James is an appraiser. He's coming and he's examining the faith of the people of God. And as he does it, he lays out some of the characteristics of what true saving faith is. What does it look like? What are its characteristics? How do we describe it? How do we know? How do we know that we have saving faith? That's the question that we're asking today in our text from James Chapter 2. Verses 14 through 26. James is talking about faith and works and this passage of Scripture has caused no level of consternation to expositors everywhere because they it seems on the surface that he's contradicting Paul or that Paul is contradicting James. Remember we said. that James was written much earlier than Paul's letters, probably the earliest writing that we have in the New Testament, even before the Gospels. And so James is not, is Paul coming in later and contradicting what James says here in our text? For instance, Paul in Galatians 2 verse 16 says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. But in our text today, James says in verse 24, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. So on the surface, it seems like Paul is contradicting James. James is teaching a justification by works, and Paul is teaching one by faith alone. These are the questions we're going to wrestle with as we look at this text today. Is Paul contradicting James? What we're going to find is that he's not contradicting James. James and Paul are writing to two very different audiences with very different goals in mind. But we're going to look as we go through this text just exactly what James means by saved, justified by works and not by faith. The question I want you to keep in mind as we read this text is, how do I know that my faith is saving? How do I know that my faith is a saving faith? How do I know what kind of faith is saving faith? So let's look at this text together from James 2, beginning in verse 14. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works, and the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted 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. 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? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. The word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this portion of your word. We ask that you would give us wisdom and insight as we peer into its depths. Help us to see the nature of true saving faith and respond accordingly. For we pray this in the strong name of Jesus, and amen. James is teaching us that since saving faith is never alone, we must respond with faith that is accompanied by works. James begins by asking a question, what good is it? He wants to understand the value. He's trying to appraise their faith. What value is your faith? Now let me pose this situation. A poor man, brother or sister, comes to you poorly clothed, and the word is basically naked. They're in tatters. They come to you. They're poor. They don't have the basic daily sustenance. And they ask you for help. And you say, go, be warm, be filled, be in peace. And you turn and do nothing. What good is that kind of faith? If that's how you respond to the needs of someone who comes to you, what is the value of that kind of faith? Remember, this is one long-sustained argument in chapter 2 that James is making. We began talking about not showing partiality because it's inconsistent with the gospel. It divides the church. God has united us together in Christ as one body. How can we show partiality to the rich instead of the poor? Over the poor. it divides the church and it dishonors the poor. And then we saw that showing partiality beyond being inconsistent with the gospel, it breaks the law of God because you're not showing love to your neighbor, which is a violation of the law. And if you break one part of the law, you break the whole law because God, the law giver is one God. The law cannot be broken because it's an expression of his character. And now James moves to show that if you respond by showing partiality in this way, what kind of faith do you have? What is the value of it? He's appraising their faith, and he gives them the situation. And on the surface of it, it's absurd. No one would do that, or at least we think we wouldn't. If somebody comes to us, we think we would respond by helping them. But apparently the churches that he's writing to, they've introduced some kind of dichotomy. It's almost like they're thinking that faith and works are spiritual gifts. Some people have faith, some people have works. You have your works, that's wonderful. I have my faith. Something like 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul outlines the gifts that are manifest in the body of Christ. But that's not what James is teaching here. James is trying to show how absurd it is for us to try to separate works from faith. Faith must respond by doing something, that is meeting the needs of these poor people in their community. Faith alone, he says in verse 17, is dead. Something that is dead is lifeless. It has no inertia. It can't move anywhere. I remember being a boy, maybe four or five, and my dad was a guitar player. He loved to play secular, take secular music and put Christian lyrics to it and use it evangelistically. And he was always tinkering with his guitars, fixing them, making them. And he made me a guitar out of a guitar neck, just the neck. And I used to air guitar like I was, you know, a rock star. But I wasn't, I was just imitating what my father was doing. Now what kind of guitar player was I? With just the neck. No strings, no pickup. What kind of music did I make? Now, the value of my guitar playing was nothing besides being sentimental to my father and me imitating him. But if he didn't play, there was no music. In the same way, faith, if it's not joined with works, it's empty and dead. Now imagine that I grew up and I was not five anymore. I went to college and I took my guitar neck with me. And I'm there in the school and I'm rocking out with my neck. I mean, the absurdity of it. And I think it's playing guitar. But everybody else around me knows that's air guitar. That's not, you're not, You have