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 demons 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 lodging 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. (James 2:14-26)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
This week’s topic brings me back inevitably to Martin Luther. I had a great conversation after church last week with a couple of people about Martin Luther. They didn’t know that Luther had such a negative view of the Letter of James. But he did. He didn’t like the Letter of James and he didn’t feel it belonged in the New Testament, basically because he felt it was too works oriented, and not centred enough on grace. Luther referred to the Letter of James as “the epistle of straw” because he felt that it had no firm foundation and that it would easily collapse. Obviously he was wrong about that. 450 years after Luther’s death the Letter of James is still very much a part of the New Testament, and I find it a fascinating piece of writing. As much as you may wonder (and I wonder it too!) what right I have to claim that Martin Luther was wrong, I guess that my right to do it stems from the fact that he and are are mere mortals, we both put our pants on one leg at a time, and I have the last 450 years of church history on my side, after all! Luther’s mistake - probably because of the “temper” of the times he lived in - was to draw too strong a distinction between “works” (as understood by James - or “deeds” as the NIV that I’m using translates the word) and “faith.” Luther thought James was being legalistic. He thought James was saying that to earn your salvation you have to do certain things. I don’t believe that’s what James was saying at all. James would not have differentiated between works and faith. James’ argument is that a person is moved to a certain way of living by the mere presence of faith. In other words, faith changes us and leads us to more “godly” actions, not because the more godly actions are required of us but because acting in such ways should become a part of our nature by virtue of having faith. Mere belief or mere faith is a proposition, so to simply say “I believe in God” or “I believe in Christ” is pointless. As he explains it, even the demons can say those things, which is to say that even those things that are totally opposed to God and to God’s ways can say those things. They prove nothing if they’re only words. But words have to be put into action. We have to practice what we preach. Otherwise our words are empty, and we dishonour God by claiming faith if our faith results in words that lead to no actions.
James is not saying that “faith alone” isn’t correct. He would, of course, have agreed that faith is essential, but like Paul who said in Galatians that faith has to produce the “fruit of the Spirit,” James is saying that faith has to be demonstrated in some way for it to be living faith, and if it isn’t living then it’s of no use to anyone. “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” A faith that doesn’t show itself in action isn’t living faith. True faith will always lead to doing good works. I wonder, though: if James believed that faith without works is dead, what would James have thought about the reverse: works without faith? There are good works done without faith. Some of the most loving, kind and Christ-like souls you’ll ever meet aren’t Christians and don’t claim to be. Some are outright hostile to faith, while still doing as many or more good works as any Christian. What would James make of that?
That’s actually very interesting. He believes that faith without works is an inauthentic faith. To put it another way, real faith leads to real works that are done for the glory of God. Inauthentic faith leads either to no works or to works done for self-benefit (either to get glory from others, or to feel good about ourselves.) I suspect James would say the same thing about works done in the absence of any faith at all. He would see those works done in the absence of faith to be self-centred or even selfish, probably because they don’t enhance relationship with the person or persons benefitting from the works. At most, they perhaps assuage guilt at the condition the brother or sister is in. “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?” The good in such cases is making ourselves feel good about having done “something” even though we’ve accomplished nothing. And we can't claim not to be guilty from time to time. How many of us have said to a person "I'll pray for you" and then two hours later we've forgotten about it? That might even apply if we were to give clothing or food to the needy person - unless our faith is also moving us to confront the conditions causing the person to be in need, rather than just giving something to the person in need to help them along. Jesus Himself was making basically the same point in His famous parable of the Good Samaritan. The people who passed by the beaten and bloodied man in the ditch weren’t faithless, but their faith was worthless because it moved them to no action. And if the Samaritan himself had simply bandaged the man up and left him there the Samaritan wouldn’t have been much better. But the Samaritan took responsibility for the man. Jesus said, “Then,” (after bandaging the man up) “he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’” That’s what a working and living faith looks like. It not only does things - it cares about people; it builds relationships with those in need and it confronts the conditions that puts them in need. That’s what the church is called to - we not just meet the needs of individual people, we are supposed to enter relationship with them and to confront the powers and the systems that create the conditions that put them in need in the first place.
A living faith is a working faith - it means means living as if what you say you believe is actually true. It means trying to make a difference - not just to people, but to society as a whole. With a living faith, we become examples to the world of the difference God makes in a life and of the type of society God desires us to create, where selfishness, self-centredness and greed are all things of the past. Let me ask you: If you were sitting in on that interview, and James asked “how has your faith affected the way you live your life?” how would you answer? I hope you would say that it’s made you try to change people’s lives for the better and to try to change society for the better. Nelson Mandela - who, in my opinion, is the only person alive today who can be called a “great” person - turned 94 last Wednesday. He was baptized and raised as a Methodist. He never really said very much about his religious faith, and yet, his witness to Christ was not what he said but what he did. He had both the opportunity and the power to take great and bloody revenge on whites in South Africa for the oppression he and his people suffered, but instead he chose to devote himself to reconciliation between blacks and whites. James would have said that was a living faith - one that spoke loudly by how it was lived, and that wasn’t merely empty words. That’s proof that a living and working faith can make a difference. None of us are Mandela. Maybe we won’t change the world. But we can still live our faith and make a difference to those around us! If we do that, we don’t just claim good news for ourselves, we become good news for the world!
No comments:
Post a Comment