Father God, it is our earnest prayer this morning that you would help us to understand this passage in a way that is entirely relevant to us and true to the passage itself. Help me to explain it. Help us all to apply it and live it. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
“What is faith?” is a question that concerns both the Christian and the non-Christian here this morning. There will be some of us who know that we do not have faith, and wonder why we don’t: Why do we find it so difficult to believe, when others appear to find it so easy? There will be some here who are perplexed about faith: I thought I had faith, but now I’m not so sure. If there is really a God, why do such bad things happen to me? Why is my life such a mess? Why do other people seem to be more certain than I am? And there may be others of us who are very confident of our faith, perhaps even too confident. And it may be that in these verses James will challenge the genuineness, the authenticity of that faith of ours. That may not be too comfortable an experience for us – like when the cashier at the checkout in the supermarket examines our credit card with peculiar intensity, or looks closely for the watermark in the £10 note we’ve just handed in. Do you find that slightly unnerving? I always do. We may feel slightly insulted when James asks us if our faith is actually a forgery. He knows we can deceive ourselves. ‘Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.’ He said back in chapter 1, verse 22, and he is still on the same theme here: ‘What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?’ (2:14).
Do I have a faith that will save me in the Judgment? That’s the question before us: do I have a faith that will save me? We need to find out.
I have four headings to take us through the passage. Notice that the first two are qualified, and the other two are unqualified.
1) Faith is Emotional …. yes …. but …. (James 2:14-17)
‘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’ (vv. 14-17).
‘What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?’ (v. 14). James is not disagreeing with what Paul wrote in other New Testament letters, where Paul stressed that men and women are saved by faith and not by works. James is not contradicting that. He is not denying that we are saved by faith. (Not for one moment is he proposing works without faith.) He is defining for us what real and living and saving faith is. But nor is he arguing that works must be added to faith to make it real. You cannot make a false faith real by adding works to it. No. Real faith itself will always have works, it will have actions, it will appear on the surface of our lives. Think of the picture we used a few weeks back to illustrate how God works.
This little picture of as it were the heart, and that line represents the surface, what is visible in our lives.
It is by faith that we (as James put it back in 1:21) ‘… humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.’
But that, hidden and invisible, occurrence in the human heart always erupts on to the surface of human life.
And that appearance on the surface (the changed life) is the only way that we can know that faith is genuine: ‘In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ (v. 17). It’s not that you can have the horizontal arrow without the vertical arrow. You cannot. They go together.
Any other pretence at faith is dead, and a dead faith cannot save. It’s just as if you and I were awaiting rescue in a burning building, and suddenly the door crashed open and a fireman burst into the room only to fall dead at our feet. He would be no use to rescue us. A dead faith will save no-one. (Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead). An example of such a non-faith is this armchair philanthropist (as he’s been called) in verses 15 & 16, who sees a brother or sister Christian in need of food and clothing and calls out, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed.” It sounds a bit like a sick ‘Adams Family’ sense of humour, doesn’t it? But I don’t think the remark is intended that way. It’s intended to be perfectly well-meaning, both pious and sympathetic: a prayer and an expression of pity. It’s not cynical or ironic. But it stops at the point of sympathy and piety and goes no further. Faith that stops with words and feelings is dead, says James.
Faith is about the emotions. Of course it is. And I sometimes fear that here at St Andrew the Great we underplay the role of feelings in our faith. We are sometimes a little too British, a little too Anglican, too restrained, too cold, too ‘stiff in the upper lip’. But James’ warning here is for those whose faith is all feeling, all emotion. Oh, we love the buzz and the excitement of a big church service, the feel-good factor of seeing one another on a Sunday. How the hairs prickle on the back of our necks when we sing ‘Amazing Grace’, or ‘How great Thou art’ all together! We love to come to church and to turn to the Bible to be comforted and strengthened in our daily lives and to be encouraged to love (all of which is great). But if we will not let it threaten our comfort zones, we’re in trouble. If it might actually cost me something in time and energy and money and dignity, I’ll confine myself to words and to wishes – “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed.”
