14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 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? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 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. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 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? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. (James 2:14–26, ESV)

When teaching through the book of James and arriving at this passage, it has become customary to launch out into an in-depth explainer on the compatibility between James and the writings of the Apostle Paul. The reason for this is simple: the church has recognized the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and Paul's letters give us the strongest articulations of that doctrine. But James, who wrote before Paul did, during the early days of Paul's preaching ministry, wrote here:

"What good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works?"
"Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."
"Faith apart from works is useless."
"A person is justified by works and not by faith alone."

These stark statements seem to build in potency throughout James's argument and, taken alone and without proper context, have flummoxed many in the church. I will get to a short attempt at synchronizing Paul and James in a moment, but I don't want to lead with that theological game of pickleball. Instead, I want to lean into James's heart lest we miss it during our wrestling match with his words. The Bible has a message; each passage is part of that message, and this passage has a message like all the other passages. What is James's message?

James wanted his audience to understand that true, living, genuine faith in Christ produces all manner of good works. To James, it isn't faith plus works, faith or works, but faith that works. He could not imagine someone in faith fellowship with the Father of Lights who was not, at least to some degree, transformed by the Father of Lights. And though we have to read between the lines of his entire letter to unearth the situation he addressed with his letter, it appears that some in his day were teaching that a profession of faith without any evidence of a changed life over time was fine. These teachers were leading the church to believe that a profession without any fruit could still save or justify that person in God's sight. James is not so sure.

To James, faith in the gospel of Christ puts someone in contact with the living God. Just as touching a live electrical wire will produce a shock, so interaction with the Father will produce some change and transformation. The flesh and Spirit will war together, but those who know God will manifest some fruit at some point. He cannot imagine how someone could say they were connected to God, God's Scripture, or God's gospel without demonstrating works of some kind.

So, James's heart desire is for his audience to recalibrate their thinking about justification by faith. He did not want them to think that saving, genuine, real, or alive faith has within it any possibility of a works-free life. Believers will be ravenous for good works because of our close proximity to God.

At this point, we might want to consult Paul. It is unfortunate that so many have pitted James and Paul against one another because they had the same doctrine but were up against different errors. Because of these different opponents, Paul and James used similar vocabulary in different ways. If I invited you to play a game of football, and you showed up with a helmet and shoulder pads, and then I showed up in my little shorts and my little shin guards, you would immediately realize we had used the word "football" in different ways.[^1] And when Paul and James write about faith and works, they are coming at it from two different angles. And because we've often misunderstood them, we have often misunderstood grace, which we often take as a pass do as we wish or a one-sided gift without any response whatsoever.

When Paul warned about works and highlighted justification by faith alone, he was dealing with those who thought the Mosaic Law had to be added to the gospel. There is a major hint in Paul's talk about works—he repeatedly refers to them as the works of the law. To the false teachers Paul addressed, one must add Jewish practices to their faith. When James warned about works and said that we are justified by works and not faith alone, he was dealing with those who thought empty words were enough to secure salvation. To the false teachers James addressed, one could give intellectual assent to or say a meaningless prayer about the gospel and feel secure before God. James, though, expected good works to flow from a person who has been truly reunited with God—not the works of the Mosaic Law that Paul warned about but the good works James mentions throughout this letter.

Make no mistake, Paul very much envisioned genuine faith leading to personal transformation. One classic passage on being saved by faith comes from Ephesians: "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8-9, NIV). How are we saved? By grace through faith and not by works. But he goes on: "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10, NIV). To both Paul and James, true, genuine, saving faith will lead to good works that God himself designed for us to walk in.

I am stating all this at the top of this teaching because James's heart, if I am even a halfway decent pastor, should become my heart as well. I believe wholeheartedly in the personal transformation that flows from a relationship with God. I am allergic to a Christian try-harderism that permeates much of the way we think about our walk with God. I believe personal change flows out of connection to our Father God. But because I love the concepts of fruitfulness flowing out of connection to God and transformation happening after interaction with God, I could be guilty of neglecting James's expectation that works and faith go together (John 15:5, 2 Cor. 3:18).

But I want us to receive James' message. He envisioned a mature and whole person in his letter, and in this interlude, he explained how true faith will lead toward maturity. And, if I am being frank, the problem James dealt with seems more prevalent to me than the problem Paul dealt with. There are different medicines for different sicknesses. We don't rub cough syrup onto patches of eczema. And it seems to me that plenty of people are drinking Paul's medicine when James is the doctor they need. When people who correctly believe works cannot get them into right relationship with God comfort themselves for a lack of fruitfulness with Paul's words, they are missing the point and should turn to James's words instead. They interpret Paul's unwillingness to add Jewish works to saving faith as Paul's willingness to subtract an expectation of good works from genuine faith.

Paul and James were in league together. Contrary to the opinions of some, they were not standing face to face, ready to war against one another, but back to back, ready to defend the gospel from different enemies. Paul fought the legalists. James fought the laziests. And both exalted the power of the gospel to transform lives for the glory of God.

