Working in Faith
Text: James 2:1-26
Summary: Martin Luther hated this passage. Luther’s reading of Paul’s writings, placed the emphasis back on where it needed to be… on faith itself.
But for Luther, the one passage he couldn’t get around, and the one that was frequently quoted back to him was the line from James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead.” For James, one of his great concerns was how their faith was actually being lived out.
Full Text:
Martin Luther hated this passage. The founder of what would become the Protestant Reformation did not like James very much. Keep in mind, this was the one who proclaimed that scripture was the only rule for faith and life, who challenged Rome’s authority of interpretation of the Bible. Luther was far more comfortable with Ephesians, saying “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8) The mediaeval church had developed a scheme of “works” by which one was seen to earn their way into heaven. Luther’s reading of Paul’s writings, placed the emphasis back on where it needed to be… on faith itself.
But for Luther, the one passage he couldn’t get around, and the one that was frequently quoted back to him was the line from James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead.” Had Martin Luther been given a choice, he would have removed James from the New Testament, calling it an “Epistle of Straw.” Yet fortunately, Luther’s bombastic rants gave way to a more reasoned consideration that there must be some shred of wisdom as to why James was part of the New Testament. It remained in, much to our benefit today.
Most of what Luther didn’t like about James is how it seemed to contradict Paul’s writings… at least if you took the small clips and verses and held them up against each other. Since Luther furiously proclaimed that scripture could not contradict itself, the presence of James in the Bible was the thorn in his side… because it did seemed to do just that.
But James has always been a thorn in our side. It is every bit a part of the New Testament, it is every bit a part of Scripture, it is every bit something that helps us live out our faith in life. For that reason, it’s all the more challenging… it tells us faith without works is dead… It is particularly appropriate for Rally Sunday… because at least in Canadian Culture, September really is the first month of the year. This is the month where we get back into the swing of things. Students are back in school, we establish new programs and new routines, while at the same time slipping back into the familiar environs as fall and winter approach. Because we are so enmeshed with the culture around us, this is also the time of year when Canadian Christians “go back to church.” Yet as James reminds us, faith is far more than simply coming and sitting in a pew.
The Epistle of James was written nearly a full generation after Paul, where the early church was gaining more a sense of its identity. Even though it is labelled as a letter, it far more resembles a sermon than correspondence… and a rather fierce sermon at that. James appears to have been written in a time where the early church was in a relative state of peace… where the excesses and persecutions of Nero Caesar had been almost forgotten… and the vicious assault under Emperor Domitian hadn’t happened yet. This sermon preaches to a church that had become complacent in this time of peace… comfortable in their own pew… It seems that only in a few short years, they became much more interested in internal politics… and in many ways complacent about the world around them. Rank, privilege, and riches seemed to be creeping inside a community that proclaims that all are equal in the sight of God.
In other places in the sermon, James speaks to the taming of the tongue… revealing that gossip has been around for thousands of years… and was just as destructive to faith communities then as it is today. Collectively, all of these things started to eat away at the identity of these early churches… while he all but names it as such; hypocrisy had gotten its slimy toe in the door.
For James, one of his great concerns was how their faith was actually being lived out. People in his community would be boasting of their business plans of what they were going to do and where they were going to go… but it seemed that God was left entirely out of the equation once they were finished with worship. For James, this was unacceptable, the community was becoming complacent… no different than or worse yet, indifferent to the world around them.
So James goes off on this tirade, attacking what he sees as an empty faith in his congregation… because while they may be saying all the right things, their actions, or rather lack thereof, spoke far louder!
Yet ever the pastor, he does not cite a specific example, but provides a theoretical one:
1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)
One thing that many Christians stand accused of today is being judgemental. I find it ironic that as far as James is concerned, showing partiality is distinctly against what it means to be a follower of Christ. Being judgemental of others is something distinctly un-Christian. Wow… and James is just warming up!
8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 9But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (James 2:8-9)
James is not mincing words at all, is he? It’s almost as if he’s scolding his congregation!
It dovetails into his next point:
14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and 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? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.(-James 2:14-17)
We know from this that James is skilled in the art of rhetoric and debate. His argument is both abstract and specific… While his example doesn’t name names, or single any one individual out, he is talking about people within his own congregation. Faith is simply being expressed as a feeling, a warm-fuzzy kind of thing that makes us feel better about ourselves. “As long as it gives me a bounce in my step, that’s what I want!”
