A Short Study in James:Having A Working Faith

One of the thorniest textual problems any Christian can face is the apparent contradiction between Paul and James. Is justification by faith, as Paul claims, or by works, as James seems to say? This problem actually has a very simple solution. For some Christians, one of the thorniest problems in the Bible is the apparent contradiction between Paul and James. It's enough to make anyone committed to complete inerrancy wither.

An Apparent Problem

James seems to say just the opposite, "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone. I have seen people twist themselves into theological pretzels trying to deal with this problem. There are a few unresolved conflicts in the Bible, but this is not one of them.

He goes back to the very beginning, citing Abraham as the archetype:. Paul makes two points here. First, if Abraham is justified by works, if salvation is his personal accomplishment, dependent on his effort alone, then he can brag about it. Second, any system of works makes God indebted to the one who qualifies. Salvation is not a gift, but a wage paid to the one who earns it. Then Paul quotes Genesis Two different terms used to illustrate Abraham's salvation.

The first is "reckoned," and the second is "justified. The word "reckoned" is a term that emphasizes an action God takes on behalf of poor sinners. To "reckon" means "to credit to the account of. He places it into our empty bank accounts, under our names. In Paul's words, "Though [Jesus] was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. This transaction took place early in Abraham's life.

We read in Genesis Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. From that time on God saw not Abraham's spiritual poverty, but his wealth. Abraham's moral bank account was rich with God's righteousness. It means "to declare free of blame; to absolve. Reckoning, the action, leads to justification, the result. Therefore, salvation is a result of justification, which comes by faith.

Salvation must come from God and not ourselves for one very good reason: Our bank accounts are truly empty. Once, while I was discussing God's qualifications for heaven with a waitress, she said, "God will approve of me. The question was a pivotal one, but she'd never considered it.

After a long, awkward silence she offered feebly, "Well, I don't take drugs. We'd only gotten through two before she began to wilt. We are guilty, each one of us. This is God's Law. These are God's requirements. Yet is there anyone who doesn't consistently violate every one? Any attempt to whittle down God's requirements to make them easier is doomed.

The Pharisees tried this, asking Jesus which commandment was the foremost of all. Jesus answered, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. We want to compare ourselves to other people, but that doesn't work.

We may fancy ourselves law-abiding citizens, but the truth is we're a lot more like Hitler than like Jesus Christ, and His righteousness is the standard. The Law gives us no hope because it has a built-in defeater to any attempt at justification by works: The Law demands perfection. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law" Galatians 5: Listen people, we really need to see these words in James as on a par with the great doctrines of grace taught by the Apostle Paul.

We need to understand that nowhere in Scripture is it taught that once we are saved we can live our lives any way we choose. We need to understand that the Christian life involves sacrificially giving of our time and our resources to those who are in need.

We need to understand that the Gospel is not just about the giving of the plan of salvation and then walking away leaving that person we witnessed to naked and hungry. We need to understand that the Gospel is both pointing men and women to the cross and then taking care of their material needs as well: Look at your Bibles, verses How much are you sorry? Profession requires action or it is not real! Perhaps through no fault of his own, or perhaps through mistakes of one sort or another. And this other brother has the means to help out this person, whether by feeding him or clothing him or whatever it may be.

Let me pray for you! And then go on your way. But not give them something to eat? Something to clothe their body? Faith is the sun; good works are its rays. If we allow brothers and sisters to wander through this life hungry and ill-clad, people we are worse than pagans. And listen again, as I said a moment ago, there is an unfortunate attitude loose in the church today that the only thing we owe people is a clear presentation of the Gospel!

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We owe them that, no doubt. And we better give them that, too! The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most important thing that believers share with others. But it is not either the Gospel or the material things needed for life, it is both! I was hungry, and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger. I was imprisoned, and you crept off quietly to your chapel in the cellar and prayed for my release.

Paul and James on Faith and Works | Religious Studies Center

I was naked, and in your mind you debated the morality of my nakedness. I was sick, and you knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, and you preached to me the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely, and you left me alone to go pray for me. A Dead Faith James 2: He very clearly says it is dead! The only bright light in an otherwise dark scenario is the fact that it is nothing new. The early church went through this very same thing, according to James.

Our churches in America are filled with fat and sassy people who love the good life America has to offer more than they do the Kingdom of God. Another of the consequences of this recession is the plunge the stock market has taken. But as a measurement of the economic health of our country, the stock market is pretty important. Translated into dollars this means that approximately 1. That is with a T, by the way. Some of that money will come back if the economy and the market improves, but some of it is gone for good.

Much of this money, perhaps the majority of it, was lost, not by the very wealthy, but by folks who had savings placed in k retirement accounts or any savings plan that invested that money in the stock market. And that includes Christians and Christian organizations. We care more about capital campaigns, church buildings, and our own personal wealth than we do Kingdom work.

And He sovereignly allows calamity to fall on individuals and on entire nations. If God is judging our nation, and I believe He is, then He is not doing so because of the atheists and all those who are antagonistic to Jesus Christ, but He is doing so because His people, all those who name the Name of His Son, are virtually indistinguishable from the unbelieving world around them.

We look just like everyone else! We are marching into a post-Christian night and God is either judging us in preparation for our destruction or He is judging us in an attempt to bring us back to Him. When is the last time you took the time to serve someone else? To listen to someone? When is the last time you prayed with someone who was hurting? When was the last time you showed your faith instead of just telling everyone about it?

