Few weeks go by where we do not hear about some horrible tragedy that grips us and causes us to respond in shock and disbelief—a terrorist bombing, an airplane crash, a hurricane or tornado claiming the lives of hundreds of people. Immediately upon hearing the news we offer up our prayers for the families and shake our heads in genuine compassion and sympathy.
And yet, tragic as these horrible events are, there is a far greater tragedy with which we live every day of our lives: The tragedy of believing one’s soul is safe only to die with a false sense of spiritual security.
James warns us to examine whether our faith is genuine. He addresses the reality that there are many who live from day to day assuming that they are okay spiritually when frankly they are not. He writes about faith here, genuine faith. And he contrasts living faith, real Christian faith, with what he terms a dead faith. We too should soberly consider his question: “Do you have genuine saving faith, or do you have a dead faith, a useless faith?” Here’s how James puts it in James 2:14-26:
14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?
17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!
One of the ways to better understand what something is, is by taking time to talk about what that something is not. Let us consider these three truths as applied to living, or authentic saving faith.
Saving Faith is not Merely Confessional
Saving faith, real Christian faith, is not merely confessional. That is, we are not Christians merely because we profess to be or confess to be. We are not Christians merely because we say that we are.
Here’s how James puts it. He asks, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says (emphasis added) he has faith but does not have works? Can (this) faith save him?”
Right from the start James teaches that no one is a Christian based upon mere verbal confession. This teaching is reminiscent of the teaching of our Lord Jesus who said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:21 and following:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness! (Matthew 7:21-23).’”
Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Saying we are Christians does not necessarily mean that we are Christians. Saving faiths is not merely confessional.
James’ immediate concern here is that there were some in the church who said they were followers of Christ, but the way they lived suggested otherwise. Principally, James teaches that these who said they were Christians did not “live it out,” did not demonstrate that they were true Christians by showing concern for others.
He then provides an illustrative example: “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?”
What does it profit? In other words, “What good is that kind of faith?” What good is there in a faith that is merely confessional? A man may say he is a Christian, but that proves nothing, especially if he clearly is not living as a Christian.
Suppose you see a man or woman dressed in shabby clothes and who is clearly hungry. You may feel very spiritual about yourself saying to them: “God bless you! May you be warm and no longer hungry!” James protests: “But you do not give them what they need!” You don’t give them food and clothing. James asks, “What good is that?!”
And he concludes that this kind of faith (the meaning of the question: “Can faith save him”), this kind of faith, this useless faith, is no good at all because it does not lead to action. This sort of faith does not lead to the good deeds one expects from Christians. In fact, James refers to this kind of faith as both “useless” and “dead.” This is not the kind of faith that saves a soul. It is a faith “by itself,” a faith that does not result in works.
So James concludes, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If it is a dead faith then it obviously cannot grant life. It does not lead to eternal life.
Saving faith is not merely confessional. We are not Christians simply because we say we are Christians. We demonstrate that we are true Christians by the way we live.
This surely comes as no surprise to those who are genuinely saved. We understand that the power of the gospel leads to regeneration, new life. Jesus says we are “born again.” We are, as Paul teaches: “New creations.” He says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).”
If we are truly saved God gives us a new heart with new desires. We read the Bible because we desire to read the Bible. We attend worship because we desire to attend worship. We pray because God has given us a desire to joy in talking with Him. We give monies to the church not because we have to, but because we want to. We love God and we just naturally live out our Christian faith. Good deeds accompany our faith as evidence of new desires.
So James argues then that if a person says he has faith but does not have the accompanying good deeds that follow, then that person has every reason in the world to doubt whether or not he or she has been genuinely converted. Saving faith is not merely confessional. It is a confession that leads to expression, namely the doing of good deeds or works. “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
We should pause for a moment to make clear that James is not contradicting the Bible’s teaching elsewhere that a person is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Were we to disregard context and just pull a couple verses from different parts of the Bible, then it might appear as though there were a contradiction.
