1 John 2

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1 John 2:1

Works That Justify Faith

James 2:15. James clarifies by an example what he means with works that show faith. He suggests his readers to imagine “a brother or sister” who has not got enough cloths against the cold and who has just enough food to survive. That example is up to date to his readers, for they didn’t like the poor (James 2:2-3). They might have felt quite addressed.

James 2:16. It could have been the case that they had just had a nice talk with one or other poor brother or sister without giving them what is necessary for the body! When they have enough themselves they can easily say to the poor: “Go in peace.” When they even say in addition that they should be warmed and filled without doing anything about that, then all that talk is plain hypocrisy.

James 2:17. Talking about someone’s lack or even praying for it, without any desire to do something about it, is dead faith. The showing of mercy is missing, and if that is missing, there is no faith. Where there are no works, the faith present in the mouth, is dead in itself. Then faith is not alive, there is no living faith. Faith and works cannot be separated. Faith as such cannot be seen. It can only be made visible by works. Through works it becomes apparent that faith is present.

James 2:18. The argument of James is quite clear. Despite that there comes an objection of someone who wants to make a distinction between faith and works. It is someone who has heard what James said about faith and works. The person himself has no faith, but he can point at a lot of good works. Because he has no faith he has missed the point in James’ message. He is boasting in his works.

James responds to him that the distinction this person makes between faith and works is not possible. If he wants to make a distinction, let him then show his faith without his works. He is not able to do that, but James is definitely able to show faith out of his works. The point is not that James ought to show faith to God. God is sure about his faith. No, the works of faith are precisely to show to men that there is true and living faith in him.

James 2:19. If it is only about faith, without works connected to it, it is no more than an orthodox confession. You can speak that out with your mouth, without it having any meaning to your heart. Look at the Jewish confession. The orthodox Jew wholeheartedly confesses that God is one. That is what God has also prescribed (Deuteronomy 6:4). That is a wonderful and fully just confession. It is a good thing that that confession is made.

But do you really think that only speaking that out is the proof of true faith? You can forget about that. Then it would mean that demons also have faith, in other words that they trust God. Demons do believe, but they shudder at the same time because they know that God will judge them because of their works that are all done in rebellion against God.

James 2:20. James concludes his dispute with his (possibly imaginary) opponent. As a kind of conclusion he again clearly says to him, whom he addresses as “foolish fellow”, that faith without works is “useless” or meaningless. By means of two examples he shows the true efficacy of faith.

James 2:21. In the two following examples James clarifies what the works of faith in fact are, how faith becomes apparent from works. These are not examples of works that men call good works. According to human standards, without including faith, we would call Abraham a child-murderer and Rahab was nothing but a traitor to the land.

You will see however that their works are in fact excellent works of faith. These deeds were done out of love for God (by Abraham) and out of love for God’s people (by Rahab). These are the two characteristics that every work of faith has. Both works speak of full trust in God.

James starts with Abraham. He says that Abraham was “justified by works”, without mentioning faith. By presenting it this way James underlines once again how necessary works are, if you want to make a statement about faith.

If you only look at this verse, without reading the following verses, it seems as if he forgets for a moment that justification can only be received by faith and that he comes into conflict here with what Paul teaches in Romans 4 (Romans 4:2-3). As you have seen earlier James and Paul of course do not contradict one another. Through the Spirit each one of them approaches the truth from another point of view.

Paul speaks about the person of Abraham in his relation to God. With Abraham God saw a faith that was focused on Him. God saw that Abraham trusted Him with a faith that He will do what He had said to do, while there was no indication at all that it was going to happen. Because of that faith God declared the person of Abraham righteous. But James is not talking about the person of Abraham to God; he is talking about the faith of Abraham that became visible to men. The faith that God saw in him was made visible to people.

