James 2:14-20 sits inside this longer paragraph.
14What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can faith save him? 15And if a brother or sister is naked and in lack of daily food, 16and one of you tells them, “Go in peace. Be warmed and filled;” yet you didn’t give them the things the body needs, what good is it? 17Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself. 18Yes, a man will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
19You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe, and shudder. 20But do you want to know, vain man, that faith apart from works is dead? 21Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22You see that faith worked with his works, and by works faith was perfected. 23So the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. 24You see then that by works, a man is justified, and not only by faith. 25In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works, in that she received the messengers and sent them out another way? 26For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 14 What doth it profit. He proceeds to commend…
14 What doth it profit. He proceeds to commend mercy. And as he had threatened that God would be a severe Judge to us, and at the same time very dreadful, except we be kind and merciful towards our neighbors, and as on the other hand hypocrites objected and said, that faith is sufficient to us, in which the salvation of men consists, he now condemns this vain boasting. The sum, then, of what is said is, that faith without love avails nothing, and that it is therefore wholly dead.
But here a question arises, Can faith be separated from love? It is indeed true that the exposition of this passage has produced that common distinction of the Sophists, between unformed and formed faith; but of such a thing James knew nothing, for it appears from the first words, that he speaks of false profession of faith: for he does not begin thus, “If any one has faith;” but, “If any says that he has faith;” by which he certainly intimates that hypocrites boast of the empty name of faith, which really does not belong to them.
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That he calls it then faith, is a concession, as the Rhetoricians say; for when we discuss a point, it does no harm, nay, it is sometimes expedient, to concede to an adversary what he demands, for as soon as the thing itself is known, what is conceded may be easily taken away from him. James then, as he was satisfied that it was a false pretext by which hypocrites covered themselves, was not disposed to raise a dispute about a word or an expression. Let us, however, remember that he does not speak according to the impression of his own mind when he mentions faith, but that on the contrary he disputes against those who made a false pretense as to faith, of which they were wholly destitute.
Can faith save him? This is the same as though he had said, that we do not attain salvation by a frigid and bare knowledge of God, which all confess to be most true; for salvation comes to us by faith for this reason, because it joins us to God. And this comes not in any other way than by being united to the body of Christ, so that, living through his Spirit, we are also governed by him. There is no such thing as this in the dead image of faith. There is then no wonder that James denies that salvation is connected with it.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 18, 19, 20 The fifth place which hangeth very well with the…
The fifth place which hangeth very well with the former treatise, touching a true and lively faith. And the proposition of this place is this: faith which bringeth not forth works, is not that faith whereby we are justified, but an image of faith: or else this, they are not justified by faith, which show not the effects of faith.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv14–20 14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a…
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
Ver. 14. Though a man say he hath faith] Saying serves not the turn. Livy telleth us of the Athenians (Dec. iv.) that they waged a word war against Philip, king of Macedon; Quibus solis valebant, and that was all they could do. Men may word it with God and yet miscarry, Isa 58:2-3; he is too wise to be put off with words; he turns up our leaves, and looks what fruit; whereof if he miss, he lays down his basket, and takes up his axe, Luk 13:7. Christianity is not a talking, but a walking with God; and at the last day it shall be required of men, non quid legerint, sed quid egerint, non quid dixerint, sed quomodo vixerint, not what they have said, but how they have acted.
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Can faith save him?] That is, an ineffectual faith, that worketh not by love, such as is the faith of the Solifidians, a faith in profession only; if a man say he hath faith, and no more, as good he might say nothing. Quid verba quaero, &c.? That faith is easily wrought, which teacheth men to believe well of themselves, though their lives be evil.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv14–20 What doth it profit; viz. as to his eternal…
What doth it profit; viz. as to his eternal salvation? Wherein are the ends of religion promoted by it? The apostle had just before declared, that they who are unmerciful to men shall find God severe to themselves, and have judgment without mercy: but hypocritical professors boasted of their faith as sufficient to secure them against that judgment, though they neglected the practice of holiness and righteousness. Hence he seems to take occasion for the following discourse, to beat down their vain boasting of an empty, unfruitful faith, and possibly, lest they should abuse or misunderstand what he had said about the law of liberty, as if that inferred a licence of sinning, and living as they pleased.
Though a man say; whether boastingly with his mouth to others, or flatteringly in his heart to himself. The apostle doth not say, that a man’s having faith simply is unprofitable, but either that faith he pretends to without works, or his boasting he hath faith, when the contrary is evident by his not having works.
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He hath faith; such as he pretends to be good, and sound, and saving, but is really empty and dead, Jam 2:26, and unfruitful.
And have not works; i.e. good works, such as are not only acts of charity, to which the papists would restrain it, but all the fruits of righteousness and holiness proceeding from faith, and appearing both in heart and life.
Can faith save him? The interrogation is a vehement negation; q.d. It cannot save him, viz. such a faith as a man may have (as well as boast he hath) without works. This James calls faith only by way of concession for the present, though it be but equivocally called faith, and no more really so, than the carcass of a man is a man.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv14, 18, 19, 20 Our apostle here enters upon the second part of…
Our apostle here enters upon the second part of his discourse contained in this chapter, namely, to shew the vanity of a fruitless faith; that such a faith as is not the parent and principle of obedience, and productive of good works, is altogether ineffectual and unprofitable. Faith of no kind, when it is alone, is justifying; as there can be no good works without faith; so where true faith is, it will be fruitful in good works, otherwise faith is no more faith; no believing without obedience will avail us; therefore St. Paul and St. James both agree to render to faith the things that are faith’s, and not to take away from works the things that are works.
What doth it profit a man to say he hath faith? &c. As if our apostle had said, "Let not any person think his faith sufficient to justify and save him without the works of charity and mercy." Alas! a mere worldly profession is a poor unprofitable thing! What will professing Christianity, and saying we believe, avail to salvation, if we obey not Christ, and live not according to the gospel? Will good works feed the hungry, or clothe the naked? Is it not like a mocking of them? Even so a notional knowledge, and a bare profession of faith, if it brings not forth the fruits of holiness and obedience towards God, of justice and rightousness, of love and mercy towards our neighbour, it is an effectual dead thing; like a dead corpse, without a quickening and enlivening soul; it is altogether dead as to our justification and salvation.
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Learn hence, 1. That a fruitless faith is certainly a dead faith. It is dead, because it does not unite us to Christ; it is lifeless, because there is no liveliness in such a person’s performances; for though faith be not always alike lively, yet if sincere, it is always living, and enables the Christian to live unto Christ, and to bear much fruit. He that abideth (that is, believeth) in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit Joh 15:1.
Observe, 2. The comparison which St. James here makes between faith and charity; from whence he draws this conclusion, If charity towards the poor, professed in words, but without works, be counterfeit, then faith in Christ, professed in like manner, without obedience, is also counterfeit and false: but charity towards the poor in words, and not in deeds, is a counterfeit charity; accordingly faith in Christ, without obedience to his commands, is a false faith; a dead faith, in regard to the effect; because it will never bring them, in whom it is, to life and salvation."
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v14 In this latter part of the chapter, the apostle…
In this latter part of the chapter, the apostle shows the error of those who rested in a bare profession of the Christian faith, as if that would save them, while the temper of their minds and the tenour of their lives were altogether disagreeable to that holy religion which they professed. To let them see, therefore, what a wretched foundation they built their hopes upon, it is here proved at large that a man is justified, not by faith only, but by works. Now,
I. Upon this arises a very great question, namely, how to reconcile Paul and James. Paul, in his epistles to the Romans and Galatians, seems to assert the directly contrary thing to what James here lays down, saying if often, and with a great deal of emphasis, that we are justified by faith only and not by the works of the law. Amicae scripturarum lites, utinam et nostrae - There is a very happy agreement between one part of scripture and another, notwithstanding seeming differences: it were well if the differences among Christians were as easily reconciled. "Nothing," says Mr. Baxter, "but men's misunderstanding the plain drift and sense of Paul's epistles, could make so many take it for a matter of great difficulty to reconcile Paul and James." A general view of those things which are insisted on by the Antinomians may be seen in Mr. Baxter's Paraphrase: and many ways might be mentioned which have been invented among learned men to make the apostles agree; but it may be sufficient only to observe these few things following: - 1. When Paul says that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law (Rom 3:28), he plainly speaks of another sort of work than James does, but not of another sort of faith. Paul speaks of works wrought in obedience to the law of Moses, and before men's embracing the faith of the gospel; and he had to deal with those who valued themselves so highly upon those works that they rejected the gospel (as Rom. 10, at the beginning most expressly declares); but James speaks of works done in obedience to the gospel, and as the proper and necessary effects and fruits of sound believing in Christ Jesus. Both are concerned to magnify the faith of the gospel, as that which alone could save us and justify us; but Paul magnifies it by showing the insufficiency of any works of the law before faith, or in opposition to the doctrine of justification by Jesus Christ; James magnifies the same faith, by showing what are the genuine and necessary products and operations of it. 2. Paul not only speaks of different works from those insisted on by James, but he speaks of a quite different use that was made of good works from what is here urged and intended. Paul had to do with those who depended on the merit of their works in the sight of God, and thus he might well make them of no manner of account. James had to do with those who cried up faith, but would not allow works to be used even as evidence; they depended upon a bare profession, as sufficient to justify them; and with these he might well urge the necessity and vast importance of good works. As we must not break one table of the law, by dashing it against the other, so neither must we break in pieces the law and the gospel, by making them clash with one another: those who cry up the gospel so as to set aside the law, and those who cry up the law so as to set aside the gospel, are both in the wrong; for we must take our work before us; there must be both faith in Jesus Christ and good works the fruit of faith. 3. The justification of which Paul speaks is different from that spoken of by James; the one speaks of our persons being justified before God, the other speaks of our faith being justified before men: "Show me thy faith by thy works," says James, "let thy faith be justified in the eyes of those that behold thee by thy works;" but Paul speaks of justification in the sight of God, who justifies those only that believe in Jesus, and purely on account of the redemption that is in him. Thus we see that our persons are justified before God by faith, but our faith is justified before men by works. This is so plainly the scope and design of the apostle James that he is but confirming what Paul, in other places, says of his faith, that it is a laborious faith, and a faith working by love, Gal 5:6; Th1 1:3; Tit 3:8; and many other places. 4. Paul may be understood as speaking of that justification which is inchoate, James of that which is complete; it is by faith only that we are put into a justified state, but then good works come in for the completing of our justification at the last great day; then, Come you children of my Father - for I was hungry, and you gave me meat, etc.
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II. Having thus cleared this part of scripture from every thing of a contradiction to other parts of it, let us see what is more particularly to be learnt from this excellent passage of James; we are taught,
1. That faith without works will not profit, and cannot save us. What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? Observe here, (1.) That faith which does not save will not really profit us; a bare profession may sometimes seem to be profitable, to gain the good opinion of those who are truly good, and it may procure in some cases worldly good things; but what profit will this be, for any to gain the world and to lose their souls? What doth it profit? - Can faith save him? All things should be accounted profitable or unprofitable to us as they tend to forward or hinder the salvation of our souls. And, above all other things, we should take care thus to make account of faith, as that which does not profit, if it do not save, but will aggravate our condemnation and destruction at last. (2.) For a man to have faith, and to say he has faith, are two different things; the apostle does not say, If a man have faith without works, for that is not a supposable case; the drift of this place of scripture is plainly to show that an opinion, or speculation, or assent, without works, is not faith; but the case is put thus, If a man say he hath faith, etc. Men may boast of that to others, and be conceited of that in themselves, of which they are really destitute.
2. We are taught that, as love or charity is an operative principle, so is faith, and that neither of them would otherwise be good for any thing; and, by trying how it looks for a person to pretend he is very charitable who yet never does any works of charity, you may judge what sense there is in pretending to have faith without the proper and necessary fruits of it: "If a brother or a sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be you warmed and filled, notwithstanding you give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit? Jam 2:15-17. What will such a charity as this, that consists in bare words, avail either you or the poor? Will you come before God with such empty shows of charity as these? You might as well pretend that your love and charity will stand the test without acts of mercy as think that a profession of faith will bear you out before God without works of piety and obedience. Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being along," Jam 2:17. We are too apt to rest in a bare profession of faith, and to think that this will save us; it is a cheap and easy religion to say, "We believe the articles of the Christian faith;" but it is a great delusion to imagine that this is enough to bring us to heaven. Those who argue thus wrong God, and put a cheat upon their own souls; a mock-faith is as hateful as mock-charity, and both show a heart dead to all real godliness. You may as soon take pleasure in a dead body, void of soul, or sense, or action, as God take pleasure in a dead faith, where there are no works.
3. We are taught to compare a faith boasting of itself without works and a faith evidenced by works, by looking on both together, to try how this comparison will work upon our minds. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works, Jam 2:18. Suppose a true believer thus pleading with a boasting hypocrite, "Thou makest a profession, and sayest thou hast faith; I make no such boasts, but leave my works to speak for me. Now give any evidence of having the faith thou professest without works if thou canst, and I will soon let thee see how my works flow from faith and are the undoubted evidences of its existence." This is the evidence by which the scriptures all along teach men to judge both of themselves and others. And this is the evidence according to which Christ will proceed at the day of judgment. The dead were judged according to their works, Rev 20:12. How will those be exposed then who boast of that which they cannot evidence, or who go about to evidence their faith by any thing but works of piety and mercy!
4. We are taught to look upon a faith of bare speculation and knowledge as the faith of devils: Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble, Jam 2:19. That instance of faith which the apostle here chooses to mention is the first principle of all religion. "Thou believest that there is a God, against the atheists; and that there is but one God, against the idolaters; thou doest well: so far all is right. But to rest here, and take up a good opinion of thyself, or of thy state towards God, merely on account of thy believing in him, this will render thee miserable: The devils also believe, and tremble. If thou contentest thyself with a bare assent to articles of faith, and some speculations upon them, thus far the devils go. And as their faith and knowledge only serve to excite horror, so in a little time will thine." The word tremble is commonly looked upon as denoting a good effect of faith; but here it may rather be taken as a bad effect, when applied to the faith of devils. They tremble, not out of reverence, but hatred and opposition to that one God on whom they believe. To rehearse that article of our creed, therefore, I believe in God the Father Almighty, will not distinguish us from devils at last, unless we now give up ourselves to God as the gospel directs, and love him, and delight ourselves in him, and serve him, which the devils do not, cannot do.
5. We are taught that he who boasts of faith without works is to be looked upon at present as a foolish condemned person. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Jam 2:20. The words translated vain man - anthrōpe kene, are observed to have the same signification with the word Raca, which must never be used to private persons, or as an effect of anger (Mat 5:22), but may be used as here, to denote a just detestation of such a sort of men as are empty of good works, and yet boasters of their faith. And it plainly declares them fools and abjects in the sight of God. Faith without works is said to be dead, not only as void of all those operations which are the proofs of spiritual life, but as unavailable to eternal life: such believers as rest in a bare profession of faith are dead while they live.
6. We are taught that a justifying faith cannot be without works, from two examples, Abraham and Rahab.
(1.) The first instance is that of Abraham, the father of the faithful, and the prime example of justification, to whom the Jews had a special regard (Jam 2:21): Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Paul, on the other hand, says (in ch. 4 of the epistle to the Romans) that Abraham believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness. But these are well reconciled, by observing what is said in Heb. 11, which shows that the faith both of Abraham and Rahab was such as to produce those good works of which James speaks, and which are not to be separated from faith as justifying and saving. By what Abraham did, it appeared that he truly believed. Upon this footing, the words of God himself plainly put this matter. Gen 22:16, Gen 22:17, Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; therefore in blessing I will bless thee. Thus the faith of Abraham was a working faith (Jam 2:22), it wrought with his works, and by works was made perfect. And by this means you come to the true sense of that scripture which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, Jam 2:23. And thus he became the friend of God. Faith, producing such works, endeared him to the divine Being, and advanced him to very peculiar favours and intimacies with God. It is a great honour done to Abraham that he is called and counted the friend of God. You see then (Jam 2:24) how that by works a man is justified (comes into such a state of favour and friendship with God), and not by faith only; not by a bare opinion, or profession, or believing without obeying, but by having such a faith as is productive of good works. Now besides the explication of this passage and example, as thus illustrating and supporting the argument James is upon, many other useful lessons may be learned by us from what is here said concerning Abraham. [1.] Those who would have Abraham's blessings must be careful to copy after his faith: to boast of being Abraham's seed will not avail any, if they do not believe as he did. [2.] Those works which evidence true faith must to works of self-denial, and such as God himself commands (as Abraham's offering up his son, his only son, was), and not such works as are pleasing to flesh and blood and may serve our interest, or are the mere fruits of our own imagination and devising. [3.] What we piously purpose and sincerely resolve to do for God is accepted as if actually performed. Thus Abraham is regarded as offering up his son, though he did not actually proceed to make a sacrifice of him. It was a done thing in the mind, and spirit, and resolution of Abraham, and God accepts it as if fully performed and accomplished. [4.] The actings of faith make it grow perfect, as the truth of faith makes it act. [5.] Such an acting faith will make others, as well as Abraham, friends of God. Thus Christ says to his disciples, I have called you friends, Joh 15:15. All transactions between God and the truly believing soul are easy, pleasant, and delightful. There is one will and one heart, and there is a mutual complacency. God rejoiceth over those who truly believe, to do them good; and they delight themselves in him.
(2.) The second example of faith's justifying itself and us with and by works is Rahab: Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? Jam 2:25. The former instance was of one renowned for his faith all his life long, This is of one noted for sin, whose faith was meaner and of a much lower degree; so that the strongest faith will not do, nor the meanest be allowed to go without works. Some say that the word here rendered harlot was the proper name of Rahab. Others tell us that it signifies no more than a hostess, or one who keeps a public house, with whom therefore the spies lodged. But it is very probable that her character was infamous; and such an instance is mentioned to show that faith will save the worst, when evidenced by proper works; and it will not save the best without such works as God requires. This Rahab believed the report she had heard of God's powerful presence with Israel; but that which proved her faith sincere was, that, to the hazard of her life, she received the messengers, and sent them out another way. Observe here, [1.] The wonderful power of faith in transforming and changing sinners. [2.] The regard which an operative faith meets with from God, to obtain his mercy and favour. [3.] Where great sins are pardoned, there must prefer the honour of God and the good of his people before the preservation of her own country. Her former acquaintance must be discarded, her former course of life entirely abandoned, and she must give signal proof and evidence of this before she can be in a justified state; and even after she is justified, yet her former character must be remembered; not so much to her dishonour as to glorify the rich grace and mercy of God. Though justified, she is called Rahab the harlot.
7. And now, upon the whole matter, the apostle draws this conclusion, As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also, Jam 2:26. These words are read differently; some reading them, As the body without the breath is dead, so is faith without works: and then they show that works are the companions of faith, as breathing is of life. Others read them, As the body without the soul is dead, so faith without works is dead also: and then they show that as the body has no action, nor beauty, but becomes a loathsome carcass, when the soul is gone, so a bare profession without works is useless, yea, loathsome and offensive. Let us then take head of running into extremes in this case. For, (1.) The best works, without faith, are dead; they want their root and principle. It is by faith that any thing we do is really good, as done with an eye to God, in obedience to him, and so as to aim principally at his acceptance. (2.) The most plausible profession of faith, without works, is dead: as the root is dead when it produces nothing green, nothing of fruit. Faith is the root, good works are the fruits, and we must see to it that we have both. We must not think that either, without the other, will justify and save us. This is the grace of God wherein we stand, and we should stand to it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv14–20 What doth it profit, my brethren,.... The apostle having…
What doth it profit, my brethren,.... The apostle having finished his discourse on respect of persons, and the arguments he used to dissuade from it, by an easy transition passes to treat upon faith and works, showing that faith without works, particularly without works of mercy, is of no profit and advantage:
though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? it is clear that the apostle is not speaking of true faith, for that, in persons capable of performing them, is not without works; it is an operative grace; it works by love and kindness, both to Christ, and to his members; but of a profession of faith, a mere historical one, by which a man, at most, assents to the truth of things, as even devils do, Jam 2:19 and only says he has faith, but has it not; as Simon Magus, who said he believed, but did not.
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Can faith save him? such a faith as this, a faith without works, an historical one, a mere profession of faith, which lies only in words, and has no deeds, to show the truth and genuineness of it. True faith indeed has no causal influence on salvation, or has any virtue and efficacy in itself to save; Christ, object of faith, is the only cause and author of salvation; faith is only that grace which receives a justifying righteousness, the pardon of sin, adoption, and a right to the heavenly inheritance; but it does not justify, nor pardon, nor adopt, nor give the right to the inheritance, but lays hold on, and claims these, by virtue of the gift of grace; and it has spiritual and eternal salvation inseparably connected with it; but as for the other faith, a man may have it, and be in the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity; he may have all faith in that sense, and be nothing; it is no other than the devils themselves have; and so he may have it, and be damned.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv14, 17, 18, 19, 20 From chap. i, 22, the apostle has been enforcing…
From chap. i, 22, the apostle has been enforcing Christian practice. He now applies to those who neglect this, under the pretense of faith. St. Paul had taught that "a man is justified by faith without the works of the law." This some began already to wrest to their own destruction. Wherefore St. James, purposely repeating (ver. 21, 23, 25) the same phrases, testimonies, and examples, which St. Paul had used, Rom. iv, 3, Heb. xi, 17, 31, refutes not the doctrine of St. Paul, but the error of those who abused it. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the apostles: they both delivered the truth of God, but in a different manner, as having to do with different kinds of men. On another occasion St. James himself pleaded the cause of faith, Acts xv, 13-21; and St. Paul himself strenuously pleads for works, particularly in his latter epistles. This verse is a summary of what follows. What profiteth it? is enlarged on, ver. 15-17; though a man say, ver. 18, 19 can that faith save him? ver. 20. It is not, though he have faith; but, though he say he have faith. Here, therefore, true, living faith is meant: but in other parts of the argument the apostle speaks of a dead, imaginary faith. He does not, therefore, teach that true faith can, but that it cannot, subsist without works: nor does he oppose faith to works; but that empty name of faith, to real faith working by love. Can that faith "which is without works" save him? No more than it can profit his neighbour.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv14–20 Verse 14. What doth it profit - though a…
Verse 14. What doth it profit - though a man say he hath faith] We now come to a part of this epistle which has appeared to some eminent men to contradict other portions of the Divine records. In short, it has been thought that James teaches the doctrine of justification by the merit of good works, while Paul asserts this to be insufficient, and that man is justified by faith. Luther, supposing that James did actually teach the doctrine of justification by works, which his good sense showed him to be absolutely insufficient for salvation, was led to condemn the epistle in toto, as a production unauthenticated by the Holy Spirit, and consequently worthy of no regard; he therefore termed it epistola straminea, a chaffy epistle, an epistle of straw, fit only to be burnt. Learned men have spent much time in striving to reconcile these two writers, and to show that St. Paul and St. James perfectly accord; one teaching the pure doctrine, the other guarding men against the abuse of it. Mr. Wesley sums the whole up in the following words, with his usual accuracy and precision: "From Jas 1:22 the apostle has been enforcing Christian practice. He now applies to those who neglect this under the pretence of faith. St. Paul had taught that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. This some already began to wrest to their own destruction. Wherefore St. James, purposely repeating, Jas 1:21; Jas 1:23; Jas 1:25, the same phrases, testimonies, and examples which St. Paul had used, Ro 4:3; Heb 11:17; Heb 11:31, refutes not the doctrine of St. Paul, but the error of those who abused it. There is therefore no contradiction between the apostles; they both delivered the truth of God, but in a different manner, as having to do with different kinds of men. This verse is a summary of what follows: What profiteth it, is enlarged on, Jas 2:15-17; though a man say, Jas 2:18; Jas 2:19; can that faith save him? Jas 2:20. It is not though he have faith, but though he say, I have faith. Here therefore true living faith is meant. But in other parts of the argument the apostle speaks of a dead imaginary faith. He does not therefore teach that true faith can, but that it cannot, subsist without works. Nor does he oppose faith to works, but that empty name of faith to real faith working by love. Can that faith which is without works save him? No more than it can profit his neighbour." - Explanatory notes.
That St James quotes the same scriptures, and uses the same phrases, testimonies, and examples which St. Paul has done, is fully evident; but it does not follow that he wrote after St. Paul. It is possible that one had seen the epistle of the other; but if so, it is strange that neither of them should quote the other. That St. Paul might write to correct the abuses of St. James' doctrine is as possible as that James wrote to prevent St. Paul's doctrine from being abused; for there were Antinomians in the Church in the time of St. James, as there were Pharisaic persons in it at the time of St. Paul. I am inclined to think that James is the elder writer, and rather suppose that neither of them had ever seen the other's epistle. Allowing them both to be inspired, God could teach each what was necessary for the benefit of the Church, without their having any knowledge of each other. See the preface to this epistle.
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As the Jews in general were very strenuous in maintaining the necessity of good works or righteousness in order to justification, wholly neglecting the doctrine of faith, it is not to be wondered at that those who were converted, and saw the absolute necessity of faith in order to their justification, should have gone into the contrary extreme.
Can faith save him?] That is, his profession of faith; for it is not said that he has faith, but that he says, I have faith. St. James probably refers to that faith which simply took in the being and unity of God. See on Jas 2:19; Jas 2:24; Jas 2:25.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 18 Jas 2:14-17. What doth it profit — From Jas…
Jas 2:14-17. What doth it profit — From Jas 1:22, the apostle has been enforcing Christian practice; he now applies to those who neglected this under the pretence of faith. St. Paul had taught, that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. This some began already to wrest to their own destruction. Wherefore St. James, purposely repeating (Jas 2:21-25) the same phrases, testimonies, and examples, which St. Paul had used, (Rom 4:3; Heb 11:17-31,) refutes, not the doctrine of St. Paul, but the error of those who abused it. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the apostles: they both delivered the truth of God, but in a different manner, as having to do with different kinds of men. On another occasion St. James himself pleaded the cause of faith, Act 15:13-21. And St. Paul himself strenuously pleads for works, particularly in his latter epistles. This verse is a summary of what follows. What doth it profit — Of what advantage is it to him, though, or if, a man say he hath faith — It is not if he have faith, but if he say he hath it. Here, therefore, true, living faith is meant. But in other parts of the argument the apostle speaks of a dead imaginary faith. He does not therefore teach that true faith can, but that it cannot subsist without works. Nor does he oppose faith to works, but an empty name or profession of faith to real faith working by love. Can that faith, which is without works, save him? Surely not. It can no more save him than it can profit his neighbour. For if a brother or sister be naked, &c. — Destitute of food and clothing; and one of you — Who calls himself a Christian, say to them, We sincerely pity your case, and feel the tender emotions of that love which our relation to each other requires; depart therefore, in peace — Whithersoever ye are going; be ye warmed and filled — Be clothed and fed by some humane person: but notwithstanding all these kind speeches, ye give them not — Either food or raiment, or any money to purchase the things necessary for the body; what doth it profit? — What is the advantage of being addressed with such hypocritical professions of love? Will such speeches feed and clothe the poor and destitute? Will they not rather seem a cruel mockery than a real kindness? Even so faith — A belief of the gospel, and of the great truths contained in it, how zealously soever it may be professed, and how orthodox soever those articles are to which an assent is given; if it have not works — If it do not produce love to God and all mankind, and obedience to his will, yea, the various fruits of righteousness; if it do not work by love, it is but a dead, empty notion, of no more profit to him that has it than bidding the naked be clothed is to him. It can neither convey spiritual life to the soul here, (which all true faith does,) nor entitle any one to eternal life hereafter.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 18, 19, 20 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man…
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith? - The apostle here returns to the subject adverted to in Jam 1:22-27, the importance of a practical attention to the duties of religion, and the assurance that men cannot be saved by a mere speculative opinion, or merely by holding correct sentiments. He doubtless had in his eye those who abused the doctrine of justification by faith, by holding that good works are unnecessary to salvation, provided they maintain an orthodox belief. As this abuse probably existed in the time of the apostles, and as the Holy Ghost saw that there would be danger that in later times the great and glorious doctrine of justification by faith would be thus abused, it was important that the error should be rebuked, and that the doctrine should be distinctly laid down that good works are necessary to salvation. The apostle, therefore, in the question before us, implicitly asserts that faith would not “profit” at all unless accompanied with a holy life, and this doctrine he proceeds to illustrate in the following verses, See the analysis of this chapter; and Introduction, Section 5, (2). In order to a proper interpretation of this passage, it should be observed that the stand-point from which the apostle views this subject is not before a man is converted, inquiring in what way he may be justified before God, or on what ground his sins may be forgiven; but it is after a man is converted, showing that that faith can have no value which is not followed by good works; that is, that it is not real faith, and that good works are necessary if a man would have evidence that he is justified. Thus understood, all that James says is in entire accordance with what is taught elsewhere in the New Testament.
Can faith save him? - It is implied in this question that faith cannot save him, for very often the most emphatic way of making an affirmation is by asking a question. The meaning here is, that that faith which does not produce good works, or which would not produce holy living if fairly acted out, will save no man, for it is not genuine faith.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14, 18, 19 Shall faith be able to save him? He now…
Shall faith be able to save him? He now comes to one of the chief points of this epistle, to shew against the disciple of Simon , the magician, that faith alone will not save any one. We may take notice in the first place, that St. James in this very verse, supposes that a man may have faith, a true faith without good works. This also follows from ver. 19. where he says: Thou believest that there is one God: thou dost well. And the same is evident by the words John xii. 42. where it is said, that many of the chief men also believed in him, (Christ)....but did not confess it, that they might not be cast out of the synagogue. Now that faith alone is not sufficient to save a man, St. James declares by this example: If any one say to the poor and naked, go in peace, be you warmed and filled, and give them nothing, what shall it profit? Even so faith, if it have not works is dead, &c. i.e. such a faith, though it be not lost and destroyed, yet it remains in a soul that is spiritually dead, when it is not accompanied with charity and grace, which is the life of the soul, and without which faith can never bring us to eternal life. In this sense is to be understood the 20th and 26th verses of this chapter, when faith is again said to be dead without good works. This is also the doctrine of St. Paul, when he tells us that a saving faith is a faith that worketh by charity, Galatians v. 6. When he says, that although faith were strong enough to remove mountains, a man is nothing without charity. (1 Corinthians xiii. 2.) When he teacheth us again, that not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. [Romans ii. 13.] St. John teacheth the same (1 John iii. 14.) He that loveth not, remaineth in death. But of this elsewhere. (Witham) --- Grotius in this place makes a very candid and remarkable profession of his faith, very different from that of his associates in the pretended reformation, called Solifideans [who pretend one is justified by faith alone]: "There are some who say, ’My works indeed are not as they ought to be,’ but my faith is firm, my salvation is therefore out of danger. This opinion, which has sprung up in this our unhappy age, and recommends itself under the name of reformed doctrine, ought to be opposed by every lover of piety, and all who wish well to their neighbour’s salvation....no faith has ever availed any man, unless it were accompanied by such works as he had time and opportunity to perform." His words are: "Opera quidem mea non recta sunt, sed fides recta est, ac propterea de salute non periclitor....Renata est hoc infelici sæculo ea sententia et quidem sub nomine repurgatæ doctrinæ, cui omnes qui pietatem et salutem proximi amant, se debent opponere....cœterum nulla cuiquam fides profuit, sine tali opere, quale tempus permittebat," &c. In vain do we glory in our faith, unless our lives and works bear testimony of the same. Faith without charity is dead, and charity cannot exist without good works. He who bears the fruits of Christian piety, shews that he has the root, which is faith what the soul is to the body. See the remainder of this chapter.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv14–20 James here, passing from the particular case of "mercy"…
James here, passing from the particular case of "mercy" or "love" violated by "respect of persons," notwithstanding profession of the "faith of our Lord Jesus" (Jam 2:1), combats the Jewish tendency (transplanted into their Christianity) to substitute a lifeless, inoperative acquaintance with the letter of the law, for change of heart to practical holiness, as if justification could be thereby attained (Rom 2:3, Rom 2:13, Rom 2:23). It seems hardly likely but that James had seen Paul's Epistles, considering that he uses the same phrases and examples (compare Jam 2:21, Jam 2:23, Jam 2:25, with Rom 4:3; Heb 11:17, Heb 11:31; and Jam 2:14, Jam 2:24, with Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16). Whether James individually designed it or not, the Holy Spirit by him combats not Paul, but those who abuse Paul's doctrine. The teaching of both alike is inspired, and is therefore to be received without wresting of words; but each has a different class to deal with; Paul, self-justiciaries; James, Antinomian advocates of a mere notional faith. Paul urged as strongly as James the need of works as evidences of faith, especially in the later Epistles, when many were abusing the doctrine of faith (Tit 2:14; Tit 3:8). "Believing and doing are blood relatives" [RUTHERFORD].
