contradict Paul? Because the apostle Paul very clearly in his letters says over and over again that we are justified by faith, and not by works. Here’s one of the many key passages, Galatians 2:16, “Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”
In an apparent contradiction to that, James says three times in the passage we’re going to study this morning, that man is justified by works; in fact, most starkly in verse 24, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
So that’s a problem, right? What’s the answer to that? Does James contradict Paul? I think that when we simply realize that James and Paul are writing to two different audiences with two different perspectives, addressing two different problems, and using their words, defining their words in slightly different ways, it becomes apparent that there’s not really a contradiction.
The apostle Paul was addressing the problem of legalism. He was addressing people who thought that they could be justified by the keeping of the law. He was addressing people who thought they could earn their salvation or who were trying to screen other people out of the church because they were not Jewish, because they were not keeping the ceremonial law.
Paul is constantly trying to emphasize to them that we are saved through the sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ, which is received by faith, not by our works. Paul is answering the question, “How does a person get right with God?” and the answer is through the cross and resurrection of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, received by faith, which, to be sure, Paul would agree transforms our lives, changes our lives, so that we are also sanctified. But we are justified by faith alone. That’s the bell that Paul is constantly ringing.
James is writing to answer another question. The question is not so much, “How does a man get right with God?” the question is, “What does true faith look like, and what are its effects in our lives?” If Paul is addressing the question of legalism, the problem of legalism, James is addressing the opposite, what’s theologically known as antinomianism. Anti nomos, okay; anti, against, nomos, law. Antinomianism is against the law.
It’s the idea that the law just doesn’t matter. If we’re saved by grace, I can live however I want, there’s no need for obedience, there’s no need for sanctification, there’s no need for holiness, there’s no need for a changed life at all. These are the people who think that as long as they say the right things and as long as they have the right doctrine that everything’s fine, but there’s no need for life transformation. James is addressing that, and the issue for James is the nature of true and genuine saving faith.
But at the end of the day, Paul and James agreed with one another, and for evidence of that you just go to Acts chapter 15, where you have the record of how the church, the early church, worked through these questions of how is a person saved, how are they made right with God; and James and Paul and Peter all end up on the same page in Acts chapter 15. So I think the answer is no, James does not contradict Paul; they’re addressing different questions.
Now, here’s the deal, and I think this is the first application point, before we even get to the text this morning: the church always needs to be addressing these two problems. Martin Luther actually famously used this illustration; he said the church is like a drunken peasant. It keeps climbing on a donkey, falling off one side, then he climbs back on and he falls off on the other side. The church is falling into legalism or into antinomianism all the time. We’re either falling into self-righteousness or into unrighteousness. We’re either veering into kind of a pharisaical kind of religiosity on one hand or becoming worldly on the other. The church constantly needs to be steered back into the right path.
Tim Keller has quoted the church father Tertullian, who said that “just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so the gospel is crucified between these two thieves, the thieves of license on one hand and legalism on the other.” These are the two thieves of the gospel, and Paul addresses one as his primary focus, especially in the letters of Galatians and Romans, while James is addressing the other.
So the question for us this morning is to really understand and wrestle with what James wants to say about faith. Alright? James wants us to have a certain kind of faith. He wants us to have a faith that works.
That leads us to the text, James 2:14-26. You can follow along in God’s word, your own copy, or you can read on the screen. Let me read God’s word to us. James chapter 2, beginning in verse 14.
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “God in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’ – and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”
This is God’s word.
There are three things for us to think about this morning as we work through the passage. I want you to see:
I. The “Faith” that Doesn’t Work
II. The Faith that Works
III. The Grace of Faith
I. The “Faith” that Doesn’t Work
Okay, so first of all, the faith that doesn’t work, in verses 14 through 20. James here is giving us a picture of a certain kind of faith, and you’ll notice here that I have “faith” in quotes. It’s a certain kind of faith. It’s the faith that doesn’t work.
I’ll just cut to the chase and say what I think James is saying here. I think James is talking about an insincere faith. He’s talking about a false faith, a bogus faith, a faith that is not genuine, a faith that is not real. That’s the faith that doesn’t work, and you see it spelled out in verses 14 through 20. James essentially points out three features of this faith, and I just want to walk through these with you. I’m borrowing here the wording from John MacArthur’s commentary on James.
