Sermon preached at The Bridge Church on July 7, 2024
Intro
One of the things I love about what God is doing here at The Bridge Church is that every week we have people visiting us for the first time. I often meet visitors who are attending a church service for the first time in their whole lives! I know that for some people, the reason they’ve stayed away from church until now is the well-documented moral failures of some church leaders. It’s why others who once were part of churches have since left. For example, I saw one survey that found that 37% of Catholics were considering leaving the Catholic church because of the prevalence of clergy sexual abuse. In the evangelical world, we have our own clergy sexual abuse scandals, as well as those dastardly televangelists who are revealed to be in it just for the money or power or sex or whatever. Other people are equally as troubled by the history of immorality in the church, pointing to the violence of the Crusades or persecution of various minority groups. I get it. When you look at some of that, you can start to wonder if this thing called Christian faith works. Does it actually make a difference?
In the summer here at The Bridge, we’ve been working through a letter in the New Testament that a man named James wrote, the half-brother of Jesus and a main leader in the early church in Jerusalem. And his answer to that last question is that yes, Christian faith works and it does make a difference. If it doesn’t, if faith leaves someone the same or even seems to make them worse, he tells us that it’s really no faith at all. Here’s what he says.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 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. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
25 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? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
James 2:14-26
1. Counter-example: well-wishing
If I asked you to sum up the main point of this passage, I think most of you would get it. Faith without works is dead. Genuine faith impacts the way someone lives. That’s why we’ve called this whole series, “It’s About Life!” For James, being a Christian is not simply a ticket to the afterlife, it’s not eternal fire insurance. It does and it must change how we live now. Of course, though, there’s some more nuance than that. To get at that, James gives four examples: two anti-illustrations of what genuine faith doesn’t look like, and two illustrations of what it does. Let’s go through those one by one and then bring it all together at the end.
The first counter-example is about the brother in need. James is saying that mere nice words are useless, they serve no purpose. My prayers for a poor brother are useless if they’re unaccompanied by action because I was the answer to the prayer! I could have been the fulfillment of this blessing I’ve spoken over my brother. When you see it like this, James’ point about the emptiness of some kind of purely spiritual faith is obvious.
This also indicates one of the main ways James thinks our faith will be worked out: specifically, in works of compassion and mercy towards those who are genuinely in need. That’s what he writes at the end of chapter 1. He informs us that what God is looking for is the kind of faith that compels someone to look after orphans and widows in their distress. In the section we looked at last week, James blasts those in the church who show favoritism to the rich. That’s especially since it’s so often the poor who are more receptive to the Kingdom of God. After all, they’ve got less to lose. The point is, compassion towards those in need is a recurring theme.
Here’s the good news, going back to what I said at the beginning: generally speaking, Christian faith works. It always has. Christians in the early centuries were famous for their compassion for those the rest of society looked down on. The fourth century Roman Emperor Julian even tried to mandate acts of charity for pagan priests because the Christians were making everyone else look bad. They were taking care of people they were not related even better than those people’s own families were! Throughout the middle ages, Christian monastic movements were one of the driving forces for charity and an argument can be made that modern hospitals were originated by Christianity. In the last couple of centuries, numerous major charitable organizations were begun by Christians: the Salvation Army, the YMCA and YWCA, World Vision, Compassion, and so on. I mean, think about the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. Throughout its history, Vancouver has been one of the least Christian cities in North America and yet when you look at the organizations in the DTES, a disproportionate amount of them are Christian ministries- places like Union Gospel Mission, Jacob’s Well, Mission Possible, Salvation Army, and so on. When you look at the statistics, survey after survey will tell you that Christians give more to charitable causes than non-Christians, and usually by a significant margin.
I want to tell you about one ministry in particular that our church has a connection with. Every summer, we take a group of people to the southern Okanagan for one week where we serve with a ministry called the Okanagan Gleaners. They’re a Christian ministry that has developed partnerships with all kinds of farms and food distributors. As you probably know, a lot of food gets wasted in the Western world. The big news here on the North Shore last winter was the dump truck loads of Mandarin oranges that were being delivered to the city dump. There’ so much wasted food. What the Gleaners do is receive that food that would otherwise be wasted, that isn’t acceptable to grocery stores, or that is a surplus. They then process it, dry it, and repackage it as soup mix to be sent around the world. Last year we processed enough food for 65,000 meal servings. This ministry is helping feed the world’s hungry with the excess we have here in the West, and we’ll be heading there in a couple of weeks with a group of 40 people from The Bridge, including a whole bunch of kids. Christian faith works.