What doth it profit--literally, "What is the profit?"
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though a man say--James' expression is not, "If a man have faith," but "if a man say he hath faith"; referring to a mere profession of faith, such as was usually made at baptism. Simon Magus so "believed and was baptized," and yet had "neither part nor lot in this matter," for his "heart," as his words and works evinced, was not right in the sight of God. ALFORD wrongly denies that "say" is emphatic. The illustration, Jam 2:16, proves it is: "If one of you say" to a naked brother, "Be ye warmed, notwithstanding ye give not those things needful." The inoperative profession of sympathy answering to the inoperative profession of faith.
can faith save him--rather, "can such a faith (literally, 'the faith') save him?"--the faith you pretend to: the empty name of boasted faith, contrasted with true fruit-producing faith. So that which self-deceivers claim is called "wisdom," though not true wisdom, Jam 3:15. The "him" also in the Greek is emphatic; the particular man who professes faith without having the works which evidence its vitality.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 6. The Christian synagogue rejects workless faith as unjustifying,…
6. The Christian synagogue rejects workless faith as unjustifying, Jas_2:14-26.
St. James now inflexibly chases his brethren out of their last refuge and excuse for their sin toward the poor. Our works, say they, do, indeed, violate the law a little, but then we are justified by faith, and the law will not punish us for subordinate negligences. In other words, we are Christians, and will be saved in spite of our sins. This is antinomianism; and it often appears in various forms, practical and doctrinal, in the Church. Its effect is, as St. Paul says, to “make Christ the minister of sin,” and to demoralize Christianity. In his Epistle to the Romans Paul emphasizes the doctrine of justification by faith alone; yet guards against all antinomianism by insisting that it is a faith from which a holy life must result. Rom_6:1-2. St. James, on the contrary, emphasizes the necessity of works—that is, a holy life—but secures the fact that the works, in order to be a true holy life, must spring from a living faith. Paul says, You are justified by a work-begetting faith; James says, You are justified by faith-begotten works. They disagree, not in doctrine, but in the emphasis they lay on the different parts of the doctrine.
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14. Hath faith… not works—A believer, but not a righteous doer; a Christian, but not a conscientious liver; pious, but not honest. He holds to a humble Christianity, but despises the poor, and is obsequious to the persecutor.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–20 14–26. Justification by Faith and Works
14–26. Justification by Faith and Works
14. though a man say he hath faith] The section on which we now enter has been the battle-field of almost endless controversies. It led Luther in the boldness of a zeal not according to knowledge to speak of the whole Epistle with contempt. (Preface to German New Testament, 1522; but see J. C. Hare’s Vindication of Luther, p. 215.) To him it was an “Epistle of Straw,” (Epistola straminea,) to be classed with wood, hay, stubble, as compared with the teaching of St Paul, which it seemed to him to contradict. It led Bishop Bull to write his Harmonia Apostolica to prove the agreement of the two, by assuming, with many of the Fathers, that St James wrote to correct the false inferences which men had drawn from St Paul’s doctrine, in itself and as taught by him a true doctrine, as to Justification. In dealing with the problem presented by a comparison of the teaching of the two writers, it is obviously necessary to start with what to the reader is an assumption, though to the writer it may be the conclusion of an inquiry, as to the aim and leading idea of the writer with whom we have to deal; and the notes that follow will accordingly be based on the hypothesis that the teaching of St James was not meant, as men have supposed who exaggerate the diversities of thought in the Apostolic age, to be antagonistic to that of St Paul, nor even to correct mistaken inferences from it, but was altogether independent, and probably prior in time, moving in its own groove, and taking its own line of thought. If this view, as a theory, solves all the phænomena, and throws light upon what would otherwise be obscure, it will be its own best vindication. At the close it may be well to take a brief survey of other modes of interpretation.
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We must remember then, to start with, that St James is writing primarily to the Jews of the “dispersion.” The disciples in Jerusalem and Judæa were under his personal guidance, and therefore were not in need of an Epistle. The faults which he reproves are pre-eminently the faults of the race. Men dwelling, as those Jews dwelt, in the midst of a heathen population, were tempted to trust for their salvation to their descent from Abraham (comp. Mat_3:9) and to their maintaining the unity of the Godhead as against the Polytheism and idolatry of the nations. They repeated their Creed (known, from its first Hebrew word, as the Shemà), “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deu_6:4). It entered, as our Creed does, into the Morning and Evening Services of the Synagogue. It was uttered by the dying as a passport to the gates of Paradise. It was to this that they referred the words of Habakkuk that the just should live by faith (Hab_2:4). St James saw, as the Baptist had seen before him, how destructive all this was of the reality of the spiritual life, and accordingly takes this as the next topic of his letter.
No emphasis is to be laid on “though a man say.” The argument of St James assumes that the man has the faith which he professes. His contention is that faith is not enough by itself, that unless it pass into “works” it gives proof that it is ipso facto dead; and the “works” of which he speaks are, as the next verse shews, emphatically, not ceremonial, nor ascetic, but those of an active benevolence.
can faith save him?] The pronoun, and, in the Greek, the article prefixed to faith, are emphatic. “Can his faith save him, being such as he is?” There is no slight cast upon faith generally, though the kind of faith in the particular case is declared to be worthless.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–20 (14) What doth it (or, is the) profit, my…
(14) What doth it (or, is the) profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works?—Some allusion here is made most probably to the Shema, the Jewish creed, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deu_6:4). It was the daily protest of the devout Israelite in the midst of idolaters, and the words of his morning and evening of life, as well as of the ordinary day. A similar utterance of faith is held to be the test of the true believer in Islam, when the two inquiring angels put their awful questions to the departed soul. But the idea is much more ancient, for a similar confession was required of the just before Osiris, the Lord of the Egyptian Heaven.
Can faith save him?—The stern inquiry comes like a prophecy of woe upon the wretched man—saved, as he fancied, by covenant with God, and holding a bare assent and not a loving faith in Him.
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(14-26) FAITH AND WORKS.—We now enter on the most debatable ground of the Epistle; a battle-field strewn with the bones and weapons of countless adversaries. It is an easy thing to shoot “arrows, even bitter words”; and without doubt, for what seemed to be the vindication of the right, many a hard blow has been dealt on either side—so many, indeed, that quiet Christian folk have no desire to hear of more. The plain assertions of holy Scripture on this matter are enough for them; and they experience of themselves no difficulty in their interpretation.
The old story of the Knights who smote each other to the death upon the question of the gold and silver shield, each looking at it only from his own point of view, may well apply to combatants who cried so lustily for “Paul” or “James.” But, now the dust of conflict has somewhat blown aside, it would be hard to prove that the Apostles themselves were ever at variance, or needed such doughty champions at all.
Truth is, they regarded the same object with a different motive, and aimed at a dissimilar result: just as in medicine, very opposite treatments are required by various sicknesses, and in the several stages of disease. The besetting error of the Jewish Christians to whom St. James appealed was that which we have traced (see Introduction, p. 353) to a foreign source; and, as it wandered but slowly from the furthest East, it had not yet reached the churches of Europe, at least sufficiently to constitute a danger in the mind of St. Paul. No better tonic for the enervating effect of this perverted doctrine of Faith could be found than a consideration of the nobler life of Abraham; and what example could be upheld more likely to win back the hearts of his proud descendants? And, if to point his lesson, the Apostle urged a great and stainless name, even that of the Friend of God, so with it would he join the lowly and, perhaps, aforetime dishonoured one of Rahab, that he might, as it were, plead well with all men of every degree or kind.
Dean Alford, quoting with entire approbation the opinion of the German commentator De Wette, found it “impossible to say” that the ideas of Faith, Works, and Justification in the two Apostles were the same. The summary of his remarks is fairly this:—According to St. James, Faith was moral conviction, trust, and truth; and yet such a theoretical belief only that it might be held by devils. Works are not those of the Law, but an active life of practical morality and well-doing; Justification is used in a proper or moral sense, but not the higher or “forensic,” as we now call it. On the other hand, St. Paul’s idea of Faith presupposes self-abasement, and “consists in trust on the grace of God, revealed in the atoning death of Christ”; Works with him referred chiefly to a dependence on legal observances; Justification assumed a far wider significance, especially in his view “of the inadequacy of a good conscience to give peace and blessedness to men” (1Co_4:4), such being only to be found by faith in God, who justifies of His free grace, and looks on the accepted penitent as if he were righteous. But even this divergence, small as it is compared with that discerned by some divines, is really overstrained; for in the present Epistle the Church of every age is warned “against the delusive notion that it is enough for men to have religious emotions, to talk religious language, to have religious knowledge, and to profess religious belief, without the habitual practice of religious duties and the daily devotion of a religious life”: while the letters of St. Paul do not, in this way, combat hypocrisy so much as heterodoxy. There is always the double danger, dwelt upon by Augustine somewhat after this manner:—One man will say, “I believe in God, and it will be counted to me for righteousness, therefore I will live as I like.” St. James answers him by showing that “Abraham was justified by Works” (Jas_2:21). Another says, “I will lead a good life, and keep the commandments; how can it matter precisely what I believe!” St. Paul replies that “Abraham was justified by faith” (Romans 4). But, if the Apostle of the Gentiles be inquired of further, he will say that, although works go not before faith, they certainly come after. (Witness his discourse on Charity, 1 Corinthians 13) And, therefore, concludes Bishop Wordsworth, “the faith described by St. Paul is not any sort of faith by which we believe in God; but it is that healthful evangelical faith whose works spring from love.”
Thus the divine lesson stands forth, clearly written; and he who runs may read. Faith must be embodied in acts: “faith, without acts of faith, is but a dream.” “The two cannot be separated, for they are given in one by God to man, and from him go back in one to God. As by faith we behold the greatness of God, and of His eternal grace, His ineffable holiness, majesty, glory, goodness, love; so we shall know and feel the nothingness of all in ourselves—whether faith or works—save as they are the gift of God. As we probe ourselves, we learn the depth of our own evil; but, as we confess our own evil and God’s good, He will take away from us the evil, and crown us with His goodness: as we own ourselves to be, of ourselves, unprofitable servants, He, owning us in His works, will say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord’” (Mat_25:21).
A deeply learned and interesting excursus on Faith, in its active and passive meanings, and on its Hebrew, Greek, and Latin synonyms, may be read in Bishop Lightfoot’s Notes on the Galatians, pp. 152-162. Admitting that “so long as our range of view is confined to the apostolic writings, it seems scarcely possible to resist the impression that St. James is attacking the teaching, if not of St. Paul himself, at least of those who exaggerated and perverted it,” our profoundest theologian assures us that the passage in Genesis (Gen_15:6) was a common thesis in the Rabbinical schools, the meaning of faith being variously explained by the disputants, and diverse lessons drawn from it. The supremacy of faith, as the means of salvation, might be maintained by Gentile Apostle and Pharisaic Rabbi: but faith with the former was a very different thing from faith with the latter. With one its prominent idea was a spiritual life, with the other an orthodox creed; with the one the guiding principle was the individual conscience, with the other an external rule of ordinances; with the one faith was allied to liberty, with the other to bondage. “Thus,” he says in conclusion, “it becomes a question whether St. James’s protest against reliance on faith alone has any reference, direct or indirect, to St. Paul’s language and teaching; whether, in fact, it is not aimed against an entirely different type of religious feeling, against the Pharisaic spirit which rested satisfied with a barren orthodoxy, fruitless in works of charity.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv14–20 Vers. 14-26. WARNING AGAINST RESTING CONTENT WITH A MERE…
Vers. 14-26. WARNING AGAINST RESTING CONTENT WITH A MERE BARREN ORTHODOXY. Preliminary note: This is the famous passage which led to Luther"s depreciation of the whole Epistle, which he termed a "right strawy" one. At first sight it appears, indeed, diametrically opposed to the teaching of St. Paul; for:
(1) St. Paul Says, (Rom_3:28) "We conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from (cwriv) works of Law," whereas St. James asserts (ver. 26) that "faith without (cwriv) works is dead," and that man is "justified by works and not by faith only" (ver. 24).
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(2) St. Paul speaks of Abraham as justified by faith. (Ro 4; cf.; Gal_3:6, etc.) St. James says that he was justified by works (ver. 21).
(3) St. Paul, or the Pauline author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, appeals to the case of Rahab as an instance of faith; (Heb_11:31) St. James refers to her as an example of justification by works (ver. 25). The opposition, however, is only apparent; for:
(1) The two apostles use the word erga different senses. In St. Paul it always has a depreciatory sense, unless qualified by the adjective kala or agaqa. The works which he denies to have any share in justification are legal works," not those which he elsewhere denominates the "fruit of the Spirit", (Gal_5:22) which are the "works" of which St. James speaks.
(2) The word pistiv is also used in different senses. In St. Paul it is pistiv dij ajgaphv ejnergoumenh; (Gal_5:6) in St. James it is simply an orthodox creed, "Even the devils pisteuousi (ver. 19): it may, therefore, be barren of works of charity.
(3) The apostles are writing against different errors and tendencies: St. Paul against that of those who would impose the Jewish Law and the rite of circumcision upon Gentile believers; St. James against "the self-complacent orthodoxy of the Pharisaic Christian, who, satisfied with the possession of a pure monotheism and vaunting his descent from Abraham, needed to be reminded not to neglect the still weightier matters of a self-denying love" (Lightfoot on "Galatians," p. 370). The tendency of the Jews to rely on their claim as "Abraham"s children" is rebuked by the Baptist (Mat_3:9) and by our Lord. (Joh_8:39) So Justin Martyr speaks of the Jews of his day: OiJ legousin oti ka) aJmartwloi w=si qeo ginwskwsin ouj mhshtai aujtoiv aJmartian ("Dial.,"
(4) The apostles regarded the new dispensation from different standpoints. With St. Paul" it is the negation of law: "Ye are not under Law, but under grace". (Rom_6:14) With St. James it is the perfection of Law. But, as Bishop Lightfoot has pointed out, the ideas underlying these contradictory forms of expression need not be essentially different." The mere ritual has no value for St. James. Apart from anything higher it is sternly denounced by him. (Jam_1:20, etc.) The gospel is in his view a Law, but it is no mere system of rules, "Touch not, taste not, handle not;" it is no hard bondage, for it is a law of liberty, which is in exact accordance with the teaching of St. Paul, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty". (2Co_3:17) But:
(5) The question now arises. Granting that St. James does not contradict the doctrine of St. Paul, is he not opposing Antinomian perversions of it, and writing with conscious reference to the teaching of the apostle of the Gentiles, and the misuse which some had made of it? To this question different answers have been returned. "So long as our range of view is confined to the apostolic writings, it seems scarcely possible to resist the impression that St. James is attacking the teaching, if not of St. Paul himself, at least of those who exaggerated and perverted it. But when we realize the fact that the passage in Genesis was a common thesis in the schools of the day, that the meaning of faith was variously explained by the disputants, that diverse lessons were drawn from it then the case is altered. The Gentile apostle and the Pharisaic rabbi might both maintain the supremacy of faith as the means of salvation; but faith with St. Paul was a very different thing kern faith with Maimonides, for instance. With the one its prominent idea is a spiritual life, with the other an orthodox creed; with the one the guiding principle is the individual conscience, with the other an external rule of ordinances; with the one faith is allied to liberty, with the other to bondage. Thus it becomes a question whether St. James"s protest against reliance on faith alone has any reference direct or indirect to St. Paul"s language and teaching. Whether, in fact, it is not aimed against an entirely different type of religious feeling, against the Pharisaic spirit which rested satisfied with a barren orthodoxy fruitless in works of charity" (Lightfoot on "Galatians," p. 164; the whole essay should be carefully studied). In favor of this view of the entire independence of the two writers, to which he inclines, Bishop Lightfoot urges:
(a) That the object of the much-vaunted faith of those against whom St. James writes is the fundamental maxim of the Law," "Thou believest that God is one"; (Deu_6:4) not "the fundamental fact of the gospel," "Thou believest that God raised Christ from the dead". (Rom_10:9)
(b) That the whole tone of the Epistle recalls our Lord"s denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees, and seems directed against a kindred spirit. To these we may add:
(c) That the teaching of St. Paul and St. James is combined by St. Clement of Rome ("Ep. ad Corinthians," c. 12.) in a manner which is conclusive as to the fact that he was unaware of any divergence of view between them, whether real or apparent. We conclude, then, that the teaching of St. James has no direct relation to that of St. Paul, and may well have been anterior in time to his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. (For the opposite view, see Farrar"s "Early Days of Christianity," vol. 2. p. 79, where an able discussion of the subject may be found.)
Vers. 14-17. (1) First point: Faith without works is equivalent to profession without practice, and is therefore dead.
Omit the article (with B, C), (1) and read ti ojfelov: so also in ver. 16. Can faith save him! rather, with R.V, that faith (hJ pistiv); the faith in question.
Vers. 14-26.
Faith and works.
I THE HOLLOWNESS OF PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE; of a mere orthodox creed without the deeds of love, which are as the fruits by which the tree is known. There is no reason to think that the Pharisee of the one parable was unorthodox, or that Dives in another was a heretic; but the faith of each of these was worthless, because not a "faith which worketh by love." The good Samaritan was a stranger and an alien, but did by nature the deeds of the Law; and thus (although salvation is of the Jews") is held up for an example. The barren fig tree stands forth as the type of profession without practice a great show of foliage, the ordinary sign that marked the presence of fruit, but after all "nothing but leaves." So is the man who says to his destitute brother, "Depart in peace, get warmed and filled," but gives him none of those things which be needful for the body; and the fate of the fig tree is a warning to all ages of the danger in which such stand.
II THE NEED OF WORKS.
1. In the case of Abraham his faith was perfected by his obedience.
1. Rahab the harlot was justified by works. Works are necessary for all Christians, wherever they are possible,
1. as the fruits of faith, and
2. as the evidences that the faith is genuine.
Hence judgment by works is expressly taught in the New Testament. So in the Athanasian Creed, "They that have done good shall go into life everlasting," etc.
III On the apparent difference between the teaching of St. James and of St. Paul, see Farrar"s "Early Days of Christianity," vol. 2. p. 99. "We may thank God that the truth has been revealed to us under many lights; and that by a diversity of gifts the Spirit ministered to each apostle severally as he would, inspiring the one to deepen our spiritual life by the solemn truth that works cannot justify apart from faith, and the other to stimulate our efforts after a holy life by the no less solemn truth that faith cannot justify us unless it be the living faith which is shown" by works. There is in the diversity a deeper unity. The Church, thank God, is "Circumamicta varietatibus clothed in raiment of many hues. St. Paul had dwelt prominently on faith; St. Peter dwells much on hope; St. John insists most of all on love. But the Christian life is the synthesis of these Divine graces, and the works of which St. James so vehemently impresses the necessity, are works which are the combined result of operative faith, of constraining love, and of purifying hope.
Vers. 14-19.
Works the test of faith.
God has joined faith and works together; but perverse human nature will insist upon putting them asunder. In the apostolic age, Paul met with many people who made works everything, to the neglect of faith; and James met with others who made faith everything, to the neglect of works.. In our time, too, multitudes outside the Church are saying that good conduct is the one thing needful, while orthodoxy of creed is comparatively unimportant.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can"t be wrong whose life is in the right. (Pope.)
Within the Church, on the other hand, many are clinging to a lifeless formal faith a faith which assents to theological propositions, but which does not influence dispositions. This latter error the apostle here exposes and refutes.
I THE INSUFFICIENCY OF A BARREN FAITH. (Ver. 14.) The case supposed is not that of a hypocrite, but of a self-deceiver. The man has faith, of a sort; but it is only the cold assent of the intellect. It does not purify his heart, or renew his will, or revolutionize his moral nature, as saving faith always does. Its weakness is seen in the fact that it is unproductive. It does not stir up its possessor to any habit of self-denial or of sympathetic benevolence. This faith coexists, perhaps, with respect of persons (vers. 1-13); or with an unbridled tongue, or a passionate temper, or a disposition to decline accepting the blame of one"s own sins. (Jas 1) How many persons who say they have faith" by assuming the responsibilities of Church membership, yet "have not works"! How many do not observe family prayer, or impart religious instruction to their children, or make any real sacrifice of their means for Christ"s cause, or devote themselves to any personal effort to advance his kingdom! James asks concerning such inoperative faith Cut booze? And the answer is, that no good use can be made of it. The faith which does not fill one"s heart with love to God, and which does not produce practical sympathy towards one"s fellow-men, is a spurious, worthless, bastard faith. Such a faith not only leaves its possessor unsaved, but increases the moral deterioration which shall make him the longer the less worth saving.
II EVIDENCE ADDUCED TO SHOW THIS INSUFFICIENCY. (Vers. 15-19.)
1. An illustrative case. (Vers. 15-17.) It is the bitterest mockery for a man who is himself living in ease and comfort to say to his shivering starving brother, when he sends him away empty-handed, "Depart in peace; do not give way to despondency; God has said he will never forsake his people; he shall give his angels charge concerning you; and I myself will pray for you. "Sentimental professions of sympathy which have no outcome of practical help do not profit" either person. They tempt the destitute man to become a misanthrope; and they ruin the moral health of the false sympathizer. (1Jn_3:16-18) Mere lip-charity is not true charity; and a professed faith which is palpably barren of good works "is dead in itself.
1. A direct challenge. (Ver. 18.) This challenge is represented as offered by a true and consistent believer. He defies the professing Christian who
2. divorces faith from practice, to exhibit his faith apart from works. He says in effect, "A believer is to "let his light shine." Well, I point to the new life which I am living as the appropriate manifestation of my faith; but, since you neglect good works, it is for you to indicate how you can manifest your faith otherwise." A faith which produces no works is unable to show itself; therefore it is not true faith at all.
3. An actual example. (Ver. 19.) Should any professing Christian of "the Dispersion" have been pluming himself upon his correct theology and. his notional faith, here was a solemn warning to him. Should he have been resting satisfied with the thought that, living in the midst of polytheism, he was holding fast by the Hebrew doctrine of the unity of God, this verse would remind him of the profitlessness of such a conviction, unless it; expanded into the blossoms and fruits of holiness. "The demons believe," and yet they remain demons. The unclean spirits whom Jesus exorcised had plenty of head-knowledge and head-faith about both God and Christ; but their faith was of a kind that made them "shudder" with terror when they realized the great verities. Being a merely intellectual credence, it could not cleanse the soul; it could only produce the "fear" which hath punishment.
Learn, in conclusion, that "with the heart man believeth unto righteousness." True saving faith not only asks, with Paul, "Who art thou, Lord?" but with him also passes from that question to this other, "What shall I do, Lord? C.J.
Vers. 14-26.
Faith and works.
The supposed antagonism between Paul and James. Misapprehension. Paul"s great argument is that, not by seeking to fulfill an impossible righteousness do we make ourselves just before God, but by acknowledging our sin and accepting his salvation. James"s argument is, that the very faith which saves us is a faith which brings forth after-fruits, or it is not true faith at all. So, then, the "works" to which the one refers are works done with a view to salvation, that God"s favor may be won by them; the works to which the other refers are works springing out of salvation, because God"s favor has been so freely and graciously bestowed. Let us study James"s presentation of this truth faith as a mere profession; faith as a practical principle.
I FAITH AS A MERE PROFESSION. All profession which is mere profession is vain, and worse than vain. This needs no proving, and therefore James, in his usual graphic style, illustrates rather than proves the truth.
1. The faith of mere profession is a mockery. (Vers. 15, 16.) Picture the scene which he supposes: "If a brother or sister be naked," etc. What mockery! So is it possible for our faith" to be a consummate caricature of the truths we profess to hold. Take, e.g. , the central creed of our religion: I believe in God the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost." What does this mean to us? That we live to God as our Father, by the grace of his salvation, and through the power of his Spirit? Or are these mere names to us? The world knows. And better no professed faith at all than a faith which is belied by all our life.
2. The faith of mere profession is but the dead semblance of the living thing. (Vers. 17, 20, 26.) Take the living man, and you have spirit, expressing itself in body, and actuating the body in all the active movements of the outer life. But mere body? A ghastly, pseudo-expression, not real; and no movement, no life. The spirit, the living principle, is gone! The analogy: what the spirit is to the expression of the spirit in the bodily form, and to the movements of active life which are carried on through the bodily instrumentality, that faith is to the profession of faith which shows it forth to men, and to the works by which it lives and moves in the world. But mere profession? Corpse-like! For there is no quickening principle there, and consequently no movement of life. So our creeds may be dead bodies, not instinct with any quickening principle, not bringing forth any fruits.
3. The faith of mere profession may consist with the deepest damnation. (Ver. 19.) Orthodoxy? You have it there! But to what result? A shuddering! Oh, let us learn this: a truth that is not wrought into the life is no truth to us; nay, it may but ensure our speedier and more dreadful ruin! Who are the atheists of the present day? Who the Christless ones? To whom was it said, "Thou, which art exalted unto heaven," etc. ? (Mat_11:23) Let us learn, that the belief which now we trifle with, and glibly profess, may one day make us shudder!
II FAITH AS A PRACTICAL PRINCIPLE. "Can that faith save him?" No, indeed; impossible per se! For whatever saves us must change us; and therefore the faith must he, not mere profession, but vital principle. True faith is trust; what we believe we live by. And faith in Christ, being a trustful surrender to Christ, is essentially operative. It must work; if it have not the "promise and potency" of work, it is not faith at all.
1. Faith manifested by works. (Ver. 18.) So far as there are true works, there is virtually true faith in the Christ of the heart, with whatever error mingled. We are warranted by Christ"s own words in saying this: By their fruits ye shall know them". (Mat_7:16-20) So, then, true works are an evidence to all of the true faith from which alone they can spring. But the converse is true: a lack of works is sure proof of a lack of faith.
2. Faith justifying by works. (Vers. 21, 23, 24, 25.) Only in so far as the faith is vital and operative does it justify, though the works themselves are really the outcome of the faith, or, more strictly, the result of the salvation of which the faith lays hold. James does not use the phrase, "justified by works," with metaphysical precision, but rather for broad, popular effect; and what he really means is, "justified by a working faith." Mingled with this, there may be likewise the idea in his mind, according to ver. 18 (see above), "accredited to the world as a justified man." So Abraham; so Rahab.
3. Faith perfected by works. (Ver. 22.)
(1) Perfected as a principle by coming to a practical issue for this the true natural history of all principles of action. Compare the passing of a law and its ultimate application.
(2) Perfected as a principle in itself, by the reaction upon it of its own exercise. For this the law of all exercise: the muscle, the brain. So faith itself the stronger for the very works which it originates and sustains. Abraham again.
All which, being translated into perhaps more experimental language, means, "Christ in you;" and the Christ within must live and wink, (Gal_2:20) May the faith that appropriates such a life be ours! T.F.L.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
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Jam_2:14-26
Though a man say he hath faith, and have not works
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Faith
The popular notion of faith is, that what a man does net deny, he believes; and that if he will maintain a doctrine in argument, he thereby proves that he believes it.
Now this may not be faith in the true sense at all. The true notion of faith is, conviction in action, principles operating in the life, sentiments embodied in conduct. Faith is practically nothing so long as it is merely in the head. Head faith can save no man. This is exactly so in daffy life. There is no witchery or mystery in this doctrine at all. Faith cannot save you in commerce, any more than it can save you in religion. Faith cannot save the body, any more than it can save the soul. So let us save Christianity from the supposed mistake of setting up a fanciful scheme of salvation; let us be simply just to the Son of God, by showing that He requires only the very same common-sense conditions of salvation that are required by ourselves in the common relations of our daily life. A man believes that if he puts his money into certain funds he will get back good interest with the most assured security. Yet at the end of the year he gets literally nothing. How was that? Because, though he believed it, he did not put any money into the funds. Can faith pay him? A man thoroughly believes that if he takes a certain mixture, prescribed for him by good medical authority, he will be recovered from his disease; but he gets no better; because, though he believed in the mixture, he did not take it. Can faith save him? Yet this is the very thing which people want to do with religion! They get a certain set of notions into their heads; they call those notions orthodox, and they expect that those notions will save them! It is an insult to common sense. The question is not whether those notions are in our head, but, what effect have they upon our life? Do they find their way from the head to the heart, from the heart to the hand? Fine geographical knowledge will never make a traveller. An exact knowledge of the chemical properties of water will never make a swimmer. You must bring your faith to a practical application. If I really and truly, with understanding and heart, receive the truths of the Christian religion, is there anything in them, as such, likely to move my life in a practical direction? Are they too subtle and speculative for time? As a mere matter of fact, the truths of Christianity are infinitely practical. They touch life at every point. In the morning, they are a loud call to duty; in the evening, they are a solemn judgment upon the day: when we go to business, they say, Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you. Here, a peculiar danger discovers itself. The man who wishes to avoid all that is most spiritual and holy in the Christian religion, inquires whether he cannot do all these duties as a mere moralist, without being what is distinctively known as a saint. He says he loves justice and mercy, benevolence and sympathy, and asks whether he cannot exercise or display them apart from what is called saving faith in Christ. Let us consider that question. There is a conduct that is philosophical, and there is a conduct that is spiritual; that is to say, there is a conduct that is based on logic, on the so-called fitness of things, on self-protection; and there is a conduct based upon a spiritual conception of sin, upon a realisation of Divine oversight and Divine judgment; and it is undoubtedly open to us to Consider the respective merits of each theory of life. I accept the spiritual, because I believe it to be fundamental; it is not a clever theory, it is a living reality; it is not a self-pleasing speculation, it is a law, a judgment, an eternal quantity. I must have a moral standard which I did not set up, and which I cannot pull down; a moral law which will harmonise with my nature, and yet for ever be above it; a law that will judge me; a law acting through all time, applying in all lands, overriding all circumstances and accidents; far above me as the sun, round about me as the light; not a guess on the part of man, but a distinct and solemn and final revelation from God. This I have in Christ Jesus; and if I accept it by a living faith, it will come out in a holy, tender, wise, and useful life, and thus I shall be saved by faith. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Faith and works
There is no analogy between mind and matter more remarkable than the reaction to which both are liable. Draw a pendulum, for example, over on one side; let go; obeying the law of gravitation, it seeks its centre. It does more, swings over to the other side. Twist a cord that has a weight attached to it, and loosen: revolving rapidly on its axis, it untwines itself; does more, passes by malay turns in an opposite direction. Or follow the billow, that, driven by the tempest, launches itself on an iron shore. Thundering it bursts into snowy foam; but more, like men retreating from a desperate charge, it recoils back into the deep. Even so of change of manners or opinion; how prone are men to pass from one to an opposite extreme, borne by the recoil beyond the line of truth! A danger this, that reformers, whether of Church or State, public morals or private manners, need to guard against. In this way we account for the very remarkable judgment that Luther pronounced on this Epistle of the Apostle James. He denied its Divine authority, he said it was not inspiration; and, not content with refusing it Divine authority, he spoke of it most contemptuously, calling it a chaffing epistle. Luther fancied that he saw in the Epistle of James a discrepancy between what James taught and what Paul taught, in regard to justification by the righteousness of Jesus Christ; and believing that he saw that, he rashly rejected this Epistle, scared by a phantom, by the mere appearance of discrepancy. There is no real discrepancy. Explanation of the appearance of it lies in this, that the Epistle of James was written after the Epistles of Paul had been perverted, grossly abused, turned to the basest purposes. Men had risen up, who held that if a man had knowledge, that was enough; if he gave a cold and intellectual assent to certain doctrines, though his heart was impious and his life impure, he might be saved. It was against this pestilent heresy that honoured Christ in word, but dishonoured Him in work; it was against those that held the doctrine of a spurious faith, against these that James took pen in hand, and asked, What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? Faith, if it hath not works, is dead.