(1) First of all, there’s empty confession. Empty confession. Look at verse 14. “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”
Now, here’s the key to understanding that verse. It’s the little word “says.” Alright? “What good is it, my brothers, is someone says he has faith…?” James doesn’t say that he has faith; he doesn’t say that, he says they say they have faith. The issue here is not, “Is it possible to have a genuine faith that doesn’t work?” the issue here is it’s possible to profess faith without possessing the real thing. I think that’s essentially what James is getting at.
In fact, there are a couple of ways you see that. You see it with the word “says,” but you also see it with the word that comes right before “faith” at the end of the verse. He says, “Can that faith save him?” “Can that faith save him?” He doesn’t say, “Can faith save him,” but, “Can that faith save him?” The clear implication is no, that faith cannot save him. James here is contrasting a genuine faith with a false faith, an empty confession of faith.
I like that little saying that the radio preacher J. Vernon McGee used to make. He used to say, “I believe in the security of the believer and in the insecurity of the make-believer.” That’s exactly right. What James is talking about here is the make-believer. He’s talking about the person who says they have faith, but there’s been no life change, there’s no life transformation, there’s no fruit of the Spirit, there’s no love, there’s no mercy. The context here is showing mercy to others, right, giving to those who are in need, not showing partiality to the poor or weaker people, concern for justice and mercy. James is saying that if you say you have faith but that faith is not demonstrated through the reality of works, the faith is empty.
Leonard Ravenhill used to say, “You doctrine can be as straight as a gun barrel and your life just as empty.”
(2) That’s the issue here. It’s an empty confession, and it’s demonstrated, then, in a false compassion. Look at verses 15 through 17. “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?” “What good is that?”
In fact, he’s just repeating what he already said at the beginning of verse 14, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” James is concerned here with faith that’s good, that does good, and the word here carries the idea of that which is beneficial. He’s asking, “What benefit is it? Of what use is a faith that doesn’t have works, and of what use is it to say to someone, ‘Be warmed and filled,’ when you don’t actually do anything to try to meet their needs?”
There’s a story I read years ago about a congregation of people kind of in the frontier days, the American frontier. So there was this frontier congregation, and they gathered one time in a church building to pray for and to try to meet the needs of people whose home had just been destroyed by a tornado.
There’s a really kind of pious, overly spiritual, self-righteous person in the church, and she noticed that there was this young family there, and the mom was there with the children but the father wasn’t there. This kind of overly righteous pharisaical person said, “Couldn’t your husband have come to the prayer meeting?”
The wife responded softly, “No, he can’t come this evening, but he sent his prayers in the wagon.” They had come with a wagon full of blankets and food and so on to give the needy family.
That’s exactly the point. It’s not how much you say you care, it’s how much you actually demonstrate that you care. It’s not saying, “Be warmed and filled,” it’s actually doing something to meet the need.
So the contrast that James is making here is not a contrast between faith and works, it’s a contrast between that kind of faith, that has no works, and a genuine faith which actually manifests itself in deeds.
(3) This false faith, this faith that doesn’t work, is seen by its empty confession, by its false compassion, and then thirdly by its shallow conviction. You see this in verses 18 through 19. “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder!”
Okay, so here’s a contrast again, right; there’s a contrast between faith that shows itself with works and the faith which doesn’t, and James essentially says here that it’s not enough to have right doctrine. Even the demons believe. Even the demons believe the basic confession of the Old Testament: “Hear, O Israel, your God is one God,” right, Deuteronomy. Even the demons believe, but they tremble. They shudder.
What do you get when you teach a demon the Apostles’ Creed? You just get a clever devil, right? What do you get when you teach a demon Grudem’s Systematic Theology? You get a reformed clever devil! But it’s still a devil, because the heart is not changed. It’s not enough to have orthodoxy, it’s not enough to have the right theology, it’s not enough to make the right confession. You can have all of those things and it be a shallow conviction; theology’s not enough. There has to be heart change along with the change of mind.
