James No.6 Faith which Works

Matthew, chapter 22, and beginning at verse 1. Jesus spoke to them again in parables saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner.

My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet. But they paid no attention and went off, one to his field, another to his business.

The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

Then he said to his servants, the wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find. So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. Friend, he asked, how did you get in here without wedding clothes? The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, tie him hand and foot and throw him outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are invited but few are chosen.

Here ends the reading. Now I read to you from the 14th verse. What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.

If one of you says to him, go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith, I have deeds. Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by what I do.

You believe that there is one God, good. Even the devils believe that and shudder. You foolish man.

Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete by what he did and the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodgings to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

You remember I said to you some weeks ago when opening out our study of this epistle that Martin Luther did not rate it very highly. He referred to it as an epistle of straw and the reason for that somewhat unwise comment was because Luther considered it had very little evangelical content indeed and it was the good doctor's added conclusion that it contradicted the statement of the apostle Paul who says that we are justified, we are saved by faith. Well this morning as we look into these final verses of chapter 2, we have to pass some judgment on Luther's conclusion.

Was Paul right in as much as we are justified by faith? Is James right when he says we are justified by works and therefore Paul is wrong? Or could it be that both James and Paul are right and Luther got it wrong because he didn't realize that these two early writers were looking at different sides of the same theological coin? Well that's one of the rather interesting subjects that's going to occupy our attention for the next 20 or 30 minutes. But something else I want to share with you before I bring you to these verses in particular and that is to remind you that when we were looking at the final passage in the first chapter I drew a distinction between an individual I referred to as a religious fake and one that I described in terms of a religious purist. The latter term was suggested simply by reading the 27th verse of James where we come across of the first chapter where we come across the words pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

That is a definition of pure religion, a very astonishing definition in many ways but nonetheless the inspired one. But over against that you remember in the earlier verses of that opening chapter James contrasts the fake, the person who masquerades, the phony, the one who claims to have a genuine religious faith but he has nothing like that at all. Now why am I reminding you of this? Well I do so for this reason, that in the 14th through to the 26th verses of the second chapter it seems to me that the same idea is there within the text.

This concern to differentiate, to distinguish between the phony and the real, the genuine and the non-genuine but James is not so much thinking of the individual, if you can divorce this concept from the individual, he's thinking about faith itself, phony faith and real faith. He distinguishes between the genuine and the counterfeit, calling the latter empty, barren and dead. Well how is it that he grasps hold the nettle of this particular concept again and springs it to our attention in the second chapter? Well he does so in the 14th verse.

Now come to that 14th verse of James 2 for a moment will you and you'll see how it is the pivot on which the whole of the following argument is going to swing. Listen to it in the authorized version and then for reasons I explain I'll quote two modern versions. Here is James putting up a question, what doth it profit my brethren, though a man say he hath faith and hath not works? Can faith save him? Now that last question seems to demand a negative response yet we know full well from the whole gamut of scripture that faith does save a person.

That's the reason why I want to bring to you the translation of the revised version and indeed of the NIV which certainly in this particular aspect conveys the original much better. The RV puts that second question like this, can that faith save him? What doth it profit my brothers, though a man say he hath faith and hath not works? Can that faith save him? Or in the NIV, what good is it my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such faith save him? Those qualifying words are necessary, why? Well you see, James is going to differentiate, as I've already previously intimated, between a false faith and a genuine faith, between the phony and the real. Now it seems to me that nothing is more important for us than to analyze this.

As an Anglican theologian, a brilliant preacher of a Keswick reputation, J.A. Motius says in his own commentary on James, it is most important to discern exactly what false faith is and what genuine faith is, and to examine ourselves in the light of the result. Well James proceeds to do this, and he does so by bringing four examples to our attention in the remaining verses, that is from the 15th down to the 26th, four illustrations of faith and they split into two categories, the phony and the real. Or if you like, and I put it this way to help you memorize our teaching this morning, he distinguishes between idle faith and ideal faith, idle faith and ideal faith.

Now follow very carefully from the passage or else you'll be all at sea. In the 16th verse to the 18th verse you get his first example of a man with a phony faith, and he describes what could well be presented as an armchair Christian. And his second example that follows from the halfway through the 18th verse to the 19th verse is that of a professional theologian.

So here are two examples of people who claim faith, but it's idle. They claim the real, genuine, biblical religion. And yet when James analyzes what they stand for he says it's all a bubble, prick it, there's nothing there, nothing there at all.