I. Now let me remark by way of caution that I may not be misunderstood, that notwithstanding what the apostle appears to say, and does say, that nevertheless we are saved by faith, we are saved by faith in the merits of Jesus Christ alone. James says, Can faith save him? I say it can--undoubtedly it can. Not the spurious faith, the false and spurious faith that is without works, and is dead, but such a faith as bringeth forth works; and how? Not by any merit of its own, for it is the gift of God, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is no more than the rope which the drowning man clutches, and by which another pulls him living to the shore. God its Author, the heart its seat, good works its fruits, Christ its object, and it saves the sinner by bringing him to the Saviour. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Saved if my faith is weak? Ay, however weak your faith is, if it is a true and living faith, it is enough. Our blessed Lord drew lessons from singing birds and gay flowers; and I have seen in the conservatory a plant from which such saints as John Bunyans Mr. Feeble-mind might gather strength, and draw something more fragrant than its odours, and something more beautiful than its purple flowers. Climbing the trellis that it interwove with greenest verdure and flowery beauty, it sprang from the soil by a mere filament of a stem, unlike the pine of yonder mountains, unlike the sturdy oaks that are built to carry their heads, and bear the storms they have to encounter. You require to trace this upwards and downwards to believe that that living shred, that filament of a stem, could be the living sustaining, channel that carried the sap from the root to all these flowers and verdant branches. And when I looked on it I thought how like it looks to the feeble faith of some living saint; but there the likeness ceases. Roughly handled one day, that filament of a stem was broken and separated from the living root; branches and flowers withered away.
II. Let me now remark, in the second place, that whale it is by faith that unites us to Jesus Christ that we are saved, good works are the certain fruit of this living, saving faith. One of Frances bravest marshals had in a civil war for his opponent the Prince of Conde, and in Conde he had a foeman worthy of his steel, the only man that could rival Turenne in handling troops, in moving armies, in sudden and successful attacks. Well, one night when Conde was supposed to be many leagues away, Turenne was sleeping soundly in his tent. He was suddenly aroused by shouts, and the roar of cannon an d of musketry, that were to him the certain signs of a midnight assault, He hastened from his tent, he cast his eyes around him, and at once discovering by the burning houses, by the quarters of the attack, by the skill with which it was planned, by the energy with which it was executed, the genius of his only rival, he turned to his staff and said, Conde is come. Certain men announce themselves; certain causes announce themselves: and especially in cases of sudden conversion you can almost as surely say, Conversion is come, salvation is come, Christ is come. It is nothing but faith that can unite us thus to Christ. Faith announces itself, but in another way. The Apostle Paul, while he says that salvation is of faith and not of works, lest any man should boast, speaks as distinctly of works. This his subject, his trumpet utters no uncertain sound. On the contrary, while he says that salvation is not of works but of faith, lest any man should boast; while he says that we are cleansed through Christ from sin, in the very same passage he adds that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. You talk of predestination and foreordination. I say predestination and foreordination have as much to do with good works as they have to do with salvation; and good works, according to that passage of Paul, are in all cases as sure as foreordination can keep them, the natural fruit of faith. And how can it be otherwise? In every other region where it works, is not faith the grand worker in this world? In the character of God, in the Person, love, and work of Jesus Christ, in an eternal world, in the Bible with its gracious promises and its glowing prospects, faith has to do with the noblest truths, and, if any man here, not devout in heart, not holy in life, says that he has faith, he deceiveth himself. But God says, Be not deceived, neither whoremongers, nor unclean persons, nor covetous persons, that are idolaters, have any inheritance in the kingdom of God.
III. Let me now, in the third place, turn your attention briefly to this remark which follows from the former, that the hopes of salvation through faith, which are founded on a faith without works, are of necessity therefore false, and being false are therefore fatal. Last century, in my country, whatever it may have been in this or elsewhere, and I believe it is true of most--last century faith was out of fashion, unless at a communion season. The peculiar doctrines of the gospel, at least in Scotland, were in many places, and in most indeed, seldom presented before the people. Christ and Him crucified were thrust into a corner. Such was the state of matters then and there. Virtue and vice--the beauties of virtue and the ugliness of vice, these were the favourite topics of the ministers, and the people had so little taste that they did not fall in love with Virtue, and even some of those that were accustomed to paint her in the pulpit, had very little regard for her themselves. And strange to say, the more the people had virtue preached to them, the less they practised it. And Jesus shut out of the pulpit, the Cross taken from the preacher, the love of Jesus never heard or carried to peoples hearts, there was nothing to produce good works; there was no pith in preaching, there was no straw to make bricks with, there was no seed to yield up a harvest, there was, so to speak, no backbone to support the soft parts and keep the form erect. The religion that we want is the religion that has Christ for its root, and good works in everything for its fruits. And any other religion is dead, James says. James says, Faith if it have not works, is dead. Not dead like a stone, which, in the flashing diamond, and in the sculptured marble, may be beautiful--but dead like that lifeless body, putrid, foul, horrible in its decay. Let me now turn your attention to this--that believers are called by Christs Word to be workers. You are called to be believers; believe. And then when you believe, you are called to be workers. Hold to the faith, be steadfast, steady, unmovable; But He adds now, as He added then by the voice of Paul, Always abounding in the work of the Lord. (T. Guthrie, D D.)
Productive faith
I. THE APOSTLES ARGUMENT. The apostle was thoroughly well aware how easy it is for the mind of man to slide into a notional possession of faith, which in itself possesses no power, and is altogether unprofitable. Persons of sanguine temperament have often wrought themselves up into a notion that they possessed faith, and they have seemed to exercise that faith towards Christ as its legitimate object; but it has been rather the sentiment of faith than faith itself, with its vitality and energy. It is possible that this delusion may be practised for a considerable time and to a great extent. And what would be amongst its immediate effects? Unsteadiness, inconsistency, want of spiritual progress, and, at length, decline from all profession. The person who is under the sentiment rather than the power of a real faith may be like the branch of a tree, cut off and planted without a root; it may be fresh and green to all appearance for a time, but there is no life in it, it is a dead branch, it is a powerless thing, it will never blossom, it will yield no fruit.
II. THE ILLUSTRATION. The mind of man may be acted on by the distresses of others: there may be a kind and a degree of commiseration felt for human wretchedness; nay, there are those who will weep with emotion over a tale of fiction, and almost by the power of human sympathy realise it as if it were true, and seem ready to give up the heart at once to the deepest impression that can be made. We delight in the manifestation of human sympathy--we begin to anticipate that it will become very profitable in its results; but still there may be the power of selfishness within, that shall at length obliterate the impressions that have been made on the sensitive nature: the emotion passes, and the step has not been taken, it may be, to alleviate that distress which is known to exist. And there is a disposition in the mind of man--a complex disposition--first to cherish images and pictures of distress that excite the emotion, and then to escape from the emotion when it has been excited. The apostle, then, puts this case, and says--What does all this profit? There is the naked object--he is unclothed; there is the hungry--he is unfed. Where is all this emotion, all this expressed sympathy? It has passed away like a vapour. Human sympathy, like faith, if it is to work anything, must bring out its direct results, or it is altogether an unprofitable thing.
III. THE CONCLUSION of the apostles argument. Even so, saith he, faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone--or, as the margin says, being by itself. The conclusion is inevitable. The true faith which justifies does invest the possessor of it with a power of working works acceptable to God. If there be no works acceptable to God--if there be, for instance, no power of holiness manifested in the ordinary details of the Christian professors life--it profits nothing, it leaves the sinner as it found him; it is but a cremation of his own mind, it is not that faith which brings the soul by the Spirit into union with Christ, and gives it both power and activity. Even so, faith, if it hath not works, is a dead thing. And we ask, therefore, of the Christian professor, when he tells us he has faith, the production of his works--not simply and on the whole ground of the evidence of his faith, but in order that the works may give consistency to his profession, and proof that he has possessed the death and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ by direct investiture from God Himself. (G. Fisk, LL. B.)
Two kinds of faith--the spurious and the genuine
I. THE SPURIOUS FAITH WHICH THE TEXT CONDEMNS. What doth it profit, though a man say he hath faith. The first point to be observed is that this faith is a faith of outward profession. We know how easily men are often persuaded to say what they do not feel, and to profess what they do not steadfastly believe and heartily embrace. This radical evil runs through the whole description given by the apostle of the kind of faith which he reprobates. It is something more talked about than felt, more boasted of than experienced, more used for self-confident display than applied to the business and practice of life. We observe, further, that there is a false faith which presumes without warrant upon its title to the favour of God and the happiness of heaven. The freeness with which the blessings of redemption are promised in the gospel has ever been the occasion--though most unjustly--with men of corrupt and insincere minds for turning the grace of God into licentiousness. This was the signal abuse which St. James found it necessary to combat, and he leaves it neither root nor branch. He first asks, with a keen sense of holy contempt for such an empty faith, What doth it profit? Does it make him who boasts in the possession of it a whit the better? Does it impress the slightest lineament of the Saviours image on his mind? Or will it produce any salutary effect upon his future and eternal condition? Can this faith--this notional faith, this faith of mere profession, this faith which produces no fruit--can this faith save him? It may delude him with many hopes, it may raise him to temporary excitement and exultation, it may urge him even to meet death without fear; but can it save him? This is the only important question; and it can have no other answer than a fearful negative! Again, the apostle presses a powerful argument from analogy. He compares faith with charity or love. For any one to say he has faith without its proper fruit is the same thing as to say that he has love without its appropriate fruit. Your sympathy goes no further than words or sentimental feelings; it stops at the very point which would give evidence of its vitality, and therefore it is not true Christian love, it profiteth nothing. Apply the same reasoning to faith. If yours is a faith which produces no fruit, if it hath not works, it is dead, being alone. A further step which the apostle takes for the detection of a spurious faith is the direct demand of evidence respecting its existence. Thou bossiest of an impalpable something which thou canst not prove to have any existence whatever. Here are no signs of life, no proof that the whole of thy profession is not either hypocritical or delusive. Say what you will, there is no faith where there are no works. Is it replied, Yes, I certainly do believe in the existence of God? That may be, and yet you may be destitute of the faith which saves the soul; for even devils believe and tremble, yet they remain devils still, and are for ever excluded from salvation! Once more, look at the examples of Scripture, the very examples quoted by St. Paul for the purpose of proving that a man is justified by faith only. Do not the cases of Abraham and of Rahab show that this justifying faith was also a working faith? A profession of faith, accompanied though it be by the clearest convictions of the judgment, is nothing but a lifeless carcass, unless it breathes and acts in holy thoughts and holy conduct, showing forth the praises of Him who is its great Author, and who has promised eternal salvation to every one that believeth.
II. THE NATURE OF THAT FAITH WHICH BY IMPLICATION IS COMMENDED IN THE TEXT. Of this faith God is the Author. It is His gift, and the most precious of all the spiritual gifts which He bestows upon man. Hence faith is not a notion, not an opinion, not a mere product of the understanding; it is a vital, efficacious principle inwrought into the soul by Divine grace. It is the very life by which we live; the might of Divine omnipotence, strengthening the weakness of a dying worm, and kindling all holy affections within the human breast. This faith accepts, without hesitation, the Divine testimony, resting with implicit confidence on the Word of God, and desiring no other and no higher authority than this for the most perfect and unlimited trust, and for the most sincere and universal obedience. Hence follows the cordial acceptance of Christ crucified as the object of our faith. It must be with a faith which unites the soul to Christ in holy bonds, which makes us one with Him and Him with us, which causes us daily to feed on Him in our hearts, and to hold sacred fellowship with Him as our Guide, Redeemer, and Friend. Finally, it must be by a faith which, while it puts away from itself all merit of works, yet brings forth abundantly those works of holy obedience which are the proper fruits of the Spirit, and which flow as legitimate effects from the holy principles which grace has implanted in the breast.
III. MAKE PRACTICAL USE OF THIS DOCTRINE. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. It is adduced as an evidence of the irresistible power of Demosthenes over the minds of his hearers that, when he had finished his speech against Philip of Macedon, the assembly instantly exclaimed, Come, let us fight against Philip! Their resolution, however, though ardently and sincerely expressed while under the excitement produced by most thrilling eloquence, was but ill-sustained or vindicated by their future conduct. Now, the faith of Christ not only prompts to holy and energetic resolves, but ensures a practice corresponding with such resolves. It is a living faith, and the proof of its life is in its effects. And it is not bare life, but life in action--life in the discharge of holy service--life in spiritual power, which faith exhibits. The Christian is not only a living, but a fruitful, branch in the True Vine. The sap which flows from the root does not expend itself wholly in leaves--there is the bud, the blossom, and the ripened cluster. The Christian is not a paralysed member of the mystical body of Christ, but moves and acts as the Head directs, not only possessing life, but feelings its power, and consciously and cheerfully yielding to the influence of its Guide. (John King, M. A.)
The test of faith
There are two main errors in religion which it is the duty of Christs ministers frequently and fully to point out. the one, that we can be righteous by our own deservings; the other, that whereas works are not meritorious, they may be neglected.
I. THAT FAITH MUST BE PROVED BY SOME TEST; and--
II. THAT THE TEST ESPECIALLY PROPOUNDED OF IT IS SCRIPTURE IS THAT OF HOLY WORKS.
I. That a mere profession of belief is useless must appear very evident to any one who chooses to give the matter the slightest consideration. For there are numerous examples in Scripture of those who rightly professed, but whose heart nevertheless was not right with God. The fact is that there are various kinds of faith spoken of in Scripture, which have each its appropriate fruit, but of which one kind only leads to close union with Christ, and consequently to eternal life.
1. There is an historical faith. We read the Scripture narrative, and we credit it. As well might it be imagined that the belief in the existence of water would quench our thirst, the knowledge of a remedy would cure a disease. No: to believe in Christ in this way has no more saving virtue than to believe the record given of any other being.
2. There is another faith of which the Scripture speaks. Our Lord told His disciples that if they had faith as a grain of mustard seed, they might bid a ponderous mountain be removed, and it should move at their word Mat_17:20). And it cannot be doubted that, in the earlier days of Christianity, there were those who cast out devils in the Saviours name, and in His name did many mighty works, who yet were not His friends, or savingly converted to Him. The faith whereby miracles are wrought has its appropriate effect. And what is this? Why, the benefit (supposing it to he cure of diseases) is to those on whom the cure is performed. It benefits not the soul of the man who works the wonder, unless you would imagine that, by the administering of a medicine to the patient the physician therein cures also himself.
3. There is a third kind of faith which the Scriptures describe. Perhaps I should not err in calling it the faith of the passions. It is the belief which is grounded upon fear or admiration--any passing emotion of the mind. Hence it produces effects wholesome it would appear for the time, but of a most limited character. Such was the faith of Lots wife. She believed the coming ruin of Sodom. She quitted the devoted city. But the lingering love of her ancient home returned: her faith faltered. Such a faith was that of Herod. He believed the plain truths which the prophet of the desert proclaimed to him. He began a reformation. But his faith lasted not long. As soon as lust was attacked, it summoned all its powers, quenched in the monarchs breast his feeble belief of the Baptizers mission. And so you see there are kinds and degrees of faith which save not the soul. Is not the inference inevitable, that we must try and prove our faith and bring it to the touchstone? that we must ascertain if ours be the genuine faith of Gods elect?
II. Whether that which is proposed in Scripture is not the evidence of holy works. Our Lords declaration seems precise enough: By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Mat_7:16; Mat_7:20). This test, then, we must adopt. It must be carefully observed that by good fruits, good works, I do not mean merely moral conduct. For, though where this exists not there can be no genuine faith or real religion, yet the life may be to the eye unblamable, and yet there be in the heart none of that spiritual principle or influence which God requires. Each part of Christian doctrine, if I may so speak, will be exhibited by its appropriate proof. Genuine faith, receiving the sad truth of mans corruption, will be evidenced by a real, not a merely professed, humiliation before God. Now, though certainly love may exist when it is but professed, yet surely the best proof of its existence is the actual exhibition of it. Desire is in the same way best shown by mens really making exertions to obtain that which they say they long for. Fear is most clearly exhibited when we actually shrink from that which we say we dread. If, then, the best proof of the existence of all these passions or principles be the really doing that which they, if actually felt, would naturally prompt to, so we may conclude it is in spiritual things: the best proof of repentance is an earnest endeavour to be freed from the power and punishment of that sin which we say we mourn for. And, further, genuine faith receiving the record which God has given of His Son will be manifested in an actual resorting to Christ for forgiveness and a cordial affection to His person, work, and offices. Practice is the proper fruit of every gracious affection: it is the proper proof of the true knowledge of God: Hereby, says the apostle, we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments 1Jn_2:3). Practice is the proper fruit of real repentance. Hence John the Baptist required the Jews to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Practice is the proper evidence of genuine faith. It was by actually complying with Gods command to offer up his son that Abraham showed his real belief in the Lords word. Practice is the proper evidence of a true closing with Christ for salvation. This is evident from the different reception, as we read in the Gospels, Christs calls met with. By some they were declined or deferred: Suffer me first to go and bury my father. Practice is the proper evidence of real thankfulness to God. And that this test is the true one is proved by what we see to be the dealings of God with men. We find that He tries, or, as it is sometimes called in Scripture, He tempts men, i.e., He brings them into situations where natural principles and affections run counter to the requirements of His Word. Thus Abraham was tried to see whether paternal affection would prevail over his trust in Gods declarations. Thus Hezekiah was tried to see whether natural vainglory would overcome humble gratitude for Gods mercy. Thus Peter was tried to see whether the fear of man were stronger than love to Jesus Christ. This test, let me further observe, is needed for the individual himself. Some mistakenly deny this. They allow that, to others, the proper proof of a mans profession is his actually walking in the fear and good ways of the Lord; but they say that he, for himself, as if by intuition, knows whether he has really laid hold on Christ, whether he really loves God. Do not these men understand that the human heart is deceitful above all things? Do they not remember that there is such a thing as self-deception, a persuasion of the mind that we desire, love, fear that which, on proof, we desire not, love not, fear not? David, sensible of this, entreated the Lord to examine and prove him, and to try his reins and his heart (Psa_26:2). And so every humble believer will desire. He will not be content with notions: he must have things. He is not satisfied with a religion of the lips or of the thoughts: he must see it influencing the whole man. He relies not on any conduct as the ground of acceptance in Gods sight: he does look at it for evidence whether or no he has laid hold upon the things which make for his eternal peace, whether or no he has truly come to Christ for salvation. And now, seeing these things are so, let me seriously, in concluding the subject, ask you what proof you are giving of the reality of your profession? (J. Eyre, M. A.)
St. James and St. Paul
It seems likely that St. James had seen St. Pauls epistles, for he uses the same phrases and examples (cf. verses 21, 23, 25, with Rom_4:3; Heb_11:17; Heb_11:31, and verses 14, 24 with Rom_3:28; Gal_2:16)
. At all events, the Holy Spirit by St. James combats, not St. Paul, but those who abuse St. Pauls doctrine. (A. R.Fausset, M. A.)
St. Paul and St. James on faith
St. Paul meets the legalist; St. James the Antinomian. (W. H. M. Aitken, M. A.)
Opposite foes
They do not stand face to face fighting against each other, but back to back fighting opposite foes. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
Faith in germ and manifested
Plainly St. James means by works the same thing as St. Paul means by faith; only he speaks of faith in its manifested development; St. Paul speaks of it in its germ. (A. R.Fausset, M. A.)
Believing and doing
are blood relatives. (S. Rutherford.)
What doth it profit?
Plutarch, who was a young man at the time when this Epistle was written, has the following story of Alexander the Great, in his Apothegms of Kings and Generals: The young Alexander was not at all pleased with the successes of his father, Philip of Macedon. My father will leave me nothing, he said. The young nobles who were brought up with him replied, He is gaining all this for you. Almost in the words of St. James, though with a very different meaning, he answered, What does it profit [ὄφελος], if I possess much and do nothing? The future conqueror scorned to have everything done for him. In quite another spirit the Christian must remember that if he is to conquer he must not suppose that his Heavenly Father, who has done so much for him, has left him nothing to do. There is the fate of the barren fig-tree as a perpetual warning to those who are royal in their professions of faith, and paupers in good works. (A. Plummer, D. D.)
Religion more than intellectual assent
Are you any more a Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these solemn verities? Is not your lifelike some secularised monastic chamber, with holy texts carved on the walls, and saintly images looking down from glowing windows on revellers and hucksters who defile its floors? Your faith, not your creed, determines your religion. Many a true believer is a real infidel. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Words and deeds
God is too wise to be put off with words; He turns up our leaves, and looks what fruit: whereof if He will, He lays down His basket and takes up His axe (Luk_13:7). (J. Trapp.)
Faith and works
Two gentlemen were one day crossing the river in a ferry-boat. A dispute about faith and works arose; one saying that good works were of small importance, and that faith was everything; the other asserting the contrary. Not being able to convince each other, the ferryman, an enlightened Christian, asked permission to give his opinion. Consent being granted, He said, I hold in my hands two oars. That in my right hand I call faith; the other, in my left, works. Now, gentlemen, please to observe, I pull the oar of faith, and pull that alone. See! the boat goes round and round, and the boat makes no progress. I do the same with the oar of works, and with a precisely similar result--no advance. Mar_1:1-45 I pull both together, we go on apace, and in a very few minutes we shall be at our landing-place. So, in my humble opinion, he added, faith without works, or works without faith, will not suffice. Let there be both, and the haven of eternal rest is sure to be reached. As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works. Faith is the parent of works, and the children will bear a resemblance to the parent. It is not enough that the inward works of a clock are well constructed, and also the dial-plate and hands; the one must act on the other, the works must regulate the movement of the hands. (Archbishop Whately.)
Doing better than talking
Two rival architects were once consulted for the building of a certain temple at Athens. The first harangued the crowd very learnedly upon the different orders of architecture, and showed them in what manner the temple should be built; the other, who got up after him, only observed that what his brother had spoken he could do--and thus he gained the cause.
Can faith save him?--
Faith more than creed
Men dwelling, as those Jews dwelt, in the midst of a heathen population, were tempted to trust for their salvation to their descent from Abraham, and to their maintaining the unity of the Godhead as against the Polytheism and idolatry of the nations. They repeated their creed, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord (Deu_6:4). It entered, as our creed does, into the morning and evening services of the synagogue, It was uttered by the dying as a passport to the gates of Paradise. It was to this that they referred the words of Habakkuk that the just should live by faith (Hab_2:4). St. James saw, as the Baptist had seen before him; how destructive all this was of the reality of the spiritual life, and accordingly takes this as the next topic of his letter. (Dean Plumptre.)
Saving faith
It is not every faith that saves the soul. There may be a faith in a falsehood which leads only to delusion and ends in destruction. \\hen the Eddystone lighthouse was to be rebuilt, Winstanley, the noted engineer, contracted to rear a structure which should withstand the assaults of time and tempests. So confident was his faith in the showy structure of his own skill, that he offered to lodge in it, with the keeper, through the autumnal gales. He was true to his word. But the first tremendous tempest which caught the flimsy lighthouse in the hollow of its hand hurled both building and builder into the foaming sea. We fear that too many souls are rearing their hopes for eternity upon the sands of error; when the testing floods come and the winds beat upon their house, it will fall, and sad will be the fall thereof. There is a faith that saves; it puts us into immediate and vital union with the Son of God. Because He lives, we shall live also. When a human soul lets go of every other reliance in the wide universe, and hangs entirely upon what Jesus has done, and can do for him, then that soul believes on Christ. To Him the believer entrusts himself for guidance, for pardon, for strength, and for ultimate admission into the exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
1. Faith is a very simple process. Thanks be unto God that the most vital of all acts is as easily comprehended as a baby comprehends the idea of drawing nourishment from a mothers breast and of falling asleep in a mothers arms. Jesus propounds no riddle when He invites you and me to come to Him just as the blind beggar and the penitent harlot came.
2. Faith is not only a simple, it is a sensible act. Do you consider it a sensible thing to purchase a United States Bond? Yes; because it gives you a lien on all the resources of the great Republic. So the highest exercise of the reason is to trust what the Almighty God has said and to rely on what He has promised. Infidelity plays the idiot when it rejects God, and pays the penalty. Faith is wise unto its own salvation.
3. Faith is a stooping grace. That heart-broken, self-despising woman weeping on the feet of her Lord is a beautiful picture of its lowliness and submission. Self must go down first, before we can be lifted up into Christs favour and likeness. On the low grounds falls the fertilising rain of heaven; the bleak mountain tops are barren. God resisteth the proud and giveth His grace unto the lowly.
4. Faith is the strengthening grace. Through this channel flows in the power from on high. The impotent man had laid many a weary year by the pool of Bethesda. When Jesus inquired, Wilt thou be made whole? and his faith assented, the command came instantly, Rise, take up flay bed and walk. At once the man leaps up, and a helpless bundle of nerves and muscles receives strength sufficient to walk and to carry his couch. Faith links us to Omnipotence.
5. Finally, it is the grace which completely satisfies. When a hungry soul has found this food, the aching void is filled; Lord, evermore give me this bread. When the sting of guilt is taken away, and the load of condemnation is lifted off, then comes relief, rest, hope, joy, fellowship with the Divine. Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace. Without this faith it is impossible to please God: when it is exercised and we come, and ally ourselves with our blessed, pardoning, life-giving Saviour, He, too, beholds the happy result of His work and is satisfied. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Be ye warmed and filled
Pretence of liberality
For a man to say to him, that hath purse penniless, body clotheless, scrip meatless, remaining harbourless, Go get thee meat, go clothe thy back, go fill thy bag, go lodge thyself, maketh show only of false liberality. If a surgeon say to the wounded person, Get thee salve, and heal thyself, yet giveth him neither salve nor plaster, nor anything whereby his sore may be healed, comforteth but slenderly. A physician bidding his cure and patient to wax strong, to recover health, to walk abroad, and yet applieth nothing, neither prescribeth anything whereby strength may be gotten, health recovered, former state restored, by bare words profiteth nothing, he that meeteth wayfaring man, far from all path or highway, wandering, and saith, Go aright, yet teacheth not which hand he must turn on, which way he must take, which path ha must follow, helpeth the strayer nothing towards his proposed journey. So to bid the hungry go fill his belly, and yet to give him nothing, is no charity; for the surgeon to persuade the wounded man to cure himself, teaching him whereby he may do it, is no pity; for the physician to exhort his patient to recover help and health, and prescribe not whereby the sickness may be repelled, and former state restored, is no remedy; to bid a man keep the right way, when he is altogether out, and not to set him in the path he must follow, is no courtesy. So-to say to the cold, Go warm thee, to the hungry, Go feed yourselves, is no compassion or mercy. Thus by this similitude the apostle showeth that that is no faith which is in words only, and not accompanied with works of charity. (R. Turnbull.)
Cheap benevolence
Dr. Guthrie, in his autobiography, describes an odd character among his Scotch country parishioners at Arbirlot who died as he lived, a curious mixture of benevolence and folly. The lawyer who drew his will, after writing down several legacies of five hundred pounds to one person, a thousand to another, and so on, at last said, But, Mr.
, I dont believe you have all that money to leave. Oh! was the reply, I ken that as well as you; but I just want to show them my goodwill.
Mouth mercy
This age aboundeth with mouth-mercy, which is good cheap. But a little handful were better than a great many such mouthfuls. (J. Trapp.)
Words useless
Be ye warmed. But what with? With a fire of word. Be filled. But what with? With a mess of words. (J. Trapp.)
Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone
Works the true test of faith
It is a very important matter that we recognise right principles in relation to God and in relation to human life and duty; but it is still more important that the principles we recognise intellectually be embodied in actual conduct. However comprehensive the range of a mans faith or credence, if he is no better in his life for it, then plainly it is of no saving value. As far as the practical issues of his faith go, he might as well be without it. The devils believe; yes, and remain devils. Here is a man who professes to believe in patriotism, who can discourse ably of the nobleness of living for ones country and echo the loyal sentiments of patriot worthies; and yet he never studies one national question, and in time of national panic, suffering, or peril, he is the very last man to do one act of real patriotism. What is the value of his fine sentiments about devotion to Fatherland? Even so faith, if it hath no works, is dead, being alone. As food and light and air and warmth, and other elements of the material world, are assimilated with our physical organisation, promoting physical growth and strength and beauty, so the truth of God, relative to mans character and life, is to be assimilated with our moral and spiritual being, producing in us moral and spiritual vigour and health and symmetry. If it is not so apprehended--if it does net dwell in us as a fashioning nutritive force and inspiration, coming out in our daily life, then we have not vitally apprehended it. Look at this a little in detail. The life and teachings of Christ are the true model and standard for human life. That is a truth to which general assent is given. And what are the moral qualities which He manifested? He was meek and lowly at heart; He was painstaking with the feeble and prejudiced; He had sympathy; He had heroism; He saw the good there was in human nature, and sought to expand it. His was a Spirit of holy zeal; His was a Spirit of self-sacrifice. And His teachings harmonise with Himself. They bear the same heavenly stamp upon them. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Love your enemies: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Now look out upon every-day life. Are Christ and His teachings copied and obeyed with loving and willing obedience by those who profess to recognise and revere them? That is the vital point. If, after the duties of the day, you who admit Christ to be your example, were to be asked, Have you taken Him as your model to-day in the practical concerns of life? Have you dealt with your fellow-men as He would deal with them? Have you bought and sold as you can suppose He would buy and sell? Have you kept your motives pure, as you know He would keep His motives pure? Have you regulated your thoughts and feelings as He would regulate His? It is very possible to have Christ in our creed--to believe in Him as an historic personage; to believe that He came forth from the Father; to give earnest thought to the mastery of His unparalleled teachings, and yet be sadly wanting in heart-homage and devotedness to Him. One little living act of obedience outweighs in value all a mans mere philosophising and intellectual credence. Christ demands actual doing (Mat_7:21). The future life is another truth to which general assent is given. This life is not all. It is, in relation to the magnitude and scope of our existence, but as the portal to the edifice. The life we live here is chequered and transitory, but that which is to come is everlasting. Now, the true life in relation to that great future is one of anticipation and earnest spiritual preparation. If we truly realised our citizenship to be yonder, we could not but be aliens here. Can the swallow love the frost and snow and leaden skies of our winter? Can the home-sick emigrant; forget the mother-country whence he came out? Can the man of refined taste and cultured mind be content amidst squalor and ignorance? Can the truehearted mother be at rest while the wail of her babe in distress summons her to its cot? And if we have souls that know that their true mother-country is in a summer clime: that have been breathed into by the quickening Spirit of God, there will instinctively be a sense of alienship here; a patient waiting there may be, still a waiting for the redemption which draweth nigh. Now, what does a mans faith in the future do for him? What fruit does faith in immortality bear upon its branches? or, like the fig-tree which Christ cursed, has it nothing but leaves? The moral accountability of man to God is another generally accepted truth. Now what kind of life does a mans faith in tills truth develop? That is the great question. Is it society, or is it God that he has chiefly before him, in what he is and does? Consider this in reference to the motives. Are they pure? In our intercourse with each other, very often only the actions are seen; the motives are hidden away in the secret chamber of a mans own breast. But the Lord looketh on the heart. Now, does the faith which we have in God as the Judge, who looketh down into the springs of action, make us careful to purify and rightly regulate the secret and interior life? What does faith do? Now, the faith that leads to works is just what men often lack. There are several things that are secondary, which are commonly elevated into substitutes and equivalents for obedience. Men are losing sight of the real end of life--right doing and being--and resting in these lower and intermediate stages. Some rest in a correct theology. They have true and lofty principles in their creed; but--but they keep them in that form. They are not expounded into living blossom and fruit. There is another class whose aim it is to be happy. The end of a Christian life is gained, they imagine, when they are able to glow with gladsome emotions. But your emotions are only worth anything as they inspire to right action. That is their purpose--to make us strong for obedience. Another class rest in the observance of ordinances and religious ceremonies. Churches and ordinances and Sabbath-days are intended simply to be helps. And as means of grace they are indispensable. But the means are often elevated into an end of themselves, and many a man reckons he has been religious when he has only been gathering inspiration for religion. In such externalisms do men rest, and the solemn, noble path of obedience lies before them untrodden. Can a faith that does not carry them beyond these things, that does not stir them up to any self-denials, any active form of goodness, any culture of a right manhood, save them? What the better is any one for believing in God if in his life he is practically atheistic? What does it matter that a man believes in the love of God in Christ, if there is no response of love in his own heart? What is the profit of a man every day reading his Bible, with faith in its inspiration, if he goes forth into the world forgetting all its teachings? What is the moral worth of any sort of intellectual credence that leaves the life barren of good works? Can such faith save? (T. Hammond.)