And in fact, a person’s mind is not really changed until the heart is changed. I remember years ago when I was dealing with a really difficult counseling situation and I was getting advice from another counselor, and the counselor quoted a little poem to me that I’ve remembered ever since. She said, “A mind that’s changed against its will / Is of the same opinion still.” If this person hasn’t changed, they really haven’t gotten it. They haven’t understood what change if their will hasn’t changed.
That’s the issue here. A person can have certain things in their mind, but it hasn’t really sunk in until there’s been a change of life.
A few days ago I was in this room walking through the sanctuary with a couple of church members, along with an interior designer. We were consulting with an interior designer about changes we’re going to make in this room. So lots of changes coming right now at Redeemer Church.
As we were talking, we started talking about the shelves that are back on that wall, back behind the screen, and what are those shelves for? I just reminded them (nobody else knew this); there used to be pipes coming out of those shelves. There was a pipe organ. Do any of you remember that? Those were taken down years ago. They were really beautiful. They didn’t really fit the style of worship and the direction we were headed for as a church, so they were taken down years ago.
But here was the thing about those pipes: they didn’t actually work. They were faux pipes; they were fake pipes. They looked good, but they didn’t make any sound! They weren’t connected to anything where they actually made a sound.
That’s the kind of faith that James is critiquing here. It’s a faith that maybe sounds right and it looks right on paper, it’s orthodox, but it doesn’t actually change a person’s life. It’s a bogus faith, based on an empty confession, a false compassion, and a shallow conviction; and James says, “Can that faith save?” The clear answer to the question is no, that’s not a saving faith.
Years ago there was a traveling entertainer who billed himself as “the human fly,” because he could just scale walls, scale up the sides of buildings or monuments, and he would do this without the protection of ropes or nets or anything like that. Crowds of people would come to watch him.
He died very tragically when he was climbing one day and everyone noticed that he seemed to hesitate as he was reaching up with his right hand to grab something, and he grabs hold of a piece of mortar, and then fell to his death. It was very tragic.
When the police examined the death scene and they looked into his hand, what they saw is that he didn’t have a piece of mortar in his hand at all, he had a fistful of cobwebs. He saw something that looked like mortar, and he grabbed hold of it, but it wasn’t really mortar, and he fell to his doom.
I think the first thing we have to say here in application to us is simply this: that this is a point where we need to examine ourselves, whether we are in the faith. We need to see, are we really holding onto something that’s genuine and that’s real? Every single one of us needs to do that.
Now, I know that there are certain introspective types of people who are very conscientious, want so much to walk with the Lord, and struggle with assurance; and I’m not trying to take your real assurance away, I’m not trying to cause you to doubt, okay? So look at your faith and by the end of the sermon this morning I’m going to have you looking to Christ, who is the object of our faith, but take a moment, and maybe take some time this week, this afternoon, to sit down and to just ask yourself some questions.
“Is my faith active? Does my faith result in care for other people? Does my faith impact the way I live? Is my faith a repentant faith, so that I’m dealing with sin in my life? Is my faith leading me to pursue holiness? Is my faith a genuine faith, or is it the kind of faith that doesn’t work?” Is it like a fake pipe organ that maybe looks good, it maybe fools everyone in church, but the reality is there’s no music coming out of it, there’s no sound, there’s no reality there. Check yourself in response to God’s word.
II. The Faith that Works
The second thing we need to note here is the faith that does work. Alright? There’s a faith that doesn’t work, but then, verses 21 through 26, James begins to unfold for us the faith that actually does work, and he does this with two examples from the Old Testament. These examples are Abraham and Rahab.
I think what James says shows us three things about this faith. Just as we saw three things about the faith that doesn’t work, here are three things about the faith that actually does work, and here’s the first.
(1) This faith is active alongside works. Look at verses 21 and 22. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.”
There’s a little play on words there in verse 22. The New American Standard says it well: “You see that faith was working with his works.” Faith was working with his works. The faith was active, and especially in obedience! Abraham’s faith was an obedient faith, and so this example of Abraham offering up Isaac, his willingness to do that, in obedience to God’s command, that was a fruit of his faith, and it was his faith working alongside the works, the faith and the obedience working together.
You might think of it this way: there’s a synergy in the Christian life between faith and action. It’s like two wheels of a bicycle. You have to have both of them for there to be real balance.