Idle faith, contrasted later on with two illustrations of ideal faith. Well come to the first example that he gives us of a phony faith, this armchair Christian. Look at him, it's a dramatic picture, almost a caricature of a picture that is presented to our eyes from the 15th verse down to the 17th.

Here we get a man who is a Christian and he hears of others who are suffering, other brothers and sisters. They're without food, they're without clothing, verse 15. And when this man, verse 16, hears of their predicament, oh he's very touched.

Oh yes, he remembers them in their prayers, in his prayers. He gives them good advice, but no action. He's full of words, but not works.

He tells them, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled. But according to the AV rendering, notwithstanding, he doesn't give them those things which are needful to the body. Now what do you say of a man like that? He's just a bag of wind, just a bag of wind.

His words, they mean absolutely nothing at all. It is an idle faith. He switches on his electric blanket at night and he prays for those who are cold outside.

But he never reaches for his checkbook to send some donation towards their relief. I'm so very thrilled. My heart is so many, many times warmed and I feel proud of being pastor of the tabernacle when on occasions, as the other week, you gave some three or four thousand pounds for relief work in Uganda.

That is the sort of thing. I'm not being patronizing, I'm not patting you on the back for the sake of it, but credit is due in this instance. That is the sort of things that James is asking for, a practical faith that not only is your emotion stirred, but your hand starts to write out a check, starts to donate money, starts to mount relief when you hear of brothers and sisters in the next street or in the country across the world who are in need.

Well, James dismisses the armchair Christian as being a fraud. He's no time for him at all, an indication of idle faith. But let's be more particular, as James brings to us the second example, and it's a more sophisticated picture that we're presented with from the 18th verse down to the 19th.

Here is a man who is a theologian. He's a man who's given to books. He's a man who's worked out in the 17th verse as well as the 18th that there are certain categories within the Christian church.

I mean by that that the Spirit gives several, as he wills, specific gifts. So here is this academic man with his library full of books, who's given to literary pursuits, and he's worked it out that there are some in the Christian church who are called to be know-howers, know how to do things, theologically skilled. And then there are others who are do-gooders.

Now he's in the former category. He knows what he should do. He's got a good understanding of theology.

He's a reformed man if ever there was. He's got his doctrine of God precise. It's accurate.

He believes there is only one God. Verse 19, he's a monotheist. He's not a pagan.

He doesn't believe in many, many gods. He's absolutely accurate in his theological scheme. And James congratulates him on this.

But in no way will James allow such a man as this to say there are those who are called to know, and there are others who are called to do. If you know what to do, and you never do it. If your theology is not applied so that it revolutionizes your life, once again, James tells us the faith amounts to absolutely nothing.

You believe, verse 19, there is only one God? Congratulations, says James. And then he smuggles in irony almost to the quality of Malcolm Muggeridge, when he says even the devils believe that. Does a devil have faith? Does a devil have saving faith? The devils, the demons, they've got a more accurate understanding of the word of God than you and I have, my friend.

And yet they're not saved. Because you see, faith is more than intellectual apprehension. It's more than just an understanding of the word of God.

And so James gives us the caricature of two men, two individuals, one, the armchair Christian, the other, the professional theologian, and both of them are reckoned by James to be guilty. They possess an idle faith. Look what he says at the end of the 17th verse, as he brings in his verdict on the faith, on the first.

Even so, faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Look what he says at the 20th verse, wilt thou know, O vain man, O foolish, foolish man, that faith without works is dead. The New Testament will not tolerate an idle faith.

Remember how Jesus, on one occasion, gave a story, a parable of people who were unemployed in the marketplace and there was work to do. The full gist of the parable is not for us to consider at this moment, sufficient for me just to lift out one salient fact. Jesus made it quite clear that the men who were idle in the marketplace were wasting their time.

And the man who has faith, who claims to believe, but that belief is a mere lit belief. It's a mere mind understanding of the gospel, is an idle man. It's idle faith.

It amounts to a big zero. It's absolutely nothing. That's what James says.

And in no way are you privileged to argue against him or foolish enough to argue against him because he has the mind of the spirit in this particular piece of argument that he brings to our attention. Well then, having studied the negative two examples of idle faith, let's move on to two happier illustrations, but this time of ideal faith. And this you come across from the 21st verse right down to the end of our chapter.

Now remember, if I can just give you an aside, remember that James is a Jew. He's the pastor of the church at Jerusalem. He's writing by and large to a Jewish audience, to a Jewish readership, although eventually his letter will fall into the hands of non-Jews.

