Sunday Scripture - James 2:20-26

James 2:20-26 

2:20-26 – In this section, James gives some concrete examples of the kind of works that real faith will produce. James consistently uses “faith” in a slightly different way than Paul does. James uses it to refer to the act of believing doctrine, much as it was used in the Jewish milieu of James’ day (and often is still used that way today, despite the way the rest of the NT treats the term). Paul, however, speaks of “faith” as a full-orbed, whole-self commitment of loyalty and trust to Christ, which will necessarily bear the fruit of good works as part of its own nature. But it is not the works that save us, it is the grace of God poured out with regard to our transformational trust in Christ’s faithfulness. So although James and Paul use the term “faith” differently, they’re actually making the same point: real faith includes concrete actions, not just intellectual knowledge or an internal spiritual act. The evidence James gives of this is twofold. First, he uses the example of Abraham, citing two different passages. The first one he quotes, that of Abraham being willing to obey God and sacrifice Isaac, uses the terminology of “faith and actions working together” and of “faith made complete” by actions. Again, this underscores James’ sense that a merely intellectual, internalized faith is clearly lacking something. True faith will be manifest in obedience to God. If we really believed that God is who he says he is—the sovereign of the whole universe, who loves us and has given us commands in order that we may grow to be what we were truly meant to be—then we will necessarily want to obey his commands, out of holy duty and love. But if the desire to obey his commands is not present in your life, then you don’t actually believe in a God that is sovereign and loving; your faith is a fantasy, ungrounded in the reality of God. James also cites the story of Abraham’s act of faith in response to God's promise of descendants: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”—the same passage that Paul also uses to prove his own point about faith and works. By including both passages--about Abraham's belief and his act of obedience--James wants to ensure that this part of Abraham’s story is not misunderstood. God’s justification of Abraham, counting him as righteous, was not simply the result of Abraham’s intellectual act; the rest of Abraham’s story shows that that intellectual act was part of a whole-life commitment to God. He notes that this kind of true faith is described as being “a friend of God”: faith is not just assenting to a doctrine, it is a life-altering relationship of love and trust with the God of the universe, a relationship that will necessarily be evidenced by the way we live. The second Old Testament story that James uses is that of Rahab, who offered shelter to two Israelite spies in Jericho, and then helped them escape. In that story, Rahab acknowledges her belief in the God if Israel. But imagine if she stopped there, and made no attempt to help the followers of Israel's God, instead supposing that her mere act of belief would be enough to save her from the destruction that was coming to Jericho. The way the story progresses in Joshua makes it very clear that, had she done things that way, she would have died along with everyone else in the city. It is her act of assisting the Israelites that demonstrates her real faith in the God of Israel. It is that whole-orbed faith, of belief and works together, that leads to her salvation—an act of grace whereby her house is spared, since it is marked with a telltale red rope (a foreshadowing of the saving effects of the blood of Christ). Finally, James gives us one more analogy: in the same way that we, as persons, are only whole because we have both body and spirit, so too faith is only truly itself when belief is partnered with actions. Otherwise, your “faith” is nothing but a corpse.

Sunday Scripture - James 2:14-19

James 2:14-19

2:14-19 – There are some who look at these verses, and at the dichotomy it describes between faith and works, and are instantly reminded of the incessant refrain of the Apostle Paul. In Galatians (as elsewhere), Paul insists that our salvation is based on faith alone, and not on works or deeds. So at first glance, it looks like James is directly disagreeing with Paul: “Faith without works is dead!” But we don’t base our theology on a mere surface-level glance at Scripture. On closer reflection, it becomes clear that these two writers, both of whom were inspired by the Holy Spirit, are each writing with slightly different issues in mind. Paul is confronting a Judaizing tendency within the early church, in which some Christians were saying that it was necessary for salvation to keep all the rules of the Old Testament Law—even for Gentile converts. Paul argues strenuously against this, and builds his theology on the understanding that it is not anything that we do that earns our salvation, lest we could take credit for it; it is all based on what Christ has done, and our only part is to receive this in faith. James, however, appears to be attacking a different perspective; a perspective that Paul never championed. His interlocutors seem to be saying that faith in Christ need not be accompanied by good works at all. But this can’t be an attack against Paul’s theology, because the Pauline letters are brilliantly clear in their portrayal of true Christian faith being a reality that must necessarily be lived out in practical action. So who is James writing against? The probable answer is that a few Gentile converts had taken Paul’s message, misunderstood it, and applied it in a reductionistic manner that fit with Greek presuppositions about the nature of the human person. Since only the spirit matters, and not the body (or so many Greeks believed), then only the spiritual act of faith is what matters in the Christian life, not the outward forms of whether one performs good deeds or not. This position is clearly problematic, even heretical; and it’s certainly not what Paul taught. In most of Paul’s letters, the entire second half of each epistle is taken up with very specific admonitions about our outward, practical deeds of obedience in the Christian life. In any case, James is clear and direct in his rebuttal . His point is simple: if you claim that faith is what saves you, then you’d better be sure that your faith is real. And real faith, as is evidenced throughout Scripture, is faith that works. Real faith is not just an act of intellectual assent; it’s a wholehearted, life-changing commitment, a transfer of loyalty to God’s Kingdom that changes the whole of how we live. If you believe Jesus is the Son of God in the same way that you believe in the law of gravity, then you do not have real faith. Even the demons believe in Jesus like that. That’s not saving faith. Saving faith is a renewal of one’s whole being through the work of the Holy Spirit; it is a transformation that includes not just our intellectual beliefs but our whole enterprise of daily living. Real faith will show the evidence of its identity in the way that we live. To use James’ example, real faith will care for the poor in outreaching, practical ways. Why? Because real faith is a union of our hearts with the God of love, who cares for the poor with compassion, yearning, and fountains of grace. If our faith is true faith, then God’s heart will be expressed through our actions. So if you don’t have deeds, then you don’t have faith. Pretty simple.