Many years ago a very great friend of mine was Director of Training at one of the country’s great charismatic Anglican churches. And he sent me the most impressive brochure for their training courses at this church; and he asked me as a friend if I would look through it for him and see whether there were any gaps, any things missing from the various things they were running training courses in. I’m afraid I wrote back to say that I could tell him what was missing without even opening the brochure. What was missing was radical Christian lifestyle – how to live simply and self-sacrificially in 21st Century Western society. But a church doesn’t have to be labelled ‘charismatic’ for that to be true of it. How much is our faith for our own comfort? Is that why you’re a Christian? For the reassurance it brings, the bolstering of our own feel-good factor? Don’t be deceived, says James, That is not Christian faith. Christian faith cannot be confined to the feelings, least of all to the feel-good feelings. ‘In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ It is not true faith at all. Faith that stays in the feelings is dead.
2) Faith is Cerebral …. yes …. but …. (vv. 18-20)
‘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?’ (vv. 18-20).
The experts can’t agree on how much of verses 18-19 is a quotation from this “someone”, this imaginary interrupter of James at this point. There are no punctuation marks in the original Greek text, but it isn’t very important because what is clear is that a wedge is being driven between faith and obedience, and James won’t have any of it. We cannot kid ourselves that some of us have the gift of being very orthodox in our belief while others of us have the gift of being very involved in doing good.
I don’t know which side of that divide you might put yourself on. “I’m not terribly doctrinal,” you might say, “I’m not very orthodox, I’m not very sound. I’ve never really sorted out all those complicated things. But I’m very good at loving. I’m a people person: I really get involved with people. I’m that sort of a Christian.” Or the others of us who say, “Well, I’m very precise about what I believe because it is the faith that saves, and I must make sure I’ve got it absolutely right. I must get the Bible absolutely right.” We must not fall into the trap of trying to make that division. A faith that is confined to the mind, says James, is no faith at all: ‘You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.’ An orthodox declaration of belief in God is not saving faith. We may have said The Creed since we were old enough to speak, and we may never have doubted God’s existence for a moment, but that doesn’t make us Christians any more than it makes the Devil a Christian. There’s plenty of orthodox doctrine in hell. Look again at verses 19 & 20: : ‘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?’ At least the demons shudder: their belief makes them do something. For some of us it stops entirely in the mind.
Now I want to suggest that this attitude (and I think that we at St Andrew the Great may be more prone to it than we are for the feel-good attitude of the previous point) is not saying that faith is for my comfort, but it’s saying that faith is for my mind. So that every sermon has to be pondered like a proposition from Wittgenstein. It’s to be discussed over lunch with other earnest thinkers: roast sermon, a gourmet delight! But some verses in the Bible don’t actually need pondering (funnily enough) – they need acting! You and I don’t need any more help in understanding them. We may need a lot more help in obeying them. And the best way to emasculate them and to neutralise them is to keep them in the mind and not bring them to bear on our lives. It’s said that on the road to heaven there is a big signpost with two arms. One arm points to the right and it says, ‘To Heaven’. The other arm points to the left and it says, ‘To Discussion on Heaven’. All students turn left.
Well, is our faith confined to our minds? Is the natural tendency at St Andrew the Great to turn left? We love to ponder Christian truths but not to live them out. Don’t be deceived, says James to us this morning. That is not Christian faith, because Christian faith, even in Cambridge, cannot be confined to the intellect. That is the faith of the ivory-tower theologian.
Now let’s move from those two negative examples to two more positive ones.
3) Faith is Costly (vv. 21-24)
‘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’ (vv. 21-24).
Here we see the faith of the son-sacrificing patriarch, Abraham. The whole significance of the Abraham story is what his faith did to his life. In the Abraham story back in the early chapters of Genesis, God called Abraham out from his own family and his homeland, and then caused him to start a life of faith that crossed and recrossed the Middle East in response to God’s promise that He would make Abraham into a great nation to dwell in a promised land where God would be their God. But James points us to the greatest test of all in Abraham’s life. When after waiting a quarter of a century he finally, in his old age, had his only natural son, Isaac, through whom all God’s promises were going to be fulfilled, God then asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. Isaac was the dearest thing that Abraham possessed. All God’s promises to him, in the light of which he had lived his entire life, were bound up with that precious little boy, Isaac. And God says, “Go, kill him on Mount Moriah.” He’s saying to Abraham, “Abraham, is it me you really love, or is it my gift to you: Isaac?” Is it God we really love, or the gifts that God brings to us? Faith will always challenge our priorities.
[Please notice that the quotation in verse 23: ‘And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ’ comes seven chapters earlier in Genesis (chapter 15 in fact) than the aborted sacrifice on Mount Moriah (chapter 22) (aborted, because at the last moment God intervened to save Isaac). So Abraham’s faith made him acceptable to God long before this particular proof of that faith. But James’ point is that real faith must always have such proof.]