So what does James, the Jewish pastor, do when he looks for examples of ideal faith? When he goes into the Old Testament and he brings out from there and placards them in front of his readership, two characters who are as dissimilar as chalk is proverbially from cheese. He speaks about Abraham, and would you believe it, he speaks about Rahab, and he says these two are classic examples of people with an ideal faith. Now that's a most astonishing selection on the part of James, why? Well, Abraham is a man, Rahab, a woman, Abraham, a Jew, Rahab, a Gentile, Abraham, a patriarch, Rahab, a one-time prostitute.

Yet both these individuals stand out classically as being folk who demonstrated an ideal faith. Look at Abraham, says James in the 21st verse, was not our father Abraham justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar. Now here's the problem, those of you who are concerned with theological niceties, in fact not so much theological niceties, real difficulties for some Christian people.

When the Apostle Paul speaks in Galatians chapter 3 and Romans 4 about Abraham's faith, he takes us back to the 15th chapter of Genesis when Abraham is adjudged to be righteous before God because he believed that one day he would become the father of Isaac and ultimately of a great nation. God revealed this to Abraham and to Sarah when they were so old that one would not normally expect people to bring children into the world. And Genesis tells us in Genesis 15 that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness, he was declared just before God.

And yet when James refers to Abraham reaching a climax of faith, he takes you not to the 15th chapter but rather he takes you to the 22nd chapter of Genesis and there you've got the story of Abraham offering Isaac on Mount Moriah potentially as a sacrifice to the Lord. And James says that that was when Abraham was justified, or seems to say that, whereas Paul says Abraham was justified when he believed God years before Isaac was born. Well is there a problem here? Is there a contradiction? I think not.

It seems to me that you resolve the problem by looking into the 22nd verse of James 2. And we've got in mind the offering of Isaac on the altar. And James says you see that his faith, Abraham's faith, and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete by what he did. In other words, corresponding actions on the part of Abraham after he believed God were compatible with his original claim of faith.

Let's express that differently in case you didn't get the point. When Paul is dealing with Abraham in Romans and in Galatians, he talks about Abraham's beginnings in the faith. The first time when he believed God, it was credited to him for righteousness.

But that becomes almost prophetic of Abraham's life. Not only does he begin with faith, he continues in faith. And faith comes to a tremendous example when Abraham offers Isaac, his son, potentially as a sacrifice to the Lord.

Paul thinks about the beginning of the Christian life. James thinks about its continuance. At the beginning, all that is needed is faith.

But if faith is genuine, works will follow. Let me express that in terms of an illustration in case you've still not fully grasped. Let's imagine that some rich landlord invites you who happens to be unemployed to his mansion.

He meets you and other friends who are in a similar unfortunate situation outside of his estate. And then he takes you through the gate and up the drive and into his house. When you arrive there, you find someone else, a friend of yours, who's had exactly the same experience.

And you say to him, how did you arrive? And he says, I came through the gate. That's how I got here. How did you come? Well, I walked up the drive with the estate owner and eventually I came into the mansion.

The one spotlights going through the gate. The other talks about the journey up the drive. Both reports are accurate, but there's a different emphasis.

So when the apostle Paul speaks about faith in Galatians 3 and Romans 4, he speaks of that initial faith, that beginning in the Christian walk. But James, when he refers to Abraham's faith now, he speaks about it continuing, about its logical progression and development. Now biblical faith, when it has opportunity, will always develop, will always manifest itself.

So when James wants an illustration of ideal faith, he puts our attention on Abraham and says that this is a man who not only began in faith, he continued the faith walk and offered Isaac as a sacrifice to the Lord. But what about Rahab? Her story is just referred to in passing in the 25th verse of this chapter. And those of you who are familiar with the account of Rahab in Joshua will have the second chapter and the sixth chapter of Joshua in your mind.

But the point that James is here illustrating is that this lady was prepared in a given circumstance to offer hospitality and security to two members of the intelligence forces of the Hebrew army prior to the taking of Jericho and the collapse of the walls. And we are told of Rahab in verse 25 of this chapter in the same way, in a similar fashion to that of Abraham. She was considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction.

Now let's gather the whole of the teaching of those two illustrations together. What is James saying? Well analyze Abraham's life, analyze Rahab's life. Both claim to have faith in the living God.