A living faith
Believing that Jesus is the Son of God, yet not to imitate His character, not to follow His precepts, not to conform to His commands, is no more acceptable faith than to speak kind words to a neighbour, and not assist his wants is acceptable and satisfactory love. Suppose, therefore, a person to profess dependence on Christ Jesus--to profess, that is, that he knows the corruption of his heart, the infirmity of his faith, and consequently, that he trusts not to his own righteousness, but to the atonement made on the Cross for the unrighteous; supposing this, we say, these are excellent words, they represent the state of the Christians mind; But still St. James is aware how prone a mans heart is to deceive him; and knowing this, he requires a proof of this dread of Gods wrath, this hatred of sin, this love of Christ in delivering us from sin. Thou hast faith; thou professest to believe in Christ; I would not doubt your profession, or deny that your belief; but examine yourself, prove your own soul; let me witness a proof of your faith in your life and practice; how else can it be known? Show me thy faith without thy worlds. Thou canst not; it is impossible. Thou canst not show it except by works, for faith is hidden in the heart; it cannot be seen of itself--it can be only judged of by its effects. It is like the life which animates the body; we cannot see it, we cannot tell what it depends on; but this we know, if the principle of life be sound and healthy, the man will breathe with freedom and move with ease. So, if there be sound and acceptable faith, though it lie deep in the recesses of the heart, its existence there will be evident; it will freely breathe in piety towards God--it will actively work in charity towards men. Here, then, is the reason why St. James requires us to show our faith by our works; because there can be no other proof of our having that faith at all, which will avail us in the sight of God. There may be a belief in Christ which the mind cannot resist, because the evidence of the Christian revelation is too strong to be set aside; there may be a belief in Christ which grows out of our birth and education, which we receive, like our language, from the country in which we are born; more than this, there may be a belief in Christ strong enough to disturb our conscience, and yet, it is to be feared, a savour of death rather than life, because it is a body without a spirit. It is not strong enough to quicken the soul with a new and vital principle--not powerful enough to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts--not powerful enough to raise the heart from things below to things above, so that it shall seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and have its treasure in heaven. And all this is done, and must be done, by that faith which does justify a man in the sight of God. Such faith rests, indeed, upon historical truth; but it is much more than the belief of an historical fact: such faith is much more than national, though it rejoices in knowing that God hath chosen the country to which we belong as one to which His saving truth should be made known; such faith is not intellectual only, though it approves itself to the judgment of the renewed mind; such faith is not dead or inactive, but lively and energetic; it inspires laborious exertion; it breathes in love to God and man; it breaks forth in spiritual desires; it refreshes itself by spiritual meditation; it dreads what Gods Word condemns--it approves what Gods Word approves; it contends against the indwelling principle of sin--it aspires after the perfection of holiness, complete participation of the Divine nature. (Abp. Sumner.)
Faith shown by works
I had the privilege of opening a beautiful country church some years since in a neighbourhood surrounded almost entirely with infidels. The preacher directed my attention to a tall, vigorous man in the congregation, and said be would give me his history when the service was over. He was, it seems, a violent, passionate, close-fisted man. Not a farthing could anybody get out of him for the salvation of souls or for the elevation of humanity. A few months ago, said the minister, he gave his heart to Jesus. The infidels in the community said, Wait a little while; touch his pocket, and you will see where his religion is. Presently, continued my friend, I came to him with a subscription paper, and spoke of the difficulties and embarrassments under which we laboured in the neighbourhood, for want of a church. Well, said the man, let us build a church. What will you give us? inquired the preacher. Fifty pounds, was the prompt reply; and the minister passed through the community with the subscription paper, at the head of which was this amount, written in the gentlemans own handwriting, which surprised everybody. A few days afterwards the most trying circumstance of his life occurred, His dear wife trembled for him. Oh, my husband! she exclaimed, dont go. His reply way, I must go; my duty calls me there. I am perfectly cool and collected, I shall become excited, but I will not say a word, or do a thing out of the way. He passed through the fiery ordeal without the least taint of anger upon him. The community then said, Surely there is something in this. You have reached his pocket, you have conquered his anger, and you have subtitled the man. There is power in the gospel of Christ. A few weeks after my visit there I received the sad intelligence that that gentleman had been buried. He had gone out into the forest, and, unfortunately, a tree fell on him and crushed him to the earth, and yet did not entirely destroy him. They carried him to the house, and sent for a physician and the minister. He calmly asked for the Bible, and read in a clear voice a chapter in St. Johns Gospel. After shutting the Bible he closed his hands upon his breast; and such a prayer, said my ministerial brother, I never heard from mortal lip for his wife, for his children, for his pastor, for the Church, and for his infidel friends. In a moment or two, after saying Amen, he closed his eyes and sweetly fell asleep in Jesus. The infidels said, There is something in religion. A few weeks since I met with that good pastor again. I inquired about his infidel neighbours, and he replied, All of them but one are happily converted to God. (The Church.)
I will show thee my faith by my works
Scriptural evidence of saving faith
The mode of instruction here proposed is the philosophical method of Scripture. It is to develop the character of faith by the test of experiment. It gives us the most vivid impressions of a genuine faith; it shows us what it is by its works.
I. SOME OF THE OPERATIONS OF FAITH IN VARIOUS SITUATIONS FITTED TO BRING OUT ITS NATURE.
II. SOME OF ITS LEADING CHARACTERISTICS.
1. It is a belief in Divine testimony respecting unseen things, with corresponding affections, purposes, and actions.
2. Faith is a reasonable thing. It is the perfection of reason to believe, not this false world, not the father of lies, but God; and especially to believe Him on subjects of too large grasp for our puny minds, and quite beyond the range of our senses, not excepting His declarations on the high mysteries of the Trinity and the atonement of His well-beloved Son.
3. Faith is bold and unbending. It gives inflexibility of purpose and action--not from obstinacy, ambition, or other unworthy motive--but simplybecause it rests on immutable truth.
4. Faith is very powerful. We have seen the proof, not in abstract reasoning, but in facts--in its actual works, exhibited by sundry devoted servants of God. Here is not theory, but experiment. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
5. Another attribute of faith is sublimity. The scene spread out before its e) e, how vast! how boundless! even the whole circle of revealed truth.
6. Another obvious characteristic of faith is its moral excellence. Learn--
1. Its Divine origin.
2. Saving faith is the same in every age and nation.
3. Some of the victories which faith is called to achieve at the present day, and in the future. (C. Yale.)
The connection between faith and works
I. TRUE FAITH IS VISIBLE. The objects of faith indeed are invisible; an unseen God, an unseen Saviour, and an unseen world; but faith itself is not so; it is something that may be seen. It may not be so at all times, or in an equal degree; for as clouds are about the Divine throne, so they sometimes encompass the Christian, and hide his graces from himself and the view of others. Yet it is at all times visible to Him Whose eyes are as a flame of fire, and knows them that are His and them that are not so. He can see it, though the rank weed of unbelief growing by which overshadows it, spoils its beauty, and hinders its growth. Genuine faith produces such a change in the disposition and conduct that it may be seen.
II. TRUE FAITH IS MADE VISIBLE BY ITS FRUITS. Those who partake of the benefits of Christs death will imitate the virtues of His life: and as they hope to be with Him in heaven, so they will endeavour to be like Him on earth. This only will prove the truth of our own religion, and recommend it to others; for it is not by thinking right, but doing well, that we are to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Neither the amiableness of our disposition, nor discernment into the mysteries of the gospel, nor flaming zeal, nor strict regard to modes of worship, though of Divine institution, will prove the reality of our religion without a sanctified heart and a holy 1Co_13:1-3).
1. We may observe, though works are distinct from faith, so distinct that they are frequently opposed to it, yet they always accompany it as the proper fruit and effect of saving faith, like water from the fountain, or light from the sun.
2. As good works are the concomitants, so also the touchstone of faith, and the rule by which we are to judge of its being genuine.
3. The truth of these propositions is confirmed by the examples which the apostle adduces.
III. THOSE WHO PRETEND TO FAITH, AND YET ARE DESTITUTE OF GOOD WORKS, ARE AWFULLY DECEIVED. Such will one day be the scorn of men and angels, and even of God Himself. If the heart be unhumbled and the life unholy, duties neglected and corruptions unsubdued, our faith is a mere pretence, and our hope is all a delusion. That faith which leaves a man where it finds him, as much attached to the world and under the power of sin and Satan as before, is no faith at all. Hence we may learn--
1. It is as impious to deny the utility and necessity of good works as it is to ascribe merit to them. They are the way to the kingdom, as one said, though not the cause of reigning.
2. All works performed before faith, or while in a state of unbelief, are no better than dead works, and cannot be acceptable with God. Works do not give value to faith, but it is faith that makes works acceptable; it is the tree that makes the fruit good, and not the fruit that makes the tree good. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
A working faith necessary
If a man would have an evidence that the sun hath just risen within our hemisphere, though it be not within his view as yet, he will see it better by looking west than by looking east; for, before he can see the body of the sun, he may see the light of it shining upon some high tower or mountain; and so by looking west he will see the sun has risen, or is rising in the east. So, when the world would have an evidence of your being a believer, they will not look to your faith, but to your works, and the rays and beams that flow from faith. And to look towards your works is to look away quite contrary to your faith; for as faith and works are contrary in the matter of justification, so faith renounces all works in point of dependence, though it produces them in point of performance. Therefore, seeing the world will not look to your heart, which they cannot see, but to your life, and will not look to your faith, which God only sees, but to your works which the world may see; Oh, take care that it be a working faith: Show me thy faith by thy works. (R. Erskine.)
Good works
If a man offer me the root of a tree to taste, I cannot say, this is such a pear, or apple, or plum; but if I see the fruit I can. If a man pretend faith to me, I must say to him, with St. James, can his faith save him? such a faith as that the apostle declares himself to mean--a dead faith--as all faith is that is inoperative and works not. But if I see his works I proceed the right way in judicature--I judge according to my evidence, and if any man will say, those works may be hypocritical, I may say of my witness, he may be perjured; but as long as I have no particular cause to think so, it is good evidence to me as to hear that mans oath, so to see this mans works. (J. Donne.)
Doctrine and practice
A prelate, since deceased, was present whose views were not favourable to the doctrine of Election. My lord, said he, addressing the archbishop, it appears to me that the young clergy of the present day are more anxious to teach the people high doctrine than to enforce those practical duties which are so much required. I have no objection, said His Grace, to high doctrine if high practice be also insisted upon; otherwise it must, of course, be injurious. (Life of Archbishop Whately.)
Faith and works
St. James sign is the best: Show me thy faith by thy works. Faith makes the merchant diligent and venturous, and that makes him rich. Ferdinando of Arragon believed the story told him by Columbus, and therefore he furnished him with ships, and got the West Indies by his faith in the undertaker. But Henry VII. of England believed him not, and therefore trusted him not with shipping, and lost all the purchase of that faith. (Jeremy Taylor, D. D.)
Faith a nerve-centre
Saving faith is the nodus or ganglion, or nerve-centre, so to speak, where the most vital lines of force converge; the point whence radiate, as from the golden milestone in the Roman Forum, roads of influence and command to the utmost extremities of the empire of the soul. (Robt. Whyte, D. D.)
Luthers view of faith
Justifying faith according to Luther was not human assent, but a powerful, vivifying thing, which immediately works a change in the man, and makes him a new creature, and leads him to an entirely new and altered mode of life and conduct. (Proctors Gems of Thought.)
Faith and works
It appeared by the fruits it was a good land Num_13:23). It appeared that Dorcas was a true believer by the coats she had made. (J. Trapp.)
Believing and working
A bishop of the Episcopal Church says, When
I was about entering the ministry, I was one day in conversation with an old Christian friend, who said, You are to be ordained; when you are ordained, preach to sinners as you find them; tell them to believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and they shall be as safe as if they were in heaven; and then tell them to work like horses.
Faith and its manifestation
We are surely not despising fruits and flowers when we insist open the root from which they shall come. A. man may take separate acts of partial goodness, as you see children in the spring-time sticking daisies on the spikes of a thorn-twig picked from the hedges. But these will die. The basis of all righteousness is faith, and the manifestation of faith is practical righteousness. Show Me thy faith by thy works is Christs teaching, quite as much as it is the teaching of His sturdy servant, James. And so we are going the shortest way to enrich lives with all the beauties of possible human perfection when we say, Begin at the beginning. The longest way round is the shortest way home; trust Him with all your heart first, and that will effloresce into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
On the existence of a Deity
The fundamental article of Christian belief is the existence of the one only living and true God. Unless this fundamental principle be admitted, there can be no such thing as personal accountableness--no such thing as either religion or morality in the world.
I. First, then, we call your attention to the infallible proofs by which we evince THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
1. And first, we appeal to the works of God, in creation and in Providence.
2. I refer you, secondly, for proof to the Word of God, or that inspired testimony which He has granted of His mind and will.
3. This truth may be further evinced by a distinct consideration of the human structure, both in body and in mind.
4. We evince the existence of God from the consent of all nations, from the earliest period of time, in all habitable parts of the universe, down to the present hour.
5. I have only one more evidence to produce, which is this: that even Satan himself, who is the father of lies, never yet ventured to impugn the great truth for which I am contending.
II. Now, secondly, let me inquire WHAT WE BELIEVE CONCERNING THIS GOD, whose being is indubitably certain.
1. First we believe that God is one.
2. Secondly, we are taught to believe that God exists in a mode altogether unsearchable and incomprehensible; so that in the simple and undivided essence there are three distinguishable subsistences--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
3. Again, we believe that this God is a Being of all possible excellence, and of infinite glory and blessedness; infinitely good and infinitely great; of unsearchable wisdom, of inviolable truth, of immaculate purity, of exhaustless patience, of unbending equity, of incomparable benignity, and of boundless love.
4. We believe in the relations which this high and holy God sustains towards the human family. I must believe not only what God is, but what God is to me; and therefore say, I believe in God the Father Almighty. I believe in Him as the creating Father; as the preserving Father, whose tender mercies are over all His works. As the redeeming Father, as the governing Father.
III. THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THAT BELIEF in the being of a God whenever it is sincere.
1. This belief must be personal.
2. This faith must be the result of knowledge, discernment, and conviction.
3. This faith must be fiducial and filial. It must be associated with complacency, love, trust--yes, and appropriation too.
4. Once more, this faith must be practical. It must issue in devotion, worship, communion, fellowship, holy fear of God, a cautious avoidance of all that will displease Him, and a conscientious performance of all that will be acceptable in His sight. It must be discovered by patient submission, and by an earnest desire after the present and everlasting enjoyment of Him as the supreme and all-satisfying Good.
Conclusion:
1. I infer from this subject the folly and criminality of doubting and denying the existence of a God.
2. In the next place, we may infer the paramount duty of extending the knowledge of God, and promoting faith in His being, and government, and laws.
3. Finally, we infer the happiness of those who have the prospect of seeing God face to face, and enjoying Him as the supreme Good through eternal ages; to have the mind fixed upon Him, absorbed in Him, for ever serving and enjoying Him as the ultimate happiness! (G. Clayton, M. A.)
The devils also believe, and tremble
The faith of Christians contrasted in its results with the faith of fallen spirits
I. THEY ARE ENGAGED IN A COMMON WORK. Both are believers, Neither Christians nor devils are sceptics. The Christian believes in an unseen Saviour. Devils believe in that which is the foundation of all truth, that there is one God. The Bible also teaches that they believe in many other things common to our creed; such as the Divinity of Christ and the approaching of a terrible retribution.
II. THEIR COMMON WORK PRODUCES OPPOSITE PERSONAL RESULTS.
1. The faith of Christians produces great mental happiness.
(1) Gratitude.
(2) Admiration.
(3) Benevolence.
(4) Hope.
2. The faith of devils produces great mental misery.
(1) Remorse for the past.
(2) Apprehension for the future.
III. THE CAUSE OF THIS GREAT DIFFERENCE IN THE PERSONAL RESULTS OF FAITH. The two classes occupy different standpoints in relation to truth. Lessons:
1. Both the happiness and misery of spiritual existences are independent of material circumstances.
2. Faith in moral truth, in all worlds, must always have an influence on the emotions.
3. The faith in Divine truth which is to save must be exercised now.
4. Spiritual happiness here is the great evidence of personal Christianity.
5. Heaven and hell are mental realities. (D. Thomas.)
Faith and emotion
(1Pe_1:8)
Why believing should in one case produce joy unspeakable, and in another convulse the spirit with paroxysms of agony.
I. THE OBJECT OF FAITH IS THE SAME IN BOTH CASES. That Object is God--God as the Creator, Sustainer, and Saviour. Christians, while contemplating God, grow glad in His presence; their faith rises into rapture, joy unspeakable and full of glory. But what of the devils? They gaze on the same object, but no cheering light flashes on their woe-worn countenance.
II. IN BOTH CASES THERE IS A KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORICAL FACTS. There is one marked difference, however, in this historic knowledge--viz., the Christian has read the history, but the devil has lived it! Startling is the reflection that Satan has been the contemporary of all ages! What, then, is the result of the Satanic knowledge? Does knowledge inspire joy? Nay! As Satan stands in the solemn temple of history, he trembles under the remorseless tyranny of self-condemnation!
III. IN BOTH CASES THERE IS A BELIEF IN DIVINE FAITHFULNESS. Satan never knew an instance in which the Divine faithfulness had failed! The Divine unchangeableness is a cause of terror to lost spirits. Hath God spoken, and shall He not perform? Can any suggest to Omniscience an idea which might reverse His purposes? The Divine immutability is, on the contrary, the source of the Christians most rapturous joy! The Christian knows nothing of the suspense which fickleness would have occasioned, and which is so fatal to calmness and rapture; he rests his head on the assurances of the eternal.
IV. It still remains to be known why believing should be attended with results so diverse. We submit that the secret is this, viz., IN THE CASE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS ACCOMPANIED BY HOPE, WHEREAS IN THE CASE OF SATAN IT IS ASSOCIATED WITH UTTER HOPELESSNESS. Having cleared our way thus far, we are in a position to do two things, viz
1. To remove certain practical errors, and--
2. To explain the nature of the faith which produces joy unspeakable and full of glory.
1. We now see that faith is not a mere intellectual exercise.
2. That faith is not a mere credence of Divine facts.
3. That faith is not a mere belief in Divine predictions. What, then, is the true faith? The faith which produces joy is the trust and confidence of the heart in the atonement and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ! It is easy to see the bearing of this argument on all efforts for the evangelisation of humanity.
Let me remind you of three facts:
1. That on earth alone can joy-producing faith be exercised.
2. That the propagation of this faith is entrusted to human instrumentality.
3. That we are responsible for the propagation of this faith up to the extent of our capability. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Conviction not conversion
Faith begins in conviction, and there are many who halt at this stage. They have heard the evidence, examined it, and are clearly, fully persuaded of its truth. But they never get beyond that. They are like a neap-tide as you have seen it rolling in from the sea. It comes with a demonstrative rush as though it would carry everything before it, but when it reaches a certain point there it stops, and with all the ocean at its back it does not exceed the mark where it is accustomed to pause. It is possible to reach the half-way point of conviction and not be saved. Sir Noel Paton received a chrysalis as a specimen to paint in a picture. It served the purpose, was wrapped in cotton, placed in a small tin box, put by in a cabinet, and forgotten. The spring time came, summer and autumn followed with more than wonted splendour, and again it was winter, when, while Sir Noel was looking for something else, his eyes fell upon the small tin box. He opened it and found, not the chrysalis, but a dead butterfly--one beautiful wing outstretched against the polished metal, the other partially developed and still entangled among the cotton. The chrysalis had burst into a half-formed butterfly and perished. So a soul may arrive at the half-way point of a full surrender, and yet perish short of it. If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.
Will; thou know, O vain man
Inconsideration and ignorance
1. From that Wilt thou know? Presumers are either ignorant or inconsiderate. False and mistaken faith is usually a brat of darkness: either men do not understand what faith is, or do not consider what they do.
2. From that O vain or empty man. Temporaries are but vain men; like empty vessels, full of wind, and make the greatest sound; they are full of windy presumptions and boasting professions.
(1) Full of wind, they have a little airy knowledge, such as puffeth 2Pe_1:8).
(2) Of a great sound and noise; can talk of grace, boast of knowledge, glory in their faith. A vain faith and a vain man are oft suited and matched.
3. Hypocrites must be roused with some asperity and sharpness. So the apostle, O vain man; so Christ, O ye foolish and blind; so John the Baptist, O ye generation of vipers. Hypocrites are usually inconsiderate, and of a sleepy conscience, so that we must not whisper, but cry aloud.
4. An empty barren faith is a dead faith.
(1) Because it may stand with a natural state, in which we are dead in trespasses and sins.
(2) Because it receiveth not the quickening influences of the Spirit.
(3) Because it wanteth the effect of life, which is operation; all life is the beginning of operation, tendeth to operation, and is increased by operation; so faith is dead, like a root of a tree in the ground, when it cannot produce the ordinary effects and fruits of faith.
(4) Because unavailable to eternal life, of no more use and service to you than a dead thing. Oh! pluck it off; who would suffer a dead plant in his garden? Why cumbereth it the ground? (Luk_13:7). (T. Manton.)
Vain man
The Greek adjective is almost literally the equivalent of our empty-headed as a term of contempt. It answers clearly to the Raca of Mat_5:22. (Dean Plumptre.)
Empty-headed,
empty-handed, and empty-hearted. Empty-headed, in being so deluded as to suppose that a dead faith can save; empty-handed, in being devoid of true spiritual riches; emptyhearted, in having no real love either for God or man. (A. Plummer, D. D.)
Faith and works
If I see fruit growing upon a tree, I know what tree it is upon which such fruit grows. And so if I see how a man lives, I know how he believes. (Bp. Beveridge.)
A barren faith
(see R. V.)
Faith is the mother who gives birth to the virtues as her children. (M. Luther.)
Abraham … Justified by works
Abrahams faith and privileges
I. THOSE WHO WOULD HAVE ABRAHAMS PRIVILEGES JUST LOOK TO IT THAT THEY HAVE ABRAHAMS FAITH. He--
1. Received the promises with all humility.
2. Improved them with much fidelity.
II. BELIEVERS MUST SEE THAT THEY HONOUR AND JUSTIFY THEIR FAITH BY WORKS. They must--
1. Be loyal to Christ.
2. Work with a spirit suiting the gospel.
3. Be prudent.
4. Be thankful.
III. SERIOUS PURPOSES OF OBEDIENCE ARE ACCEPTED FOR OBEDIENCE.
IV. FAITH IS NOT GENUINE UNLESS IT PRODUCES SUCH ACTIONS AS ABRAHAMS. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Faith perfected by works
Our natural disposition with regard to spiritual exercises is a compound of indolence, coldness, and faintheartedness; therefore we need continually to be stirred up, chafed, and animated by the Word of God and by prayer. As water, though naturally cold, admits of a high degree of heat, but if removed from the fire will gradually become cold again, so our religious affections, to whatever fervour, liveliness, and vigour they may have been raised, will, if not kept awake and recruited by fresh matter, insensibly abate into lukewarmness and even coldness. Though there still be latent spiritual life, its glow is only kept up by active stirring. Hence St. James says, that through works is faith made perfect, that is, through the perpetual activity and stir of practical devotion. (J. A. Bengel.)
The Friend of God
The friendship of God
I. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD IS CONNECTED WITH THE RICHEST COMMUNICATIONS OF PEACE AND SPIRITUAL COMFORT.
1. The consciousness that we are reconciled to the Most High, and have in Him a Father and a Friend, sheds over the mind a tranquillity which excels the excitement of worldly joy.
2. The knowledge of God supplies to the devout mind topics on which it loves to dwell, and which call forth into active exercise its purest and best emotions.
3. The imitation of the Divine character gives to the mind the lofty pleasures of benevolent feeling and action.
II. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD INVOLVES THE ASSURANCE OF SUCCOUR INSEASONS OF PERPLEXITY AND DANGER. His power, knowledge, wisdom, are without limit, and His ever-wakeful eye marks the interests of all who trust in Him.
III. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD ASSURES US THAT ALL THE OCCURRENCES OF LIFE, HOWEVER VARIED AND PERPLEXING, SHALL CONTRIBUTE TO AN
ULTIMATE WELFARE. Afflictions themselves are part of Gods wise and gracious discipline--evidences, not of anger, but of love.
IV. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD WILL BE THE PORTION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT, WHEN THE SCENES OF MORTALITY ARE OVER. (Homilist.)
The highest friendship
The only true friendship is that spoken of here. In order to attain it, there must be--
I. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE.
1. Spiritual.
2. Progressive.
3. Difficult to acquire.
II. TRUST.
1. Mutual.
2. Complete.
3. Founded on faith.
III. UNINTERRUPTED INTERCOURSE.
1. Sameness of interests.
2. Personal communication.
3. Loving devotion. (Homilist.)
The Friend of God
I. How GOD MANIFESTED HIS FRIENDSHIP TO ABRAHAM.
1. By His love.
2. By His sympathy.
3. By His care.
II. How ABRAHAM MANIFESTED HIS FRIENDSHIP TO GOD.
1. By confidence.
2. By communion.
3. By zeal and obedience. (G. Brooks.)
The Friend of God
Abraham was called the Friend of God because he was so. The title only declares a fact. The Father of the faithful was beyond all men the Friend of God, and the head of that chosen race of believers whom Jesus calls His friends. James says not only that this was Abrahams name, but that he was called by it. Among the Jewish people Abraham was frequently spoken of as the Friend of Goal. At this present moment, among the Arabs and other Mahommedans, the name of Abraham is not often mentioned, but they speak of him as Khalil Allah, or the Friend of God, or more briefly as of Khalil, the Friend. It is a noble title, not to be equalled by all the names of greatness which have been bestowed by princes, even if they should all meet in one. Patents of nobility are mere vanity when laid side by side with this transcendent honour. I think I hear you say, Yes, it was indeed a high degree to which Abraham reached: so high that we cannot attain unto it. We also may be called friends of God. Jesus Himself invites us to live and act, and be His friends. Surely, none of us will neglect any gracious attainment which lies within the region of the possible. None of us will be content with a scanty measure of grace, when we may have life more abundantly. The other day there lauded on the shores of France a boatful of people sodden with rain and salt-water; they had lost all their luggage, and had nothing but what they stood upright in: they were glad, indeed, to have been saved from a wreck. It was well that they landed at all; but when it is my lot again to cross to France, I trust I shall put my foot on shore in a better plight than that. I would prefer to cross the Channel in comfort, and land with pleasure. There is all this difference between being saved so as by fire, and having an abundant entrance ministered unto us into the kingdom. Let us enjoy heaven on the road to heaven. Why not? Aspire after the best gifts. Grow in grace. Increase in love to God, and in nearness of access to Him, that the Lord may at this good hour stoop down to us as our great Friend, and then lift us up to be known as His friends.
I. Look at the name, Friend of God, and regard it as A TITLE TO BE WONDERED AT.
1. Admire and adore the condescending God who thus speaks of a man like ourselves, and calls him His friend. The heavens are not pure in His sight, and He charged His angels with folly, and yet He takes a man and sets him apart to be His friend. In this case the august Friend displays His pure love, since He has nothing to gain. You and I need friendship: we cannot always lead a self-contained and solitary life; we are refreshed by the companionship, sympathy, and advice of a like-minded comrade. No such necessity can be supposed of the All-sufficient God. We know how sweet it is to mingle the current of our life with that of some choice bosom friend.
Can God have a friend? It cannot be that He is solitary: He is within Himself a whole, not only of unity, but of tri-personality--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--and herein is fellowship enough. Yet, behold, in infinite condescension the Lord deigns to seek the acquaintance of His own creature, the love of man, the friendship of Abraham. Friendship cannot be all on one side. In this particular instance it is intended that we should know that while God was Abrahams Friend, this was not all; but Abraham was Gods friend. He received and returned the friendship of God. Friendship creates a measure of equality between the persons concerned. When we say of two men that they are friends, we put them down in the same list; but what condescension on the Lords part to be on terms of friendship with a man! Again, I say, no nobility is comparable to this. Parmenio was a great general, but all his fame in that direction is forgotten in the fact that he was known as the friend of Alexander. He had a great love for Alexander as a man, whereas others only cared for him as a conqueror and a monarch; and Alexander, perceiving this, placed great reliance upon Parmenio. Abraham loved God for Gods sake, and followed Him fully, and so the Lord made him His confidant, and found pleasure in manifesting Himself to him, and in trusting to him His sacred oracles. O Lord, how excellent is Thy lovingkindness, that Thou shouldest make a man Thy friend!
2. I want you also to note the singular excellence of Abraham. How could he have been Gods friend had not grace wrought wonderfully in him? A man is known through his friends: you cannot help judging a person by his companions. Was it not a great venture for God to call any man His friend? for we are led to judge the character of God by the character of the man whom He selects to be His friend. Yes; and, though a man with like passions with us, and subject to weaknesses which the Holy Spirit has not hesitated to record, yet Abraham was a singularly admirable character. The Spirit of God produced in him a deep sincerity, a firm principle, and a noble bearing.
3. Follow me while I note some of the points in which this Divine friendship showed itself.
(1) The Lord often visited Abraham (Gen_15:11; Gen_17:1; Gen_18:1, etc.).
(2) In consequence of these visits of friendship paid to Abraham, secrets were disclosed (Gen_15:13-16; Gen_17:16-21; Gen_18:17-19). Abraham, on his part, had no secrets, but laid bare his heart to the inspection of his
Divine Friend. Visits were received, and secrets were made known, and thus friendship grew.
(3) More than that, compacts were entered into. On certain grand occasions we read: The Lord made a covenant with Abram. Once with solemn sacrifice a light passed between the divided portions of the victims. At another time it is written that God sware by Himself, saying, Surely, blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. The two friends grasped hands, and pledged their troth.
(4) This friendship resulted in the bestowal of innumerable benefits. The life of Abraham was rich with mercies. He was singularly favoured in all things to which he set his hand. The Lord is a Friend who can never know a limit in blessing His friends. Having loved His own He loves them to the end. To Abraham through-the grace of his Divine Friend difficulties were blessings, trials were blessings, and the sharpest test of all was the most ennobling blessing.
