Practical Christianity, James 2:20-26

Expositing further from the Epistle of James, Pastor Derek teaches us that "Saving faith is proved genuine through costly obedience to God and costly service to others".

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Transcript

Practical Christianity, James 2:20-26

A month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States forces launched an air
attack against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Early on, American planes bombed
Taliban targets while anti-Taliban Afghans fought on the ground. But the Taliban had
tanks and concentrated troops, so the troops were making little progress.
One day, an F-15 armed with precision-guided bombs got a call that the Afghans and
Americans that were taking shells from the Taliban tanks. The F-15 was cruising at
twenty thousand feet, but thick clouds lay below the highest mountain peaks, so the F-15
could not get a visual on the tanks. Flying blind, the plane had to release the weapons
and let spotters on the ground pick them up and guide them to the tanks. The military had
spent millions of dollars for this purpose, and one by one the bombs dropped on the
tanks, raining down destruction, and causing the Taliban to scatter. We could say that the success of the soldiers “justified” several people along the
way. The success justified the American troop’s confidence in their weapons. The
success also justified the generals’ strategy of waging war primarily through the air. And
finally, going years back, the success of the bombing justified the original engineers who
sought to develop the technology in the first place. (Adapted from Daniel Doriani).
If we were to use James’s terminology, we would say that all these people were “justified
by works.” It was the work of the bombing that proved them to be right. The only way that
the American troops, the generals, and the engineers could be demonstrated to be right
was through the successful bombing. In a sense, they could then say, “I told you so.”
It’s really no different with the reality of saving faith. Faith is what you believe about who
the Lord Jesus is and what He accomplished for you. It is a whole-souled commitment in
the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. As John Murray says, “Faith is trust in a person, the
person of Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the lost. It is entrustment of ourselves to
him. It is not simply believing him; it is believing in him and on him.”
In addition to being a personal matter, saving faith is also designed to be a public
declaration (Ro. 10:9). It is something that we must confess. It is something that we must
“say” we possess (2:14). But even then, we all know that professing isn’t the same thing
as possessing. Just because we profess an invisible reality of the heart doesn’t
necessarily mean that we possess saving faith (Acts, 8:13, 20-23). So, how then are we
to know if we have saving faith? If eternity is at stake, how can I know my faith is real?
The answer, according to James, is the presence of good works in the believer’s life.
James argues, we are justified, or our faith is proven to be genuine when it is
accompanied by good deeds. Our actions demonstrate the reality of our profession, and
this connection is so foolproof that James can say, “You see that a person is justified by

works and not by faith alone.” (24) And now, in 2:20-26, James is going to solidify his air-
tight argument about the relationship of faith and works. Here, we learn that...Saving faith

is proved genuine through costly obedience to God and costly service to others.

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Even though this is what James is clearly saying, this strikes us as odd because “justified
by works and not by faith alone” is not a phrase commonly used in Christian circles. We
would say the exact opposite, “We are justified by faith alone.” In doing so, we would be
agreeing with the Apostle Paul, who unequivocally stated, “For we hold that one is
justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (Rom 3:28) and we would be aligning
ourselves with “sola fide,” or “by faith alone,” the battle cry of the Reformation.” But here,
James’s argument is different. He’s not saying the exact opposite, as if we are justified by
works alone (this is often overlooked) but that we are justified by faith and works.
Harmonizing James and Paul is both simple and complicated. The simplest thing to
recognize is that they are writing about the exact same gospel, but they’re addressing
different problems that existed in different churches. Paul is fighting against the false idea
that we can in anyway earn our salvation. He’s denying that works are efficacious for
salvation. To be saved, we can’t rely on any measure of works. Salvation is not by works
or by faith plus works. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
On the other hand, James is fighting against an easy believism that reduces salvation to
intellectual belief. He’s writing to people who claim to be Christians (brothers), but their
faith is simply intellectual and emotional, it has not resulted in a transformed life. There is
little to know evidence of being a doer of the word, of practicing pure and undefiled
religion, and concern for those who are desperate need. Such “faith” cannot save (14), is
dead (17), and comparable to the faith of demons (19). We're still battling both today.
Now, as James transitions to the second half of his argument, he adds another charge
against “workless” faith (20). “Do you want to be shown,” or “do you want concrete
evidence” that a faith without works is useless? “Foolish” translates a word that literally
means “empty.” A foolish person is someone who lacks understanding. This is stubborn,
hard-hearted ignorance. There’s also a wordplay in the Greek that doesn’t come across
in English. “Useless” is literally “not working.” The idea is, a faith that does not work, does
not work. According to James, only an empty-headed, hard-hearted person would think
that we can be saved by a faith that does not result in works.
In the rest of the text, James transitions from an imaginary objector to historical
examples. He provides two illustrations from the OT that support his contention that a
faith that does not result in works is useless. The first is from the life of Abraham, the
great patriarch (21-24). James argues that there was a specific point in time when
Abraham was “justified by works,” or “justified by works and not by faith alone.”
He was justified by works “when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar.” This event is
recorded in Gen. 22:1-14. The writer of Hebrews explains the extraordinary nature of
Abraham’s faith when he says, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac,
and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom
it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was
able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive
him back. (Heb. 11:17-19) Despite all of his confusion about what the Lord was calling

