Faith Without Works

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15. If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16. And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; not withstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17. Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 18. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? 21. Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? 22. Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect! 23. And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.'--James 2:14-23.

{Jam 2:17}JAMES thrice reiterates his point in this passage, and each repetition closes a branch of his argument. In James 2:17 he draws the inference from his illustration of a worthy sympathy which does nothing; in James 2:20 he deduces the same conclusion from the speech put into the mouth of an imaginary speaker; in James 2:24 he draws it from the life of Abraham. We shall best et hold of the scope of these verses by taking these 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, 6; 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 James 2:14 begins with supposing the case of a mere lip faith,' while James 2:17 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 James 2:14 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 paralysis which affects the arms does not, in these cases, interfere withthe 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.' Romans 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 James 2:18-20.

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 (James 2:13). 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 (Deut. 6:4, etc.). James seems, in James 2:20, 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 v., and there is a distinct verbal contradiction between James 2:24 here and Romans 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? James 2:22 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,' Out 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 James 2:24 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 88).

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.'