(5) Since Abraham was Gods friend, God accepted his pleadings, and was moved by his influence. Friends ever have an ear for friends. When Abraham pleaded with God for Sodom, the Lord patiently hearkened to his renewed pleadings. Lot was rescued, and Zoar was spared, in answer to that prayer; just as Ishmael had been endowed with earthly blessings in response to the pleading, O that Ishmael might live before Thee! and just as the household of Abimelech had been healed in answer to Abrahams supplication.
(6) There was also between these friends a mutual love and delight. Abraham rejoiced in Jehovah! He was his shield, and his exceeding great reward, and the Lord Himself delighted to commune with Abraham.
(7) Observe, too, that this friendship was maintained with great constancy. The Lord never forsook Abraham: even when the patriarch erred, the Lord remembered and rescued him. He did not cast him off in old age. Constancy is also seen on the human side of this renowned friendship: Abraham did not turn aside to worship any false God.
(8) More than that, the Lord kept His friendship to Abraham by favouring his posterity. The Lord styled Israel, even rebellious Israel, The seed of Abraham My friend (Isa_41:8).
II. Now notice THE TITLE VINDICATED. Abraham was the Friend of God in a truthful sense. There was great propriety and fulness of meaning in the name as applied to him.
1. Abrahams trust in God was implicit. Bathing his forehead in the sunlight of Jehovahs love he dwelt beyond all questions and mistrusts. Oh, happy man, to know no scepticisms, but heroically to believe! He was a perfect child towards God, and therefore a complete man.
2. Next, there was joined to this implicit trust a practical confidence as to the accomplishment of everything that God had promised. Faith is to credit contradictions, and to believe impossibilities, when Jehovahs word is to the front. If you and I can do this, then we can enter into friendship with God, but not else; for distrust is the death of friendship.
3. Next to this, Abrahams obedience to God was unquestioning. Whatever God bade him do, he did it promptly and thoroughly. He was Gods servant and yet His friend; therefore he obeyed as seeing Him that is invisible, and trusting Him whom he could not understand.
4. Abrahams desire for Gods glory was uppermost at all times. He did not what others would have done, because he feared the Lord. He did not want that a petty princeling, or indeed anybody, should boast of enriching Abraham: he trusted solely in his God, and though he had a perfect right to have taken the spoils of war which were his by capture, yet he would not touch them lest the name of his God should be in the least dishonoured Gen_14:22-24).
5. Abrahams communion with God was constant. Oh, happy man, that dwelt on high while men were grovelling at his feet! Oh, that you and I may be cleansed to such a pure, holy, and noble life that we, too, may be rightly called the Friends of God!
III. Regard this name as THE TITLE TO BE SOUGHT AFTER. Oh, that we may get to ourselves this good degree, this diploma, as Friend of God! Do you wish to be a friend of God?
1. Well, then, you must be fully reconciled to Him. Love must be created in your heart; gratitude must beget attachment, and attachment must cause delight. You must rejoice in the Lord, and maintain close intercourse with Him.
2. To be friends, we must exercise a mutual choice: the God who has chosen you must be chosen by you. Most deliberately, heartily, resolutely, undividedly, you must choose God to be your God and your Friend. But you have not gone far enough yet.
3. If we are to be the friends of God, there must be a conformity of heart, and will, and design, and character to God. Can two walk together except they be agreed? Our lives must, in the main, run in parallel lines with the life of the gracious, holy, and loving God, or else we shall be walking contrary to Him, and He will walk contrary to us.
4. If we have got as far as that, then the next thing will surely follow--there must be a continual intercourse. The friend of God must not spend a day without God, and he must undertake no work apart from his God.
5. If we are to be the friends of God we must be co-partners with Him. He gives over to us all that He has; and friendship with God will necessitate that we give to Him all that we have.
6. Friendship, if it exists, will breed mutual delight. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him. I am sure if we are Gods friends our greatest joy is to draw near to God, even to God our exceeding joy.
IV. THE TITLE TO BE UTILISED for practical purposes.
1. Here is a great encouragement to the people of God. See the possibility that lies within your reach--make it a reality at once.
2. Next, here is solemn thought for those who would be friends of God. A mans friend must show himself friendly, and behave with tender care for his friend. A little word from a friend will pain you much more than a fierce slander from an enemy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Friendship with God
I. THE NATURE OF THAT FRIENDSHIP WHICH SUBSISTS BETWEEN GOD AND HIS PEOPLE.
1. This friendship is not such as subsists between two equals, but between persons widely different in rank and dignity--the friendship that there sometimes is between a mighty prince and one of his subjects, in the former of whom it is mere condescension and kindness, and in the latter honour and preferment.
2. This friendship with God is in consequence of a reconciliation which has taken place (Rom_5:1). A mere act of grace on Gods part, through a Mediator; and, on their part, repentance.
3. This friendship includes--
(1) Knowledge.
(2) Likeness or agreement.
(3) Cordial esteem and strong affection.
(4) Free and delightful intercourse.
(5) Mutual confidence.
(6) A disposition to please, honour, and serve.
II. REFLECTIONS AND INFERENCES.
1. We are hence led to form the most pleasing ideas of the great and blessed God.
2. How thankful should we be for Jesus Christ; and how ought we to love Him and rejoice in Him, through whom we can view the offended Sovereign of the universe with such complacency, and entertain the hope of His friendship.
3. The excellence and dignity of true religion--it introduces all who are possessed of it to the most exalted state of honour and happiness.
4. What ought to be the temper and conduct of those who are advanced to this high and honourable state?
(1) They are bound to all the expressions of gratitude and love.
(2) Let the friends of God cultivate a more lively faith and habitual confidence in Him.
(3) The friends of God should consider themselves as bound to exercise love and friendship towards others.
5. The relation in which good men stand to God, highly recommends them to the esteem of all who know them.
6. We may hence judge concerning our state, whether we are interested in the Divine friendship or not.
7. We learn what we are to judge of the real character, condition, and duty of those to whom the honourable appellation in the text does not belong.
Their character is, that they are the enemies of God: their condition is, that they are the objects of His displeasure; and their duty is that they instantly seek His friendship, and become reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ. (S. Palmer.)
Abraham the Friend of God
Friendship is a theme calculated to make a deep impression upon the mind. Even philosophers, with all their austerity of disposition and stoical apathy, could expatiate on its sterling value. And Christianity, so far from discountenancing the cultivation of friendship between man and man, happily tends to promote it.
I. THE GLORIOUS PRIVILEGE. Friendship with God includes--
1. Freedom of access.
2. The exercise of a charitable and sympathetic disposition.
3. Confidential communications.
4. The due administration of counsel and reproof.
5. The bestowment of suitable blessings.
II. THE HAPPY INDIVIDUAL UPON WHOM IT WAS CONFERRED. Abraham was called the Friend of God. If you would be numbered with the friends of God, ye must be the possessors of Abrahams faith. There is a threefold view in which this faith should be contemplated.
1. It justifies from sin.
2. It purifies the heart.
3. It regulates the life. (Essex Remembrancer.)
Abraham the Friend of God
There are two passages in the Old Testament to which the apostle may here refer, viz., 2Ch_20:7; Isa_41:8. That any of the fallen children of Adam should be admittedto bear this title, a Friend of God, is at once a display of the greatest condescension on the part of the glorious Jehovah, and of the efficacy of His grace in its influence on the heart.
I. ABRAHAM ENTERS INTO THIS STATE OF FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD BY THE CALL OF DIVINE GRACE, AND AS A BELIEVER IN THE DIVINE WORD. This method of entering into friendship with God is graciously appointed as suited to our fallen state, and as bringing honour to God in our salvation. It shows that on no ground of our own can we claim acceptance with the Majesty of heaven. We have fallen from Him, and have forfeited His love.
If we are received by Him, it must be in some way devised by His wisdom and grace, and which He discovers to us; and we must be brought to receive it as He freely and graciously presents it unto us in the testimony of His own Word, so that by the exercise of faith in that Word, and resting on what it reveals as coming from God, we are to be accepted, justified, and saved.
II. AS THE FRIEND OF GOD, ABRAHAM WAS FAVOURED WITH DIVINE DIRECTION, AND IMPLICITLY FOLLOWED THAT DIVINE GUIDANCE. This has ever been the privilege and the spirit of those who have been heirs of the faith and piety of Abraham. Called out from the course of an evil world, they have become travellers towards the heavenly Canaan, have been taken under the care of their God, as the friend of their souls; and they have yielded themselves to the guidance of infinite wisdom and mercy as to all the way which they should pursue through this world. God, as their gracious Friend, has said that the meek He will guide in judgment, and the meek He will teach His way; by the counsels of His Word He will lead them in right paths, by the events of His providence open their path; making His way straight before their face--the way in which He would have them to go; giving to them the wisdom profitable to direct them, and inclining their hearts to walk in the path He points out.
III. AS THE FRIEND OF GOD, ABRAHAM HAD INTIMATE COMMUNION WITH GOD. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant--He will make them the men of His counsel, acquainted with His will, and receiving the tokens of His love. He invites them to come near, He promises to commune with them off the mercy-seat; there is the gracious Intercessor to introduce them, and the Divine Spirit to aid them. Their fellowship truly is to be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. They are to find that it is good for them to draw nigh unto God. Through Christ they have an access by one Spirit unto the Father. They are to realise a Friend in heaven who is ready to attend to their eases--who can understand all their feelings, observe all their wants--who can sympathise with them under all their sorrows--who is ready at all times to hear their pleadings, and who is able to do for them exceeding abundantly above all that they ask or think, according to the power that worketh in them.
IV. AS THE FRIEND OF GOD, THERE WAS, IN THE CASE OF ABRAHAM, SUBMISSION AND OBEDIENCE TO THE DIVINE WILL, COMBINED WITH TRUST
IN THE DIVINE PROMISES. The same word that gives the command presents the promise; we are to Obey the one, and leave it with God to fulfil the other. His command must be right, His promise must be true and good; the dispensations of His providence must be wise and right, and the word of His promise must be firm as the pillars of heaven!
V. As THE FRIEND OF GOD ABRAHAM WAS LOOKING FOR HIS FULL AND FINAL HAPPINESS IN GOD. This is the case with all those who partake of the faith and piety of Abraham. Thus it was with his believing descendants. This was their language, As for me, I shall behold Thy faith in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness. This God is our God for ever and ever, He will be our guide even unto death. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. They felt their spirits rising to God, longing to get nearer to Him. My soul followeth hard after Thee, anticipating the complete enjoyment of His presence and love, and conformity to His image in a future state. This is to be the inheritance of the saints in light, for which God is meetening them by the friendship they have with Him here. By way of conclusion, let us observe--
1. How great the privilege, how high the honour, how enduring the happiness, to be a friend of God!
2. Then the great point of inquiry is, Are we possessors of the faith and piety by which Abraham was distinguished as the friend of God? (Thos. Coleman.)
Abraham the Friend of God
I. THE DISPOSITION AND CONDUCT OF GOD TOWARDS ABRAHAM. He distinguished him as His friend by--
1. His large munificence.
2. His intimate communion with Abraham.
3. His affectionate confidence in Abraham.
4. His sacred fidelity to Abraham.
II. ABRAHAMS DISPOSITION AND CONDUCT TOWARDS GOD.
1. Abrahams steady faith in God.
2. Abrahams holy fellowship with God.
3. Abrahams cheerful obedience to God.
III. IMPROVEMENT.
1. Learn from the subject, the true dignity of man. It is not worldly distinction, not earthly possession, not alliance with the gay and the great; but it is to be blessed with faithful Abraham--it is to have fellowship with heaven, and friendship with God. But do all sustain this true dignity? Are all the friends of God? Certainly not. If men were His friends, it would be evinced in their disposition and conduct; but no such evidence is universally given. The fact is too plain, that many are living the very opposite of a life of faith, of prayer, and of obedience.
2. Be thankful for the grace which you have found. Praise Him, oh, praise Him, for all His inestimable benefits.
3. Confide more implicitly and affectionately in Him who hath done so much for you.
4. Enjoy your comforts with grateful satisfaction.
5. Learn to endure trials with calm submission.
6. Beware not to offend your Friend. (T. Kidd.)
Friendship with God
I. THE UNPARALLELED MERCY OF GOD. It is a friendship which the Highest Sovereign in the universe originates--
1. With the meanest of His subjects.
2. With His meanest rebellious subjects.
3. At a most tremendous sacrifice.
4. Pressed on them after repeated rejections.
II. THE INCOMPARABLE PRIVILEGES OF THE SAINT,
III. THE DEMONSTRATION OF PIETY. We cannot be friends of God without developing certain salient, palpable, and evidential results.
1. We shall be humble in spirit.
2. We shall resemble Him in character.
3. We shall have zeal for His honour.
4. We shall have confidence in His administration.
5. We shall love the society of His friends.
6. We shall delight to think of Him. (D. Thomas.)
Friendship with God
I. The friendship, of which the apostle speaks, like that which existed between these two noble characters to whom I have referred, was marked by MUTUAL CONFIDENCE. There must be between friends a sure, unquestioning, repose of heart upon heart--a repose, the result of mutual confidence, and knowledge of mind and character. There must be trust so simple, so full, that it cares to have no reserves and secrets; dependence so real, so implicit, as will not be shaken by a semblance of suspicion, even when there are actions on the one side or the other, which, for the time, cannot be understood, and which must wait to be explained.
II. MUTUAL COMMUNION, as in the case of the sons of Saul and Jesse, strengthens friendship; it longs for it, lives by it. And with what intimate communion, indeed, did the Lord distinguish his friend Abraham, by special and direct address, besides other divers means, and at sundry times 1 From the day of his call from the eastern side of the river, to the day of his death at a good old age, did He converse with him, and direct him at critical seasons of his history. The communion was intimate and friendly in an unusual degree: and as God drew near to him, he, to take the impressive description which the apostle gives of the fellowship which the Christian heart has consciously with God, he drew near to God; worship was the habit of his soul. Oh! how blessed a privilege, within the reach of the meanest, the feeblest child in spirit of his Father--of Gods faithful ones! You all have secrets which you cannot tell to man--secrets which you must conceal even from your dearest friend--there are feelings so sacred, or so delicate in their nature, that they must not be spoken even to him. But there is no grief, no care of the heart, which we may not, cannot, ought not to open before our Heavenly Father. The very sigh of contrition He hears and understands--the very flow of feeling of desire towards Himself, which never passed into utterance--each silent affection of the heart is a prayer before Him. There are Seasons, too, when distance forbids that access to earthly friends for which our burdened hearts do intensely yearn; but there are no seasons of separation from our Heavenly Father--no wants, no cries will ever be intrusive upon His patient audience.
III. MUTUAL FIDELITY is a characteristic of friendship--fidelity which, when tried, can bear the test, and is strengthened by it. Now mark, on the one hand, the fidelity of God to His friend. It was sorely tried, but it was never shaken by the infirmity of the patriarch. It was independent of the patriarchs worthiness or unworthiness; shown, not because of merit, but because of grace; and so it varied not with the varying disposition of its object; it lived through Abrahams infirmity. Its exercise was pity, pardon, restoration; the promise failed not, though the creature thought it in his injustice. I say, this is the secret of the Divine faithfulness which never wearies, never weakens, never exhausts; this is the secret--I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and therefore with lovingkindness trove I drawn thee! Then, I observe the faithfulness of the patriarch. As on a cloudy day, the sun shines through the misty curtain which hides it, so, notwithstanding sad failures of fidelity, the friend responded to the faithfulness of God, and as eminent was his faith, so necessarily cheerful was the obedience of Abrabam. (C. P. Eyre, M. A.)
Abraham the Friend of God
The following story is given by Mahometan Commentators on the passage, God took Abraham for His friend, which occurs in the fourth chapter of the Koran, entitled Nessa or Women; Abraham was the father of the poor, and in a famine he emptied his granaries to feed them. Then he sent to one of his friends, who was a great lord in Egypt, for corn. But the friend said, We also are in danger of famine. The corn is not wanted for Abraham, but for his poor. I must keep it for our own poor. And the messengers returned with empty sacks. As they neared home they feared being mocked for their failure; so they filled their sacks with sand, and came in well laden. In private they told Abraham of his friends refusal, and Abraham at once retired to pray. Meanwhile Sarah opened one of the sacks, and found excellent flour in it, and with this began to bake bread for the poor. When Abraham returned from prayer he asked Sarah whence she obtained the flour. From that which your:friend in Egypt has sent, she replied. Say rather from that which the true Friend has sent, that is God; for it is He who never fails us in our need. At the moment when Abraham called God his Friend, God took Abraham also to be His friend.
By works a man is justified
Justification by works, and not by faith only
I. Without holiness of heart and life, we cannot be in a justified state, because holiness of heart and life, with its remote consequences here and hereafter, is the very end and design of our justification.
II. Without holiness of heart and life we cannot be in a justified state, because the principles implied in justification infallibly produce holiness of heart and life.
III. Holiness of heart and life is the only evidence which we can give of our justification to our fellowmen and to the Church of Christ.
IV. Holiness of heart and life is the only evidence of our justification that will be received at the judgment-seat of God. (James Stark.)
Creed and conduct
(with Rom_3:28)
It should be remembered that these two apostles, although writing upon the same subject, regard it from different points of view. Paul, with his metaphysical mind, had been working out the doctrine of the sinners justification. He had shown that Jew and Gentile are alike guilty before God, for all have sinned. Where then, he asks, is mans hope? It is in the unmerited mercy of God. Salvation is the gift of grace, and not the reward of works. By this method of gratuitous justification human boasting is excluded, and Divine love is manifested. James looks at the same subject more on its practical side. He is not so much concerned with the ground of justification as with its evidence. He asks, What is the test of personal religion? Is it enough for a man to say I believe? Assuredly not. Words without deeds are of little worth. They are like professions of charity without charitable acts. Nothing is easier than for a man to say I believe; but unless the soul actually accepts Christ as its Saviour and Lord, such words are empty and delusive. If they express a reality, it is a reality which involves nothing less than a complete transformation of the life. The man puts himself under the authority of Christ; accepts His teaching as the rule of his life. He is conscious of new motives, new aims, new joys. New spiritual forces have sprung into being in his soul. He is justified by his works, in the sense that his works prove the reality and power of his faith. We thus see that there is no real disagreement between the apostles Paul and James. One makes prominent the side of truth which the other passes over. The truths they teach make a complete gospel; a gospel of deliverance from sin itself, as well as from its punishment. From Paul we learn to renounce all self-righteous grounds of confidence, and to look for salvation through faith in Christ. From James we learn that the faith required is a faith that will manifest itself in obedience to the law of Christ and that if this obedience be lacking it proves the absence of real living faith. The Church must still cleave to this gospel of the necessary union of faith and works. Christian belief and Christian morality have no separate and independent life. They are closely and vitally connected. They stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect. They are the necessary parts of one whole. It is possible to attach too much importance to the holding of a sound creed. A correct theology is no infallible criterion of spiritual life. Christianity is much more than a set of logical propositions. A man may have a full system of divinity in his head, and no divine light and love in his heart. On the other hand there can be no true obedience without faith. There must be the grasp of the soul upon truth, or it will not operate upon the conduct. Conventional morality is often a hollow, selfish thing; an appearance only; a painted fire, in which there is neither light nor heat. The morality that springs from Christian faith must of necessity be sincere. It is the outward expression of an inward life of goodness. The faith in which it has its root need not be formulated into a creed; but it must be none the less real and powerful. So long as it is a vital force in the soul, it matters not whether it is expressed in logical definition and syllogistic form. It is a living conviction that is required, not a lifeless dogma. No morality is so lofty, so far-reaching, and so binding as that of the New Testament. Christianity offers itself as our guide in the round of everyday life, as much as in the work and worship of the Sabbath. It seeks to make every home a sanctuary, and every man and every day holy unto the Lord. It seeks to banish from the earth all such things as lying and stealing, self-seeking and niggardliness, unfair dealing, short weights, small measures, bad tempers, and cross words. It seeks to promote justice and liberty, uprightness, consideration for others, love between man and man. If the power of this truth were duly felt, would the members of our churches content themselves with the present low standard of Christian conduct? Is there not some room for the taunt that Christianity is a failure, when its professors are sometimes found to be no purer in character, no more noble nor unselfish in life than other men? Our age is said to be sceptical. Able writers are engaged in defending by argument the citadel of truth against the assaults of error. But the mightiest argument the Church can advance is the practical embodiment of the truth she believes. Let her show her faith by her works. Let her feed the hungry and clothe the naked, teach the ignorant, rescue the fallen, devote herself, like her Divine Lord, to the removal of human suffering and human sin, showing in all things a heavenly purity and self sacrificing love. This shall be more convincing than the reasoning of all the Paleys and the Butlers the world has seen. The power of practical piety shall accomplish that which argumentative theology has failed to achieve. The same power will be found mighty in the evangelisation of the world. The world is weary of cant and dogma. It wants reality. It looks for life. It asks contemptuously, What do ye more than others? Let Christian workmen be as diligent in their masters absence as in his presence. Let Christian employers be fair and just to their workmen. Let Christian tradesmen and Christian customers act according to the precepts of the New Testament. Let Christian principles prevail in the market, the shop, and the field. Men will learn the mighty power of Christs doctrine when they see it thus exhibited in Christ-like life. (T. Bagley.)
Justification
Faith is the fountain-head, whence works proceed, and the justification of man ensues in course. Let me illustrate this by a familiar example: suppose a man to have a mill worked by a stream which ran out of one of our lakes; now it is quite clear that he owes all his water, and therefore all his prosperity on that matter, to the lake. And as the stream has no water of its own, but draws all from the lake, the truth, broadly and nakedly set forth, will be, that he is dependent on the lake only, without any water that the stream of itself supplies. Now with this statement we may compare the statement of St. Paul, that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law, which in themselves can avail him nothing; and it would be particularly contradictory to the assertion of all such as maintained that the man was supplied by the stream, without any reference to the lake; give the lake, and you have the stream from its overflow: so faith supposes works. But make a channel ever so broad and deep for the stream, you will have no water if there be no water in the lake: so works are nothing without faith. And so St. Pauls assertion was especially, contrary to the doctrine of the Jews, who would have the Gentiles justified by works. But suppose now the owner of the mill to say, I entirely depend upon the lake, and so presuming, entirely neglected the stream, never cleaning out its channel, nor repairing its embankments, would he not shortly find out that he must look to the stream too, and that he depended both upon the lake and the stream, and not on the lake only? Such was the mistake of those with whom St. James argues, who said that they had enough in their faith, and neglected works: and accordingly St. James tells them that they must be justified by works, and not by faith only. (R. W.Evans, B. D.)
Good works
As a fruit-tree, to be worth anything, brings forth fruit, so faith, to be real, brings forth works: good acts, holy deeds, right conduct, pious living. Faith without works is as dead as a skeleton; works without faith, as lifeless as a belted tree. What God hath joined, let no one put asunder. I fear, however, that sometimes our idea of what good works are, is erroneous. We are prone to regard only something religious, or something very great or conspicuous, as a good work. If some of us could only build a church, or endow a college or a theological seminary or a great hospital, or head a popular subscription list, we might think that we were doing a good work. And so we should be; if an object is good and the motive pure, and the love of man and of Christ pervade it, the act is a good work. But it does not require the condition of size to cause a deed to be holy. Dimension is not an essential property of things spiritual. Let us take the family. We have a way of speaking of our sacred duties, and, by these, we generally mean our religious ones; but are no duties sacred except those of the closet, or the chapel? All duty is sacred. You cannot lay the finger on a duty, or a class of duties which is not. It is just as truly a sacred duty that a father provide for his family, as that he contribute to the support of the external and public acts of religion. Prayer is a sacred duty, but just as truly is industry. And, in this realm of sacred duty, this field for the exercise of godly works which spring of godly faith and a love for both man and his Maker, what, pray, shall we call a gentle tone, a soft answer, a look of compassion, a touch of sympathy; what, the forethought which anticipates the wishes of others; the spirit of self-sacrifice which prefers personal inconvenience rather than to give unnecessary trouble; what, all those little things which adorn and glorify the domestic life? Are they not all in the nature of holy deeds? An act needs not to be heralded in order to be noble. The smallest good work is large. And take the social life. Any act which spares the feelings of some sensitive person; any act which shields the blunders of ignorance; anything--small or large, which recognises the brotherhood of humanity--are not these, if they come of love of God and men, in the nature of good works? In one sense they cannot be little; nothing is small that is done for God and in His Name. (R. W.Lowrie.)
Good works
The Bible, from first to last, insists upon personal righteousness. Common life, or society, teaches us also that a salvation that did not insist upon virtue would be the destruction of society in all its temporal interests. If heaven could be sustained and peopled by faith without good works, earth at least could not; it would be compelled to resort to moral lives. The doctrine of salvation by faith must therefore be so stated and held as to leave society its friend, trusting faith rather than fearing it, and must be so stated and held as to leave the other doctrines of Christianity some reason of existence. In their joy over the newly-discovered idea of salvation by the mediation of Christ, some of the divines around Luther, with Luther himself, declared that no amount of sin would imperil the soul that should possess this marvellous faith. Thus at one stroke the doctrines of regeneration, and repentance, and sanctification, and love to man, are cut-down as cumberers of the ground. The Bible is reduced to one sentence; its grateful music is silenced into one note, to be sounded evermore upon a single string. This discussion may now prepare us to hear the words of St. James, which so conflict with the Solitidian, words of our creeds. Faith, indeed, will save a soul, but faith then is not rigidly a belief; it is more, it is a friendship, for the word belief is often wholly omitted, and for whole pages the love for Christ reigns in its stead. In St. John the word love quite excludes the word faith. Faith, therefore, being a devotion to a leader, a mere belief is nothing. A man is justified by his active affections, and not by his acquiescence in some principle. Thus faith, in the biblical sense, is not a simple belief, but a mystical union with Christ, such that the works of the Master are the joy of the disciple. Works, that is, results--a new life--are the destiny of faith, the reason of its wonderful play of light upon the religious horizon. If the New Testament is to be a place where belief is a substitute for a moral life, then the uprightness of Job was not a shadow of our better era; but the spectacle is reversed, and we are the waning evening of a day whose purer sunlight fell thousands of years ago in the land of Uz. But we believe in no such retrograde of doctrine. We believe the righteousness of the Old Testament only a shadow of the great unfolding of the human heart, destined to issue out in the Sermon of the Mount. If the old law said, Thou shalt not kill, it sounded only the first note in the music of a love which would do to others what it would theft others should do unto it.
Indeed, the gospel is a perfect overflow of justice, of honour, of kindness, of active love. Its prayer is that men may be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect. But this spiritual condition will not become universal or even common, if the word belief is so magnified that the Church cannot see the human righteousness in its supreme beauty. (D. Swing.)
Rahab the harlot
Rahab
I. She possessed SINGULAR FAITH.
1. She received no instruction from her parents. Here we see a lone palm in the desert, a solitary life among the tombs. When in seeing inquirers I have to talk to young persons who are the only ones of the family attending the house of God at all, the only ones who make any pretensions to godliness, I feel great sympathy with them because I know they will have much to put up with, and a heavy cross to carry. Such converts are not plants in the conservatory, but flowers exposed to the winters cold; yet it is right to add that I have often observed that these have become amongst the strongest and most decided Christians that I have ever met with. Even as Rahab, though her faith was solitary and was like a lily among thorns, yet was her faith none the less strong, but perhaps all the more unwavering.
2. She was not in a believing country. If we could have taken a birds-eye view of the city of Jericho, and had been informed that there was one believer there, I warrant you we should not have looked to Rahabs house. She would have been about the last person that we should have supposed had been a possesser of faith in the true God. God has a people where we little dream of it, and He has chosen ones among a sort of people whom we dare not hope for.
3. Her means of knowledge were very slender; and, therefore, the food of her faith was comparatively scant. She had no book inspired of God to read; she had been instructed by no prophet; no Elias had spoken to her in the name of God: no Jonah had gone through the streets of her city warning men to repent. What information she had obtained she had gathered by odds and ends. Take heed lest in the day of judgment she should rise up against you. She believed with far less testimony, how will you be able to excuse your own persistent unbelief?
4. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about her faith was that she should be a woman of such a character. She was apparently the most unlikely.person to become a believer in Jehovah. She was a harlot, a woman that was a sinner, and universally known to be such.
5. Rahabs faith was singular because the subject of it was difficult. What was it she had to believe? Was it not this? That Israel would destroy Jericho. Now, between Jericho and the tribes flowed the Jordan, and the Israelites had no means of crossing it. Only a miracle could divide that overflowing river. Did Rahabs faith expect a miracle? If so, it was remarkably strong. Around Jericho stood a gigantic wall. There was no likelihood of the assailants scaling it or making a breach in it. Did Rahab think that those walls would fall flat to the ground? Or did she leave the way of the capture with God, but firmly believe that it would be conquered? If so, she was a woman of no small faith.
II. RAHABS FAITH WAS ACTIVE. It was not a sleeping faith, or a dead faith; it was an operative faith.
1. It was active, first, mentally. When she believed she began to think. Some persons get converted at revivals and wild excitements, and seem to me as if they either have no brains or else their heads were never entered by grace. May we have a faith which thrills our entire manhood, moves our judgment, enlightens our understanding, and makes us decided for truth and righteousness in whatever company we may be thrown.
2. Her faith was active in her own sphere. She did not set up to be a heroine, and say, Now I am a follower of Jehovah, I must be doing something extraordinary. She did not pack up her clothes and start off to some distant place where she could find more glittering service for Jehovah; but she stopped where she was and served God there. She minded her own guests and kept her own house. I believe that home duties are one of the very best forms of the activity of faith, especially in Christian women. Our business is not to do what we fancy, but what the Lord appoints for us.
3. And let me say that she did all this to the best of her ability, and she used her common sense. I never could see why true religion should be so often associated with stupidity, and yet I have remarked that some gracious people either affect a babyish simplicity, or else the Lord has indeed chosen the foolish things of this world. If you have faith, surely you are not therefore to act as if you had lost your reason.
4. Rahab was also active at great risk. She gladly staked all upon the truth of God, and ran all risks to save the servants of the Lord. In this being far superior to those who will not risk their employment, their situation, their good name, or even the love of a single relative for Jesus Christs sake.
III. RAHABS FAITH WAS MARRED WITH GROSS WEAKNESS. She lied unto the men who came to the door to seize the spies. But at the same time, please to recollect that she did not know it was wrong to lie. There were, no doubt, in her conscience indistinct glimmerings of an idea that to lie was an evil thing, but, nevertheless, her surroundings prevented her clearly knowing it as we know it. To this very day among many Orientals it is far more usual to lie than to speak the truth; in fact, a thorough-bred aboriginal eastern never does speak the truth unless by mistake, and he would be very sorry for it if he knew he had done so, even by accident. Among the Hindoos men cannot readily be believed upon their oaths in courts of justice. You must judge individuals from their own standpoint, and consider their circumstances, or you may do them an injustice. I do not want to say a word of apology for the falsehood, far from it. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, altogether wrong; but, for all that, before you condemn Rahab, be quite sure that you do not condemn yourself, and ask yourself first what you would have said, or what you would have done under the circumstances. To tell the truth is always right. Consequences are not so much to be thought of as the claims of the God of truth.
IV. Rahabs was A FAITH THAT WAS NOT ABOVE THE USE OF OUTWARD SIGNS AND SEALS. She was not superstitious; she did not believe that anything mystical was in the red cord, but she put it there, because she had been told to do so. Now, the highest faith in Christ is perfectly consistent with the obedient use of Christian ordinances.
V. HER FAITH WAS SAVING FAITH. I have shown how it was grievously marred, but it was effectual notwithstanding. She was saved when all the city wall went down. So true faith in Christ, despite its weakness, will save us, separate us from world, join us unto Gods Israel, marry us to the true Prince of Judah, give us kinship with the Lord Jesus Christ; and what higher dignity is it possible to receive?