no talent there, because there's no music. Faith without works is dead. It's dead. If it is alone, it's dead. What would you do in this situation? What would you do if somebody came to you who is destitute? How would you respond? Are you calculating in your mind, can't afford really to help? Somebody can, there's gotta be an organization. The point is not to make you feel guilty. The point is for you to examine how would you respond to the needs of others? And James is showing that if you respond in this way and then call it faith, then you're wrong. We're asking ourselves the question, how do I know if I have saving faith? Well, the answer is, if it's not alone. If it's not alone. Since saving faith is never alone, our faith must be accompanied by works. And so James, he responds, In verse 18, he continues. Now he seems like he's answering objections like the relativist. You know, a relativist is somebody who thinks truth is relative, that it's it's true for you, but I have my truth too, and both are true. And this is pervasive in our culture. Well, you see, in verse 18, this objection, someone will say you have faith. I have works. You know, we'll split the difference. I'm gifted with faith. I just believe. I hear people say this when I talk with them. They say, yeah, I'm just not religious. I'm spiritual. I believe there is a God. But we all get to him in our own way. You know, we all serve and worship him in our own way. The Buddhists, the, you know, the Mormon, the, all the different, Islam, you know, New Age, whatever. We're all worshiping the same God, really. And I'm just not religious. And that's just a pretty mask for unbelief. For unbelief says that I don't believe that there is a God, and I'm not going to be responsible to him. But James responds by saying, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. He's basically saying, prove it. You say you have faith. Let's see what it looks like. Bring it out for all of us to see. You show me your faith apart from works, and I'll show you mine by works. Prove it. Prove that you have faith. And then we'll all examine and see which one is genuine and real. Which one is the real thing? James is an appraiser, calling people to examine their own hearts. He says, you believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Believing that God is one is part of the creed of Israel. As they recite the Shema from Deuteronomy 6, 4, where Deuteronomy says, hear, O Israel, the Lord, our Lord, is one God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Remember that we talked last week summarizes the first table of the law Jesus teaches that Deuteronomy 6 for the Shema here Oh Israel along with love your neighbor as yourself all of the law and the prophets hang on on those two commandments and all Israel Recited this from birth. This is their catechism The Lord our Lord is one and Wonderful, you believe that. That's great. You know the catechism and you can recite it from birth. Wonderful. Even the demons believe that and shudder in fear. That's not enough. It's not enough just to believe in propositions. It's not enough just to have mental assent. Just to think, yes, I believe God. I believe the creed. I believe even our catechisms. I believe those things to be true. That's not enough. That's not enough. Even the demons believe that, right? These are facts. We must believe them. We must believe that they are true. But James is pushing us. Bring out your faith and put it on display. Let's see what it looks like. And so he says, Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? This is really stark, harsh language. He calls them fools. Fine, I will stoop down to your level, and I will prove to you that faith must be accompanied by works. And then he gives three examples, and we're gonna look at these three examples, and then we'll be in a better position to give a definition of what is true saving faith. First, he begins with Abraham. Now, we read the story that James quotes from. He says, was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works. Now, we read the story of Abraham being called to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. The Lord begins that section in verse 1 by saying that he's coming to test Abraham. He wants to test his faith. Will Abraham cling tightly to his faith in God and move out to sacrifice his only son, his promised heir, the only heir? The one that God gave to him. Why would God call him to do that? Will he trust? Will he step out in faith to sacrifice his only son? Hebrews chapter 11, verse 17 through 19, that great hall of faith chapter in Hebrew says this. 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. So Abraham, he moves out in faith because he thinks to himself, God, who gave me this promise seed, this child who is a covenant child, who is a promise, the line is going to proceed through him. If God has given him to me, then God, after I sacrifice him, can raise him from the dead. And so his faith works, and it moves out. Can you imagine the anguish that he must have been experiencing? Walking with his probably almost 14-year-old son up the mountainside. Where's the sacrifice, Dad? Why do you have a huge knife, Dad? What are we doing here, Dad? Can you imagine the turmoil? Faith is made perfect, is completed by His work. God intervenes and says, now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. God was testing Abraham's faith. God wasn't asking Abraham to do anything that he wouldn't willingly do himself when he offered up his own son as sacrifice for each one of you. Abraham's faith moved him to respond in obedience. Imagine. Imagine if Abraham believed, but it was just a thought. I believe in God. I believe God. I'm not going to do this. It doesn't seem wise to me. I'm going to stay here at home. Imagine, is that faith? What kind of faith is that? What's the value of that kind of faith? Nothing. James says it's useless. That's the first example that James gives us. The second is the example of Rahab. In verse 25 he says, 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? Now it seems we have two contrasting examples here. We have the great patriarch