Were we to read James’ statement: “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” and then open Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus and read: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9),” we might conclude that James is teaching a “faith-plus-works” salvation and that Paul is teaching a “faith-minus-works” salvation. Is there a contradiction?
What we must understand is that James and Paul are speaking about two different points in the Christian life. Paul is talking about the way into the Christian life, the beginning of Christian living. James is talking about a point after one has become a Christian, the living out of Christian faith. As we have note previously: James does not write this letter to teach how to become a Christian, but how to behave as a Christian. Paul, in his writings, frequently stresses the way one becomes a Christian and he does so by teaching that the way to God’s approval is not to be found in the way many of his Jewish acquaintances erroneously believed: by keeping the law.
Paul is addressing the entry point into salvation when he writes: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).” That is, “You cannot earn your way into heaven. You cannot ‘work’ your way into favor with God. You are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ alone.”
In that same passage, however, Paul goes on to say that once a person is saved that he or she will live out the Christian faith by doing the good deeds and works that God has prepared for him to do. To the one who is saved he writes: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
So salvation is not a “faith-plus-works,” nor a “faith-minus-works,” but a “faith that works.” In the words of a popular proverb: “Faith alone saves,” but “the faith that saves is never alone.” 1
James continues to teach that saving faith is not merely confessional. In verse 18 he suggests: “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
This verse is notoriously difficult to translate. In the original Greek manuscripts there is no punctuation and all the letters are side-by-side with hardly any space between them. Consequently, we cannot say for sure just who is doing the talking and when. We know that one person says something and that someone else responds. Beyond this we cannot say for certain where the quotation marks rightly belong.
For our purposes, it seems helpful to avoid being too near-sighted and back up a bit and read the text in it’s wider context. This way–however the punctuation works out– the wider point remains: faith and works are inseparable. As wrong as it is for one person to say, “I have merely faith,” it is equally wrong for the other person to say, “I have merely works.” The two are inseparable.
Again, salvation is not a “faith-plus-works,” nor a “faith-minus-works,” but genuine living faith is a “faith that works.” Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is never alone, it will be accompanied by works that show this faith to be genuine, saving faith.
So if one person merely has good deeds, good works only, good deeds but no faith, then this is a person who may be good on the outside but has not been changed on the inside.
Have you ever heard the expression, “Empty suit?” And empty suit is a derogatory expression, a way to refer to someone who looks good on the outside—they’re dressed nicely—but they are empty on the inside. Or we might say, “The lights are on, but there’s nobody home.” What we mean is that this person looks okay on the outside, but there’s a problem on the inside. They are lacking something.
Applied to James’ teaching on faith, one person may say he is a Christian and another may say he has good works. Truth is, both are necessary for genuine conversion to have taken place. Otherwise we are making an empty claim. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. But once we are “born again,” new creatures with new desires, we will live out the truth of our confession by doing the good works God has ordained for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).
Saving Faith is not Merely Intellectual
Not only is saving faith not merely confessional, but it also is not merely intellectual. James addresses those who may have their doctrine right, but again fail to live out that faith in the doing of good deeds. Saving faith then, is not merely a cerebral or intellectual experience.
Specifically James says, “You believe that there is on God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!”
A person can believe orthodox statements about the Christian faith and still be lost. A person can accept truth claims about God and still be destined for hell.
The statement: “You believe that there is one God” is an orthodox Christian statement. There is but one God! So James says, “You do well.” But then he warns: “Even the demons believe (this)—and tremble!”
Even demons believe true statements about God, but this does not mean that they are in a right relationship with God. Saving faith is not merely intellectual. We are not put into a position of favor with God simply by agreeing to true statements.