Going back to James, just blessing the poor with words is useless. It’s got to be accompanied by action. The good news is that for Christians throughout history, it often is.
2. Counter-example: orthodoxy without orthopraxy
The second counter-example that James uses is demons. And yes, James believes in demons, and so do I, and so do many of us at The Bridge Church. Contrary to some in our culture who only believe what they can see with their eyes, we believe that reality is more complex. We believe that there are invisible forces, spiritual beings called angels, and that they have free will, just as humans do. Some of those beings can and have used that free will to rebel against God and attempt to undermine God’s work in humanity. We believe that unless you understand this, unless you understand there is an ongoing, brutal, spiritual tug of war for your soul going on, that you’ll be like a boxer fighting someone with a blindfold on. Anyway, that’s beside the point for James. He assumes his readers also believe in the existence of demons. His point is that in many ways, demons are quite orthodox.
I don’t know what you think of when you hear that word, “orthodox.” Maybe you think of Jewish people with long beards and yarmulkes, or big ornate cathedrals in Eastern Europe. It’s a combination of two Greek words: ortho, meaning right, and dox, from the word for thinking. It’s thinking rightly about something. Now, the Bible teaches us that there is one God. In the Old Testament, a passage that Jews repeat again and again on a twice a day basis to the present day is the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” There is one God, not many. That’s crucial for authentic biblical faith. But here’s what James says: demons believe that too. Evil spiritual beings are in full agreement that there is one God. They might be bent in all kinds of ways, but they’re not confused about that.
We could list other orthodox beliefs too. Clearly, from the Scriptures, demons have very little confusion about the identity of Jesus. You’ll come across various stories where a demon-possessed person rushes Jesus and starts screaming things like, “I know who you are- the Holy One of God!” And Jesus has to tell these things to shut up about it. The issue isn’t that the demons don’t know the truth, it’s that they want to twist it to accomplish their wicked purposes. Demons also have no doubt that Jesus is risen from the dead. There’s a verse in 1 Peter 3 that indicates that the resurrection of Jesus has been proclaimed to disobedient spirits as a sign of God’s victory over them. They know these things. They’re orthodox. However, they’re clearly not saved. That’s because their orthodoxy doesn’t lead to orthopraxy, which is another fancy sounding word that means right practice. Instead, their knowledge leads them to shudder in fear because they know their judgment is impending.
Keep this in mind. Not all who claim to be Christians really are. James signals that possibility right off the bat, when he talks about those who claim to have faith. A few years ago, my wife Carolyn worked for the government during the federal census. She’d go from house to house and collect responses from those who hadn’t completed the census on their own. The government is so desperate for your information they will pay someone to hold your hand to fill out a form. In that census, over 50% of Canadians still said they identified as Christian. I’m going to make a bold claim: that is an unbelievably inflated number. People might believe they are Christian because they were baptized as an infant in a Catholic or Anglican or United church. They might believe they are Christians because they believe that some being they call God exists. They might even believe they are Christians because they believe that Jesus died on a cross and maybe even rose from the dead. But for some, this intellectual belief has no bearing on how they live on a day to day basis. It doesn’t lead them to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. That’s how the Shema continues, by the way. Immediately after the “the Lord is One” verse is the command to love the Lord with everything we’ve got. You can’t do the one without the other. Orthodoxy without orthopraxy is empty. It’s no better than what the demons have going on, and if you’re in the same boat as demons, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe find another boat.
So those are the two anti-illustrations James gives. That’s what genuine faith does not look like. But James gives us two examples of what it does look like.
3. Example: Abraham
The first is Abraham. Let’s admit that if you’re coming at this fresh, this verse is going to make very little sense: “wasn’t our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?” Most of you parents are thinking, that doesn’t sound very righteous to me. Even on the worst days, when your toddler has smeared his feces all over the walls in a daring twist on modern art, or when your teenager has responded to you dropping half your life’s savings on a family vacation by spending the entire time on her phone, did you consider putting them on an Old Testament style altar? Don’t answer that. The point is, that would seem like the opposite of righteous. Fair enough! But let’s look at the context.