When was the last time you lived out your faith in love and sacrifice? And because of that he kind of stands out from the rest of the crowd. But what really sets Vance apart is that he is a servant-hearted father who cares not only for his own kids, but also for the many other kids who play in the streets by his building. One night at 9 p. The year-old boy who lives a few doors down needed help tying his tie. He had a big presentation at school the next day, and he had no father to help him get ready. After Vance had finished tying the tie, the boy sheepishly asked, "Do you have a pair of black dress shoes I could borrow?

He was certain God was telling him to give the boy those shoes.

Paul and James on Faith and Works

He told the boy to wait at the door as he headed into the apartment to look for any pair of shoes but the expensive pair. Before he went to the closet, though, he told his wife what he sensed the Spirit was saying to him. She agreed that it sounded like God had given him a great idea. So Vance got out his new shoes and brought them to the boy. He was teaching that the means of salvation that God had provided for all people, Jew and Gentile, was ultimately not the law of Moses but the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Salvation came through Christ; the law had been given to lead Israel to Christ.

First, it teaches that we are justified by our faith in Jesus Christ. This is seen in the logic of Galatians 2: In teaching about our faith in Christ, Paul did not use the word faith to mean merely passive mental assent. The Greek words translated faith pistis and to have faith or to believe pisteu? As Paul reminded the Galatian Saints, their faith was inseparably connected to their baptism: Nevertheless, Paul did not classify baptism or obedience to the gospel as works, because, as we have seen in this context, works meant works of the law of Moses—distinctively Jewish rituals—not general efforts to live the gospel.

Paul saw baptism and obedience to the gospel as outgrowths of faith in Jesus Christ. For Paul, faith meant a wholehearted acceptance of salvation through the Atonement of Christ; to place faith in Christ was to commit oneself into his care with a trust that naturally manifested itself in actions such as repentance, baptism, and striving to live by the Spirit. Faith alone commitment to the gospel will justify us to God, even without living the law of Moses. As Paul later wrote to the Saints in Rome, he expanded upon many of the same teachings that he had presented in Galatians see Romans 1—8.

Notice that in each of these passages where Paul referred simply to works, he also referred to grace: For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: Briefly, two important characteristics of these passages need to be recognized. Works in this context does appear to refer more broadly to our acts of religious devotion in general. Without it, we would be forever lost see 2Nephi 2: On the basis of our works, we all fall short.

It deepened his appreciation for the Atonement of Christ. Thus, we cannot assume that even Paul always meant the same thing by the terms he used. The second epistle of Peter mentions this: If God responds to sin with goodness, then why not sin? Twice more in his epistle to the Romans, Paul refuted the charge that he promoted or condoned sin see Romans 6: Paul was also accused of teaching against the law of Moses, which if true would have been regarded as a serious offense—blasphemy—for the law had been given by God.

But Paul took pains to clarify that the law was good. The law was not responsible for human sin or the consequences of sin; the law merely made human sins clear for all to recognize:. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: Was then that which is good made death unto me? But sin, that it might appear sin, work[ed] death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

Paul explained that the problem with the law was that while it clarified what sin was, it did not deal with the problem of human weakness or impart spiritual life see Romans 8: For that, we needed the Atonement of Christ. When Paul returned to Jerusalem following his third missionary journey, a riot broke out in the temple courts when Jews from Asia Minor spotted Paul in the temple: This, of course, was not true; Paul and the other Apostles taught that Gentile members of the Church did not need to live the law of Moses.

To dispel the rumors, Paul went to the temple as requested—and that is where the riot broke out and Paul was arrested see Acts We learn some important facts from this account: Though many commentators have emphasized the seeming disagreement between Paul and James, it is possible to see them as mutually supportive, each ministering to different ethnic groups, and both trying very hard to keep the Church together at this time of extraordinary cross-cultural tensions.

Paul faced opposition from Jews nearly everywhere he preached see Acts It does seem that James was responding to such accounts, judging from phrases he used to introduce his discussion on faith and works: These phrases suggest that James and his readers were aware of people who were speaking in a simplistic way about faith absent from works. We can see these usages at work throughout these verses in James. The King James Version does not translate the Greek article h? Another is seen in the verses that immediately follow: Even so faith [h?

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This verse is comprised of three statements: But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith [h? James next turned, as Paul did, to the example of Abraham. It is plausible, therefore, that James could have heard distorted versions of what Paul had taught about Abraham and felt impelled to reassure his readers and correct doctrinal misunderstandings. Seest thou how faith wrought with [sun? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Paul would have agreed, for, as we have seen, Paul did not conceive of faith without obedience.

Thus James did not oppose Paul; he opposed only the false idea that faith was passive. Paul would not have disagreed. Paul had taught that God offered salvation through the Atonement of Christ, and thus the way we receive the blessings of the Atonement is by faith in Christ—faith that leads us to enter the new covenant and live the gospel. James would not have disagreed. Both Paul and James taught faith in Jesus Christ and lived by that faith. Both knew that true faith in Christ transforms us, for both had experienced personal transformation arising from their faith.

A Faith That Works (James 2:14-20) Introduction: The...

James had initially disbelieved that his brother Jesus was the Christ, and Paul had initially persecuted the Church see Mark 3: Both had their own sacred experiences coming to know the risen Lord see Acts 9: Ehrman, The New Testament: Oxford University Press, , — My approach to this subject is also somewhat similar to that of Stephen E. Deseret Book, ], 82—85 and of BrianM. Anti-Pauline Rhetoric or a New Emphasis? Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and ThomasA. Wayment [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, ], — I agree with Robinson and Hauglid generally that Paul and James harmonize in doctrine while differing in semantics, audience, and historical setting, but the scope of this paper has permitted a more in-depth, contextual look at these issues.

Deseret Book, , What James meant by the terms dikaiosun? Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works.