Faith must rewrite our lives, or our lives will rewrite our faith. When we say The Creed together, as we did a few moments ago, what we actually mean by those statements is defined by how we live our lives the rest of this week. Most of the rest of Cambridge would not and could not have said The Creed with us just now. But will you and I actually live the rest of this week just like the rest of Cambridge?– as if we’d never said those things? Then whatever we say with our lips on Sunday we are, according to James, practical atheists. If your faith doesn’t rewrite your life this coming week then, according to James, we are non-believers.
Our faith must affect what we do with our money, how we spend it tomorrow, what we do with our sexuality, what we do with our ambitions, our desires, our energies, our loves, our griefs, our pains, our sorrows and our joy. Faith must rewrite our lives as it did Abraham’s, or our lives will rewrite our faith. In verse 22 you see that his faith and his actions were working together: ‘… and his faith was made complete by what he did.’ Faith dominated Abraham’s life. God was His closest companion, his greatest value, his highest good. And that is why, nearly four millennia later, we still remember Abraham. There was no point to his life outside God. And, dare I say it?– there will be no point to your life and to mine outside God. You can try as hard as you can, and I’ll try as hard as I can to give our lives meaning without God, and we will not succeed.
But faith will be costly. It will challenge our priorities every day. Is there something in my life which, if God took it away, it would destroy my faith in Him? My job, my house, my children, my marriage, my hopes of marriage, my health, my self-respect, my sanity, my dignity? From time to time I need to stop and reflect what matters most – the gifts God gives me or the Giver Himself. We only fully enjoy and rightly employ the gifts of God when we put the Giver first.
Faith is more than just a feeling. It’s more than a statement of belief. It is costly. It controls our lives – and it conquers death.
Let’s finally consider the spy-saving prostitute, Rahab, and her courageous faith.
4) Faith is Courageous (vv. 25, 26)
‘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’ (vv. 25, 26).
If we haven’t got that message now it won’t be because James hasn’t told us (repeatedly!) Now this person Rahab is somebody you may not be too familiar with. She is a sharp contrast to Abraham. Abraham was the revered ancestor of the Jewish race; Rahab was an outcast, a Gentile, a non-Jew, a sinner, a prostitute and a woman (greatly devalued in the ancient world). She had no special messages or promises from God to base her faith upon, as far as we know. You may remember the story. Let me remind you of it. When the people of Israel first entered the Promised Land they were a race of ex-slaves from Egypt, who had been meandering around the Sinai Peninsular for the previous 40 years. And all they had had to go on was God’s word that He would give them the land of Canaan. In the first chapter of the book of Joshua that promise: ‘I have given them the land’ or ‘God has given them the land’ comes again and again. And then in chapter 2 they send these spies across the Jordan into Canaan for the first time, and they reach Jericho, where they take refuge in a brothel run by Rahab. And what is it that Rahab says to them? It’s a crucial moment in the story. She says, “I know that the Lord has given you the land.” That promise that had sustained them for 40 years – what do they hear when they first get into the Promised Land? They hear it on the lips of a Gentile prostitute! An extraordinary moment!
Then Rahab acted out her faith by saving the spies’ lives at the risk of her own. You don’t lightly harbour the spies of a hostile nation which is about to invade your own nation. But she does, and so eventually she saved her own life, in turn, when Israel later sacked the city of Jericho. It was living, costly, courageous, dynamic faith in an unexpected quarter: ‘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?’ (vv 25, 26).
Now, we don’t know how Rahab knew that God had given the land to the people of Israel. When she said, “I know that the Lord has given you the land,” the reaction of the spies would probably have been, “How on earth do you know that? We’re the first Israelites you’ve ever met! How can you know that?” But she did know it and she had believed it and she was now acting on that belief. Faith is a God-given thing. It appears in unlikely places and it causes people to switch allegiances; so Rahab had to act against her own people to cross cultural and racial divides.