Way back in Genesis 15, Abraham is an old man. He’s been getting senior’s discounts at Denny’s for decades already. But God speaks to him and tells him that despite his age and the barrenness of his wife Sarah, he would have a son through her. God promises Abraham that ultimately, he would be the ancestor of a people more numerous than the stars in the sky. It seemed like the most unlikely thing in the world, even more unlikely than a Canadian team ever winning the Stanley Cup again. But Genesis 15:6 says that “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” This is a verse that Paul draws on a lot in the New Testament, because it shows that even in the Old Testament, God wasn’t simply looking for people who could keep a list of arbitrary rules. He was looking for relationship. He was looking for people who believed Him and trusted Him, even when things looked impossible.
In the end, God fulfilled this promise. Years later, Abraham did have a son with Sarah, named Isaac. But a few years after that, perhaps when Isaac was a teenager, God spoke to Abraham again and asked him to sacrifice Isaac to Him. We could spend a whole sermon just on this story because it’s full of thorny issues. The reality is that child sacrifice was common in the Old Testament world, as well as in other cultures around the world since, and that the Old Testament consistently speaks strongly against the practice. This is the only time God asks for it and He doesn’t allow it to go forward. When it becomes clear that Abraham is willing, God stops him and spares Isaac’s life. I know it still troubles us. But what James wants us to ask is what it is about Abraham led him to that willingness, especially considering Isaac was the fulfillment of God’s promise to him? Here’s what the New Testament book called Hebrews says: “by faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead” (11:17-19). Abraham was willing to obey God because he trusted God’s plan. He trusted that God would make a way forward even when it seemed impossible, even if it involved raising someone from the dead, and his actions were based on that trust.
Let me use an example that will hopefully be a little less troubling to us. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Now, if you have an enemy, a genuine enemy who wants to destroy you, who is determined to see you in the worst possible light, and to land you in as much trouble as they can, you do not want to love them. You do not want to seek their good. You will not receive Christ-like advice from sitcoms and TikTok. Everything in your heart and your culture teaches you to seek revenge or justice. Here’s Jesus saying, “love them.” And if your faith is truly in Jesus, then your desire will be to do what he says. You will trust that even if it makes no sense to you. You will trust that he knows best. Your faith will translate into action and you will seek to love your enemies and forgive those who have wronged you. That’s similar to how Abraham’s faith compelled him to action.
One more note on Abraham before we move on. Like I said, Paul uses Genesis 15:6 to say that we are saved by faith, not by works. James seems to use that verse in a way that’s contradictory. He says that Abraham was justified- declared to be right with God- through his obedience, through his works. But actually, I believe Paul and James would agree. Faith in God through Jesus, which means a relationship of belief and trust, is what saves you. However, genuine faith will also produce action. Abraham’s action was the sign that his faith was real.
4. Example: Rahab
The final example James provides about what faith looks like is a woman named Rahab. You can find Rahab’s story in the Old Testament book called Joshua. There’s some debate about what the word describing her occupation actually means, but traditionally it’s been understood that Rahab was a prostitute. She was a Canaanite living in the city of Jericho. In other words, she was not an Israelite, not one of Abraham’s descendants. In pretty much every way, she was the opposite of Abraham. But it turns out they had one thing in common: they ended up going all in on faith in God.
Two spies had been sent out from the Israelites to check out Jericho and the surrounding lands. They ended up staying at Rahab’s house. The Bible doesn’t tell us why. Considering her occupation, we might have our suspicions. We have to remember that in various ways, morality in the Old Testament was a bit, should we say, fuzzier than in the New Testament. I know what you’re thinking: “come on James, can’t you use a story that doesn’t involve sketchy stuff? It’s like Netflix out here!” When the ruler of Jericho hears about the spies, he sends people to Rahab’s house to search it, but Rahab covers them with stalks of flax and sends them in another direction. Rahab later tells them she’s done this because she believes that their God is the true God. In return, they promise to rescue her and her family when the city falls. That’s exactly what happens. Rahab and her family end up playing a big role in the whole story. Now part of the people of Israel, Rahab marries an Israelite named Salmon and becomes the great, great grandmother of King David and many times great grandmother of Joseph, Mary’s husband.
The question is, why does James use her as an example? Because, like Abraham, her faith in God resulted in action. It meant that she was all in on God and was willing to lay everything else down because of this faith. In the moment, that would have seemed crazy or worse. She was betraying her own people, really. But the long-term result of her action-producing faith in God was that God used her to bring about Israel’s greatest leader and ultimately to raise up the savior of the world. It all started with faith.