Abraham, the prostitute Rahab. But she did an amazing thing. You see, she's in the city of Jericho. Great fear and dread has fell on the whole land of Canaan because they know Israel is coming. And they're wiping out everybody in their path. She hides the spies and allows them to leave. Now, this isn't just opening your home to strangers. These are enemies. She is a traitor to Jericho, her city, for hiding these people. It takes incredible faith. To say, I spurn the city that I'm in because I'm going to wed myself to Israel's God. She says this to the spies. She says, and I said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land melts away before you. "'For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water "'of the Red Sea before you when he came out of Egypt, "'and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites "'who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, "'whom you devoted to destruction. "'And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, "'and there was no spirit left in any man because of you. "'For the Lord your God, He is God, "'in the heaven above and in the earth beneath.'" Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death." Now imagine if her faith just was in propositions. I believe that Israel's God is God. And it didn't go anywhere else. She would have been destroyed along with all of Jericho. Her memory would never have been remembered. But we remember her down to this day for her faith that moved out, trusting that God would honor that. And he did. She became the great, great, great, great, great grandmother of King David in the line of our Messiah, Jesus Christ. Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho, commended for her great faith. But it wasn't just a faith that sat there. It wasn't just a faith that believed the catechism. It was a faith that worked. It was a faith that worked. Then the last example he gives in verse 26 is of the body apart from the spirit. He says a body apart from the spirit is dead. So also is faith without works. There is a debate in the science scientific community about how to define death. Is it just the cessation of life? Well, that's not really helpful because you have to define what is life. Used to be thought that maybe it was the cardiac. If there was a cardiac arrest, no heartbeat for a long time, then you're dead. But with CPR, we can revive people minutes, hours later. So it's brain activity. But even brain activity, people on ventilators can do surprising things like maintain circulation and respiration and control their temperature, heal wounds, fight infections, gestate fetuses. So it's not just brain activity. We look at scripture and we know that death is when God withdraws the breath of life from you. Breath in Hebrew and Greek is one of those wonderful words that means it has a rich depth to it. It means breath, it means wind, it means spirit. When God takes his spirit, that's when the body dies. It ceases to have life because there's no spirit animating it. There's no spirit making it move. Death is not natural. It's not natural. People try to console others when a loved one passes away and they're elderly. They've lived a good long life. They had a good life. Now, death is just natural. And they try to console you with that. But it's not natural. We were not made to die. No matter how long we live with somebody, when we lose them, we feel robbed. Because it's not supposed to be this way. Death is a product of the fall. It's a product of the curse of sin. And we have eternity in our hearts, such that we long to be with God and to live with Him forever. And James says, just like the body, apart from the spirit, which is unnatural, so it is with faith without works. It's not natural. It should never be that way. Faith should always be accompanied with works. What James has shown in this sustained treatment is that faith without works is good for nothing, it doesn't make sense, and it's not natural. Now we're in a better position to ask ourselves the question, what is saving faith? Our confession says that faith is receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness alone is the alone instrument of justification. Yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. Faith is receiving and resting upon Christ and His righteousness as the alone instrument for our justification. But it's never alone, but it's always accompanied with all those saving graces. It's faith working through love. This is the relationship. What we're looking at is the relationship between justification and sanctification. Justification is an act of God's free grace, the catechism says. Sanctification is a work of God's free grace. They're different. Justification is the declaration. Imagine you're in a courtroom. You're standing before the judge of all the earth. All of your sins are there. He's looking at a list of everything that you have done wrong, every idle word, every sinful thought and action and deed. They're all there. He looks up from that record of debt, and then he looks to you, and he sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, because you're clothed in him. And Jesus says, that one is mine. and your record is cut and done away with, and the charge not guilty is registered on your account. That's your justification. You did nothing. You stood there. And if you were not clothed in the righteousness of Christ, then all of your sins would have clothed you. But because of that, Because of that great declaration, not guilty, you have freedom. You have great joy. Now imagine you turned and left the courtroom, and then you walked out and showed partiality to the rich over the poor. Imagine you turned and you hate your brother in your heart. You have just been cleared of all this debt. And then you turn and treat others not showing mercy. It's absurd. Faith, when it hears that declaration, when it partakes of that good news, it responds in loving joy, in faith-filled obedience with great desire to love and serve those who are poor and needy, our neighbors. It responds by showing mercy. Remember, in verse 13, just before this section, James says, judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Justification is the declaration that you are right with God. Our sanctification is the daily walking out, conforming ourselves to that good news. As we become more and more like Christ by putting off the old man and by putting on Christ, by daily taking up our cross and following him, by obeying his word, We talked at length last week about the law of God, how it's a perfect law of liberty, how it gives us direction, and how we are to live before God. James and Paul, they have different goals in writing, but they're saying the same thing. See, Paul is saying that you cannot be justified by works of the law. And what he means by works of the law is those works that Jews did to separate themselves from unclean Gentiles. But the problem in the Galatian church is that the Gentiles are becoming Christians, and the Jews are saying, well, if you want to come to Christ, that's good, but you also need to keep the law of Moses. particularly you need to be circumcised and you need to keep to these food restrictions that separate us and Paul says if you if you boast in that if you make your justification in that works of the law You will never be justified because you will never be good enough Paul has the same category that James has he says it's in Galatians 5 6 it's faith working through love Paul is not contradicting James. James is not calling us to use the law of God as a means for our justification. James is saying the works demonstrate that we have been justified. They're the fruit, the evidence of it. They prove your justification. How can you have faith? How can you be justified and not have proof of it in your life? How can you have the declaration, not guilty, and then continue in sin? It's absurd. When Christ gave you his righteousness, he also gave you his spirit that daily enables you more and more to look like him. So the question we're asking ourselves is, do I have saving faith based on this criteria? What does my life resemble? What does it look like? What fruit, what evidence is there? How am I marked? How do people know me? This is seen most tangibly, James says, in not showing partiality. This is a part of his argument. The church is divided because it's treating some people differently than other people based upon their appearance, based upon what they look like. And James says, that's not demonstrating faith when you treat people Differently, we're all made one in Christ. There's no distinctions. Remember, the ground is level at the cross. All of us only bring our sin. And we only all receive the righteousness of Christ. There's no ground for boasting. Not in the color of your skin, not in your status in society, your class, Not in being Presbyterian. Not in being Reformed. None of those things matter before God. But do you have the righteousness of Christ imputed to you and received by faith alone? That's the only thing that makes a distinction between me and someone who's not in Christ. And that's no cause for us to show partiality, but pity. and to reach out to them in love because of their desperate plight, because if they perish in their sin, I shudder. I shudder to think of the judgment that awaits those who are not in Christ. And if when I'm preaching this message and your heart is hard, And you're thinking to yourself, I don't know if that characterizes me. I don't know if I have that kind of faith. Brothers and sisters, today is the day of salvation. So long as it is called today, it's not too late to call on the name of the Lord. Our justification is shown by the work that we do. And many of you, I know, do great work, great work of love, pouring out yourself over decades in this church, caring for and meeting the needs of your brothers and sisters in Christ, pouring yourself into your community, Let me remind you that our church in North America is falling under the weight of nominalism. They have a faith, but they denied the power of it. Nominalism is this, I believe, but it doesn't ever work. It's Sunday morning Christianity. But Monday through Saturday, our lives resemble the world. There's no differentiating someone who's a Christian from someone who's not a Christian. But brothers and sisters in Christ, God has called us to live lives of holiness. And that means that we will look different than the world. Our lives will be counter-cultural. Our families will look different. The way we parent our children will be different. The standards that we set in our home will be different. The things that we watch and consume on the media will be different. What we fill our minds with will be saturated in the word of God. Don't let your faith be only in name. Be only in pious words that sound good, but don't result in action. True saving faith is seen in a life devoted to God. True saving faith is not alone, but is always accompanied by works. Let us examine our own lives to make sure that we are bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. For a day is coming when God will separate the sheep from the goats, separate those whose faith is one in name only from those who have true, genuine faith that have responded to their justification. who have washed the feet of the saints, who have cared for the poor and the sick and those in prison. True saving faith is evident for all to see. If God has declared you to be righteous in your justification, then your life should reflect that. That's what James is teaching. Don't have a faith in name only, but respond with joyous gratitude and obedience to our Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that in Christ we have the great declaration, not guilty. And sadly, Father, that although true of many of us, there is a disconnect between that statement and us moving out in faith and obedience to you and what you have called us to be as your people. Father, please forgive us and teach us to demonstrate, to give evidence of the justification, the faith that is at work in us through the good works. We ask that all of the saints here, their faith will be perfected, be completed by their good works. For we pray this in the strong name of Jesus, and amen.