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him to do, Abraham resolved to obey God regardless of the cost, and he reasoned that if
God was commanding him to sacrifice the child of the promise, then somehow, in some
way, God would bring Isaac back to life. What monumental faith!
As James explains, Abraham’s actions (or works) demonstrated the reality of true,
genuine faith. His existing faith was “active with his works” and that “his faith was
completed,” or came to its intended purpose through his radical, costly obedience. In this
sense, Abraham was “justified by his works.”
Since his point is to demonstrate that saving faith results in works, James takes us back
to Abraham’s initial conversion (23). This instance, quoted out of Gen. 15:6, refers to the
moment (over 30 years before) when Abraham originally placed his faith in God. As the
result, it was counted to him as righteousness- or he was justified by faith alone.
Interestingly, Paul uses the same illustration to prove the doctrine of justification by faith
(Ro. 4:1-5). It’s clear James and Paul are using “justified” in different senses. Paul is
using it to describe a judicial act in which God declares an unrighteous sinner to be right
standing before Him on the basis of their faith in Christ for salvation. When you believe
upon Christ for salvation, God declares you justified in His sight, that you are positionally
righteous before Him, because He transfers (or imputes) the righteousness of Christ into
your spiritual account (2 Cor. 5:21).
James agrees that Abraham was justified by faith at that point, but he wants to answer
the question, how do we know that Abraham’s faith was real and genuine, and not a
useless, dead, demonic faith? Answer: Abraham’s sacrificial obedience. When James
says Abraham was “justified by works”, he’s not saying that he was saved by his
obedience, but rather, that his obedience proved the reality of his previous saving faith.
As James uses it, “justified” means, “to vindicate, or to demonstrate as righteous.” So,
Abraham’s was justified by faith when he initially believed God, but his faith was
demonstrated to be genuine (justified by works) through his costly obedience.
Daniel Doriani says, “In God’s court, believers are justified the moment they believe. When
they trust in Christ as Lord and Savior, their sin is laid on Christ and Christ’s righteousness is
imputed to them. Yet works also justify in this secondary sense: they vindicate God’s
declaration that we are right with him. They prove that we are alive in Christ.”
Think about it Christian. Were you there in God’s cosmic courtroom when God declared
you righteous in His sight, when He justified you by faith in Christ Jesus? Of course not.
Then how do you know that what God declares about you, that you are positionally
righteous before Him, is true? Or, if you were saved as a child, how do you know that
your salvation is real? As it was for Abraham, our father, so it is for us.
Saving faith is proved to be genuine through costly obedience to God (21-24). When we
profess faith in Jesus, we are not only believing on Him for salvation, we are also
confessing Jesus as Lord (Lk. 6:46). We are recognizing Christ’s worth, that He is the
sovereign Lord of the universe, and that He alone is worthy of our devotion. In coming to

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Jesus for salvation, you are making a commitment to make Him supreme and follow Him
in obedience (Lk. 14:25-27,33; 1 Jn. 2:6). This is why Thomas Chalmers could say, “Faith
is the starting-post of obedience.” Or Bonhoeffer, “Only he who believes is obedient; only
he who is obedient believes.”
But James has another illustration up his sleeve. (25-26). James moved from Abraham
our father, the friend of God, to Rahab the prostitute. She differs from Abraham in almost
every way. He was wealthy, moral, the father of a Jewish nation, a major figure in society.
Rahab was poor, immoral, an outcast, and a minor figure in Canaanite society. Yet, as
the Israelites closed in on the city of Jericho, she believed in the Lord (Josh. 2:9-11).
And as evidence that her faith was genuine, she received the messengers and sent them
out by another way. She put her life on the line by receiving the Israelite spies and by
buying them time to get away. Her example teaches that...Saving faith is proved to be
genuine through costly service to others (25-26). True faith obeys God and serves others.
What does this look like? According to James, this means caring for those in desperate
need, of not just responding with religious platitudes, but by legitimately sacrificing
yourself for the welfare of others. And the absence of a faith that does not produce costly
service to others is analogous to a lifeless body. In order to be a living human being, you
have to have an immaterial spirit that animates the material body. If the spirit has left the
body, all you have is a corpse. If you have a faith that does not result in good deeds, you
are a spiritual corpse. Your faith is dead and useless. But where there is faith and works,
there is evidence of spiritual life.
Saving faith is proved genuine through costly obedience to God and costly service to
others. Abraham our father was justified by his costly obedience to God, and Rahab the
prostitute was justified by her costly service to others. This is good news, because
everyone in between, from the rich and the poor, the important and unimportant, the
moral and immoral, can be justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
And everyone who truly believes in Him and on Him will have a faith that works.