For James, it isn’t good enough, especially when there are people within their own ranks who are poor, who have needs, and yet those who are able to help aren’t lifting a finger. Being a follower of Christ is not something that is reserved exclusively for Sunday morning!
But James backs it up with a zinger… Okay… so you believe in God? Okay, that’s good… but he makes the point that even demons believe in God. Even those cosmic powers that oppose God, believe. So is just getting all our facts right enough? For James, the answer is “absolutely not!”
This is why Martin Luther hated this passage so much. He had spent all of his life trying to earn is way into God’s good graces… and it was a revelation to discover that by grace we have been saved through faith… it’s God’s gift. God’s love is given to all of us. It became the rallying cry of the Reformation.
So how do we reconcile these two? The problem is, we set them up in opposition without realizing that they spring from the overall foundation. We spend our time arguing whether or not we’re putting the cart before the horse… trying to figure out what we need to do or have first before we can get moving.
But neither James nor Paul would have gotten hung up on such questions. Faith, as always, is the starting point. For both of them, the question is not “are you saved?” But “God has already saved you… now what are you going to do about it?”
God has already saved you, now what are you going to do about it? Our outside actions are a reflection of that internal change.
Faith is neither theoretical nor abstract, but forms the foundation of what we do… it is by definition a part of every action in our lives. This is why James is harping on it so much. If our faith doesn’t transform and guide the way we act, how we treat one another, and how we live within one another, then what good is it? But taking the earlier words from James, we need to be very careful about judging others. We need to be very careful about the mindset that says “For your faith to be real, your experience has to be exactly the same as mine…” –but this isn’t true. Each of us is different, each of us experiences Christ moving through our lives differently, and each of us responds differently! But for faith to be real and authentic, it really does need to become seated in the core of who we are… guiding our actions in all that we do and all that we are… the ground of our being.
So how does faith transform and work our life? How does our faith extend beyond our pew every Sunday morning? Good question! Let’s find out!
Amen.
Summary: Martin Luther hated this passage. Luther’s reading of Paul’s writings, placed the emphasis back on where it needed to be… on faith itself.
But for Luther, the one passage he couldn’t get around, and the one that was frequently quoted back to him was the line from James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead.” For James, one of his great concerns was how their faith was actually being lived out.
Full Text:
Martin Luther hated this passage. The founder of what would become the Protestant Reformation did not like James very much. Keep in mind, this was the one who proclaimed that scripture was the only rule for faith and life, who challenged Rome’s authority of interpretation of the Bible. Luther was far more comfortable with Ephesians, saying “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8) The mediaeval church had developed a scheme of “works” by which one was seen to earn their way into heaven. Luther’s reading of Paul’s writings, placed the emphasis back on where it needed to be… on faith itself.
But for Luther, the one passage he couldn’t get around, and the one that was frequently quoted back to him was the line from James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead.” Had Martin Luther been given a choice, he would have removed James from the New Testament, calling it an “Epistle of Straw.” Yet fortunately, Luther’s bombastic rants gave way to a more reasoned consideration that there must be some shred of wisdom as to why James was part of the New Testament. It remained in, much to our benefit today.
Most of what Luther didn’t like about James is how it seemed to contradict Paul’s writings… at least if you took the small clips and verses and held them up against each other. Since Luther furiously proclaimed that scripture could not contradict itself, the presence of James in the Bible was the thorn in his side… because it did seemed to do just that.
But James has always been a thorn in our side. It is every bit a part of the New Testament, it is every bit a part of Scripture, it is every bit something that helps us live out our faith in life. For that reason, it’s all the more challenging… it tells us faith without works is dead… It is particularly appropriate for Rally Sunday… because at least in Canadian Culture, September really is the first month of the year. This is the month where we get back into the swing of things. Students are back in school, we establish new programs and new routines, while at the same time slipping back into the familiar environs as fall and winter approach. Because we are so enmeshed with the culture around us, this is also the time of year when Canadian Christians “go back to church.” Yet as James reminds us, faith is far more than simply coming and sitting in a pew.