We need James in our modern time. We need to embrace the concept that a workless faith is a dead faith, and a dead faith cannot save or justify it because it isn't faith at all! We need to kill our weak and empty definitions of faith and replace them with the living and powerful definitions the Bible gives. We need to trade out the smoldering ashes of unbiblical faith for the raging blaze of biblical faith.

1. Faith Does Good (2:14-17)

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 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? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Throughout the passage, James hears the objections of an opponent. In this opening paragraph, this person says he has faith, but James is not sure that faith can save him because a faith void of works is dead faith (14-17). It won't be their final hypothetical argument with James, but this first move is to merely claim faith without any change or accompanying transformation. This man has said he has faith, but James is not sure that faith can save him.

To be clear, James is sure that genuine faith saves, but he is unsure about the legitimacy of the faith some had professed. This is why James points out that faith is only what this man says he has. That faith, James said, cannot save him because it's dead faith.

To illustrate this point, James returned to one of his favorite themes—helping church members in need. If someone who is part of the congregation walks in without proper clothing and is in need of their next meal, the wrong response is to say to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things they need (1:15-16).

What is James's point with this illustration? Admittedly, most scholars think James is showing us a time when faith should lead to action. He might be doing that, but I tend to think he is using that scenario as an illustration of how empty words are of no benefit. When someone is in need, words do not get the job done. So also, James said, faith by itself, faith that is only in word with no actions backing it up, is dead faith (1:17). In other words, you can say anything you want, but it doesn't mean anything until the actions back up the words.

That word-only, workless proclamation of faith is not good. James asked, What good is that type of faith? The answer? No good. But real faith—faith that is alive and genuine—does a world of good in people's lives.

Is this understanding of faith hard for you to digest? Does it sound like an affront to grace to you? It shouldn't. Paul, the New Testament author who explored God's grace more than anyone else, clearly expected grace to produce radical results in the lives of those who received it. When you trace the power of God's grace in Paul's letters, it becomes clear that he envisioned it as the thing that could reorient your identity and recalibrate entire communities. He thought of it as a "radical, divine dynamic" that produces "moral and social transformation."[^2] Paul never thought of grace as a free pass to behave as we wish or an entry point into a relationship with God detached from any expected outcomes. He thought there was an entire catalog of good works God made each of us for and that grace would nudge us in the direction of those good works (Eph. 2:10, Titus 2:11-14).

Perhaps you have heard that grace is opposed to works in some way. This is untrue. As Dallas Willard wrote, "Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action."[^3] It is entirely reasonable for God's gracious gift of his Son (and subsequent gifts of his goodness throughout our lives) to propel us to give back to him. It is entirely possible to respond to a lavish gift with thankfulness, devotion, kindness, and thousands of other smaller reactions—this is not an attempt at earning salvation or anything else from God! This was one way first-century people understood grace gifts, so it makes sense that both James and Paul expected good works to flow from God's grace.

Yes, real and alive faith produces so much good. I think we know this on an instinctive level. When we come across believers who are making a difference in the lives of others, we intuit that they are responding to God—their faith is alive! And when we find a bit of progress in our own lives and we step forward to meet a need, we know it is because our faith is alive, and faith does good.

2. Faith Produces Evidence (2:18-19)

18 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. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

James's opponent continues here with another angle to their argument. It appears they are saying that some people are works people and some people are faith people (2:18). But James knows that faith cannot be separated from its outcome, so he challenges his opponent to show him faith apart from works (2:18). It's impossible. The works, or the outcome of faith, tied to a string at the other end of faith, is action or works.

This person, James said, is even sound in doctrine enough to recite the Great Shema of Deuteronomy that God is one (2:18). They did well to believe that, James said, but even the demons believe—and shudder at the name of Jesus (2:19). What James means is that demons—who are obvious opponents to the gospel and certainly not in the camp of those who have been justified in God's sight by faith—believe in God and are emotionally moved by the truth. The demonic realm is portrayed in the gospels as certain of Jesus' identity as the Son of God, that an ultimate judgment exists, and that Christ has authority over all.[^4] But if you saw a demonic being in its naked state, you would never confuse it for a friend of God.

James says all this because he expects faith to be evidenced in our lives. He will show his faith by his works (2:18). He will not merely say important doctrines—God is one!—or be emotionally moved by God's truth. Instead, true faith responds to those doctrines and the emotions that flow from them. I spoke with one dad recently who told me of a time he gave one of his young boys a sports drink without knowing it was a special type loaded with caffeine. Everyone ended up surviving (the child is in rehab, and the dad is recovering well from his wife-induced injuries), but in the moment, though he could not see the caffeine, he could see the effects of the caffeine. Faith is like that—we cannot see it, but we can see its results.

