A patriarch and a prostitute! Those are seemingly odd examples of godliness to most of us, and yet they are both models that James gives us in the end of chapter 2 of living faith. The important question throughout this whole series, the underlying, unspoken perhaps, question is “has Jesus really changed your life?” You see it’s one thing to profess faith in Christ and then go on living as if nothing has happened. It’s one thing to believe certain doctrines, to say you love others, to say you love God. It’s another thing entirely to actually believe, and actually love. Has Jesus changed your life? James gives us here, in verses 20-26, two examples of living faith to challenge us.
In verse 20 James begins, “Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?” He then illustrates his point with two examples of living faith in Abraham and Rahab. He writes:
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”- and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
The two examples, though from clearly different people, give us a real life picture of what it means to possess a living faith.
For Abraham, the great patriarch of the nation of Israel, his faith in God meant a willingness to sacrifice his only son. The child of promise, the one who was the realization of the plan God had told the aged man about, was going to have to die. This story has always bothered me. Maybe I don’t have the faith of Abraham, though. Because he believed that God would keep his word and acted. Genesis 22:5 reveals that Moses believed he and his son would return again to their servants after they made sacrifice. And the author of Hebrews tells us that Abraham “considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead,” (Hebrews 11:19a). So Abraham acted in faith and God spared his son. Rahab too risked. She took in spies and shielded them from enemies so that God’s plan for Israel’s conquering would be fulfilled. She believed in the God who had sent these men and so she risked her life to hide them. All this James tells us, is evidence of a living faith. He even goes so far as to say that they were “justified by their works.”
Now it’s important to note that the Greek word for “justified” can have several meanings. It can mean to declare righteous, which is often how Paul uses it. But it can also mean to prove or vindicate, which seems to be clearly how James is using it here. Paul uses it this way sometimes too, see for example his discussion of God being “justified” in Romans 3:4. The focus, then, of the passage is not on salvation by works, but rather is their evidence in your life that you have been saved by grace?
Throughout this whole series I have tried to point out all the ways that we in the modern American church have made grace cheap and salvation simple. The truth is that the gospel of God, the free gift of Christ’s righteousness and his death for our sins, is not cheap. And our reception of that gospel is not simple. God gives us freely the offer of salvation but he calls us to action. To suppose that you can become a Christian spend the rest of your life not giving one thought to God’s glory, or Christ’s cost, or the road of discipleship is to presume upon God’s grace. We are saved by faith alone, but true faith does not remain alone!
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 