How do we know they had faith? Well Abraham gives God full obedience. Rahab will minister to those who are unfortunate as these two Israeli spies were. She will in effect see them in categories referred to earlier in James, the last verse of the first chapter.

Her religion will prompt her to act in favor of those whose life is very much at the point of meeting her in the balance. So you have this contrast very clearly drawn in James's epistle between idle faith and ideal faith. You remember the armchair Christian, the professional theologian, the people who are all words but no works, who are all advice but no action, says James, that does not constitute biblical faith at all.

Biblical faith is one in which a person is seen at every end and turn of their life to be working through what they believe. Genesis 15, Abraham says, I believe you God, I give you my life. Genesis 22, he's brought face to face with a test.

Are you prepared to give your son, your only son Isaac, will you lay him on the sacrifice on the altar for me? And Abraham comes through. His faith is a genuine faith. His faith develops.

So does that of Rahab. She says to the spies at the beginning of her encounter with them, I believe that your God is the God of the heaven and the earth. There is no other God like your God.

Do you really believe that Rahab? If that is so, let actions illustrate your words. Give refuge to two of God's servants and let's see that your faith is ideal. Now, my Christian friend, I ask you, what's the measure of your faith? Is it an idle faith, an academic faith? Do you come here Sunday morning by Sunday morning, I and in the evening too, and you mouth these hymns, my faith looks up to thee, thou Lamb of Calvary, but in the practical situation, you know full well, it doesn't really make any difference.

Your home is not open to people. Your checkbook is not open to those who have need. You know full well that there is a contradiction between what you sing on a Sunday and the way that you live on a Monday through to Saturday.

Is that your situation? Then I warn you, I have to warn you in the name of James, more still in the name of God, I have to warn you that there is such a thing as an idle faith. The most wretched pastoral situations I have to deal with is trying to cope with people who for 20 or 30 odd years have convinced themselves that they've been Christian. When in fact they have been just nominal, going through the mechanics, going through the religious practices, believing that they were what clearly they were not.

If they were, then they couldn't behave as they did. They couldn't behave as they do. Their faith, idle, test yourself.

It's a hard word. It's a stern word this morning, but it's a word which comes clearly to us from the word of God itself. Is your faith an idle faith or is it an ideal faith? Do you match actions with your words? Are you there ministering to the orphan, ministering to the widow? Is your home open for people? Does your money go through your fingers quickly, directed by the Holy Spirit, not spent carelessly? These are practical tests and if I don't bring those before you, then I'm answerable to God for preaching a neutral, diluted gospel.

You remember that parable and with this I conclude that brother Richard brought to us from, is it Matthew 20, Matthew 22, of the man who was challenged as to whether he had a wedding garment. This man was invited into a feast, do you remember? Others had not turned up and the man who was given the feast sent his servants out into the highways and the byways and he told others to come in and one came in and eventually he was encountered by the Lord who gave the feast and he said, where's your wedding garment? And the man was absolutely embarrassed. He was speechless, he was without excuse.

What did that wedding garment stand for? It stands for a life with no actions to adorn the belief. Oh yes, this man could have got up and testified, there was an occasion. I was 39 years of age and someone came along to me, I was on a highway, I was without any hope at all.

Someone came and they said, do you want some food, do you want some clothing? And so I went into this feast, but I never did anything about preparing myself. Going to the feast made absolutely no difference to my life. It was just words, just words.

Revelation chapter 19 and verse 8 gives you the biblical commentary on that parable which our Lord tells in Matthew 22. Revelation 19 verse 8, it speaks of those who are redeemed. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her, the Christian community to wear.

Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. I ask you my friend this morning, have you got a wedding garment? Are there acts that you have done for the Lord God which indicate that your faith is indeed genuine? Is it ideal or is it idle? Is your faith phony or is it real? Do you masquerade as being something that you're clearly not? If the word finds you out, then I turn you to the Christ who can deal with phonies and turn the counterfeit into the genuine, who will deal tenderly with those who professed but have never really embraced.

And he will bring you into an understanding of his word and his demands upon your life so that with Abraham and Rahab, your name can be numbered as amongst those whose faith is not idle but ideal. May God bless this word to your hearts, amen. Father, far from being an epistle of straw, we would conclude that James has within its teaching the finest of the wheat and we would ask that we might inwardly digest what he lovingly communicates and we pray that our faith shall be illustrated by our actions, an ideal faith which speaks eloquently to others and brings honor and glory to the name of the Christ, amen.