Chuck Swindoll has said that “faith is like calories; you can’t see them, but you can always see their effects.” Right? Faith demonstrates itself! That’s the point. Faith demonstrates itself in action.
Now, Martin Luther actually did understand this, and it’s clear to see in something he said in his preface to the book of Romans. Listen to Luther.
He said, “Oh, it is living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith! And so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises it has already done them and is always at the doing of them. He who does not these works is a faithless man; he gropes and looks about after faith and good works and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks with many words about faith and good works.”
It sounds a lot like James. I think Luther had actually gotten the point after all. Faith is active! It’s a busy, active impulse in our hearts.
Now, there can be times where faith is weak and so you don’t see as much fruit, right, and Jesus talks about weakness of faith, doesn’t he, when he rebukes his disciples for their little faith, their small faith, for the weakness of their faith. But the principle of faith – when it’s healthy, the principle of faith demonstrates itself in action.
James also says here that faith was completed by his works; Abraham’s faith was completed by his works, or it was perfected by his works. The idea here seems to be that the faith that had marked Abraham’s life for some 30 years, from the time that God called him and from the time that God gave him this promise that he would have a son, that faith was demonstrated and matured and was perfected in the course of his lifelong obedience. So the reality of his faith was seen.
(2) Here's the second thing to see about this faith: this faith is vindicated by works. You see this in verses 21 through 24, and also in verse 25. In fact, you have this phrase three times, the phrase, “justified by works.” Justified by works.
Now, this is the thorny verse, right? These are the phrases that people have trouble with in James. Is James teaching salvation by works? Is James contradicting Paul?
I think we have to just understand what James means by “justified.” That word “justified” can have a legal meaning, okay? So it can have a meaning where it essentially means to be declared right in the eyes of a court, and when Paul uses this word he’s using, almost all of the time, he’s using it in this legal, forensic way. He’s thinking of us under the eyes of God the Judge, and when he says that we are justified by faith or we’re justified by grace or we’re justified by the blood of Christ, what Paul has in view is that the verdict of the judge is given to us right now. As soon as someone believes in Jesus, the verdict is given, “Not guilty. You are righteous in my sight, accepted, forgiven; your sins are pardoned.”
But the word essentially means – it can have that legal connotation, but it essentially means to be vindicate. It means to vindicate. It can be vindication in the eyes of a court. In Paul’s thinking it’s a vindication that happens right now, but oftentimes when this word is used it’s used in reference to the final judgment, and it’s looking ahead. It’s looking ahead to the final judgment, where everyone will be assembled, right, the living and the dead, the sheep and the goats; everyone will be assembled, and everyone will receive a verdict, and the verdict will be given in accordance with the life that’s been lived.
Now, Jesus teaches this, James teaches this, and Paul himself teaches this.
Jesus, Matthew 12:36-37: “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
It’s obvious here in James, but just two verses that I haven’t read this morning, James 2:12-13: “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
Here’s Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what Is due for what he had done in the body, whether good or evil.”
Now, all of the writers of Scripture teach this. You have it in the Old Testament, New Testament; you have it in the gospels, the epistles; you have it Paul, James, John, Jesus – they all teach this, that there’s a final judgment, and the final judgment is in accord with our works.
That’s not a contradiction to what Paul teaches, that we receive the verdict now. When we receive the verdict now, we are receiving a genuine justification in the sight of God, so that we can be at peace with God, our conscience can be assured our sins are forgiven; that comes to us through faith, and it comes to us on the basis of the finished work of Christ.
But when the verdict is given on the last day, while it is absolutely true that that verdict is ultimately based on the finished work of Christ, the public evidence for the reality of that faith which joins us to Christ, the public evidence of that faith is the life that we’ve lived, and it’s the fruit of that faith. That’s probably what James has in mind here.
I think the illustration of Abraham is striking, the illustration of Abraham, verses 21 through 24. He’s referring, of course, to the incident recorded in Genesis 22. Do you remember this? This is the great story of Abraham and Isaac.