God needed no proof of Abraham’s faith, but he led Abraham into a situation in which his faith became visible to his environment. Therefore you read in Genesis 22 that God tested the faith of Abraham (Genesis 22:1). He asked of Abraham to offer his son Isaac on the altar (Genesis 22:2; 9). James says that “Abraham our father” (after all, he is their forefather), was justified “when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar”. You know that he did not literally need to offer Isaac, but to God Abraham really offered his son.

James 2:22. In that way he showed that his “faith was working with his works”. It even goes further. The faith that Abraham possessed inwardly, was perfected by his works, in other words completed, accomplished.

James 2:23. By this deed, by this work of faith, the Scripture was fulfilled that says: “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” This quotation comes from Genesis 15 (Genesis 15:6) and there it refers to the justification of Abraham because of his faith in God. But James connects this quotation to Abraham’s work of faith in Genesis 22, because this work of faith confirms that he truly possessed faith. Only in that way Abraham could offer everything he had on the altar. Do you also do that? All your possessions, you yourself, your family?

In Isaac Abraham offered everything on the altar. In that way he even offered all God’s promises on the altar. In doing so Abraham proved that as for him God was above everything. The Giver surpasses the gift. The only way Abraham could offer his son was because he looked to God because He trusted God and loved Him. In this all Abraham behaved as “the friend of God”. This is how Jehoshaphat speaks of him toward God (2 Chronicles 20:7) and that is how God Himself calls him (Isaiah 41:8). When you are a friend of God it means that you love God.

James 2:24. James concludes this example of Abraham with the undeniable conclusion that works of faith are absolutely essential to prove the presence of faith. It is only justified to say that you believe in case it also appears from your works.

James 2:25. In order to illustrate this more abundantly James points at another example from the Scripture. Next to the great man of faith he places Rahab, the harlot, the woman from a cursed nation. In that way he delivers a striking proof that with God there is no partiality. He says that she “in the same way”, which means like Abraham, was justified by faith.

And what did her works consist of? She received “the messengers” in her house and hid them from her compatriots. James calls the spies (Hebrews 11:31) ‘messengers’ because they came to her with a good message. By receiving the messengers she chose for God’s people and against her people. She believed that the land where she lived was under the judgment and that this land was given by God to His people. She sacrificed the present possession to possess it together with God’s people. That is faith in action.

Do you also sacrifice the land where you live in, the world, to possess it with the Lord Jesus in future? If you know you are connected to God’s people who will only later take possession of the world, you are a traitor in the eyes of the world because you will not commit yourself to anything in this world. Don’t let it weigh you down. Look to the Lord of glory and you will know for Whom you are doing it.

The Danger of the Tongue

You have received practical teachings in chapters 1 and 2, a practice that is surrounded by heavenly light. That practice can only, as you have seen in chapter 1, become reality when there is new life. That means that only new creatures (James 1:18) are able to bring faith into practice. In chapter 2 your attention was focused on an object for the heart: the glorious Lord (James 2:1), the center of the new creation. By Him you are attracted to follow a straight course through the world. But another thing is needed and that is wisdom which like the gift of the new life comes down from above (James 3:17; cf. James 1:17-18).

James 3:1. Before James starts to talk about this wisdom from above he first urgently demonstrates the danger of the tongue to you. The tongue is the most accurate measure of what is present in your heart. It is for a reason that the Lord says that the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart and that we will be justified or condemned by our words (Matthew 12:34b; 37).

James calls on his brethren because of the fact that it appears that many people tend to present themselves as a teacher. By that he means that they tend to place themselves above others to lecture those others about how things should be done. So he is not talking about the teachers in the church who are given by the glorified Lord as gifts to His church (Ephesians 4:11). It is not possible that James is addressing those teachers.

It is about those who want to be something that God has not given to them. It is the same like wanting to be rich, which is different than if God makes a person rich. James warns that you should bear in mind that if you want to be a teacher, you will receive a stricter judgment. If you want to be a teacher without first being taught yourself, then it will appear from your words that you do not know what you are talking about. However, you will be judged by it.