Last Sunday I was preaching at a wedding in China. Two thirds of the wedding guests were non-English speaking Chinese. I didn’t know what reference to make, if any, to Jesus Christ at that wedding ceremony in that Communist land. But I was challenged by a prayer partner here in Cambridge before I left not to assume that there would be no Christians among the Chinese present. And sure enough, there were! One of the bridesmaids was a Christian, and we were able to talk about the emerging underground Church. I don’t know what faith has cost Christian believers in China over the last 40 years. I don’t know what faith has cost some of us here now – and is costing at the moment. There will be people here for whom faith may be as costly as it was for Rahab. Perhaps you come from a country where Christians are being persecuted today. Or perhaps here in England it has estranged you from your natural family. Perhaps it isolates you even now in your situation from the people around you: in your street, in your hall of residence, the house you live in, from the people you rub shoulders with at work day by day. Well, I want to say it’s an honour to have your company today. Living faith is an infectious thing, and I for one appreciate the encouragement of the fellowship of other believers. And I want to encourage you in turn. I know it’s much tougher for some of us than for others, and I think it’s much tougher for the young with the pressures that there are upon them – and one can remember what it’s like to stand as a Christian at school. That faith encourages me enormously.
Well, we’ve considered this faith worse than death (as I called it in the overall title). I hope we’ve checked out our own faith for signs of life. That may have been quite tough. There may be somebody here who has been convinced that he or she is not a Christian after all. Being a Christian is not a small and incidental thing. It’s not an accidental thing that just sort of happens one day. It comes because God steps into our lives, and not because of something we do, certainly. But it isn’t something to be uncertain about, a sort of accidental, coincidental thing.
The New Testament doesn’t conceive of a vague, woolly, uncertain faith which is saying, “Well, yes, I’ll try to be a Christian this week. I hope I am. Maybe. I hope so. I’ll do my best.” The New Testament speaks of a faith that transforms life; it goes beyond the emotions, the feelings; it can’t even be contained by the mind. It’s costly and courageous. It conquers death (that’s the title I would like to have sneaked in towards the end of this sermon, because that picks up on the faith of Abraham and the faith of Rahab).
People are often troubled about whether they are certainly saved or not, whether their faith is a living faith. If you are in that category I want to speak to you. If you let your faith live your life for you this week, you won’t have any doubts next Sunday as to whether you’re a Christian or not. You may have had a rough week, it may have cost you a lot of money, a lot of time or a lot of energy. You may be a poorer person next Sunday, but you won’t be uncertain about whether Jesus is a living Saviour and has called you to His own kingdom and glory and purposes. You won’t have uncertainties about whether your sins are forgiven or whether God loves you and has a purpose for your life. Let your faith live your life this coming week if you want certainty and assurance in the Christian life. Or if you don’t, James would say to us, “Don’t deceive yourself – faith without works is dead.”
Faith is not just for those who feel in a certain way or think in a certain way: it controls life and it conquers death.
I’m going to close with an old story that I find very encouraging. It concerns an elderly homeless man who lived on the streets and took to visiting a local church very regularly. He’d come into the same church in the middle of the day each day, and sit in the back pew just for a few minutes, and leave again. This happened for years. The vicar eventually noticed it was going on and accosted him. He said, “Jim, why do you come into church and sit like that in the back pew for a few moments every day?” The old man said, “Vicar, I’m not much of a believer. So I just sit there for a moment at noon and say, ‘Jesus, it’s Jim.’ And then I leave again.”
Well the old man had lung cancer and, as those who live on the streets do, he didn’t last very long. He was admitted to the local hospital and the vicar meant to visit him (he had a very full diary) and (as I know, it’s happened to me) he got there too late. He got to the ward and the Ward Sister said, “I’m sorry, he died earlier this week.” The vicar said, “Oh, I am so sorry. I’ve been meaning to visit him and I failed to do it. I don’t suppose he had many visitors.”
“No,” she said, “he didn’t have any in fact. But, you know, it’s a funny thing – he was a most cheerful patient, nonetheless, right to the end. I asked him once how he kept his spirits up. And he said, ‘It’s because of my visitor.’ I said, ‘What visitor? You never have any.’ He said, ‘He comes every day about noon. He walks into the ward and stands at the end of my bed and he looks at me. And he just says, “Jim, it’s Jesus.” ’ ”
Faith will cost. Faith must control your life and mine if we are real believers. But faith will conquer death.
Let’s pray:
Father God, it’s not easy to have our innermost lives examined by your word and tested in this way. Forgive us when we recoil from that and find it hard. But by your grace please work in every one of us, at the deepest possible level, and help us to have the faith of an Abraham or a Rahab. May it control our lives; may it conquer death. In Christ’s name. Amen.