VI. HER FAITH BECAME WITH GOD ACCEPTABLE, SO THAT SHE WAS THE MEANS OF THE SALVATION OF OTHERS. She thought of her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and her sisters. Now, wherever there is a real child of God there will be anxiety for his family. If you do not want to have your children saved, you are not saved yourself. Rahab, with all that was wrong about her, had an intense love for her kindred. But notice that, love them as she might, she could not save them unless she got them under the red flag. It will be of no use when you die to say, Spare me, O avenging angel, my mother prayed for me, my sister agonised for my conversion. No, you must personally get into Christ yourself, and have a real faith in Him, or no prayers of others can be of any avail for you. But the mercy was that somehow Rahab was helped by God to bring all her family in. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
The faith of Rahab
1. Many times God may choose the worst of sinners. Faith in a harlot is acceptable: The last shall be first; that is, those that set out late for heaven do often make more way than an early professor. The most odious and despised sinners, when they turn to God by repentance, find grace and place in Christs heart.
2. The meanest faith must justify itself by works and gracious effects. Rahab, a Gentile convert, doth not only profess, but preserve the spies. The smallest faith, though it be but like a grain of mustard-seed, will have some branches.
3. Believers, though they justify their profession, are still monuments of free grace. It is Rahab, the harlot, though justified by works. The scars and marks of old sins remain, not to our dishonour, but Gods glory.
4. Ordinary acts are gracious when they flow from faith and are done in obedience; as Rahabs receiving the messengers: entertainment in such a case is not civility, but religion. A carnal man performeth his religious duties for civil ends, and a godly man his civil duties for religious ends, and in offices natural and human he is spiritual. Certainly there is no chemistry like to that of grace; there brass is turned into gold, and actions of commerce made worship. A Christian is always doing his great work, whether in the shop or in the closet, obeying God and glorifying God in his respects to men.
5. The great trial of faith is in acts of self-denial. Such was Rahabs, to prefer the will of God before the safety of her own country; and such was Abrahams in the former instance. Self-denial is the first thing that must be resolved upon in Christianity (Mat_16:24). No trial like that when we can part with some conveniency in sense, upon the proper and sole encouragement of faith.
6. The actions and duties of Gods children are usually blemished with some notable defect; as Rahabs entertainment with Rahabs lie. Moses smote the rock twice (Num_20:11); there was anger mixed with faith.
7. God hideth His-eyes from the evil that is in our good actions. Here is mention made of receiving the messengers, but no mention of the lie. He that drew Alexander, whilst he had a scar upon his face, drew him with his finger upon the scar. God putteth the finger of mercy upon our scars. (T. Manton.)
One faithful
If there be those among you who are ever disposed to complain that temptation is too strong for you, that the world around you is evil, and that your own hearts prompt to forbidden gratification, oh! think of Bahab, her conduct and its reward. There is no brighter example set before you in affirmation of the sacred truth, that where sin aboundeth, grace doth much more abound. It was but report that reached her. She listened, and was guided aright. Direct teaching is offered you. Do not suppose it enough to express your belief only, that belief must be proved sincere by your consequent conduct. She hazarded her life in the cause of Gods people. Act on your convictions. Ye too, out of weakness, shall be made strong. Ye too, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, shall have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. But are you fearful? Do you dread to suffer present loss on casting in your lot with the people of God? Then are you put to shame by her who risked the loss of all things, who had been brought up with heathens, and had lived in sin, and who yet resisted unto death, and was saved with the remnant of the true Israel. Through the same faith, working by love, ye shall be accounted righteous, and in that more fearful overthrow, when the sun shall be black as sackcloth of hair, and the stars shall fall from heaven, ye shall in nowise be forgotten, but shall inherit the kingdom prepared for the blessed, even from the foundation of the world. (F. Jackson.)
Faith without works is dead
The vital efficacy of faith
I. THE NECESSITY OF ITS POSSESSION.
1. It is Divinely required.
2. It is the only way of salvation.
3. It is an essential property of religion.
II. THE EXCELLENCE OF ITS CHARACTER.
1. It is Divine in its author.
2. It is vigorous in its operations.
3. It is consoling in its prospects.
III. THE EFFICACY OF ITS PRINCIPLE. When faith is genuine, it always promotes--
1. Works of purity and holiness.
2. Works of conquest and triumph.
3. Works of love and benevolence.
4. Works of zeal and perseverance.
Lessons:
1. The necessary union between faith and works.
2. The duty and importance of self-examination.
3. The peace and felicity of holding fast faith and a good conscience. (Theological Sketch-book.)
Living faith a working faith
With a view to the exposition and application of this text, we shall endeavour to exhibit--
I. THE ERRORS WHICH IT OPPOSES. The covenant of mercy, although framed before the fall, was revealed after it. The Bible is not so old as sin. Error came first, and truth followed it. A daring rebel rose in a portion of the sovereigns dominions, and a force was sent to discover and destroy him; the position, magnitude, and character of the insurrection, determine the dispositions of the royal army which has been commissioned to put it down. Thus, error that sprung up on earth has determined the form of the truth that invades it from heaven. Emerging from the strife victorious, salvation appeared in the form which it got in those fires. The truth which the Bible contains was, in its essence, prior to all error and sin, for error is originally a deviation from eternal truth; but the Bible, which brings the truth to us, has been shaped upon falsehood its foe. The same rule holds good when you descend to the specific features of revelation. Even the sayings of Jesus often took their shape from the cavils of devils or wicked men. The operation and effect of this principle may be seen in the teaching of the two apostles, James and Paul, regarding faith. Had the errors of those days been of another cast, the truth on that subject would have descended to us in a different form. More particularly the two main features of faith, as represented in the Scriptures--the two feet on which it stands secure--have been moulded in two deep pits which Satan had prepared for the destruction of men. The two errors regarding faith were contrary to each other, and yet both alike were contrary to truth. Both put asunder the two whom God has joined, and the severance is death to the severed; as well might you expect the right and left sides of a human being to live and act after they are separated by a sword. The works of the legalist are dead for want of faith; the faith of the antinomian dead for want of works. These two deep pits, so situated, give form and position to the two main pillars of the truth. As the errors are opposite, the same enunciation of truth is not fitted to subvert both. The truths that will meet and match these lies are in an important sense the opposite of each other. The errors, though opposite, are both errors, and the truths, though in a subordinate sense opposite, are both truths. Two separate witnesses have been chosen and called to give evidence against these two errors, and enunciate the corresponding counteracting truths. Paul deals with one of the adversaries, and James with the other. Paul insisting on faith only, and James on works also, stand not face to face fighting against each other, but back to back fighting opposite foes: they are both on the same side, although for the time they look and strike in opposite directions. Paul divides the whole world into two: those who seek to be justified before God through faith in Christ; and those who trust in other appliances. He then tells off as on the right side those who cling to faith, and sets aside all the rest as errorists. Observe, now, it is the division whom Paul has pronounced right, and that division only, with whom James deals. He addresses not those who denied Pauls doctrine of faith, but those who accepted and professed it. Pauls test decided the soundness of the profession: James throws in among the sound another solvent which precipitates a quantity of dark and fetid grounds. His question is: Assuming that you all acknowledge faith, is your faith living or dead?
II. THE DOCTRINES WHICH IT TEACHES. Here we must, in the first place, endeavour to ascertain the meaning of the remarkable figure which is employed in the text. A handle is borrowed from nature, that by its help we may more firmly grasp this spiritual and unseen thing. In the structure of the analogy body corresponds to faith, and spirit to works. The question here lies not between faith and obedience, but between a true and spurious faith; works are put forward, not as a substitute for faith, but as a test of its genuineness. It is an application to this particular case of the Lords own rule, By their fruits ye shall known them.
1. Verse. 1: James as well as Paul starts with faith in Jesus as the first and chief; but he proceeds to explain what fruits it ought to bear. He proposes certain lovely virtues, such as humility, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love, not as substitutes, but as companions for faith.
2. Verse 14: Here he does not say that faith is profitless; but that it is profitless for a man to say he has faith, while his conduct shows that his profession is false.
3. Verse 20: It is here neither expressed nor implied that works will justify the doer, while faith will not justify the believer; he only reiterates the former assertion that barren faith is dead, and dead faith is worthless.
4. Verse 24: A faith that stands alone does not justify, for it is a dead faith.
III. PRACTICAL LESSONS. Both in its doctrinal and its practical aspect the text is obviously and emphatically one sided: it does not give all the doctrines and all the precepts which bear a relation to the subject. It is not a treatise on theology, but a vigorous stroke for actual holiness. It is the sudden, self-forgetting rush of a good soldier of Jesus Christ, not directly against the opposing ranks of the enemy to drive them in, but against the diverging columns of his own friends, to direct their line of march into the path of safety. The main lesson is, An orthodox profession will not save an unconverted, unsanctified man. A correct opinion will not waft to heaven a carnal mind. When a breeze blows on a bed of growing willows, all heads bend gracefully; not one resists. But it costs the willows nothing to yield; and when the wind changes, you may see them all pointing the other way. Behold the picture of smooth, hollow, unreal faith! We learn regarding a certain ancient Church, from the testimony of the true Witness, that they had a name that they lived while they were dead; and the same species of Christianity abounds in the present day. The outward frame of faith, although correct and complete, is a body dead, if it have not love within, and break not forth in righteousness. In nature, the higher animal organisations are, as a general rule, more noisome in death than the lower. The more perfect the body is while living, the more vile it becomes when it is dead. Faith--the system of revealed truth taken from the Bible, and lying accepted in a human understanding--is a glorious body; but this body dead is in Gods sight most loathsome. There is no sight on this world so displeasing to the Holy One as the profession of trust in Christ without a panting and straining after conformity to His image. (W. Arnot.)
Faith without works is dead
The use of the body, we all know, is to communicate between the soul and the external world--it interposes between the spirit of man and the objects of nature, and is a means of communication between both--conveying to the mind images and impressions, and being again the instrument by which the mind acts upon matter. The eye, the bodily organ, is nothing more than a medium by which the ideas of form and colour are derived from objects of nature. So long as it effects this purpose, it partakes of life--it is a means of linking soul to soul, and man to the world; but when it has ceased to perform such an office, when the spirit has withdrawn from the body to which it belongs, then, although the organ still remains with all the beauty of its admirable mechanism, it no longer partakes of life, for there is no living principle with which it is connected, and for which it serves as a medium of communication. Consider faith as a new principle, or a new sense in the soul, having for its office to give notice of the things belonging to the other world, and you will see that there is great propriety in pronouncing it to be dead, if it be not accompanied by works. You have all, perhaps, had opportunities of witnessing what is termed a dead hand or arm; and what is it to which you apply such a name? It is to a member upon which impressions hurtful to the body may be made, and yet no such intimation conveyed to the mind as would cause the danger to be avoided. And if a man say that he has faith, and yet do not refrain from things that may hurt the soul--if he present himself thoughtlessly in the way of spiritual dangers, and do not manifest by watchfulness and prayer a sense of the temptations to which he is exposed, how can we suppose that the faith which is so inoperative in producing that salutary fear and trembling, in which salvation is to be worked out, can have more life in it than the withered hand from which power and sensation have withdrawn, and which is, in consequence, no longer an agent between the soul of man and the external world. This doctrine that faith may be dead is a very important truth to have communicated, because it has a directly practical tendency. If faith as well as other qualities may decay, it, as well as others, requires exercise to keep its influence alive. We know perfectly well that everything human languishes and decays if suffered to remain in a state of inaction; we know that strength of body and strength of mind both require exercise for their continuance; we know that every sense we possess, by judicious exercise acquires increased power, and that when unexercised its power invariably declines--the doctrine of my text informs us that it is thus with faith also. Let us suppose that there is lodged in the heart of a man a true faith in Christ--the natural result would be that his works should correspond with his belief, and that he will deny his appetites, and moderate his desires, and regulate all his affections in such a manner as to make his life an illustration of his principles. Now, it is evident, that the power of his faith will be increasing, according as it is thus successfully exercised. Every victory it gains over some darling affection, or some tempting sin--every triumph it wins over any sordid or narrow interest, will add to its power--it will be gaining over gradually to its own interest and its own views all those forces in the heart of man which he had lately given as auxiliaries to the passions within him, and the temptations which continually surround him. Ask yourselves, then, are your works such as to strengthen your faith, or is your faith weak, because your works are few? Your hopes of heaven must rest upon your faith, but faith requires works for its support. What is the reason why our faith in the world where we live is so strong? Because we are continually exercised in the works of it--because our senses are impressed by its appearances, and our passions agitated by its excitements, and our minds engaged by its interests. Learn wisdom from the children of this world. Let the powers in us which belong to God derive instruction from our inferior nature, and then we shall have faith in God established within us, firm as is our faith in the world. And what are those means appointed by God to keep our faith alive, the neglect of which will cause its decay? They are the duties which devolve upon us from the relations in which we stand towards God and towards our brethren--the duties which originate in our hopes of heaven and our station upon earth. (M. OSullivan, M. A.)
Works through faith
The hardest battle which Christianity has to fight in the world is not the battle against heathenism or against ignorance or against atheism. These are hard battles enough, as all who have fought them know; but the hardest of all is the battle against unreality. A missionary may convert a village, a town, a tribe, to the faith of Christ; a Christian worker may make himself a centre of Divine light and knowledge in some city den of thieves and outcasts where God was unknown before: there are Christian champions in plenty to repel the assaults of those who attack, from this side or that, the premises or the conclusions of the Christian faith. But how few are those who, not being the heralds of a new religion, lacking the stimulus of the novel or the strange, without the excitement of a controversial straggle, have Caught men to be Christians inwardly; who, brought face to face with professing believers, have persuaded them not to be content with a religion of formulas and congregations and a conventional morality, but have brought it home to them that that is not all of Christianity; that Christianity is not simply a system of belief or of moral practice, but that in its highest embodiment it is the holiness which is born, and born necessarily, not of an assent to a creed, not of obedience to a law, but of faith in a Person. Now this battle against unreality was, in the very essence of it, the battle which Christ had to fight and did fight in His life in the world. All religious faith must have a moral as well as an intellectual element in it; and (let me insist upon it for a moment) in attacking the Judaism of His day, Christ was attacking it upon its moral rather than its intellectual side. There wore three different developments of national pride in the Jews which combined to make their religion the barren tree it was. One was their pride in their descent: We have Abraham to our father. Another pride was in their law; in their own knowledge of its requirements, and the exhaustive fashion in which some of them, at any rate, strove to fulfil them. The third kind of pride was a pride in their belief--their belief in the one God, Jehovah the God of Israel. It was to all this unmeaning belief, to this religion which was only self-satisfaction, to this faith which enlisted only the lower and more mechanical powers of the mind, and hardly touched the heart at all; it was to this that Christ came and opposed His religion. And there is nothing, perhaps, more remarkable in His teaching than the absence of any attempt to formulate a creed, or to set forth a precise statement of doctrine. But if this comparative absence of doctrine pure and simple in Christs teaching is remarkable, no less remarkable is its appearance, and the transcendent importance given to it, directly He is gone from the scene. What is the reason of the change? If Christ had not thought this necessary, why should His apostles introduce it? The answer is not far to seek. Christ had done His work: He had laid the foundations of the faith--laid them strong and immovable in the personal love of His followers to a personal Leader and Saviour. But something more was requisite. If His work was to have, under human conditions, a permanent influence upon generations yet unborn, it must have an abiding centre from which this influence could radiate. This centre was the Christian Church. But it would have been in vain for the Church to content herself with precepts of holiness, and to leave the truth about the Author of holiness and the way of attaining it to take care of themselves. Men will not rally round a standard the motto of which is simply goodness. They must have something more definite: something which appeals directly to the mind, upon which the reason can fasten. And so the Christian creed, which in Christs own lifetime had remained in the background, not because it was unimportant but because it was rather taken for granted, came into a prominence that it has never lost. If we look at the history of the Christian Church since the days of its Founder, we shall see that the great crises in its career have been crises when doctrines rather than morality have been at stake. Truth can count a thousand martyrs for every one that goodness has. And if you turn to modern religious circles, the same holds good there. You know how much readier people of the professedly religious type are to condone a moral peccadillo here and there than to forgive an error in doctrine: how much easier it is to collect a multitude that will rob a church where the service offends their beliefs or their prejudices, than one that will pull down a gin-shop where souls for which Christ has died are sold daily and nightly over the counter. The enthusiasm of opinion is far commoner, far more readily roused, than the enthusiasm of right-doing. But is this precedence given to truth over goodness entirely wrong? Are we to depose faith once for all, and enthrone morality in its place? Assuredly not. Bat for all that, there are two things which are of paramount importance for us to settle before we attach a supreme value to faith in a creed. One is what we include in a creed; the other is what we mean by faith. There are at the present time two opposite tendencies about creeds between which it is not wholly easy to steer. One is to regard all of them alike, as the same or nearly the same in value and authority: to sit as God, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all. Assuredly, I do not envy the man who cannot see in the higher religions of the non-Christian world a thousand elements of what is noble and godlike. But it is one thing to allow that, and wholly another to say that the difference between Christ and these other founders, between the faith of Christ and their faiths, is only one of degree. If there is no Christian revelation, Christianity ceases to be a religion and becomes only a moral system: and if in Christ there has been a revelation, however incomplete, however limited, it is an essential part of it, as we have it--that it is the one authoritative revelation which God has made of Himself to the world. The other tendency is to go on enlarging indefinitely the area of what is held to be vital and essential in the Christian creed, to go on including in it point after point of debatable belief, until it covers almost the whole field of theology. There is nothing more dangerous than this tendency to multiply the vital elements in the Christian creed. In human belief there are three things, one of which will always vary in inverse ratio to the other two. One is the amount which men are asked to believe; the second is the number of those who will believe it; the third is the thoroughness, and by that I mean both the honesty and completeness, of their belief. If a creed is too minute in his details and too wide in its area, either people will not believe it, or they will accept it superficially or hypocritically. If we would have a universal Church, either its creed must be a simple one or there will be this half-and-half acceptance of it. If we would have a thorough and complete belief, either the creed must not be a complicated one, or we shall shut out from the Church the great mass of reasoning men. And if God has given us a revelation which confessedly leaves much unrevealed, if the utterances of the Church supplementing that revelation are on certain points but tentative and hesitating, is it a false inference to make that God meant the mind of man to exercise itself upon the great questions which concern the Divine nature and counsels, as well as upon those which concern only man and the world--to find a field, not only in all earthly knowledge, but in the science of sciences, the science of the nature of God as revealed in the history of His dealings with man? If so, the creed of a true Church will be one which has indeed a heart of rock, immovable and fast, in the great central truths of the faith, for without that it would be a mere floating island, disappearing and reappearing in a sea of doubt; and yet one which is content to leave unfixed much about which Christians will think differently as long as human reason is imperfect and the light from above but partial. And when we pass from creeds to our belief in them, from the matter of faith to faith itself, how narrow and mistaken is the common view of ill Faith and works, cries the superficial student of Gods Word, at what opposite poles these stand! Will men never see what the apostles saw plainly enough, that faith and works only differ as cause and effect, as the courage which moves to heroic deeds differs from the heroic deeds to which it moves us? that, to put it in another way, faith is a work of the mind and heart, works but the expression in outward act of some faith or other within? Will men never remember that deeds have no moral value in themselves apart from the motive which inspires them? When man slays man, is it the feet that are swift to shed blood, or the hands that are red with the stains of it, that are to blame? Does charity lie in the fingers that drop the coin into the alms-box, or that put the cup to the mouth of the dying? Does self-restraint reside only in the lips that close upon the angry word? Nay, there is no virtue in an act by itself--it is the motive in the heart that makes it good or bad. And it is so with the beliefs of the mind. There is no spiritual value in mere belief, even of religious truths; it is the heart with which men go to meet the truth, the honesty, the reverence, the fear with which they desire to look into it, that Rives it its worth. Faith and works alike are on one side, the outcome of what is best in man towards God; on the other, they are alike His gifts, as every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. (H. A. James, B. D.)
Faith and works
Religion may be described in general terms as consisting of knowledge and practice, the first of which is no farther useful than as it tends to produce and encourage the second. The Almighty has not revealed to us the knowledge of Himself and His will merely for the improvement of our understanding, but for the amendment of our lives; not to entertain our minds with abstract speculations, but to govern our actions and to form our souls to virtue. Faith, indeed, is not, like the moral virtues, destroyed by a simple omission of its proper acts; yet, by continued negligence, it will imperceptibly die away, and give place to infidelity; not perhaps to open and declared infidelity, but to a secret kind, which seems to be the most prevailing sin of this age. The progress of this decay is easily traced through all its steps and degrees. By intermitting the practice of those religious duties which faith binds us to we lose all taste and affection for them; soon after they become the objects of weariness and disgust, feelings which excite us powerfully to throw them off entirely by secretly renouncing that faith which imposeth so heavy a load. The substance of faith being corrupted, there remains no more than an empty shadow, worse in the sight of God than pagan infidelity, because it is infidelity raised upon the rocks and ruins of Divine faith. It must be confessed that a habit of faith may exist in the soul without acting, but still no wise man will depend on such a faith for his justification. A thousand enemies wage eternal war against it; and when it lays aside good works, which are its only weapons of defence, it must of necessity be vanquished. Besides, if we consider faith in another view, as a supernatural grace bestowed by God, its connection with good works will still appear more evident. For, faith being given us only for action, all its virtue is reduced to this--that it is proper for raising in the soul a desire for those good things which it reveals: its only employment being to support man in the execution of his Christian duties; when it produceth nothing of this kind, the Almighty is concerned even for His own glory to withdraw it. It is thus that we may sometimes see the most sublime geniuses, the most penetrating and soaring spirits, fall into the grossest errors, and wander in utter darkness, acknowledging neither God, nor faith, nor law. Thus the neglect of good works, we see, brings on the extinction of faith; and so far, therefore, they appear absolutely necessary. But we may farther observe that good works, sincerely and fervently practised, are the only means to arrive at the perfection of faith, or to strengthen a faith that is weak and languishing; and this second truth is capable of illustration, both from reason and authority. I give a remarkable example of it, in the person of the centurion Cornelius, who, from an obscure and confused belief which he had of the mysteries of God, arrived at the clear, distinct, and perfect faith of a Christian. God had regard to the works of piety and mercy which Cornelius continually performed, and sent an apostle to instruct him, and prepare him for baptism. Let us, like him, be pious, zealous, honest, and charitable; and we shall see whether that God, who is ever faithful in His promises, will not by His Holy Spirit increase and strengthen our faith. We cannot, perhaps, at present serve God, nor fulfil His law, with that vivacity and assurance of faith which all His saints have shown; but we can interest the Almighty in our favour. By regulating our family; by doing justice to all the world; by inspiring the love of virtue among our friends; by employing other and more powerful intercessors, which are the poor and the needy; we may incline God to restore us that spirit of religion which is well-nigh lost. Every charitable action we perform, every assistance we bring to the ruined or afflicted, every prayer we breathe to Heaven, will serve to rekindle our wavering faith. We have always sufficient faith to enable us to begin this work, and sufficient to condemn us, indeed, if we begin it not. What was it inspired Cornelius with so much fervour in his prayers and his charities? He believed in a God, the rewarder of virtue and avenger of vice; and this made him conclude that, being rich, he was obliged to be charitable; that, being a father, he was obliged to teach his children the duties of religion; that, being a master, he was obliged to give good example to his domestics; that, being a man and a sinner, he was obliged to pray and to perform works of penitence. Do we not, like him, believe in a God? and, in the profoundest abysses of libertinism, do we not still preserve that ray of light which nature herself affords to point out the existence of a Deity? We have then sufficient faith for a beginning, and sufficient to engage us in the duties of piety and charity, in the accomplishment of which our faith shall be infallibly perfected. Let us then address our prayers to God, to beg His assistance in our works of faith; and, aided by Him, let us go on with increasing ardour and activity. Moved by our filial confidence, He will hearken to our prayers; our weak and cold faith shall revive within us, and we shall revive with it. By superior diligence our former losses shall be repaired, and our light grow clear in proportion to our good works. In the end we shall be found worthy of this sentence from our Judge--As thou hast believed, so be it unto thee. Thou hast improved the talent which was intrusted to thy care; thou hast shown thy faith by thy works: come and receive thy reward. Thou hast trod with firm perseverance the path which thy faith traced out, and still had an eye to the recompense which it discovered to thee: come, take possession of the heavenly kingdom, and enjoy eternal felicity. (A. Macdonald.)
Justification, according to St. Paul and St. James
In the fourteenth verse we find the apostle putting a question, and asking, What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works: can faith save him? Here the important word in the question is the word say though a man say he hath faith. The apostle does not write it thus--What does it profit if a man have faith? That indeed would be a direct contradiction to the whole of Scripture; for, wherever our acceptance before God is spoken of, faith is spoken of as the instrumental cause of that acceptance. But he asks, What good will it do a man to say he has faith, while he shows no proof that he has it in his works? Will such a faith as that (for that is the exact force of the Greek article in the original)--will such a faith as that save him? He then illustrates and explains this in the following verses, by another question, which our common sense at once answers, and by a case, of which a very child can see the force. We remark, then, that the drift of St. Jamess reasoning, as we have seen it hitherto, is not to affirm that our works are the ground of our acceptance and the instrumented cause of our justification, but simply that they are the evidences and fruits of that faith which justifieth. So that, while the principle of faith, being seated in the heart (for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness) is not seen or discerned by any, but is hidden within the heart, as the living sap is hidden within the tee; yet the good works, which are the inseparable fruits of faith, and follow after justification, are evident, as the apples, leaves, and blossoms prove, though we cannot see it, that the sap of life is at work within the tree. We see that, so far from St. James being at variance with St. Paul, the two inspired apostles perfectly agree. St. James here brings forward the same passage Gen_15:6, as St. Paul quotes in Rom_4:5; and therefore both the apostles must mean the same things, as both bring forward the same passage of the Word of God. The object o! the apostle St. Paul, in that passage of his Epistle to the Romans, is to show the way in which we are accepted before God; of St. James, in this passage, to show what is the proof of our acceptance before men. St. James, however, seeing that many laid claim to this faith who had it not, saw it necessary to show that saving faith must be justified, i.e., proved to be saving faith before men by works of righteousness, that, where no works of righteousness were to be seen in the life, there then could be no saving faith in the heart; and that those who talked of faith, and said they had faith when they gave no evidence of it before men in their lives, had not that faith of Abraham, who, because he trusted and believed Gods word, was able to give up his son, his only son; or Rahab, who, because she believed, risked her life to receive the spies, and so found it. We see, then, that the one apostle, St. Paul, shows us that we are justified by faith alone, the other, St. James, that the faith on account of which we are justified is never alone or without works; and that, if it is alone, it is not saving faith, but the faith (if it may be called such) of devils and hypocrites. Let us remember that, though good works are not the ground of our acceptance--for that rests entirely on Christs finished work; and we ever look to be found in Him, not having our own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God by faith--still they are sweet evidences of our acceptance, as they show that our faith is the faith of Gods elect; because it is not barren nor unfruitful: they prove that we are trees of righteousness, which the Lord hath planted; because they are full of sap; because they bring forth their fruit in its season; because, having been planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of the house of our God; because they bring forth more fruit in their age; and because they have faith for their fixed, unswerving root, fastened unto Christ; drinking life and nourishment from His grace and fulness; therefore their boughs are clad with the fair fruit of virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, loving-kindness, godliness, and charity. (W. Weldon.Champneys, M. A.)
A dead faith
1. A dead faith is that which dwells only on the tongue, not in the heart; which produces no good works, but is alone, and without holy fruits. It does not work by love, and so resembles the faith of the devils; it leads to no self-denying sacrifice; it produces no esteem for the people of God, and no willingness to cast in ones lot with them. Such are some of the marks of a dead faith, which the apostle compares to a body without the spirit. What a striking comparison this! The body may be perfectly formed, but if there be no spirit within, no breath to animate the form, it is but a lump of clay; it wants its best part. So with faith, if without energy, love, and holiness; it may be perfect in its outward form, correct in all its lineaments, yet it evidently has no breath of the Spirit of God within; it is a dull, cold, heavy, lifeless thing.
2. Again, the body without the spirit is incapable of performing its proper functions. Speak to it, it hears you not; touch it, it feels not; weep over it, it sheds no tear of sympathy in return; rejoice over it, but its eyes sparkle not, its tongue makes no respond of joy. Then you have work to do, the work of the Christians life; it works not with you, it is motionless, insensible, dead. So with the faith which is not quickened and penetrated by the Holy Spirit: it is incapable of performing the proper functions of faith; it hears not aright the Word of God; it feels not the love of Christ; it weeps not with them that weep for sin; it cannot rejoice in spiritual joys; it works not for God; it moves not towards Him in grateful love; it is insensible as to His grace; it is a dead thing.
3. Yet, again, the body without the spirit is an offensive object. So it is with the faith, which has no spiritual life within it; it is an offensive object with God; it arrogates so high a name, it pretends to so much, it takes the place of such a better thing; and then it produces nothing but dead works and corrupt fruits, and is a loathsome thing in the sight of a holy living God.
4. And yet, once more, the body without the spirit is dead, and none but God can give it life. So with the man whose faith is a dead faith; he must be quickened by God, raised from the death of sin, experience the power and grace of a risen Saviour, or he will never see life. (J. H. Hambleton.)
Justification
We are justified freely, by grace (Rom_3:24); meritoriously, by Christ (Rom_5:19); instrumentally, by faith
139 Rom_5:1); evidentially, by good works (Jam_2:26). (William Marsh, D. D.)
A child of God cannot live an ungodly life
Rev. J. A. Methuen once asked a labouring man what he thought of antinomianism, and whether he conceived it possible for a child of God to live an ungodly life? He received this answer: Mr. Methuen, if I pour boiling water into a cup, it makes the outside hot as well as the inside. So, sir, when the gospel once gets into a mans heart, the life will soon show its there. (Sword and Trowel.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv14, 19 Chapter 12
Chapter 12
FAITH AND WORKS: THREE VIEWS OF THE RELATION , OF THE TEACHING OF ST. JAMES TO THE TEACHING OF ST. PAUL-THE RELATION OF LUTHER TO BOTH.
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Jam_2:14-26
"What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; and yet ye give them not the things needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. Yea, a man will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works; show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith. Thou believest that God is One; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and shudder. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect; and the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God. Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. And in like manner was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works, in that she received the messengers, and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead."- Jam_2:14-26
THIS famous passage has been quoted in full, because one needs to have the whole of it before one in order to appreciate the value of the arguments used on this side and on that as to its relation to the teaching of St. Paul on the connection between faith and works; for which purpose mere extracts will not do; and also because considerable changes, some of them important, have been made throughout the passage by the Revisers, and these will influence the impression derived from reading the passage as a whole.
It might be thought that here, at any rate, we have got, in this singularly practical and undogmatic Epistle, a paragraph which is, both in intention and in effect, distinctly doctrinal. It seems at first sight to be a careful exposition of St. Jamess views as to the nature and value of faith and its relation to conduct. But a little attention will prove to us that throughout the passage St. James is as practical in his aim as in any part of the letter, and that whatever doctrinal teaching there may be in the passage is there because the practical purpose of the writer could not be fulfilled without involving doctrine, and not at all because the writers object is to expound or defend an article of the Christian faith. He has agenda rather than credenda in his mind. An orthodox creed is assumed throughout. What needs to be produced is not right belief, but right action.