In itself, it is not wrong to have the desire to teach others and it is certainly a good thing that there is room to teach in the meeting of the church. That seems also to be the case here, for this admonition would be superfluous if the freedom to speak were not open to all brethren. Only it seems that it became crowded at the pulpit. It is like the Corinthians with whom Paul also had to put a brake on their impulse to express themselves (1 Corinthians 14:27-33).

If you want to teach others in the right sense of the word, you absolutely need to be taught first at the feet of the Lord Jesus (Luke 10:39). He Himself gives the right example. To Him has been given a tongue of disciples or of those who have learned, in other words: of someone who has been taught (Isaiah 50:4). He had always obeyed His Father. He never passed on anything, unless He had heard it from His Father. Therefore He was able to talk with the weary woman at the well of Jacob and tell her everything she had done (John 4:6; 29). He was able to speak because He had opened ears (Psalms 40:6).

James 3:2. Another instruction for not desiring to be too eager to be a teacher, is that we stumble in many ways in what we say. If you honestly look at yourself, then you need to admit that it regularly happens that you do not put in the right words what you mean, do you? When you look back you sometimes have to regret that not everything you have said was right. It shows your weakness and you have to be well aware of that.

If you are perfect in your speech, thus if you perfectly control your tongue, then you will also control your deeds and the course you take. The Lord Jesus is the only One Who has never stumbled in His words, which also makes only Him perfect in everything His body did. To us it is important to guard our tongue, for that is the greatest stumbling block for us.

James 3:3. James wants to clarify the functioning of the tongue and the effect of both the right and wrong use of it through examples from nature. You keep your body in control by keeping your tongue in control. It is the same as how you bridle a horse. If you want to bridle a horse you must put bit and bridle in its mouth (cf. Psalms 32:9). In this way you can manage to direct the whole horse to your pleasure and turn it wherever you want. That large body of the horse is totally in your power through the small bit in its mouth.

Horses were primarily used in combat. We may apply this example in that sense to a battle of words. Precisely then it is important for us to control our tongue. Especially in battles of words or disputes we often say things that we later regret.

James 3:4. The second example is that of a large ship that is driven by the hard wind in its sails. Still it is not a plaything of the wind and the waves. That large ship has, in proportion to the large ship, a very small rudder. That very small rudder is directed by a pilot. When the pilot directs the rudder with his firm hand, then that large ship obeys according to the position of the rudder. The position of the rudder determines where the ship is heading to and not the wind.

We can apply this example of the ships at sea to our journey through the sea of life which we are sailing and where we are exposed to all kinds of winds. Events in our life stir us up. If we know that the Lord Jesus is standing at the rudder of our life ship, we know that those events do not happen accidentally. That will prevent us from sinning with our mouth, as we see that with Job (Job 2:10). We stay on the right course if we keep focusing on the Lord and our home harbor with Him.

James 3:5. After the positive examples of the use, or better said, the control of the tongue, James turns to the destruction that the tongue often causes. He already showed how the tongue as a small part of the body can control mighty powers. Now he shows how the tongue as a small part of the body is an indomitable force that wreaks great havoc.

The tongue is a member by which the pride of man and his independence of God are expressed in the most arrogant manner (Psalms 12:4). The tongue is the instrument by which man boasts in great deeds. You can hear that daily in the language that politicians use. Without the slightest modesty they summarize everything they have achieved, according to their own convictions. In these same speeches they also make their promises while they keep on overestimating themselves gigantically. It would be a shame for believers to use such prideful language.

This blustering and exaggerated language has often set the flame on fire. It is for a reason that James says that the tongue is a fire. The point is that although it is a small fire it is like a match stick that is able to set on fire a large forest or a great stack of wood. Look at the fall of man and all its consequences. The sin of the tongue has been the first sin that entered creation. The fire that has been kindled in paradise has been destructing the lives of all men until this day. Everyone who does not convert will be delivered to this fire forever and ever.

