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Summary

James asks a pointed question. What good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him (v. 14)? Then he paints a picture. A brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food. Someone says, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” but gives nothing the body needs. What good is that (vv. 15-16)? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead (v. 17). Someone may answer that faith and works are simply different gifts. James replies, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (v. 18). Believing that God is one is good. But the demons believe that too, and they shudder (v. 19). Then James calls two witnesses. Abraham offered up his son Isaac on the altar (v. 21). His faith was active along with his works, and his faith was completed by his works (v. 22). Rahab received the messengers and sent them out by another way (v. 25). As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead (v. 26).

Verse 24 can make a Reformed reader pause. “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Paul writes, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). Do the two apostles disagree? I believe they do not. Both of them quote Genesis 15:6. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (James 2:23; see Romans 4:3). In Genesis 15, Abraham had not yet climbed Mount Moriah. He simply believed the promise, and God counted him righteous. That is the scene Paul holds on to. Years later, in Genesis 22, Abraham offered Isaac. James says this is when the Scripture “was fulfilled” (v. 23). The faith God had already counted as righteousness was shown to be real. Paul asks how a sinner is made right with God. James asks what real faith looks like. Paul faces the person who tries to earn God’s favor. James faces the person who says he believes and stays the same. The two apostles stand back to back, facing different enemies. Paul himself speaks of “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Our Westminster Confession puts it well. Faith is “the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified.” It “is no dead faith, but worketh by love” (WCF 11.2).3

Meditation Points

1. “Go in peace, be warmed and filled” (vv. 14-17)

James does not argue in the clouds. He takes us to a cold doorway. A brother or sister stands there, poorly clothed and lacking in daily food. Someone offers a kind, religious sentence. “Go in peace, be warmed and filled.” But no coat changes hands. No bread is given. James asks what good that is (v. 16).

Many of us know this scene from the inside. A missionary family shares a real need. We say, “I will pray for you,” and we mean it. Prayer is never small. But sometimes our words help us more than they help them. They let us step quietly away from the doorway.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) gives a helpful description of that moment. It observes that protective parts work hard to keep us from feelings that seem too much to bear.1 Someone else’s need can stir our own helplessness, or an old fear that there will not be enough. A kind word lets a protective part close the door gently. I believe this observation fits what many of us have felt. But IFS also teaches that beneath every part lies a Self that is naturally compassionate and whole.2 Here, as a Calvinist, I part ways. Scripture does not send us inward to find a good core. It tells us our center needs to be born again. Love for a cold brother is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). It comes to us from Christ.

“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (v. 17)

“Dead” is a strong word. James does not say weak or immature. He says dead. He is not asking us to work harder so we can stay saved. He is asking us to check for a pulse. And where the pulse feels faint, the answer is to run back to Christ, who gave His own body for us.

2. Even the Demons Believe (vv. 18-20)

“Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (v. 18). Faith lives in the heart, and no one can see the heart. So how does faith become visible? By what it does.

Then James brings up the great confession of Israel. “You believe that God is one; you do well” (v. 19; see Deuteronomy 6:4). James does not mock sound doctrine. He even says they do well. Then comes the sting. The demons believe it too, and they shudder. They hold correct doctrine about God. They are very orthodox. And they tremble.

We Reformed folks love sound doctrine. I do too. Reformed theology has long described saving faith as knowledge, assent, and trust. The demons have the first two. They know who God is, and they agree that it is true. What they lack is trust. They do not rest on God. They run from Him.

This is the question behind much of my ministry. Why don’t we behave as we believe? James calls the person with this kind of faith “foolish” (v. 20). The Greek word means “empty.” A faith that never moves toward God in trust, and never moves toward a neighbor in love, is an empty shell.

3. Abraham, the Friend of God (vv. 21-26)

James calls two witnesses, and they could hardly be more different. Abraham is the father of Israel. Rahab is a Canaanite woman with a past (v. 25; Joshua 2). A patriarch and an outsider. If living faith showed up in both of them, it can show up in anyone.

Look at Abraham. “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works” (v. 22). The word “completed” carries the sense of reaching a goal. A seed is completed when it bears fruit. The faith God counted as righteousness in Genesis 15 bore its fruit on Mount Moriah. And Abraham “was called a friend of God” (v. 23).

But Mount Moriah points beyond Abraham. God stopped Abraham’s hand and provided a ram in Isaac’s place (Genesis 22:13). Abraham did not have to give up his son. God did not spare His own. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Here is the Gospel under this hard passage. We do not become God’s friends by our works. We are His friends because Christ finished the work. Then the Spirit breathes life into our faith. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

“For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” (v. 26)

A living body breathes. A living faith breathes too. And very often, it breathes toward the brother at the door.

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