In this affectionate pastoral St. James passes in review the defects which he knows to exist in his readers. They have their good points, but these are sadly marred by corresponding deficiencies. They are swift to hear, but also swift to speak and slow to act. They believe in Jesus Christ; but they dishonor Him by dishonoring His poor, while they profess to keep the law of charity by honoring the rich. They are Orthodox in a Monotheistic creed; but they rest content with that, and their orthodoxy is as barren as a dead tree. It is with this last defect that St. James is dealing in the passage before us. And as so often, {Jam_1:12; Jam_1:19; Jam_2:1; Jam_3:1; Jam_3:13; Jam_4:1; Jam_4:13; Jam_5:1; Jam_5:7; Jam_5:13} he clearly states his main point first, and then proceeds to enforce and elucidate it.
"What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save Him? That faith" is literally "the faith," or "his faith"; viz., such faith as he professes, a faith that produces nothing. There is no emphasis on "say." St. James is not insinuating that the man says he has faith, when he really has none. If that were the case, it would be needless to ask, "Can his faith save him?" The question then would be, "Can his profession of faith save him?" But St. James nowhere throws doubt on the truth of the unprofitable believers professions, or on the possibility of believing much and doing nothing. Why, then, does he put in the "say"? Why not write, "If a man have faith"? Perhaps in order to indicate that in such cases the mans own statement is all the evidence there is that he has faith. In the case of other Christians their works prove them to be believers; but where there are no works you can only have the mans word for it that he believes. The case is parallel to that sketched by our blessed Lord, which St. James may have in his mind. "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy Name, and by Thy Name cast out devils, and by Thy Name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity". {Mat_7:21-23} In this case it is manifest that the profession of faith is not mere empty hypocrisy; it is not a saying of "Lord, Lord," to one who is not believed to be the Lord. It is a faith that can remove mountains, but divorced from the love which makes it acceptable. The two, which God hath joined together, have by mans self-will been put asunder.
The relation, therefore, of the teaching of St. James to that of His Divine Brother is clear: the two are in perfect harmony. What is its relation to the teaching of St. Paul? Omitting minor differences, there are in the main three answers to this question:
(1) The writer of this Epistle is deliberately contradicting and correcting the teaching of St. Paul
(2) St. James is correcting prevalent misunderstandings, or is anticipating probable misunderstandings, of the teaching of St. Paul.
(3) St. James writes without reference to, and possibly without knowledge of, the precise teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles respecting the relation between faith and works.
(1) Those who hold the first of these three views naturally maintain that the Epistle is not genuine, but the production of some one of a later age than St. James, who wished to have the great authority of his name to cover an attack upon the teaching of St. Paul. Thus F. C. Baur maintains that the doctrine of this Epistle must be considered as intended to correct that of Paul. This, which is taken from the second edition of his work on the "Life and Work of St. Paul," published after his death in 1860, by his pupil Zeller, may be taken as his matured opinion. In his history of the "Christian Church of the First Three Centuries," published in 1853, he expresses himself a little less positively: "It is impossible to deny that the Epistle of James presupposes the Pauline doctrine of justification. And if this be so, its tendency is distinctly anti-Pauline, though it may not be aimed directly against the Apostle himself. The Epistle contends against a one-sided conception of the Pauline doctrine, which was dangerous to practical Christianity." In both works alike Baur contends that the Epistle of James cannot be genuine, but is the product of some unknown writer in the second century. The opinions that our Epistle is directed against the teachings of St. Paul, and that it is not genuine, naturally go together. It is against all probability that St. James, who had supported St. Paul in the crisis at Jerusalem in A.D. 50, {Acts 15} and who had given to him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, {Gal_2:9} should attack St. Pauls own teaching. But to deny the authenticity of the Epistle, and place it in a later age, does not really avoid the difficulty of the supposed attack on St. Paul, and it brings with it other difficulties of a no less serious character. In any case the letter is addressed to Jewish Christians; {Jam_1:1} and what need was there to put them on their guard against the teaching of a man whom they regarded with profound distrust, and whose claim to be an Apostle they denied? It would be as reasonable to warn Presbyterians against the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope. Besides all which, as Renan has shown, the letter sketches a state of things which would be inconceivable after the outbreak of the war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem; i.e., it cannot be placed later than A.D. 66.
Dr. Salmon justly observes, "To a disciple of Baur there is no more disappointing document than this Epistle of James. Here, if anywhere in the New Testament, he might expect to find evidence of anti-Pauline rancor. There is what looks like flat contradiction between this Epistle and the teaching of St. Paul But that opposition to Paul which, on a superficial glance, we are disposed to ascribe to the Epistle of James, disappears on a closer examination. I postpone for the moment the question whether we can suppose that James intended to contradict Paul; but whether he intended it or not, he has not really done so; he has denied nothing that Paul has asserted, and asserted nothing that a disciple of Paul would care to deny. On comparing the language of James with that of Paul, all the distinctive expressions of the latter are found to be absent from the former. St. Pauls thesis is that a man is justified not by works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. James speaks only of works without any mention of the law, and of faith without any mention of Jesus Christ, the example of faith which he considers being merely the belief that there is one God. In other words, James is writing not in the interests of Judaism, but of morality. Paul taught that faith in Jesus Christ was able to justify a man uncircumcised and unobservant of the Mosaic ordinances. For this Pauline teaching James not only has no word of contradiction, but he gives no sign of ever having heard of the controversy which, according to Baur, formed the most striking feature in the early history of the Church…Whatever embarrassment the apparent disagreement between the Apostles has caused to orthodox theologians is as nothing in comparison with the embarrassment caused to a disciple of Baur by their fundamental agreement."
We may, therefore, safely abandon a theory which involves three such difficulties. It assigns a date to the Epistle utterly incompatible with its contents. It makes the writer warn Jewish Christians against teaching which they, of all Christians, were least likely to find attractive. And after all, the warning is futile; for the writers own teaching is fundamentally the same as that which it is supposed to oppose and correct. Besides all which, we may say with Reuss that this Tubingen criticism is merely baseless ingenuity. It "overlooks the unique originality of the Epistle"; and to ascribe to the writer of it "any ulterior motives at all is simply a useless display of acuteness."
(2) This last remark will not predispose us to regard with favor the second hypothesis mentioned above-that in this passage St. James is correcting prevalent misunderstandings, or is anticipating probable misunderstandings, of the teaching of St. Paul. There is no trace of any such intention, or of any anxiety on the subject. The purpose of the passage is not doctrinal at all, but, like the rest of the Epistle, eminently practical. The writers object throughout is to inculcate the necessity of right conduct. Readiness in hearing the Word of God is all very well, and correctness of belief in God is all very well; but without readiness to do what pleases Him it is as useless as a dead vine. Whether St. James remembered the words, "We reckon that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law," {Rom_3:28} must remain doubtful; for, as has been pointed out in a previous exposition, there is some reason for believing that he had seen the Epistle to the Romans. But there is no reason for believing that he was acquainted with the parallel statement in the Epistle to the Galatians, "We being Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, save through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believe on Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law; because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified". {Jam_2:15-16} Of one thing, however, we may feel confident, that, had St. James been intending to give the true meaning of either or both of these statements by St. Paul, in order to correct or obviate misunderstanding, he would not have worded his exposition in such a way that it would be possible for a hasty reader to suppose that he was contradicting the Apostle of the Gentiles instead of merely explaining him. He takes no pains to show that while St. Paul speaks of works of the law, i.e., ceremonial observances, he himself is speaking of good works generally, which St. Paul no less than himself regarded as a necessary accompaniment and outcome of living faith.
Moreover, was there any likelihood that the Jewish Christians would thus misinterpret St. Paul? Among Gentile Christians there was danger of this, because they misunderstood the meaning of the Christian liberty which he so enthusiastically preached. But with Jewish converts the danger was that they would refuse to listen to St. Paul in anything, not that they would be in such a hurry to accept his teaching that they would go away with a wrong impression as to what he really meant. And precisely that doctrine of St. Paul which was so liable to be misunderstood St. James proclaims as clearly as St. Paul does in this very Epistle. He also declares, more than once, that the Gospel is the "law of liberty". {Jam_1:25; Jam_2:12} Had St. James been writing to Gentiles, there might have been some reason for his putting his readers on their guard against misinterpreting St. Pauls manner of preaching the Gospel: in writing "to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion" there was little or no reason for so doing.
(3) We fall back, therefore, upon the far more probable view that in this passage St. James is merely following the course of his own argument, without thinking of St. Pauls teaching respecting the relation between faith and works.
How much of St. Pauls teaching he knew depends upon the date assigned to this Epistle, whether before A.D. 50 or after A.D. 60. At the later date St. James must have known a good deal, both from St. Paul himself, and also from many Jews of the Dispersion, who had heard the preaching of the Apostle in his missionary journeys, had seen some of his letters and brought both good and evil reports of his work to the Church at Jerusalem. Each year, at the Passover and other festivals, James would receive multitudes of such visitors. But it does not follow that because he knew a good deal about St. Pauls favorite topics, and his manner of presenting the faith to his hearers, therefore he has his teaching in his mind in writing to Jewish converts. The passage before us is thoroughly intelligible, if it is treated on its own merits without any reference to Pauline doctrine; and not only so, but we may say that it becomes more intelligible when so treated.
At the opening of the Epistle St. James insists on the necessity of faith: "knowing that the proof of your faith worketh patience" (Jam_1:3); and "Let him ask in faith, nothing doubting" (Jam_1:6). Then he passes on to insist upon the necessity of practice: "Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves" (Jam_1:22); and "Being not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that worketh" (Jam_1:25). At the beginning of the second chapter he does exactly the same. He first assumes that as a matter of course his hearers have faith (Jam_2:1), and then goes on to show how this must be accompanied by the practice of charity and mercy towards all, and especially towards the poor (Jam_2:2-13). The passage before us is precisely on the same lines.
It is assumed that his readers profess to have faith (Jam_2:14; Jam_2:19); and St. James does not dispute the truth of this profession. But he maintains that unless this faith is productive of a corresponding practice, its existence is not proved, and its utility is disproved. It is as barren as a withered tree, and as lifeless as a corpse. Three times over he asserts, with simple emphasis, that faith apart from practice is dead (Jam_2:17; Jam_2:20; Jam_2:26). All which tends to show that the present paragraph comes quite naturally in the course of the exhortation, without any ulterior motive being assumed to explain it. It is in close harmony with what precedes, and thoroughly in keeping with the practical aim of the whole letter. We see how easily it might have been written by any one who was in earnest about religion and morality, without having heard a word about St. Pauls teaching respecting faith in Christ and works of the law.
It has been already pointed out that a letter addressed by a Jewish Christian to Jewish Christians would not be very likely to take account of St. Pauls doctrine, whether rightly or wrongly understood. It has also been shown that St. James, as is natural in such a letter, makes frequent appeals to the Old Testament, and also has numerous coincidences with portions of that now much-neglected Jewish literature which forms a connecting-link between the Old and the New, especially with the Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. It was in the period in which that literature was produced that discussions as to the value of faith in God, as distinct from the fear of God, and in particular as to the faith of Abraham, the friend of God, began to be common among the Jews, especially in the Rabbinical schools. We find evidence of this in the Apocrypha itself. "Abraham was a great father of many people…and when he was proved he was found faithful" (Ecclus. 44:19, 20). "Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness," {RAPC 1Ma 2:52} where the interrogative form of sentence may have suggested the interrogation of St. James. It will be observed that in these passages we have the adjective "faithful" (πιστος); not. yet the substantive "faith" (πιστος). But in the composite and later work which in our Bibles bears the name of the Second Book of Esdras we have faith frequently spoken of. "The way of truth shall be hidden, and the land shall be barren of faith" (5:1). "As for faith, it shall flourish, corruption shall be overcome, and the truth, which hath been so long without fruit, shall be declared" (6:28) "Truth shall stand, and faith shall wax strong" (7:34). And in two remarkable passages faith is spoken of in connection with works. "And every one that shall be saved, and shall be able to escape by his works, and by faith, whereby ye have believed, shall be preserved from the said perils, and shall see My salvation" (9:7, 8). "These are they that have works and faith towards the Most Mighty" (13:23). With Philo faith and the faith of Abraham are common topics. He calls it "the queen of the virtues," and the possessor of it "will bring a faultless and most fair sacrifice to God." Abrahams faith is not easy to imitate, so hard is it to trust in the unseen God rather than in the visible creation; whereas he without wavering believed that the things which were not present were already present, because of his most sure faith in Him Who promised. Other instances might be quoted from Jewish literature; but these suffice to show that the nature of faith, and the special merit of Abrahams faith, were subjects often discussed among Jews, and were likely to be familiar to those whom St. James addresses. This being so, it becomes probable that what he has in his mind is not Pauline doctrine, or any perversion of it, but some Pharisaic tenet respecting these things. The view that faith is formal orthodoxy-the belief in one God-and that correctness of belief suffices for the salvation of a son of Abraham, seems to be the kind of error against which St. James is contending. About faith in Christ or in His Resurrection there is not a word. It is the cold Monotheism which the self-satisfied Pharisee has brought with him into the Christian Church, and which he supposes will render charity and good works superfluous, that St. James is condemning. So far from this being a contradiction to St. Paul, it is the very doctrine which he taught, and almost in the same form of words. "What doth it profit (τι δφελος), my brethren," asks St. James, "if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing," says St. Paul. "And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing." (ουδεν ωφελουμαι).
St. Paul and St. James are thus found to be agreed. It remains to be shown that in spite of his own statements to the contrary, Luther was as fully agreed with the latter as with the former. When he writes about St. James, Luthers prejudices lead him to disparage a form of teaching which he has not been at the pains to comprehend. But when he expounds St. Paul he does so in words which would serve excellently as an exposition of the teaching of St. James. In his preface to the Epistle to the Romans he writes thus: "But faith is a Divine work in us, that changes us and begets us anew of God"; {Joh_1:13} and kills the old man, and makes of us quite other men in heart, courage, mind, and strength, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. Oh, it is a living, active, energetic, mighty thing, this faith, so that it is impossible that it should not work what is good without intermission. It does not even ask whether good works are to be done, but before one asks it has done them, and is ever doing. But he who does not do such works is a man without faith, is fumbling and looking about him for faith and good works, and knows neither the one nor the other, yet chatters and babbles many words about both.
"Faith is a living deliberate confidence in the grace of God, so sure that it would die a thousand times for its trust. And such confidence and experience of Divine grace make a man merry, bold, and joyful towards God and all creatures; all which the Holy Spirit does in faith. Hence the man without compulsion becomes willing and joyful to do good to every one, to serve every one, to endure everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace. Therefore it is impossible to sever works from faith; yea, as impossible as to sever burning and shining from fire."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv14–20 14–18. What doth it profit. Professions are nothing unless…
14–18. What doth it profit. Professions are nothing unless their fruit is deeds. Even faith is of no avail unless it demonstrates its life by works.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v14 Jas_2:14. Say.—Or, “make profession.” The man may really have…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Jas_2:14. Say.—Or, “make profession.” The man may really have the faith, but it cannot be an effective faith if it finds no expression in actions. “Faith, without acts of faith, is but a dream,” Works.—Simply “actions.” Not meritorious works. Can faith.—Not faith generally, but his particular faith—the faith which proves itself to be mere sentiment.
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Jas_2:16. Be ye warmed and filled.—The verb is either imperative, “Get yourself warmed and filled,” or indicative, “Ye are warming and filling yourselves.” Plumptre prefers the indicative form. “What greater mockery than to be taunted with texts and godly precepts, the usual outcome of a spurious and cheap benevolence!”
Jas_2:18.—This is the language not of an objector, but of one whose views James approves. Without.—That is, “apart from,” “distinct from.” The suggestion is that the two things cannot either wisely, or rightly, be separated.
Jas_2:19. Tremble.—Shudder.
Jas_2:20. Vain man.—Empty-headed; a term of contempt: see Mat_5:22.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Jas_2:14-20
Sentimentality is not Religion.—In every age the difficulty has had to be dealt with, of confusing profession with piety, and sentiment with religion, and talk with service. The difficulty especially associates with Christianity, which is essentially a spiritual religion; has no sphere if it does not get a soul-sphere; but when it has gained the soul-sphere, persists in gaining the body-sphere also. In the early Church there were the deceived and the self-deceived—those who took up with religion from interested motives, and those who had very unworthy notions of what religion is and requires. Some were carried into the Christian profession on passing waves of emotion, and when the excitement died down they were surprised to find in what responsibilities they were involved. Some were intellectually convinced of Christ’s claims, but did not come into the moral influence of personal relations of love and trust. Intellectual belief is not bound to bear fruit of godly living; personal faith is. The trust which binds to Christ binds to the service of Christ. The faith which saves, and the works which serve, are linked indissolubly together. These are the truths St. James presents in this paragraph, in his practical, pointed, and illustrative style. Two words will give the contrast which St. James so forcibly presents. Saying, showing. Saying that we have faith. Showing that we have faith. Both are right. Profession may be the duty of the hour as truly as charity. But there is this marked difference between the two. Showing can stand alone, but saying cannot. A man who shows his faith by his works need not make profession, for the works will make all the profession that is needed. But the man who shows his faith only by his profession will find the profession is altogether a worthless thing to himself and to others, unless it is followed up by answering works of charity and service. Of the Pharisee class our Lord said, “They say and do not”; and in those words may be found the keenest and most severe reproach.
I. Saying that we have faith, or resting in profession and sentiment.—This is a special peril at times, under particular sectarian conditions, and to peculiar natural dispositions. Such times are times of revival; such conditions are demands of special beliefs; such dispositions are prevailingly emotional. There are insincere and time-serving forms of making religious profession; but we need only take sincere forms with which men are self-deluded. St. James wants us clearly to see that merely saying we have faith cannot save. It has no necessary saving influence in the life; it has no moral power. This has been embodied in the familiar saying, “Hell is paved with good intentions”; which were ineffective things, and could not save the man from going to hell. Therefore it is constantly pressed on attention that the faith which saves is not intellectual belief, of which we can make a profession, but heart-trust, which brings us into personal relations with Christ, and compels service to Him in the service of his. As professors we are always in danger of living a sentimental rather than a practical Christian life. The danger seems expressed in our common modes of speech. We say we make a profession of religion. Would it not be better, less exposed to misunderstanding and mistake, if we were to say we have begun, and are trying to live, a Christian life? We may easily become satisfied with making a profession; we can never be satisfied if our effort is to live a godly, righteous, and sober life. The danger of sentimentality starts with us in the very beginning of our religious history. The great force of influence brought to bear on us then tends to nourish feeling. Very little effort is made to urge on us the doing of duty, and the acceptance of a life of charities and sacrifices. And a serious estimate of many advanced Christian lives brings to light the mastery of this evil. To many the searching Spirit of Christ may have to say, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” The fact is that people prefer that which cultivates the sentimental, increases mere knowledge, or pleases with the delicacies of high feeling; they are often offended when, with plainness and point, the claims of the Spirit of Christ are shown bearing upon temper, and home, and indulgences, and business, and charity. But profession of faith, if it stand alone, if that is all a man has, does not save, and cannot. Our Lord stamped the helplessness of mere saying in His severe reproach, “Many shall say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name? and by Thy name cast out devils? and by Thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity” (Mat_7:22).
II. Showing that we have faith.—Or expressing faith in service. St. James gives a definite case in illustration. A distressed Christian brother, needing actual food and clothing, comes to the man who says he has faith, and expects his saying so to suffice. The man lives in the region of excellent sentiment and pious talk. And he gives plenty of these things to his distressed brother; but no clothes and no food. Now what good could that do either to the professor or to the distressed brother? It did not nourish the professor’s faith only to talk; and it did not help the poor man in his need to listen to talk. It would have shown the man’s faith—and showing is speaking loudly and effectively—if he had given some clothes and some food. Ministry, charity, the life of service—this is the true profession, the proper showing forth of godliness. Think of Dorcas, and the crowd that gathered about her house, mourning for her, and showing the garments she had made for them. That crowd wept for her because of what she had done. Think of those holy women who ministered of their substance to Christ, and were honoured by Him for what they had done. Nay, think above all of Christ Himself, over whose whole life shines the glory of something done to relieve, and comfort, and raise, and save His fellow-men. “He went about doing good,” showing how much more “blessed it is to give than to receive”; and “leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps”—this example, not talking about his faith, and satisfying Himself with talk, but showing His faith by works of loving charity and devoted service. There may be:
(1) faith without works;
(2) works without faith;
(3) faith seen in works; and
(4) works culturing faith. Isolated faith is a helpless (dead) thing. There are three possible stages of faith:
(1) faith spoken with the lips;
(2) faith seen in the life;
(3) faith felt in the deeds which carry the persuasion of it to others.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Jas_2:14. Faith as Trust, and Works as Charity.—According to St. James, faith was moral conviction, trust, and truth, and yet such a theoretical belief only that it might be held by devils. Works are not those of the law, but an active life of practical morality and well-doing. Justification is used in a proper or moral sense, but not the higher, or “forensic,” as we now call it.—After De Wette and Alford.
Religion is Devotion and Duty.—The Church of every age is warned against the delusive notion that it is enough for men to have religious emotions, to talk religious language, to have religious knowledge, and to profess religious belief, without the habitual practice of religious duties, and the daily devotion of a religious life.—Ellicott’s Commentary.
St. James no Antagonist of St. Paul.—Lightfoot says, “It becomes a question whether St. James’s protest against relying on faith alone has any reference, direct or indirect, to St. Paul’s language and teaching; whether, in fact, it is not aimed against an entirely different type of religious feeling, against the Pharisaic spirit which rested satisfied with a barren orthodoxy, fruitless in works of charity.”
True Faith.—True faith rests not in great and good desires, but acts and executes accordingly. It will be long enough ere the gale of good wishes carry us to heaven.—Bishop Hall.
Jas_2:15-16. Feeling without Action.—We pity the wretchedness and shun the wretched; we utter sentiments just, honourable, refined, lofty; but somehow, when a truth presents itself in the shape of a duty, we are unable to perform it. And so such characters become by degrees like the artificial pleasure-grounds of bad taste, in which the waterfall does not fall, and the grotto offers only the refreshment of an imaginary shade, and the green hill does not strike the skies, and the tree does not grow. Their lives are a sugared crust of sweetness, trembling over black depths of hollowness; more truly still, “whited sepulchres,” fair without to look upon, “within full of all uncleanness.”—F. W. Robertson.
The Lesson of Commonplace Charity.—St. James’s illustration is decidedly commonplace, but it has its power, suggestiveness, and pointed application in that very fact. Men could have found excuses, and shifted off from themselves the application of St. James’s truth, if he had found some unusual or peculiar case. The skill of a Christian teacher is often shown in the fresh adaptations of commonplace truths or illustrations. The commonplace appeals to the universal conscience. How very usual is the case of a fellow-creature needing clothes and food. How often is the good word that costs nothing, and does nothing, made to stand in place of the good deed which costs something, and does much. 1. The good word may be good, but not timely.
2. The good word is but mockery when it stands by itself. Many a poor beggar who wants a crust has been mocked with a sermon.
3. The good word is acceptable and useful when it goes along with, or follows after, the kindly deed. The lesson of commonplace charity is, that it is always better to help the distressed with our hands than with our lips. The lips may do good service when they back up what the hands do. Do not say to the cold and naked, “Be ye warmed”: warm them, and save your talking to them until they are warmed. All our good works should be instinct with the same principle. Do first, and let good speech be the fair companion of good deeds.
Jas_2:17. Faith and Works.—Suppose I say, “A tree cannot be struck without thunder”; that is true, for there is never destructive lightning without thunder. But again, if I say, “The tree was struck by lightning without thunder,” that is true too, if I mean that the lightning alone struck it without the thunder striking it. Yet read the two assertions together, and they seem contradictory. So, in the same way, St. Paul says, “Faith justifies without works”—that is, faith alone is that which justifies us, not works. But St. James says, “Not a faith which is without works.” There will be works with faith, as there is thunder with lightning; but just as it is not the thunder but the lightning, the lightning without the thunder, that strikes the tree, so it is not the works which justify. Put it in one sentence—Faith alone justifies, but not the faith which is alone. Lightning alone strikes, but not the lightning which is alone without thunder; for that is only summer lightning, and harmless.—F. W. Robertson.
Faith as a Cipher.—Faith is like a cipher in arithmetic, which, no matter how often it is repeated, represents nothing “being alone,” but when added to the units it gives them value. So faith and works.—Bayot.
Faith and its Fruits.—Faith must be known by its fruits. When a mighty cliff is to be shattered by gunpowder, a small chamber is prepared in the interior, and filled with the powder, then a wire connected with an electric battery is carried in. At the appointed signal the spectators watch the cliff, and if they see no movement they know the messenger that flashed along the wire has not been received. If it had been, the cliff would have heaved, and fallen into the sea.
The Word “Dead” as applied to “Things.”—It has been shown by Professor Drummond that things are properly said to be dead when they fail to “respond to their environment.” Then we have to find what is the particular environment of faith: then we can test faith, and see if it is living, and if it is living by an all-round and complete response to its environment.
Jas_2:17-18. Faith a Sentiment and Faith a Power.—St. James has really but one topic. It may be expressed in this way—Godliness is practical. It is the spirit that tones, and gives good character to, all human life and relations. This is true of all godliness; it is pre-eminently true of the Christian godliness. The old Jew repeated his profession of faith—“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord”—day by day, until it became a meaningless routine, and he could keep on saying it, and even pride himself in keeping on, while well-nigh everything in his life and conduct and relations was inconsistent with the due fear of God, and with a fitting sense of the brotherhood of man; subversive of the first principles of religion and justice and charity. The condition was well represented by the Pharisees of our Lord’s day, who came under His severest denunciations, because they prided themselves upon their faith, but kept it clear of all influence upon their works. They said, but did not: were always ready to show their faith, to talk about it, to boast about it; but they dared not, and did not wish to, show their works; and they needed to have themselves shown up to themselves by the searching and revealing words of Christ. Judaism did not contemplate any such divorce of faith and works. Indeed, the Mosaic system provided against any such possibility by its elaborate system of works—duties, ceremonies, relations, obligations—in and through which the faith of the Jew might find expression. Jewish ritual was valuable with faith, but worthless and mischievous without it. The faith that did nothing was nothing. St. James writes to Jews who had come to accept Jesus as Messiah and Saviour—to Jews whose new formula of faith was, “I believe in one God, and in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent”: and a very good creed to believe that was. But the peril attached to it was that which attached to the old Jewish creed, and indeed to all creeds. It was of no value by itself, and yet men were always tempted to satisfy themselves with it alone. A man’s faith is a living thing, and all living things want to do something; they want to work; and they are known by their works. We do not call a thing alive that does nothing; and faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. St. James does but announce a universal fact and principle, one that is as true to-day as yesterday. A faith that could do nothing—poor, weak, worthless thing—never saved anybody yet. Doing nothing, it could not do that. A faith that can do nothing neither God nor man can take any notice of. It is a bubble, and bursts with a touch. St. Paul scorns the vain thing as much as St. James; and our Divine Lord and Master scorns it even more than they. He sees men repeating their “Shema” (their “apostles’ creed”) day by day, and He says, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The matter vitally concerns us, and it may be shown that—
1. These are two distinct things—faith and works.
2. They can be separated, so that man may have one and not the other.
3. When separated, faith becomes a sentiment, and works become a snare.
4. When united, faith becomes a power of life in works, and works become a nourishment of the power in faith.
I. These are two distinct things—faith and works.—Faith is a mood of the mind. Works are activities of the body. Works are things done; faith is the soul that should be in the doing. Faith puts the man into the sphere of the unseen. Works keep the man in the sphere of the seen. Faith is sometimes spoken of as the intellectual apprehension of certain propositions; then we call it belief, but it may not mean our apprehension, it may only mean our acceptance of something on the basis of an authority that we recognise, and to which we submit. No “works” are necessary to “belief”; and no moral redemption was ever wrought by the mere belief of anything. “Saving faith” is more than “belief.” Faith is personal trust in a person, who is felt to be worthy of the trust. It is heart-reliance. To that trust the belief that is an intellectual apprehension may, and does, powerfully help; but it is the trust that saves, not the belief. It has been pointed out, by Godet and others, that the faith of St. James is really not the same thing as the justifying faith of St. Paul. And if this is clearly apprehended, all thought of contradiction between the teachings of St. James and St. Paul is made impossible. Godet says: “The faith of which St. James affirms that it does not justify is quite of a different kind from that of which St. Paul affirms that it suffices for justification. They differ with respect to their object and their nature. When St. Paul teaches justification by faith, he means faith in the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ; or at least—when he is dealing with Old Testament personages—faith in the gracious promises of Jehovah, of which this redemption was the fulfilment” (we should have preferred to say, faith in Jesus Christ Himself, in whom is the redemptive power); “whereas the faith which St. James declares to be insufficient for salvation means simply—he says so himself, chap. Jas_2:19—that belief in the one only God which distinguished the Jews from the heathen.” The fact is, that St. James had in mind the theory of salvation by faith in the unity of God which Pharisaic Jews so tenaciously held. Justin Martyr says to Tryphon, the Jew, “As for you Jews, you affirm that even when you are sinners, yet if you know God, He will not impute to you your sins.” And in a Judaistic document of the second century it is said, “A monotheistic soul has this privilege above that of an idolater—that even when it has lived in sin it cannot perish.” It is clear that St. James means by faith “belief”; and belief in one particular thing—belief with which men satisfied themselves, to the neglect of all other sacred obligations. Is that sort of faith of any more service now than it was then? St. James is right. Such “faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself.” “Works” are distinct from “faith”; but here again St. James and St. Paul mean two different things by the term. St. Paul writes concerning works that precede faith, and represent a man’s own endeavour to secure a ground on which to claim salvation. “Works,” in that sense, are clearly antagonistic to faith; and the apostle properly urges that all such works must be put away before a saving faith can even become a possibility. But St. James has not “works” in any such sense before his mind at all. He was thinking only of the works which should come after faith—should be the sign of faith, the proof of faith, and the proper culture of faith. St. James is precisely in the same range as St. Paul when the apostle urges that “they which have believed God should be careful to maintain good works.” Works instead of faith will save no man. Works expressing faith, and showing it to be real, living, will save any man, because the faith in the works is the required Divine condition of salvation on man’s side.
II. These two things—faith and works—can be separated, so that a man may have the one and not the other.—We all know and esteem highly the men and women who abound in good works, fill their lives with active charities, and serve their generation with self-sacrificing services and generosities, and yet make no profession or pretence of religion. And do we not also know many who have only faith, a helpless, workless faith—who can fight for their particular setting or little piece of truth, and feel sure of the special favour of God because their belief is right, but never “lift up hands that hang down, never strengthen feeble knees,” never comfort sorrowing hearts, but can only press their beliefs, as the absolute grounds of salvation, even upon the dying? A man who has nothing but his faith, and prides himself in that, separates himself from humanity, and from Jesus Christ, the brother of humanity, and may be classed among the unloveliest of the unlovely, going about judging his fellows by his own poor mental standard. But the fact that the two things, which are knit and welded together in the purpose of God, can be separated by the wilfulness and the false teachings of men, so that one of us may have the faith, and another of us may have the works, is full of the most serious import to us all. Because neither of these, by itself, can save us. Faith cannot save, if alone. Works cannot save, if alone. That sort of faith saves which can be called a works-faith, a faith that is living enough, real enough, to do something, something good and something kind. How is it with us? Have we faith? Is it delightfully orthodox, so that we are quite proud of it? We do well. “The devils also believe,” and do something more than believe—they “tremble.” St. James rises into scornfulness. “If a man say he hath faith, but have not works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled; and yet he give them not the things needful to the body; what doth it profit?” Have we only works? I do not mean any manufacturing of self-righteousness by strict obedience to law—that is a Pauline idea, and does not come to St. James’s mind here. Are we full of the “milk of human kindness”; ever ready to serve; inventive in charities; a father to the poor; the helper of the widows; a Dorcas in generous thoughtfulness? If it all be without faith, if it have no inspiration in our love to the Lord Jesus, which love carries to Him our trust, what doth it profit? Can works save? He is deluded who thinks so. They will be appraised at their worth. They are, and they will be, rewarded according to the Divine estimate of their merit; but they never saved a man from his sins yet. They bear no relation to saving a man from his sins. That comes through a Divine Saviour; and that comes to a man by the faith which links him to the Saviour, and brings to him all the saving power that is in Him. Works do not save. Faith saves, when it is such faith as is real enough, vigorous enough, to do something, to express itself in works. Dead faith cannot save; living faith can; it is the living link with the living Saviour.