I want to take a moment to drill down on James's point: we must adjust our attitude about works. Is it possible for someone to slip into legalism in an attempt to appear more godly to others or to try to earn God's favor? Absolutely. But if we are honest, it is the antinomian (anti-regulatory law) perspective we are in more danger of succumbing to right now. James wants us to stop seeing good works as some dangerous thing that might somehow erode our relationship with God. Instead, he wants us to see them as the logical expression of our relationship with God.

If God has touched our lives, we can expect some evidence, and the works attached to a walk with God are an absolute thrill to engage in. To step out in service, to provide mentoring, to practice generosity, to engage in ministry, to pray for others, to actively engage Scripture, to love your neighbor—these are all electrifying activities in a walk in with God.

3. Faith Leads to Actions (2:20-25)

20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 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?

James's opponent, this man who thought faith and works could be detached—James called him a foolish person—needed one last address (2:20).

When James appealed to Abraham, he was using the exalted father of the Jewish faith as his specimen of faith that works. Everyone regarded Abraham as the father of faith. Paul made it clear that Abraham was justified by faith when he believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:2-3, Gen. 15:6). When Paul made his reference to Genesis 15, he was referring to a story at the outset of Abraham's journey. But James comes along and appeals to Genesis 22 and the story of his near-sacrifice of Isaac to illustrate that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone (2:24). Hebrews tells us he knew if he went through with it that God would raise Isaac from the dead (crazy faith there), but he didn't go through with it because God stopped him (Heb. 11:19). God would be the one to sacrifice his willing Son, not Abraham.

To be clear, James does not say that Abraham was left in some unjustified limbo from the time of his profession of faith to the time he offered Isaac many years later. What James indicates is that Abraham's faith and the justification he received from God were proved real and carried out in action as he climbed the mountain with Isaac. Thirty years had passed from his profession to his act of obedience, but to James, it was an inevitability. If you pulled on the string of Abraham's faith, this work was tied to the other end. His faith was active along with his works, and his faith was completed by his works, James said (2:22-23).

If Abraham held nothing back from God, Rahab held nothing back from God's people. You can find her story at the beginning of the book of Joshua when the people of Israel were on the cusp of entering the promised land. God's judgment of the Canaanite peoples had been delayed long enough—it was time for the Hebrews to go into the land. One major city, Jericho, had heard of Yahweh's victory over Egypt and others during their wilderness wanderings. But even though people in town trembled because of Yahweh and his people, it was a belief in God without action—intellectual and emotional belief without living faith, except for one city prostitute who became willing to hide some Hebrew spies in exchange for her safety. She risked it all, holding back nothing, and became an ancestor of Jesus!

With these two contrasting examples—Abraham was a patriarch and the original Hebrew who everyone knew, while Rahab was a female gentile who no one knew—James laid out his case that faith leads to action.

What about you? Are you willing to confess that true, living, genuine faith leads to inevitable action? Do you feel the tug on your own heart to enter into deeper levels of obedience to God? Are you becoming willing to hold back less from God and less from his people? Can you come to James's conclusion?

Conclusion (2:26)

26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Can you agree with this? Will you believe that good works are not an added extra, just as breath is not an added extra to a living body? Will you embrace James's vision of maturity, his thinking that faith produces the whole and complete Christian?

Some of you might have been thinking of the great reformer, Martin Luther, while we considered this passage in James. After many dark centuries, Luther and others helped the church recover the beautiful doctrine of justification by faith. One could not buy or work their way into God's favor (or work their way out of it). So, it comes as no surprise that a man who centered so much of his work and life on the doctrine of justification by faith struggled a little with James. He didn't dismiss or reject it, but did refer to it as an "epistle of straw" in comparison to John, 1 John, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter. Other reformers seem to have understood James better than Luther did, but Luther certainly understood faith. Let's close with his definition of faith from his commentary on Romans:

"Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God's grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all creatures. And this is the work which the Holy Spirit performs in faith. Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God who has shown him this grace. Thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and fire."

Study Questions

Head (Knowledge, Facts, Understanding):

What is the main message that James is trying to convey in this passage about faith and works?
How does James's teaching on faith and works differ from Paul's, and how can we reconcile their perspectives?
What examples does James use to illustrate the relationship between faith and works, and why are they significant?

Heart (Feelings, Impressions, Desires):

How does the idea that genuine faith inevitably leads to good works make you feel about your own faith journey?
What emotions do you think Abraham and Rahab experienced as they demonstrated their faith through their actions?
How does the concept of faith being completed by works inspire or challenge you in your spiritual life?

Hands (Actions, Commitments, Decisions, Beliefs):

What practical steps can you take to ensure that your faith is alive and producing good works?
How can you apply James's teaching on faith and works to your daily life and decision-making process?
What specific areas of your life do you feel called to demonstrate your faith through action, and what commitments can you make to follow through?

[^1]: David Platt inspired this illustration in his book, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary, James (B&H Publishing Group, 2014).

[^2]: John M.G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace (Eerdmans, 2020)

[^3]: Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship (HarperOne, 2006), 166.

[^4]: see Mark 3:11-12, 5:1-13, Luke 8:31, Matthew 8:29.