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 ²⁰You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? ²¹Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? ²²You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. ²³And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. ²⁴You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

I’m used to a slightly different translation of verse 20: “Faith without works is dead.”  In my many discussions on this verse, there were two camps.  The first camp said this verse proves beyond a doubt that a person can lose his salvation; the other side said that because you can’t lose your salvation, this verse doesn’t mean you can.  I, personally, still fall within the second camp, but I could never help noticing the circularity of my argument: I was using my conclusion to prove my point.  That has never been an effective apologetics strategy, but armed with our study on righteousness over the last year, it is finally clear how to answer it.

Whereas the writer in Hebrews mashed up belief and obedience into the single word “faith”, and while we Christians tend to use it that way, James was using it to refer only to our belief.  For our obedience, he said “works” or “deeds”.

 ²⁰You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?

In other words, “You foolish man, do you want evidence that belief without obedience is useless?”  Or applied to the more inflaming translation that I am used to: “Belief without obedience is dead.”

But this time around, we are equipped without our understanding of what righteousness is:

• Believe God, and He accounts it to us as righteous.
• Obey God, and it is our righteousness… or rather, that is how the righteousness accounted to us will manifest.
• As we saw in Paul’s writings, the righteousness God accounts to us gives us the status of being “just”, when without Him we are not… we are… “just”-ified, made like God, and when you say God is righteous, you are saying that He is just.

Here now is what James is adding…

²⁴You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. 

In other words, we are not brought into a state of ”justice” at the moment God accounts righteousness to us, but when we act in that righteousness.  And that makes sense, for what kind of justice has God accomplished when He accounts to us righteousness and we do not act on it?  On the other hand, acting on it does not make us more righteous.  It does not take away the righteousness God gave us; but there is no true justice in our lives if we do not act on the righteousness we now have.

So, who goes to Heaven? All of the righteous? Or only the justified? 

If the former, then it suggests we don’t need to obey to go to Heaven.  If only the latter, then notice that it is still the obedience that gets us there, because the belief made us righteous; the obedience was merely its manifestation.  So here is my conclusion: the righteous do obey.  If they don’t, then my guess is that they are not righteous… which can only mean that they do not believe what God has told them, but were merely paying God lip service.

Jesus said you’d know the faithful by their fruit, such that the fruit itself is not what saves.  Then Paul adds that the faithful in Christ are justified.  Finally, James says that without fruit (i.e., obedience), any belief is dead, and there is no justification. 

One could take this too far, and say there is a sequence to salvation… belief, then obedience. But that is not what Jesus said.  Or one could say that you are justified the moment you believe, and that you don’t have to obey… but that is not what Paul said.  So, James clarifies that without obedience, belief is dead or useless.  In other words, those who believe also obey. 

So, belief is salvific, and you will know those who believe their fruit. Simple.  It doesn’t mean we’re perfect; no one obeys 100%.  No one.  And no Christian disobeys 100%.  Even the backslidden Christians do thing in obedience… I would guess that they enter God’s discipline, as we read about earlier this week, and then come out more obedient than before.

But what about the faithful who will never obey? No such thing.  So stop fretting over the question.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 8:08 am and is filed under Word Studies, Bible Commentary, Devotional Notes, Righteousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.