III. When separated, faith becomes a sentiment, and works become a snare.—If faith is checked from following out its natural impulses, it turns back upon itself, and having no air and no exercise gets thin, and ready to vanish away; or else it exaggerates to itself its own importance, and walks about its “little garden walled around” with an uplifted head that may be Pharisaic, but certainly is not Christly. Sentimentality is morally mischievous. It exhausts the religious capacity. It takes the place of service. Cherishing excellent but fruitless sentiments, many a man has gone on into the awful awakening of the after life unsaved. For sentiment never saved a soul from sin yet, and it is certain that it never will. And if a man stops with his proprieties and charities, and satisfies himself with his good works, he puts himself into temptation and a snare. He silences the inward voice—with which comes the Divine voice—convicting of sin that needs a Saviour. He lets good works stop his ears, and so not a sound of the Saviour’s gracious call to the weary and heavy laden can come in to him. Snared and held, it is nothing to him that “Jesus of Nazareth passes by.” Is that snare round you? Is your soul facing the great laws of God, and complacently saying, “All these have I kept from my youth up. What lack I yet?” Listen: those kind things you do are all very well in their way, but there is a stain on your soul. What are you going to do with that? You want Him—you want to believe in Him—who alone can cleanse the stain away.
IV. When united, faith becomes a power of life in works, and works become a nourishment of the power in faith.—Works have their value in the motives that inspire them. Many do kind things simply because they have kind dispositions. Many do kind things because they are overpressed by the sense of duty. And many do kind things because they feel the inspiration of noble examples; but none of these can ever lift our good works into the highest plane. They must have a higher motive than any of these: the “constraining love of Christ,” on whom the faith is savingly fixed. Saving faith is life and inspiration for all good works. All is done well, when done for Jesus’ sake. And the life of holy service and charity nourishes the faith. By use; for it is wanted for every good deed; but even more, because whoever spends himself in ministry, as the Lord Jesus did, sets himself upon constant renewals of spiritual strength, even as the Lord Jesus did. You cannot unite St. Paul’s “works” with “faith”; you must put “works,” as grounds of claim, altogether away. But you can unite St. James’s “works” with “faith,” and you must do so; for it is only the faith that can do something, and does do something, that saves the soul from death.
Jas_2:19. “The Lord our God is one Lord.”—A similar utterance of faith is held to be the test of the true believer in Islam, when the two inquiring angels put their awful questions to the departed soul. But the idea is much more ancient, for a similar confession was required of the just before Osiris, the lord of the Egyptian heaven.
The Faith of Devils.—St. James’s expression, “the devils [dæmons] also believe and tremble [shudder],” at once recalls to mind our Lord’s treatment of the devil-possessed sufferers, and the spirits of evil that possessed them. One case is especially to the point, and illustrative of this sentence. “There was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit: and he cried out, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.” There is the faith in Christ of devils; and there is the shuddering fear which faith brings to them. St. James is not intending to argue that devils can believe. Given adequate grounds for any statement, and rational intelligences are bound to believe it, and prove themselves wholly unworthy of the trust of rational intelligence if they do not. Devils must believe, just as angels and men must. What St. James urges is that the faith of devils in Christ is a practical faith. There is almost a touch of humour in his reference to them. Their faith does not abide alone; it does not spend itself in profession; it impels them to do something. True, what they do is not much good to themselves or anybody else, but still it is doing. They shudder. St. James seems reproachfully to suggest, that very much of so-called Christian faith spends itself in sentiment; does nothing; does not even shudder.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Jas_2:15-16. Practical Prayer and Benevolence.—In the vicinity of B—— lived a poor but industrious man, depending for support upon his daily labour. His wife fell sick, and not being able to hire a nurse, he was obliged to confine himself to the sickbed and the family. His means of support being thus cut off, he soon found himself in need. Having a wealthy neighbour near, he determined to go and ask for two bushels of wheat, with a promise to pay as soon as his wife became so much better that he could leave her and return to his work. Accordingly he took his bag, went to his neighbour’s, and arrived while the family were at morning prayers. As he sat on the doorstone, he heard the man pray very earnestly that God would clothe the naked, feed the hungry, relieve the distressed, and comfort all that mourn. The prayer concluded, the poor man stepped in and made known his business, promising to pay with the avails of his first labours. The farmer was very sorry he could not accommodate him, for he had promised to lend a large sum of money, and had depended upon his wheat to make it out; but he presumed neighbour —— would let him have it. With a tearful eye and a sad heart the poor man turned away. As soon as he left the house, the farmer’s little son stepped up and said, “Father, did you not pray that God would clothe the naked, feed the hungry, relieve the distressed, and comfort mourners?” “Yes: why?” “Because if I had your wheat I would answer that prayer.” It is needless to add that the Christian father called back his suffering neighbour, and gave him as much as he needed.
Give to him that needeth.—We read of King Oswald, that as he sat at table, when a fair silver dish, full of regal delicacies, was set before him, and he ready to fall to, hearing from his almoner that there were great store of poor at his gates, piteously crying out for some relief, did not fill them with words, as, “God help them!” “God relieve them!” “God comfort them!” but commanded his steward presently to take the dish off the table and distribute the meat, then beat the dish all in pieces and cast it among them.—Holdsworth.
Jas_2:17. True Faith acts.—True faith rests not in great and good desires, but acts and executes accordingly. It will be long enough ere the gale of good wishes carry us to heaven.—Bishop Hall.
Works evidence Faith.—Works are the evidence of faith. There is both light and heat in the candle; but put out the candle, and both are gone, one remains not without the other. As the pure fair orb which borrows radiance from the sun sheds heavenly light upon a world that lies in darkness, so do the Christian’s virtues shine. But as that beauteous planet, if ever it come between the world and its true source of light, darkens instead of brightens, throws on the earth below a shadow, not a beam, so what we most admire in man proves but a fatal snare, if it obscure the glory of the cross, the need of free salvation.—A. L. O. E.
Oars pulled together.—Two gentlemen were one day crossing the river in a ferry-boat. A dispute about faith and works arose,—one saying that good works were of small importance, and that faith was everything; the other asserting the contrary. Not being able to convince each other, the ferry-man, an enlightened Christian, asked permission to give his opinion. Consent being granted, he said, “I hold in my hands two oars. That in my right hand I call “faith”; the other, in my left, “works.” Now, gentlemen, please to observe, I pull the oar of faith, and pull that alone. See I the boat goes round and round, and the boat makes no progress. I do the same with the oar of works, and with a precisely similar result, no advance. Mark! I pull both together, we go on apace, and in a very few minutes we shall be at our landing-place. So, in my humble opinion,” he added, “faith without works, or works without faith, will not suffice. Let there be both, and the haven of eternal rest is sure to be reached.” As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works. Faith is the parent of works, and the children will bear a resemblance to the parent. It is not enough that the inward works of a clock are well constructed, and also the dial-plate and hands; the one must act on the other, the works must regulate the movement of the hands.—Archbishop Whately.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v14 14-18. We see in these verses that the only…
ARGUMENT 8
FAITH AND WORK
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14-18. We see in these verses that the only possible method of manifesting our faith is by our works, the legitimate fruit.
19. “Dost thou believe that there is one God? Thou doest well: the demons also believe and tremble.” The devil and his myrmidons are utterly dead, spiritually, yet possessing wonderful intellectual power. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, consisting of spirit, mind and body. The conscience, will and affections constitute the human spirit. The conscience survived the fall, still ringing out the voice of God in the soul of the most abandoned reprobates, always taking God’s side of the controversy. The will, the king of humanity, so long as we remain in sin being on the devil’s side, is turned over to God in conversion, ever afterward deciding with God in every emergency, while depravity still survives in the deep regions of the affections, till eliminated by entire sanctification. The mind embraces the intellect, the judgment, the memory and the sensibilities. Since the apostasy from the apostolic experience of Pentecostal baptism, the pulpits have been mainly filled by dichotomists, confounding the spirit with the mind, and, consequently, preaching mentalities instead of spiritualities. At the present day the popular preachers feed the mind and let the soul starve to death. The churches are thronged with people having nothing but intellectual faith, just like the devils; meanwhile they are spiritually dead. In common parlance, spirit, heart and soul are synonymous. While God says, in the Bible, “Speak comfortably to my people,” the Hebrew says, “Speak to the heart of my people.” During the last five Sundays I have heard five Doctors of Divinity in five great churches of this city (San Francisco) preach at 11 A.M. Those five sermons were to the mind exclusively, giving nothing to the poor soul for the conviction of a sinner, the conversion of a penitent or the sanctification of a Christian; meanwhile the multitudes walk down to hell. The human spirit, and not the mind, is the immortal being, destined to live forever in the flames of hell or the glories of heaven. The Lord multiply the holiness people a thousand times, as it is incumbent on them to give the Gospel to the world.
20-23. Here James refers to the notable case of Abraham when he offered up Isaac on Mount Moriah. Whereas God had repeatedly assured him that Isaac was to be the progenitor of Christ the Savior of the world, when, in flat contradiction, He ordered him to sacrifice his son for a burnt offering, the faith of the patriarch staggered not at the irreconcilable dilemma. Meanwhile he proposes to offer him for a sacrifice; his heroic faith leaps to the conclusion that God will surely raise him from the dead (Heb 11:19), and send him home rejoicing to meet his mother. Thus Abraham’s obedience confirmed and perfected his faith.
24. This verse shows conclusively the utter inadequacy and futility of a disobedient faith.
25. “In a similar manner was not Rahab the tavern keeper also justified by works, receiving the spies and sending them another way?” The Hebrew word zonash simply means a woman keeping a public house, without regard to her moral character. In this case we have clear revelation that she was a good woman, a friend of Israel and a believer in Jehovah, and hereby James mentioned her along with Abraham as an example of Christian faith made perfect by obedience. Having espoused the cause of Israel she became the wife of Salmon, a Hebrew, and one of the honored mothers of our Lord.
26. This verse assures us that faith without works is dead, being alone. The plain and simple meaning of dead faith is no faith at all, just as a dead horse is no horse practically. The Bible is a plain book, needing nothing but common sense and the Holy Ghost to understand it. Martin Luther, a great and good man, living in an age when Biblical exegesis was in its infancy, discarded the Epistle of James as spurious, because of its irreconcilable antagonism to the grand Pauline epistles on justification by faith alone, without works. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without deeds of law.” These apparent contradictions of Paul and James all evanesce on a fair exegesis. Paul is expounding the justification of a sinner whose work is all in Satan’s kingdom, and belongs to him. Hence the utter futility and nonsense in his attempt to procure justification by his good works. Let him do ever so much good work, as a matter of necessity he must do it in the devil’s kingdom, therefore Satan gets it all. Regeneration must bring him into the kingdom of God before he can possibly render obedience to divine law. James is describing the justification of a Christian, as we see abundantly evinced by the case of Abraham offering up Isaac forty-one years after he had been justified as a sinner by faith alone. Genesis 15 and Rom 4:22. In the gracious economy there are four justifications:
(1) In infancy, without either faith or works, by the free grace of God in Christ.
(2) In case of the guilty adult sinner by faith alone, when in the full and final abnegation and abandonment of all sin in the profound realization of his utter ruin and meatness for hell fire, in final desperation he casts himself on the mercy of God in Christ. Then the Father freely and fully forgives him for Christ’s sake only. The foolish dogma of a sinner’s justification by works has populated hell with millions, this vainly and ignorantly treating the vicarious atonement of Christ with contempt.
(3) After the sinner has been justified freely by the work of Christ received and appropriated by faith only, he must then be justified as a Christian (not in the sense of pardon, but approval), throughout the remainder of his life. James is addressing Christians, who can not be justified by faith only. A faith which remains alone is Satan’s counterfeit every time. Such a faith never brings justification but condemnation. Justifying faith is always active and obedient. Hence a Christian must constantly prove his faith by his works, like Abraham. When he ceases to obey God, his faith falters, and his experience dies.
(4) When we all stand before the Great White Throne in final judgment, we will be justified by works alone. Rev 22:12 and Mat 25:34. Our final judgment will have nothing to do with the heaven or hell problem; but with our reward in heaven and retributions in hell, which will be determined entirely by our works.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v14 Division 3. (Jas 2:14-26.)
Division 3. (Jas 2:14-26.)
The manifestation of faith by works.
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We come now to that part of the epistle which has been more commented on, perhaps, certainly more misinterpreted, than any other part. Faith, as we have seen, is indeed, in a certain sense, the apostle’s subject all the way through. The works upon which he dwells are the works of faith. If that is not found in them, they are no good works for him. On the other hand, faith that hath not works is not faith. It is not to the dishonor of faith to say so: no, his argument is, that faith is such a fruitful principle that if the tree be there, its fruit will be surely found. The apostle’s subject here is the manifestation of faith by works. He is not in the least speaking of justification before God, as we have already said. That is not his subject, nor has the apostle Paul, whose subject it is, left such an important modification of his doctrine (as by many this is thought to be) to come in this disjointed manner from the mouth of another long afterwards. If it were indeed so, it would be a hopeless matter to follow the reasoning of any one writer by itself. He might have left out some important thing which should have been considered, and the absence of which would vitiate the whole argument. As has already been said, the apostle Paul distinctly leaves room for what James says here, when he says of Abraham that if he were justified by works he would have whereof to glory, and adds, "but not before God." No one can find, throughout what is said here, any hint that a man is justified by works before God. The whole question is one of the reality of profession. Christians are professedly believers, but what doth it profit if any one say he hath faith but hath not works? It is simply a question of saying it -professed faith. But can faith that is in profession merely, as here, save him? It was but a fair word. Who would think that it could profit if any were naked or lacking daily food, and one should say to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," and yet do nothing to furnish them with that which was needful? What would they think of it? The profession of faith merely would be nothing better than such a profession of works, which would falsify itself at once to any one. Faith, then, that has not works is dead in itself. There is no principle of fruit in it, and this, for us, is the test of its reality. We see at once that he is not thinking of God who knows the heart, but of man who does not know it, and who can only judge of it by the outward conduct. "Some one will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith apart from works, and I will show thee my faith by my works." It is plain that that is the only possible way, and it is equally plain that it is simply a question of manifestation before man. He does, indeed, assert that the faith that saves is that which is fruitful, but who questions that? and who could possibly desire to have it otherwise? It is a blessed thing to know that that which in itself is the humblest thing possible, and which turns one away from self to Another, is yet that which, by bringing into the presence of the great unseen realities, must of necessity have its corresponding fruit in life and walk. He takes in the mere Jew here, orthodox in his monotheism; but what had it wrought in him? It was, surely, well to believe that God is One, and the demons believe that too, but their faith is thus far fruitful that at least it makes them shudder; but the faith that is merely of lip, and cannot demonstrate itself, is really of no value.
And now he brings forward the case of Abraham, our father, to whose faith God Himself had borne witness. It is not, of course, in his purpose here to cite the Scripture which speaks thus simply as sufficient, however sufficient it was to that there was faith in Abraham. He does not say, as Paul does, that Abraham was justified by faith when "he believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Was that not true, then? It must certainly have been true, for the Scripture itself asserts it. But his point is that this faith, as to which God had pronounced, issued in works which justified Abraham as a believer -justified what was said by God, that "he believed God." Thus, he does not refer to what the fifteenth of Genesis brings before us, but takes us on to what came long years after in that magnificent display of faith on Abraham’s part, when he offered Isaac his son, his only son, upon the altar, at the command of God. Plainly, that was a work that needed itself to be justified by the faith that was in it. It was a faith which this rendered indisputable. It was plain to see how faith wrought with his works in this case, and by works the faith was made perfect; that is, it came thoroughly to fruition. Paul’s argument is as to the justification of the ungodly; James’ is as to the justification of one already accepted as a believer. It is a justification which we have to pronounce. The Scripture was here fulfilled which saith, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." It was not merely now that Scripture spoke, but that Abraham’s conduct spoke as to the truth of the Scripture. God had said that Abraham believed Him. His own conduct made it plain he did so. Thus he came into the blessed place of one whom God could call His friend; and thus "we see that a man is justified by works, and not by his faith only;" for if he had only his faith to speak of, no one could take account of it at all.
In Rahab the harlot we find even more conspicuously, in one way, the truth of this. She was but "Rahab the harlot." There were no good works, in the way men speak, that she could produce, surely, for her justification; but the works which justified her now were simply works that evidenced her faith, and which had all their value in it. She realized that the messengers were, as it were, the messengers of God. She saw and owned God in them. In that way she received them, although they had come to spy out the city in which she dwelt, that they might destroy it. Plainly, if it were not before God that she bowed in this, her works were not merely unprofitable, but only evil. The seeing God made the whole difference. It was God Himself who was pronouncing the judgment: how could she resist Him? Thus she had a faith which did not ennoble her: it was, as we know, accompanied, in fact, by deception, although such deception, no doubt, as men think all right in similar cases. But if the apostle were seeking moral works by which faith was to be enriched, works which had in themselves that natural excellence which men see in works of charity and such like, certainly he would not have taken up the poor harlot Rahab as an example of them. No, it is simply the evidence of faith that he is seeking, and that in order to show us that profession merely is nothing; there must be reality; and "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." It is mere barren orthodoxy, as we are accustomed to say; and yet, with a Jew, how much his faith counted for! There was, and there is continually, the need of the warning; and the warning is simple enough if, instead of taking merely fragmentary expressions, we look at what is put before us here in its proper connection. He will not dishonor faith, as men so often dishonor it, by putting it as if it were something merely to stand side by side with works, so that one is to be estimated by the two together. No, says the apostle, the faith is that which produces the works, the life of them, and that which makes a man’s works to be acceptable to God in order to be acceptable at all. Such is the character of the faith that saves, and that does not make it, then, the works that save, or that help to save. The works simply distinguish it from the mere barren profession, which, barren as it is, men will at all times seek to make something of.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v14 Jas 2:14-23.
James
FAITH WITHOUT WORKS
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Jas 2:14-23.
JAMES thrice reiterates his point in this passage, and each repetition closes a branch of his argument. In verse 17 he draws the inference from his illustration of a worthy sympathy which does nothing; in verse 20 he deduces the same conclusion from the speech put into the mouth of an imaginary speaker; in verse 24 he draws it from the life of Abraham. We shall best get hold of the scope of these verse, by taking them three parts separately.
I. Now, most misconceptions of a writer’s meaning are due to imperfect definition of terms.
James was no metaphysician, and he does not stop to put precisely what he means by’ faith.’ Clearly he meant by it the full evangelical meaning of trust when he used it in the earlier part of the letter {Jas 1:3; Jas 1:6; Jas 2:1-5}. As clearly he here means a mere intellectual belief of religious truth, a barren orthodoxy. If that undeniable explanation of his terminology is kept steadily in view, much of the difficulty which has been found in bringing his teaching into harmony with Paul’s melts away at once. There is a distinct difference of tone and point of view between the two, but they entirely agree in the worthlessness of such a ‘faith,’ if faith it can be called. Probably Paul would not have called it so, but James accepts the ‘saying’ of the man whom he is confuting, and consents to call his purely intellectual-belief faith. And then he crushes it to atoms as hollow and worthless, in which process Paul would gladly have lent a hand.
We may observe that verse 14 begins with supposing the case of a mere lip ‘faith,’ while verse 17 widens its conclusion to include not only that, but any ‘faith,’ however real, which does not lead to works. The logic of the passage would, perhaps, hang better together if verse 14 had run ‘if a man have faith’; but there is keen irony as well as truth in the suggestion that a faith which has no deeds often has abundant talk. The people who least live their creeds are not seldom the people who shout loudest about them. The parslysis which affects the arms does not, in these cases, interfere with the tongue. James had seen plenty of that kind of faith, both among Pharisees and Jewish Christians, and he had a holy horror of loose tongues {Jas 3:2-12}. That kind of faith is not extinct yet, and we need to urge James’s question quite as much as he did: ‘Can that faith save?’ Observe the emphasis on ‘ that’ which the Revised Version rightly gives.
The homely illustration of the very tender sympathy which gushes inwards, and does nothing to clothe naked backs or fill empty stomachs, perhaps has a sting in it, Possibly the very orthodox Jewish Christians with whom James is contending were less willing to help poor brethren than were the Gentile Christians.
But, in any case, there is no denying the force of the parallel. Sympathy, like every other emotion, is meant to influence action. If it does not, what is the use of it? What is the good of getting up fire in the furnace, and making a mighty roaring of steam, if it all escapes at the waste-pipe, and drives no wheels? And what is the good of a ‘faith’ which only rushes out at the escape-pipe of talk? It is ‘dead in itself.’ Rom 2:17-29 shows Paul’s way of putting the same truth. Emotion and beliefs which do not shape conduct are worthless Faith, if it have not works, is dead.
II. The same conclusion is arrived at by another road in verses 18-20.
James introduces an imaginary speaker, who replies to the man who says that he has faith. This new interlocutor ‘says’ his say too. But he is not objecting, as has been sometimes thought, to James, but to the first speaker, and he is expressing James’s own thought, which the Apostle does not utter in his own person, perhaps because he would avoid the appearance of boasting of his own deeds. To take this speaker as opposing James brings hopeless confusion, What does the new speaker say? He takes up the first one’s assertion of having ‘faith’; he will not say that he himself has it, but he challenges the other man to show his, if he can, by any other way than by exhibiting the fruits of faith, while he himself is prepared and content to be tested by the same test. That is to say, talk does not prove the possession of faith; the only possible demonstration that one has it is deeds, which are its fruits. If a man has {true} faith, it will mould his conduct. If he has nothing to produce but his bare assertion, then he cannot show it at all; and if no evidence of its existence is forthcoming, it does not exist.
Motion is the test of life. A ‘faith’ which does nothing, which moves no limb, is a corpse. On the other hand, if grapes grow ruddy and sweet in their clusters, there must be a vine on which they grow, though its stem and root may be unseen. ‘What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.’ True faith will be fruitful. Is not this Paul’s doctrine too? Does not he speak of ‘faith that worketh by love?’ Is it not his principle, too, that faith is the source of conduct, the active principle of the Christian life, and that if there are no results of it in the life, there is none of it in the heart?
But the second speaker has a sharp dart of irony in his quiver {verse 13}. ‘You plume yourself on your monotheistic creed, do you, and you think that that is enough to make you a child of God’s? Well, that is good, as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. You have companions in it, for the demons believe it still more thoroughly than you do; and, what is more, it produces more effect on them than on you. You do nothing in consequence of your belief; they shudder, at any rate - a grim result, but one showing that their belief goes deeper than yours. The arrow gains in point and keenness if we observe that James quotes the very words which are contained in the great profession of monotheism which was recited morning and evening by every Jew {Deu 6:4, etc.}. James seems, in verse 20, to speak again in his own name, and to reassert his main thought as enforced by this second argument.
III. He has been arguing from the very nature of faith, and the relation between it and conduct.
Now he turns to history and appeals to Abraham’s case. In these verses he goes over the same ground as Paul does in Romans 5., and there is a distinct verbal contradiction between verse 24 here and Rom 3:28; but it is only verbal. Are the two apostles writing in ignorance of each other’s words, or does the one refer to the other, and, if so, which is the earlier? These are interesting questions, to deal with which satisfactorily would more than exhaust our space.
No doubt the case of Abraham was a commonplace in rabbinical teaching, and both Paul and James had been accustomed to hear his history commented upon and tortured in all sorts of connections. The mere reference to the patriarch is no proof of either writer having known of the other; but the manner of it raises a presumption in that direction, and if either is referring to the other, it is easier to understand Paul if he is alluding to James, than James as alluding to Paul.
Their apparent disagreement is only apparent. For what are the’ works’ to which James ascribes justifying power? Verse 22 distinctly answers the question. They are acts which spring from faith, and which in turn, as being its fruits, ‘perfect’ it, as a tree is perfect when it has manifested its maturity by bearing. Surely Paul’s doctrine is absolutely identical with this He too held that, on the one hand, faith creates work, and on the other, works perfect faith. The works which Paul declares are valueless, and which he calls ‘the works of the law,’ are not those which James asserts ‘justify.’ The faith which James brands as worthless is not that which Paul proclaims as the condition of justifying; the one is a mere assent to a creed, the other is a living trust in a living Person.
James points to the sacrifice of Isaac as ‘justifying’ Abraham, and has in mind the divine eulogium, ‘Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me,’ but he distinctly traces that transcendent act of an unquestioning devotion to the ‘faith’ which wrought with it, and was perfected by it. He quotes the earlier divine declaration {Gen 15:6} as ‘fulfilled’ at that later time, By which very expression is implied, not only that the root of the sacrifice was faith, but that the words were true in a yet higher sense and completer degree, when that sacrifice had ‘perfected’ the patriarch’s faith.
The ultimate conclusion in verse 24 has to be read in the light of these considerations, and then it appears plainly that there is no contradiction in fact between the two apostles. ‘The argument.., has no bearing on St. Paul’s doctrine, its purport being, in the words of John Bunyan, to insist that "at the day of doom men shall be judged according to their fruit." It will not be said then, Did you believe? but, Were you doers or talkers only?’ {Mayor, Epistle of St.. James, LXXXVIII}.
No doubt, the two men look at the truth from a somewhat different standpoint. The one is intensely practical, the other goes deeper. The one fixes his eye on the fruits, the other digs down to the root. To the one the flow of the river is the more prominent; to the other, the fountain from which it rises, But they supplement, and do not contradict, each other. A shrewd old Scotsman once criticised an elaborate ‘Harmony’ of the Gospels, by the remark that the author had ‘spent a heap of pains in making four men agree that had never cast [fallen] out.’ We may say the same of many laborious reconciliations of James, the urgent preacher of Christian righteousness, and Paul, the earnest proclaimer that ‘a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v14 (See Scofield "Rom 1:16")
save
(See Scofield "Rom 1:16")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v14 Proof of faith demanded in brotherly love:
Proof of faith demanded in brotherly love:
v. 14. What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? Can faith save him?
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v. 15. If a brother or a sister be naked and destitute of daily food,
v. 16. And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?
v. 17. Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
v. 18. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith and I have works; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.
v. 19. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble.
v. 20. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
This passage is not opposed to Rom 3:21-28, but offers the opposite side of the question, the key to the entire discussion being given in v. 17. The apostle first of all asks a challenging question: What is the advantage, my brethren, if one says he has faith, but has no works? Can that faith save him? The apostle here characterizes a person that has mere knowledge of the head, of the mind, concerning the facts of salvation, but is without the faith of the heart which is bound to be active in love. Real faith, saving faith, without some evidence of its presence in the heart, is unthinkable. Such faith has nothing in common with saving faith; such faith is a delusion and vanity.
In order to bring out his point, the apostle illustrates: If a brother or sister is ill clad and destitute of daily food, one of you, however, should say to them, Go your way in peace, be warmed and fed, but you would not give them the necessaries of the body, what good would it be to them? Here is a concrete case, which is met with all too often, also in our days of vaunted charity. A brother or a sister may be found in actual want, actually destitute of the needs of the body, insufficiently clad, undernourished or not nourished at all, and yet some people are satisfied with a pious wish that God would take care of their needs. If such a wish is made by one that is able to help, and there is actual need, then there is only one conclusion possible, namely, that such a person knows nothing of the real faith of the heart as it is bound to be active in love, in good works for the help of one’s neighbor. In a case of this kind the pious wish is an example of the rankest hypocrisy; for nothing but selfishness is able to neglect dire necessity as it is brought to the attention in circumstances of that kind.
The conclusion will therefore stand: Even so also faith, if it has not works, is dead, being by itself. Works are a necessary concomitant, an inevitable fruit of real faith. Spurious, hypocritical faith, then, being without works, is no faith; or if one wishes to assume that there was faith at one time, it is certain that such faith has died and is no longer able to bring forth real fruit in the shape of good works. A faith by itself, without good works, is simply unthinkable.
The apostle now anticipates an objection on the part of some of the readers: But someone will say, Thou hast faith;—I also have works;—show me thy faith without works, and I will show thee my faith out of my works. This is a very vivid presentation, in the form of a dialog. Someone might raise the objection: Do you claim to have faith? thus apparently making the matter doubtful. But the writer would be ready with his rejoinder: I certainly do, and what is more, I have works to show for it. He might very well challenge the objector to give evidence of his faith without works, and then he, the author, would soon furnish convincing proof of the existence of real faith in his heart, namely, the good works which are the fruit of faith.
In an almost sarcastic vein the argument continues, as brought against the person with a fruitless faith: Thou believest that God is one; thou doest well: the devils also believe—and shudder. But dost thou want to know, O vain man, that faith without works is useless? That is about the extent and the content of the faith of which the objector can boast; he has the knowledge of mind and head which tells him that there is only one true God, that God is one in essence. That knowledge is good enough as far as it goes. But saving faith it most assuredly is not; for even the devils know this much about God, that the Lord is one Lord; in fact, they have a very complete and accurate knowledge of the essence and qualities of God, Luk 8:26 ff. They tremble and shudder in the presence of God, knowing full well that they are helpless before His almighty power. Any person, now, that flatters himself in a fatuous manner as to his possessing true faith, and has not gotten beyond the standpoint held by the devils, is depending upon a mere head knowledge without works such as are bound to flow out of saving faith, and therefore surely has a vain and empty hope to sustain him. Note: Wherever circumstances are shaping themselves as they lay in the congregations to whom this letter is addressed, it is only by means of plain speaking as here done by the apostle that the evil may be combated with any hope of success.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 18 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
James encourages the scattered believers to show their faith before others, just as Abraham showed others his faith by his works.
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What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works?
James is using a rhetorical question to teach his audience. AT: "It is no good at all, fellow believers, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works." (See: Rhetorical Question)
if someone says he has faith, but he has no works
The can be restated to remove the abstract nouns "faith" and "works." AT: "if someone says he believes in God but he does not do what God commands" (See: Abstract Nouns)
Can that faith save him?
James is using a rhetorical question to teach his audience. This can be restated to remove the abstract noun "faith." AT: "That faith cannot save him." or "If a person does not do what God commands, then just saying he believes in God will not save him." (See: Rhetorical Question and Abstract Nouns)
save him
"spare him from God's judgment"
stay warm
This means either "have enough clothes to wear" or "have a place to sleep." (See: Metonymy)
be filled
The thing that fills them is food. This can be stated explicitly. AT: "be filled with food" or "have enough to eat" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
for the body
to eat, to wear, and to live comfortably (See: Metonymy)
what good is that?
James uses a rhetorical question to teach his audience. AT: "that is not good." (See: Rhetorical Question)
brother or sister
a fellow believer in Christ, whether male or female
faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead
James speaks of faith as if it were alive if one does good works, and of faith as if it were dead if one does not do good deeds. This can be restated to remove the abstract nouns "faith" and "works." AT: "a person who says he believes God, but does not do what God commands, does not really believe God" (See: Metaphor and Abstract Nouns)
translationWords
brother
faith
works
save
sister
peace
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 15, 18, 19, 20 2:14-26 James explains why Christians need to be concerned…
2:14-26 James explains why Christians need to be concerned about the judgment of their actions (2:12-13): Real faith must be accompanied by good deeds (see 1:22-25).
2:14 if you say you have faith: James writes to Christians who need to be stimulated to produce actions that should arise from genuine faith. Paul makes the same point (see, e.g., Gal 5:6) but often criticizes people for trying to base their relationship with God on what they do (Rom 3:20, 28; 4:3-5; Gal 2:16; 3:1-14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.