You remember that Isaac was the son of promise, remember? Born when Abraham is an old man, Sarah, his wife, is an old woman; the son of promise, given in a supernatural way. This was the son in whom all of God’s promises would be fulfilled. This was the son that brought joy and laughter into Abraham’s and Sarah’s lives. All of their dreams terminate in Isaac, and in Genesis 22 God tells Abraham, “Sacrifice your son.”
Genesis 22:2, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a brunt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” And Abraham goes. He makes the journey. He climbs the mountain. He even lifts the knife, and he’s ready to plunge it into the heart of his son, and you can only imagine the agony of that moment. You can only imagine the confusion, that God would ask him to do such a horrible thing.
Of course, you remember the story that the angel stops him, the voice stops him and says, “Don’t slay your son,” and instead there’s a ram that’s caught in the thicket. God provides a sacrifice, and God essentially says, “Now I know that you fear me, because you were willing to obey me, even to this point.”
Now, that’s the example that James uses of Abraham’s obedience, his works, that proves the reality of his faith. But it’s interesting that James then quotes a different passage, and the passage he quotes not from Genesis 22; the passage he quotes is from Genesis 15. It’s Genesis 15:6 that James quotes here, and the passage reads (you see this in verse 23), “And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’” And then James adds, “And he was called a friend of God.”
Isn’t it interesting that the passage he quotes, that passage takes place something like 30 years before the incident that James cites? Now, I think the idea is this, that Abraham had been a believer for all these years, and as soon as he believed his faith was counted as righteousness. He was righteous in God’s sight. God had already accepted him. But now that faith is getting demonstrated by the ultimate test. Now that faith is being seen in the ultimate act of obedience, and Abraham is seen to be someone who is right before God.
Now, get this: Abraham’s obedience did not make him a believer. His faith made him obedient. Do you see the difference? Faith comes before obedience, not the other way around. Abraham’s obedience is not what made him righteous before God. He was accepted as righteous as soon as he believed. He believed and it was credited to him for righteousness. But his faith led to an obedience that vindicated the reality of his faith. His obedience proved that his faith was genuine.
You might almost say it like this, that in Paul what you’re getting is the doctrine of justification by faith, and in James what you’re getting is the doctrine of justification of faith. What justifies the faith? What vindicates the faith? What shows that the faith is real? What demonstrates that is the fruit of obedience.
Someone put it this way in a hymn:
“Let all who hold this faith and hope
In holy deeds abound;
Thus faith approves itself sincere
By active virtue crowned.
Abound in holy deeds because of faith! Faith is what makes you right with God, but the faith is completed, it is perfected, it is demonstrated, it is vindicated, the faith is justified by the works of obedience.
(3) Now the third thing to see is simply this, that this is true of all believers. This is what faith is, alright? This is what faith looks like. It’s not that there are some believers who have no works at all and they’re saved and there are other believers who have works and they’re the mature ones who get a lot of rewards. That’s not the contrast. The contrast is between a bogus faith that has no works and a genuine faith that is expressed through its works.
You can see that in that James gives two illustrations here, and they could not be further apart in terms of who they were. There’s both Abraham and there’s Rahab.
Think about this for a minute. Abraham is the father of the faithful, right, the father of the nation of Israel. Abraham is a patriarch. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people.
In contrast to that you have Rahab, and what was Rahab? She was a Canaanite, she was a prostitute. She’s almost incidental to the story. She welcomes these spies, she doesn’t turn them in, and she and her household are saved in the destruction of Jericho. Almost incidental to the story, until you keep reading and you realize that Rahab married a Jewish guy named Salmon, and that Salmon was the father of the ancestor of King David, or he was the grandfather (or maybe he was great-grandfather) of King David. So, Rahab becomes the ancestor of Jesus the Messiah, so she actually had a key role to play.
So you have two very different people. You have the respected Abraham and you have the prostitute Rahab, but they’re both believers, they’re both people of faith, they’re both people who demonstrated that faith in their actions, and it’s as if James is saying here, “This is what faith looks like. Take the greatest examples and the least example, from one end of the spectrum to the other; a genuine believer demonstrates their faith through their deeds.”
Let me give you an illustration. This is a fourth-hand illustration, okay, because I got it from my preacher friend Rodney Tolleson (some of you may know him, he pastors a church in Demotte, Indiana. He got it from Tim Keller, and Tim Keller got it from Charles Spurgeon! Spurgeon probably got it from somebody, too. I’m going to give you the version I got from Rodney, because he added something that I think is helpful.