True Christian faith, living faith, grips both the head and the heart. Genuine faith is both cerebral and cardiological. If faith is merely intellectual then it is faith that resides only in our heads. If, however, we recognize the depth of our sin, and throw ourselves upon the mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and surrender to Him as Lord, then something has happened on the inside. Something has happened in our hearts. We are different. We are changed. We are saved. And this saving faith leads to the doing of good deeds, good works.
The great Puritan preacher and thinker Jonathan Edwards makes this point in a sermon preached on this verse. His sermon is entitled, “True Grace Distinguished From The Experience Of Devils.” Isn’t that a great Puritan sermon title?! Edwards makes the point that, just like demons, man can know the various attributes of God and yet remain lost. Here’s an excerpt from the sermon:
2The devils know God’s almighty power. They saw a great manifestation of it when they saw God lay the foundation of the earth…and were much affected with it. They have seen innumerable other great demonstrations of [God’s] power, as in the universal [flood], the destruction of Sodom, the wonders in Egypt, at the Red sea, and in the wilderness, causing the sun to stand still in Joshua’s time, and many others…
So the devils have a great knowledge of the wisdom of God. They have had unspeakably more opportunity and occasion to observe it in the work of creation, and also in the works of providence, than any mortal man has ever had.
Devils and [condemned] men know that God is eternal and unchangeable. And therefore they despair of there ever being an end to their misery. Therefore it is manifest, that merely persons having an affecting sense of some, or even of all God’s attributes, is no certain sign that they have the true grace of God in their hearts.
This is precisely the warning James provides: one can believe true statements about God and still be lost. Merely intellectually understanding truths of the Bible does not guarantee one’s salvation. It does not guarantee that the grace of God is operative in our hearts.
Saving faith is not merely confessional and not merely intellectual. But there is more:
Saving Faith is not Merely Emotional
Note the emotion indicated by the demons. James describes them this way: “Even the demons believe—and tremble!”
They shudder, they bristle. They move, they shake. They feel. One could say that when they are in the presence of God, they are very emotional. A lost person can feel awe in the presence of God.
Emotions are part of our being. We all “feel” certain ways in certain situations. Emotions themselves are not the problem. The problem is when we base the authenticity of our faith upon mere emotional experience.
It is dangerous to believe we are genuinely saved simply because we have (or don’t have) an emotional experience of some kind. No one is saved merely because he or she feels a certain way. The fact is, there are many days when the true Christian does not necessarily feel very good or very spiritual. Emotions come and go.
A lost person can feel the warmth of a church building. A lost person can feel the care and concern of others. A lost person can feel good when listening to congregational music. He can feel excited, happy, and even good about his spiritual condition.
Saving faith then, is not merely confessional, not merely intellectual, and not merely emotional.
So what is a sign that the true grace of God is working in our hearts? We are saved when we place our faith in Jesus Christ alone as Savior. We believe that we are sinners who can do nothing to earn God’s favor. We repent, turning from our sin and turning to Jesus Christ, looking to Christ alone for acceptance with God—Christ’s redemptive work on our behalf. And this genuine faith and trust in Christ alone leads to a different way of living. We are new creations and we live out our Christian faith through practical deeds and loving works.
Salvation is not a “faith-plus-works,” nor is salvation found in a “faith-minus-works,” but genuine living faith is a “faith that works.”
What About You?
- Does your faith in Christ involve both “head” and “heart?” How can you use these terms to help someone else believe in Jesus?
- In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus indicates that saving faith is more than merely addressing Him as “Lord,” and goes on to describe various “works” unbelievers have done in His name. Since Jesus says we must do the will of His father in heaven, what is the problem with those to whom Jesus refers?
- “Faith alone saves,” but “the faith that saves is never alone.” Do you agree with this statement? Explain and apply your answer.
- Paraphrase of John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent (1547), responding to Canon 11 of the sixth session.
- http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/truegrace.htm
Gersom Clark
Happy Resurrection Sunday, Todd!
Todd Linn, PhD
Thank you, Gersom! Christ is risen!!