What Kind of Faith Do You Have?

This is the text of the sermon I am preaching for my grandfather's church this morning:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. (James 2:14-26 NRSV)

I read this passage the other day and I found myself a little confused. I had always heard that we are justified by faith. So I looked it up. Sure enough I found Romans 3:28 "For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law." So what are we to do with this apparent contradiction? After all the Holy Spirit inspired the whole of scripture.

I believe that what we have here is not the opposition of faith and works, rather the combination of the two that shows us who actually has faith. Once that realization strikes you it is amazing how much of the sayings of Jesus come into focus.

Let's look at Matthew 7. As the Sermon on the Mount draws to a close Jesus says to beware of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing. He says you will know them by their fruits. The very next thing that he says has always been for me one of the most terrifying parts of the Bible.

"Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' (Matthew 7:21-23 NRSV)

That verse always made one wonder. These people prophesied and cast out demons. Jesus doesn't even know who they are. Pretty chilling. Let's read the next verse.

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-and great was its fall!" (Matthew 7:24-27 NRSV)

Notice his words. Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them. Jesus was not some guru. In his human form he walked the earth as a rabbi. Judaism is not a religion of navel gazers and good intentions. It is a faith that requires it followers to live the life that God has called all people to live.

So how does this connect with our text from James? Very simple. Before I go there I want to turn to another text in Matthew. In Matthew 25 we are nearing he end of another group of Jesus' teachings. After this parable he immediately launches into the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Now you know this parable. The sheep and the goats are separated. How does Jesus separate them? By what they did. Does this mean that we are justified by our works then. No! No! No! We are justified by our faith. Ephesians 2:8-10 says: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life."

I like how the evangelical scholar Christopher J. H. Wright says it in his book The God I Don't Understand "Yes, of course. We are justified by faith. But we will be judged by our works."

This agrees with the words of Jesus we have already seen. In Matthew 7 we saw that Jesus was not interested in all of the spiritual claims and actions of the people. he wanted people who would listen to his words and act on them in the parable of the sheep and the goats we see that he knows his sheep by what they have done. This also falls in with what John saw in Revelation.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. (Revelation 20:12-13)

So what about Paul? Well he saw this as well. In his second letter to the Corinthian church he wrote: "For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil."

The evangelical tradition is a proud one in the US and Great Britain. The evangelical leaders cared passionately about saving souls. It defined what they did. They were not just interested in that though. They wanted to change society. If you have see the movie Amazing Grace you know about one aspect of William Wilberforce's career. He, and other evangelicals, also reformed the penal system, abolished slavery, enlarged the vote, and completely changed society. They did this because they believed it was their job to create a society that lived out the commands of Christ. They were not content to wait for Christ to return to make their world a better place, they decided to do it. They didn't wait for the government to do it, they simply took the initiative. They took over prisons, they took over the poor houses, they opened hospitals.

You see, this is exactly what James was referring to. The whole point of the Law and the Prophets was not to bring salvation. Every Jew knew that God saved by His grace. After all, the law and the prophets are full of such stories. God called Abram, not because of what he had done. He saved the children of Israel through His mercy and grace. After they were saved from Egypt, then they were told how to live in order to show the goodness of God to the nations. The prophets called God’s people to come back to that life. Their exhortations are full of return, come back, change.

You see those were all previews of what we are called to do. We were saved from the bondage of sin by the passover lamb. We were called to go to a promised land. We were delivered from death and destruction by the waters of baptism. We have been called a holy people. We are called to be priests and kings. So now we need to live in accordance with that.

So when we think of how we are supposed to act. I ask you to see Jesus. He is there in the eyes of a malnourished child in Africa. He is there is the face of a mother in Haiti who has just lost her children. He is there in the woman who is being abused by her husband. He is there in the child being sold into the sex trade, or forced labor in the chocolate industry. He is there in the faces of the people at Providence House. Will you join me in a crazy, radical idea brought to us two thousand years ago. Will you take the time, make the time to change the world. It may take an occasional Saturday afternoon. We may miss a favorite TV show in the evening. I ask you. For the love of Him who came to earth and died an agonizing death on the cross. How could we do any less?






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