The story goes like this: there once was a skilled gardener, a very skilled gardener, who was also a friend of a king. One season this gardener grew the very best carrot he’d ever grown. It was an amazing carrot. It was the product of all of his skill, of all of his hard work, of all of his industry over the years; and he loved the king, and because he loved the king he brought this simple gift to the king, this simple carrot, and he said, “Oh king, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever seen, and because I love you and I love your rule so much and I think you’re such a good king I want to present this to you as a gift.”
The king received it, and as the gardener was walking out of the court the king stopped him and said, “You’ve been a loyal subject. You’re a good man, you’re a good gardener, and I actually own land that’s next to your garden, and I want to give you that land so that you can grow more fruit and you can continue to cultivate fruit for the benefit of the people.”
Well, there’s a nobleman who was in the court when all this happened, and the nobleman starts scratching his head and says, “Wow, this guy got all this land just for giving him a carrot. I wonder what I’d get if I give him a horse.”
So the next day he comes to the court and he says, “Oh king, this is one of my horses, this is the finest horse I’ve ever had. You’re such a wonderful king; I want to present my horse to you as a gift.”
The king took the horse and sent the nobleman away without giving him anything. When the nobleman asked – he said, “Well, how come you gave the gardener this land for a simple carrot but you wouldn’t give me anything for the horse?”
The king answered; he said, “when the gardener gave me the carrot, he was giving the gift to me, but when you gave me the horse you were giving it to yourself.”
That’s the difference between righteousness that comes out of a relationship and the righteousness that’s essentially self-righteousness, that you’re trying to get something out of God. That’s the difference between a faith that works and just trying to be justified by your works.
Now, you could add one more person to the story, and this is what my friend Rodney did. He said if you could add a third person to the story he would be a gardener who talked and talked and talked and talked about how much he loved the king, but he never gave the king anything.
That’s the kind of person that James is writing about, and saying, “He doesn’t really love the king at all.” A faith that is genuine is a faith that is proven to be genuine by the fruit that it produces in his life.
III. The Grace of Faith
So we’ve seen the faith that doesn’t work, we’ve seen the faith that works; now, really quickly (we’re almost done), the grace of faith. Now, I’ve said it over and over again that the gospel is here, it’s implicit. Sometimes it’s in the white space in James; you have to read between the lines a little bit. But as I was studying this passage, it was interesting; when you read James chapter 2, James chapter 2 begins with faith, there’s a mention of faith in verse 5, and then it ends with faith. You put all that together and you begin to see something of the grace of faith. So I just want to end by kind of connecting the dots for you, and I want you to see three things about the grace of faith.
(1) First, grace is the object of our faith. Look at chapter 2:1. This is how James starts the chapter. He says, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.”
Now, that’s not a throwaway verse. Remember who’s writing this. This is the brother of Jesus! The brother of Jesus! Can you imagine worshipping your brother? What would it take for you to fall down and worship your brother and say, “My Lord and my God”? Who would do that? The only way anyone would do that is if they are absolutely convinced that this brother, who was crucified, rose from the dead and is the Lord of glory. That was an act of grace from Jesus into the life of James that brought him into faith, and James here shows that he understands that the object of our faith is not what we do. The faith is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.
So when you examine yourself, that’s a good thing to do, but you don’t end self-examination by looking at yourself; you end your self-examination by looking to Christ, who is the object of faith.
Listen to how Charles Haddon Spurgeon put it. He said, “Remember, sinner, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee - it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee - it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that is the instrument - it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore…look not to thy hope, but to Christ, the source of they hope; look not to thy faith, but to Christ, the author and finisher of thy faith, and if thou doest that, ten thousand devils cannot throw thee down.”
Look to Christ. Christ is the object of our faith, and in Christ we receive grace.
(2) Then look at verse 5 and you see something else; you see that grace is actually at the source of our faith. You might ask yourself, “How do you get faith? How do you get a genuine faith, a faith that demonstrates itself in deeds?” Look at verse 5.
“Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?”