James 3:6. It is the fire burning in hell that comes out through the tongue. “The [very] world of iniquity” is summarized in the tongue.

Two Springs

James 3:7. “The human race” has the ability to tame all animals with their natural tendency toward freedom, in other words to control them. Man is able to catch and control the wildest, fastest and most uncatchable beasts, the highest flying birds and the most terrifying deep dark sea monsters.

James 3:8. Man is superior to all creatures, but the tongue is the master of man. You may be able to control your tongue. That is only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you give Him the control in your life He can manifest the new life through your tongue.

However, there is no way that you can have any control over another person’s tongue. No man will ever be able to control the tongue of another person. The tongue is a “restless evil [and] full of deadly poison”. You can arm yourself against poisonous beasts or put them in a cage so that they may not harm you, but it is absolutely impossible to prevent the deadly poison of the tongue. The tongue of natural man is compared to a serpent and its words to deadly poison of asps (Psalms 140:3; Romans 3:13-14).

James 3:9. You will fully agree with this sharp characterization of the tongue. But be careful. All of a sudden James puts the emphasis on you, while he includes himself also. He speaks about who profess to be believers and that includes you also. What do you do with your tongue? You bless the “Lord and Father” with it and you curse “men” with it who have been made “in the likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 11:7).

James 3:10. How could it be possible that “from the same mouth … blessing and curse” proceed? Or can you not recognize it? Haven’t you ever cursed someone because he treated you badly, while you also blessed God for the kindness and grace He has shown to you? Well, that is what James means and what should not be possibly. It is possible that in a meeting you may bless the Lord Jesus and the Father and right after that you slander your fellow believers or unbelievers with your tongue, while visiting someone.

James 3:11. James radically condemns such a double-hearted use of the tongue. He clarifies such an improper use by some examples from nature. In nature it is impossible that opposite things come from the same opening of a fountain. The tongue forms an exception to that general, logic rule. Unfortunately, the tongue can utter opposite words. The tongue, considered as a fountain, can indeed cause both the sweet and the bitter to spring up. The tongue can make spiritual statements at one moment and fleshly statements at another moment.

You are able to speak a “fresh”, literally “sweet”, word at the one moment, a word that is pleasant, and at another moment a bitter word, a word that expresses bitterness. You must consider, however, that both words are not from the same deeper lying fountain. The good, “sweet” word comes forth from the new life, the “bitter” one comes forth from the old nature.

Therefore it is important to pay attention to which nature has authority over your tongue. The new life allows you to speak with a new tongue, that is, since your conversion you can speak in a different way than when you did not know the Lord Jesus. If there is still little sign of this, the cause may be that your heart is often little filled with the Lord Jesus.

James 3:12. Each expression indicates out of which fountain from which that expression originates. If you slander a fellow man it originates from the old man. A praise to God originates from the new man. By the fruit you know the tree (Matthew 12:33). In nature it is natural that each tree bears the fruit that belongs to that tree and that it bears no fruit that belongs to another tree. It is foolish to assume that you would be able to pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a vine. Likewise it is impossible that you can drink fresh or sweet water out of a salty spring. Unfortunately, what is impossible in nature can be possible with the believer.

James 3:13. However, there is still something that can help us to use the tongue properly. We can use our tongue properly if we are wise and if we are aware of the time we live in. We live in the end time. In such a time we can simply not afford to use our tongue improperly, for instance to undermine one another. In the end time we are appealed to be “wise and understanding”. That is why the question sounds who is ‘wise and understanding’.

The prophet Hosea also speaks about that (Hosea 14:9). Hosea describes the ways of God with Israel. God’s ways result in a world that is full of peace under the rule of the Lord Jesus. ‘Wise and understanding’ is he who learns from the ways of God and applies that to his life. You can learn from the past of God’s people how you should live. Also in Psalms 107 the question sounds as a response to the ways of God (Psalms 107:43).