Sunday Scripture - James 2:1-13

James 2:1-13 

2:1-7 – Once again, James rightly diagnoses one of the commonest failings of human nature: our willingness to judge people at a glance, to treat them better or worse based solely on outward appearances, or on such trivial considerations as wealth and worldly status. The scene James describes is entirely believable—a rich man and a poor man enter a church: the rich man is attended to, given a comfortable and prominent seat, while the poor man is at best ignored, or at worst, told to take a place of insignificance. While contemporary American culture is not quite the same as ancient Greco-Roman cultures in consideration of wealth and class, human nature has certainly not changed. In our egalitarian, cheer-for-the-underdog mentality, we may well not give the ostentatiously dressed rich man preference over the poor person in our congregation, but we certainly do fall into the trap of giving more prominence to persons of fame than is their due, and to ignoring those who are suspected of addictions or mental instability in addition to their poverty. For instance, if New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady wandered into our church service, it is almost guaranteed that he would receive far more positive attention than a homeless man who, in his manner of behavior, seemed a little off. But James wants to press us on this point: should we actually be acting in that way? Is there anything intrinsic to the nature of Tom Brady as a human being that makes him more valuable than the homeless man? The clear answer, from Christian theology, is “No.” Now, our church members would of course want to give Mr. Brady a warm welcome and to express our thanks for the innumerable sporting heroics that he has achieved for our little corner of the world; but if we do so, we must take great lengths to ensure that the homeless man too is also given a warm welcome and granted the loving attention that he deserves, simply because he is a fellow human being, created in God’s image and lavished with God’s love. But James doesn’t even stop there: he goes so far as to suggest that, in terms of moral virtue, there’s a good chance that the poor man will be more laudable than the rich. As we already covered in the commentary on 1:9-11, poverty gives one more opportunity for the pursuit of virtue than does wealth, so it’s a decent bet that poorer people will be more virtuous, on the whole, than richer people (a stereotype that modern social science appears to support). So, James says, if you’re going to show special favor to anyone, you should show it to the poor man—such are the ones that God has “chosen…to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom,” whereas the rich are more likely to magnify themselves rather than God, and to greedily sue for even more wealth than they already have. James describes our natural behavior of making assumptions about people based on these appearances of wealth and class as discrimination, and he says that we have “become judges with evil thoughts.” But we are not in the office of judge over anyone else, and it’s a good thing we’re not: we make a rather poor job of it. God alone is the judge, for only he truly sees beyond appearances, to the heart of the matter. The bottom line is this: God does not show favoritism among his children, and so neither should we.

2:8-13 – James continues his point by quoting one of Jesus’ favorite Old Testament commands: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which the Lord had called one of “the greatest commandments,” and which James describes as “the royal law.” James then makes clear the seriousness of showing favoritism. Many Christians would simply shrug off this behavior, claim that it’s just a natural human instinct to show a little bit of favoritism, and that it’s not really a big deal, as long as we are at least trying to work on overcoming our failure to love all of our neighbors to the fullest extent. After all, it’s not like ignoring the weird homeless guy who makes us uncomfortable is the same as murdering him, right? Hold on there, James says. In a certain sense, it is exactly like murdering him. Loving our neighbors is a law of God in the same way that the commandment against murdering is a law of God. Breaking either one leaves you with the status of a lawbreaker, in exactly the same way. Here James agrees with one of the principles of Paul’s theology: everyone has broken the law, and thus stands in need of God’s grace. But James has a slightly different focus: while Paul immediately shifts from the problem of our status as lawbreakers to the grace offered through Jesus Christ, James shifts to a slightly different point, but no less true: we really ought not to keep breaking the law! So, now that we know that favoritism turns us into transgressors of the whole law of God, one of the things we must do (in addition to accepting God’s grace to right the internal wrongs that we can’t right ourselves) is to stop breaking the law. We must remember that God’s good law is there for our protection, for our freedom, and that our life stands under the judgment of that law. Thankfully, of course, we have the mercy of God, demonstrated through the cross, which “triumphs over judgment.” Though we are lawbreakers, we will not bear the full punishment of our deeds, since Christ has already borne them for us. But because we have received mercy, we too need to be givers of mercy, not of judgment. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “As you judge, it will be judged to you.” If we are being judgmental against others, we need to realize that our own lives will be analyzed in a similarly harsh light one day. James agrees: “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.” Though the New Testament is clear in many places that our status of salvation will not be in question at the Judgment, because we are saved by God’s grace through the faith of Jesus Christ; but it is also clear that we nevertheless will also face a judgment of sorts, a weighing of our lives, and a believer who had lived their lives in a spirit of harsh judgmentalism toward others cannot expect to receive a favorable hearing on that day. James reminds us at the very end of the fact that we are recipients of God’s lavish mercy, which triumphs over judgment—should we not then also be merciful toward others?