The Epistle of James was written nearly a full generation after Paul, where the early church was gaining more a sense of its identity. Even though it is labelled as a letter, it far more resembles a sermon than correspondence… and a rather fierce sermon at that. James appears to have been written in a time where the early church was in a relative state of peace… where the excesses and persecutions of Nero Caesar had been almost forgotten… and the vicious assault under Emperor Domitian hadn’t happened yet. This sermon preaches to a church that had become complacent in this time of peace… comfortable in their own pew… It seems that only in a few short years, they became much more interested in internal politics… and in many ways complacent about the world around them. Rank, privilege, and riches seemed to be creeping inside a community that proclaims that all are equal in the sight of God.
In other places in the sermon, James speaks to the taming of the tongue… revealing that gossip has been around for thousands of years… and was just as destructive to faith communities then as it is today. Collectively, all of these things started to eat away at the identity of these early churches… while he all but names it as such; hypocrisy had gotten its slimy toe in the door.
For James, one of his great concerns was how their faith was actually being lived out. People in his community would be boasting of their business plans of what they were going to do and where they were going to go… but it seemed that God was left entirely out of the equation once they were finished with worship. For James, this was unacceptable, the community was becoming complacent… no different than or worse yet, indifferent to the world around them.
So James goes off on this tirade, attacking what he sees as an empty faith in his congregation… because while they may be saying all the right things, their actions, or rather lack thereof, spoke far louder!
Yet ever the pastor, he does not cite a specific example, but provides a theoretical one:
1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)
One thing that many Christians stand accused of today is being judgemental. I find it ironic that as far as James is concerned, showing partiality is distinctly against what it means to be a follower of Christ. Being judgemental of others is something distinctly un-Christian. Wow… and James is just warming up!
8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 9But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (James 2:8-9)
James is not mincing words at all, is he? It’s almost as if he’s scolding his congregation!
It dovetails into his next point:
14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and 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? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.(-James 2:14-17)
We know from this that James is skilled in the art of rhetoric and debate. His argument is both abstract and specific… While his example doesn’t name names, or single any one individual out, he is talking about people within his own congregation. Faith is simply being expressed as a feeling, a warm-fuzzy kind of thing that makes us feel better about ourselves. “As long as it gives me a bounce in my step, that’s what I want!”
For James, it isn’t good enough, especially when there are people within their own ranks who are poor, who have needs, and yet those who are able to help aren’t lifting a finger. Being a follower of Christ is not something that is reserved exclusively for Sunday morning!
But James backs it up with a zinger… Okay… so you believe in God? Okay, that’s good… but he makes the point that even demons believe in God. Even those cosmic powers that oppose God, believe. So is just getting all our facts right enough? For James, the answer is “absolutely not!”
This is why Martin Luther hated this passage so much. He had spent all of his life trying to earn is way into God’s good graces… and it was a revelation to discover that by grace we have been saved through faith… it’s God’s gift. God’s love is given to all of us. It became the rallying cry of the Reformation.
So how do we reconcile these two? The problem is, we set them up in opposition without realizing that they spring from the overall foundation. We spend our time arguing whether or not we’re putting the cart before the horse… trying to figure out what we need to do or have first before we can get moving.
But neither James nor Paul would have gotten hung up on such questions. Faith, as always, is the starting point. For both of them, the question is not “are you saved?” But “God has already saved you… now what are you going to do about it?”
God has already saved you, now what are you going to do about it? Our outside actions are a reflection of that internal change.
Faith is neither theoretical nor abstract, but forms the foundation of what we do… it is by definition a part of every action in our lives. This is why James is harping on it so much. If our faith doesn’t transform and guide the way we act, how we treat one another, and how we live within one another, then what good is it? But taking the earlier words from James, we need to be very careful about judging others. We need to be very careful about the mindset that says “For your faith to be real, your experience has to be exactly the same as mine…” –but this isn’t true. Each of us is different, each of us experiences Christ moving through our lives differently, and each of us responds differently! But for faith to be real and authentic, it really does need to become seated in the core of who we are… guiding our actions in all that we do and all that we are… the ground of our being.
So how does faith transform and work our life? How does our faith extend beyond our pew every Sunday morning? Good question! Let’s find out!
Amen.
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