It seems that James has pondered on those verses. That he asks the question means that not everyone is wise and understanding, but that he would want to appeal to the few, like you. In Israel there was mention of only one tribe of which could be said that it was wise in understanding the times (1 Chronicles 12:32).

If you understand that you live in the end time, then you also know that it does not come down to words, but to deeds. It is about “a good behavior … in the gentleness of wisdom”. Such a conduct has got nothing to do with powerlessness, but on the contrary with powerfulness. Only it is not natural power, but spiritual power. You see that in perfection in the life of the Lord Jesus on earth. You can learn it from Him (Matthew 11:29). If you learn from Him and practice that in your life you will be an encouraging example to others (Daniel 11:33).

James 3:14. However, James says, nothing of that will happen “if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart”. You are envious if you begrudge another person to have something because you don’t have it and you yourself want it also. That goes for both material and immaterial matters. Such jealousy expresses itself in selfish ambition or strife. Strife arises because you begrudge another person to have something. Big words come out of your mouth. You think you at least have the right to have what the other person has!

In that way you end up lying “against the truth”. You contradict the truth of God’s Word in which we see clearly that we are all different and that we also deal differently with things in life and also in the church.

James 3:15. Such an attitude is not a sign of a wisdom that you have received from above, but on the contrary a wisdom that is from below. It is not a Divine, heavenly wisdom, but an “earthly” wisdom. It is not a wisdom that comes from the Spirit of God, but from your natural feelings, just say your ‘gut feelings’. It is a “natural” wisdom, for it is about the satisfaction of your fleshly needs. This wisdom is guided by the chief of demons, the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44) and is therefore also “demonic” by nature.

James 3:16. You see that in the consequences of “jealousy and selfish ambition”. Envy and self-seeking cause nothing but “disorder” and a practice that shows all kinds of evil.

James 3:17. It is possible to hand in and condemn that wisdom and replace that with being guided by the wisdom that is from above. That means that you look to Christ Who is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24; 30). Thus He is also presented to the church at Colossae, and therefore there was no confusion there, but good discipline and stability in faith (Colossians 2:3; 5).

The first feature of the wisdom from above is that it is “pure”. James emphasizes that purity comes “first”. The next features flow from this. Purity is the most important because it is about God Himself Who is pure. He is in no way connected to sins (James 1:13).

When there is sin in your life, you cannot possibly be guided by the wisdom that is from above and there can neither be mention of the following features of wisdom. 2. If you confess the sin you become pure again (1 John 1:9) and then you can be “peaceable” and go on peacefully. This is how the Lord Jesus speaks about it at the sermon on the Mount, where on purity also follows peace (Matthew 5:8-9). 3. You will also be capable of being “gentle”, meaning that you will not seek to defend your rights and demand things for yourself. 4. You are also “reasonable”, which means to be subjective, available and correctable. 5. If you allow yourself to be taught by the wisdom from above you will be “full of mercy and good fruits”, that will be visible in your life, as it was the case with the Lord Jesus. 6.

You are “unwavering” and therefore against forming sects and will not be dragged to join a certain party or sect. 7. Finally you are “without hypocrisy”, which means that you do not pretend to be different than you are.

James 3:18. You can show all of that in the world and practice that toward others. These seven features of the wisdom that is from above, are the fruit of righteousness. They come from righteousness. If they are practiced they are sown, as it were. These fruits can only be “sown in peace”. Peace is the motive to sow this fruit.

And what does this fruit deliver? Peace (Psalms 85:10). If you make peace, if are a peace maker (Matthew 5:9), you reap peace. You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7b). You are always sowing. All the words you speak and all the deeds you do are seeds sown by you.

If your words and deeds are inspired by the wisdom from above, you will reap a wonderful fruit, peace. Then you will now already be able to enjoy what will be present in the coming kingdom of peace all over the world.

Now read James 3:7-18 again.