5. Bringing it together
Let’s try to bring this all together. In the midst of all these examples, James is saying the same thing in all kinds of ways: faith that doesn’t produce action, that doesn’t result in good works, that doesn’t change your life, is no faith at all. He uses various words for that kind of non-faith. He says it’s no good. He says it’s dead. He says it’s useless. Instead, he says that real, genuine faith is fulfilled when we live it out. Faith is meant to be lived out. To use an admittedly strange metaphor, a couch is meant to be sat on. If you don’t let anyone sit on it, but instead insist that it be a kind of shrine for people to worship Ikea from a distance, you’ve really missed the point. A couch is meant to be sat on. Food is meant to be eaten. And faith is meant to be lived out.
But before we wrap up, I want to clarify a few things. I want to do my best not to let you leave this place with a wrong idea about what I’ve said.
First, I want to emphasize that salvation is by grace, through and through. When we stand before the Lord on Judgment Day, our salvation will not depend on whether we met the threshold for good deeds. It’s not like a test where 65% gets you a D (so you’re in but barely)- and 45% is a fail (see you later!). Salvation is a gift from God that we do not deserve and we accept it through faith. James believed that. James 1:18 states, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created”. He chose to give us birth through the Gospel. James refers in 2:1 to believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. James, just like every other author in the New Testament, understood that we are saved and declared innocent by God on the basis of faith in Jesus.
Second and related, I want to emphasize that our works are always a response to God’s work. Our love is a response to His love. Our compassion is a response to His compassion. He initiates, we respond. Therefore, the way we move forward is not by gritting our teeth and trying really hard to be good people, but instead by letting the knowledge of His gracious love increase in us and overflow from us. As we said last week from James 2, if we’ve received mercy from God, we better show it to others. I want to read you this passage from 1 John 3 that says something very similar to James but makes this response theme clear.
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
1 John 3:16-18
Right? Very similar to James, but here you get the emphasis that we love because He first loved us. Jesus died for us. He laid down everything out of his love for us. We know what love is because of the cross. He didn’t just say that he loved us, he showed us in the most dramatic act in history. If we receive that and put our faith in Christ, then his love overflows from us towards others in response.
Third, if I don’t say this next part, some of you are going to leave here full of doubt and insecurity. You’ve heard what James says and you’re thinking, I don’t know if I’m in. I don’t know if I’m good enough. I don’t know if I’m living it out enough. I don’t know if my faith in Jesus has made me different. I want to say that most likely, it has. Most likely, you are living it out in ways that you’re not even aware of. The issue in James, as it is often in Christian faith, is the heart. Is your heart receptive to God’s word? Is your heart’s desire to honor the Lord with your life? When he highlights an issue in your life, do you want to change it? Do you have compassion for the poor and the broken of the world? Those are all pieces of evidence that your faith is real and that it is being lived out. Or are you hard-hearted, lacking compassion for the poor, living however selfishly you want, believing that as long as you can check the box beside a couple of belief statements, you’re good to go, God’s lucky that you claim to have faith? If that’s the case, then yes, question the authenticity of your faith and get right with God.
And finally, I want to put a bookend on this, a neat little bow, by saying that this is all about mission. If you’re with us this morning and you’re not a follower of Jesus, I hope that you will hear what I’m saying. If you’ve come across professed Christians who are hard-hearted and blatantly and repetitively live in ways totally contrary to the words of Jesus, that experience may have caused you to distance yourself from Christian faith. I want you to hear James again saying that this kind of faith is useless and dead and is in fact no faith at all. They may claim to have faith, they may associate themselves with the name of Jesus, but their lives show that they don’t belong to him at all. I hope that what James 2 says might help remove an obstacle for you and help you consider receiving God’s love for you that He has shown us in Jesus. I pray that you would receive his gift of forgiveness that comes through the cross of Jesus.
And if you are a believer, I hope you’ll hear from James 2 how important it is that we live rightly before God. His love needs to be poured out from us towards others. Jesus said that the world would know we belong to Jesus because of our love for one another. He said that the world would know that he was sent by the Father because of the way His people treated one another. The world is watching, brothers and sisters. Let’s let our faith in our loving Savior dictate our actions and produce good works, so the world would know Him and would know that Christian faith works.