Man, there is such a pile-up of words there! James says they’re beloved! Who are they beloved by? They’re loved by God, and also loved by James.
They are brothers; that means they’re members of a family. Listen; did you choose to be born in your family? No, you were just born in your family. You don’t choose your family. Some of you think, “Well, I wish I could choose a different family,” but anyway, you have the family you have because you were born into it. You know what? You’re born into the family of God, and John tells us in the Gospel of John that we are born to the family of God as we believe in Christ, as we receive him; we are born “not by the will of flesh, not by the will of man, but [born] of God.” It’s God’s will that brings us into the family.
Then notice this, also in verse 5, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith?” God chooses! How do you get faith? God chose to give you faith. That’s how you get it. The faith comes from grace, it comes from God.
And the he says, “You are heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him.” Listen, here’s the thing about heirs: heirs inherit something, not because they worked for it, but because they’re in the family. Everything that you get in heaven and in eternal life and from God, at the end of the day, everything you get you get because you inherited it because you’re a member of the family, because of your older brother who died for you on the cross and because you’ve been born into this family and because God has chosen you to be a part of this family. You don’t get it because of your works; you get it by an inheritance.
Here’s the deal: God graciously chooses us, he makes us rich in faith, he makes us his heirs, he gives us the promises of his kingdom, he gives us faith, and the works come from the faith, but the faith comes from the grace. The beauty of grace is that God does this at great cost to himself, but the power of this grace is that it actually changes our lives.
(3) And then finally, number three (this is the last thing); we also see grace in the experience of our faith. Go back to verse 23, and I just want to highlight the end of that verse, which I kind of passed over before. Verse 23, talking about Abraham; it says, “The Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ And he was called a friend of God.” A friend of God.
Even friendship is grace, right? You don’t earn friendship. You don’t get to be friends with someone because you earn it. I mean, you try really hard to make someone your friend and earn the friendship and you’ll probably end up spoiling the friendship, right? Friendship is something that it’s kind of mysterious how it arises, but in the divine economy God makes us his friends, and he does it by grace. The experience of our faith is an experience of grace as we live in friendship with God, as we live in communion with God.
Now, how in the world can that happen for someone who is a pagan idolater, as Abraham was? The way it happened is that God singled him out and said, “I’m going to choose him, I’m going to bless him, I’m going to make promises to him, I’m going to call him to myself,” and Abraham responded.
For every single one of us who believe in Christ, we owe our faith in Christ, we owe our friendship with God, we owe it all to grace, to grace and to grace alone. So don’t look to your works, don’t even look to your faith; look to Christ, who is the author and finisher of your faith; look to the grace of Christ that secures your faith, and look to that grace that transforms us so that our faith becomes a fruitful kind of faith. Let’s pray.
Gracious God, we thank you for the promises of the gospel, and we thank you that the gospel is ultimately about not what we do for you, but what you have done for us in Jesus Christ. We do ask you right now to examine our hearts and help us see whether we have a genuine faith, a faith that really has embraced this grace and that is demonstrated by transformation in our lives. We don’t want a bogus faith, we don’t want to rely on something that is false and uncertain, and so where conviction is needed I pray that you would give it.
Lord, for everyone who’s been pretending, for everyone who has just been trying to assure themselves on the basis of a bare profession, for everyone who says they believe but have not genuinely believed, I pray that there would be a real moment of truth and conviction, conviction that does not end in despair but conviction that leads to godly sorrow leading to repentance and to a genuine, heartfelt faith in Christ and the joy of new forgiveness and freedom that comes in him.
For every believer I pray for assurance, assurance that comes as we look to Christ himself and what he has done, assurance that comes through the witness of the Spirit in our hearts, who bears with us in our hearts that we are your children; and an assurance that comes as we can see that there has been change in our lives, certainly not the degree of change that we want to see or ought to see, but something’s different because of our faith in Jesus Christ.
Lord, as we come to the table this morning may we come with our eyes on Jesus, may we come receiving the bread and the juice with hearts full of faith in Jesus, who is the bread of life, who has given himself for us. As we partake of this meal, may we do so as those who are the friends of God, those who know you in a true and saving way and who live in communion and fellowship with you. This we pray in Jesus’s name and for his sake, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
