Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, giver of all grace, You have called us not only to believe in Your Son but also to live by faith in Him. Grant us Your Holy Spirit, that our trust in Christ may be living and active—bearing fruit in love, obedience, and good works. Strengthen our hearts to follow You even when the way is hard, that we may be found faithful, and our faith may be shown true; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus 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 without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God.”

Dearly Beloved Fellow Believers,

Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ is to us the most precious teaching of the Holy Scriptures. By it we are sure of our salvation and can live in peace. We know that our eternal place in the Father’s house is assured because Christ won it for us by His sacrifice and God has given it to us by His grace.

We are thankful that this precious teaching is set forth in the Scriptures so clearly and so often that we need not be in any doubt about it. We have it throughout the Scriptures beginning with the passage from Genesis that James quotes here: “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” We have it in the words of Jesus that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). And we have it in the epistles of Paul that teach salvation by grace alone, thoroughly and repeatedly; Paul both tells us that we are saved by grace alone and repudiates the idea that we are to be saved by our works.

How then are we to understand what James writes here? When he says that “faith without works is dead,” is he teaching something different than what Paul teaches when he says that we are justified “by faith apart from the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28)? Certainly not. James does not contradict Paul; he complements what Paul teaches. He takes aim here at false ideas about faith in Jesus Christ. In doing that he also gives us

A PROFILE OF TRUE CHRISTIAN FAITH

It is action, not empty words

The first verse of our text is one that can be a bit unsettling when it is read for the first time, or when it is read out of its context: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” But upon closer inspection any concern that the writer is teaching salvation by works soon vanishes. We notice that James does not say “if someone has faith,” but rather “if someone says he has faith,” which is very different. James is talking about someone who claims to have faith but whose life and conduct give no evidence of it. The question, “Can faith save him?” is better translated “Can such a faith save him?” (Some of the modern versions do translate it this way.) James is saying that a faith that produces no visible results, no fruit, is no faith at all. It is no more than the pretense of faith, an empty claim.

We see that this is what James means from the illustration that he gives us. He presents to us the case of a brother or sister in Christ who is in real need. This is someone who is truly destitute, someone who doesn’t have anything to eat or enough clothing to keep warm. Everybody knows—James is saying—that in such a case mere words aren’t enough. If you were to do no more than to say, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” it wouldn’t do them any good. To really help them you would need to give them some food and clothing.

The same is true of faith in Christ, James goes on to say: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Just saying, “I believe in Jesus” or “I’m a Christian” can be just as empty as saying “be warmed and fed” to someone who is cold and hungry. Claims of faith are empty if there is no evidence of faith in one’s life.

Well, we might ask, what sort of works does James have in mind? What works show that real Christian faith is in the heart? James answers these questions for us with another illustration. Unlike the one about the brother or sister in need, this one is not hypothetical. James brings up an actual case from Bible history, from the life of Abraham. A better example could not be found, for Abraham is the father of believers. Of all the examples of faith in the Old Testament Abraham’s is the highest.

But notice what work of Abraham’s James points to as evidence of his faith in God. We might expect that he would point to Abraham’s unselfish yielding to his nephew Lot when there was no longer enough pasture and water for both their herds and flocks. Abraham let Lot choose which land he wanted. Or we might expect him to refer to Abraham’s acts of worship, how he built an altar and called on the name of the Lord. But instead James refers to “when he offered Isaac his son on the altar.” His choice of this as the work that really showed Abraham’s faith is most instructive. Here was an incident where Abraham did what God told him to do. Abraham obeyed God even though what God had commanded was extremely difficult and painful. What God had commanded was this, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). Not only was that something difficult and painful in the extreme, it didn’t make any sense to Abraham. Isaac wasn’t just the only son born to him and Sarah; he was the heir through whom God had said that He would fulfill His promise to send the Savior. How could those promises be fulfilled if Isaac were killed while still in his youth? Abraham didn’t know how, yet he went ahead and prepared to do what God had commanded. He did it because he believed in God, he had real faith in God. He believed that God knew what He was doing, even if Abraham didn’t know what God was doing. We can see James’s point here: Abraham was “justified by works,” that is, he was shown to be a true believer with real faith by his obedience to God even when obedience was hard and didn’t seem to make sense. (And let’s not forget the good outcome of that obedience and what God had in mind as we see in Genesis 22:10-18.)

From this we see that faith is not just saying that we believe in God, that we believe in Jesus Christ. Real faith is a living, active force in the heart because it is the creation of God the Holy Spirit. It makes a difference in how we live. If we say that we believe in Christ yet our way of life is no different from our worldly and unbelieving neighbors, then we have reason to do some serious soul-searching. Real faith in God shows itself in our willingness to hear, learn, and abide by His word. And we, like Abraham, are confronted with situations in life where going by God’s word is hard and when we don’t see how it can be for the best. For example, in our world today people are reluctant to make the public commitment necessary for marriage. They like to leave their relationships open-ended; that seems like the wiser course to them. Others want to abandon their marriage commitment when it proves difficult to keep. But faith in God leads us to obey Him in these things, to make the life-long commitment to another and then to keep it, in good times and in bad times.

Consider another example. God wants us to continue to hear and learn His word all our lives, to continue in His word (John 8:31-32). He wants us to join in public worship with fellow believers, to confess Him before others (Matt. 10:32). To us this may not seem necessary. “I have faith,” we may say, “so why do I need to read the Bible or go to church?” But true faith leads us to do these things just because God has said He wants us to do them. Going to church is not a work of merit by which we earn our salvation; to regard it as such would be offensive to God. But going to church to worship and hear the word is an act which shows that we believe. A man who was deaf and nearly blind was once asked why he still went to church every Sunday, since he couldn’t even hear the sermon or the hymns. “I go to show which side I’m on,” was his reply.

True Christian faith is trust in God, not just knowledge of Him

Why does faith move us to do what God commands, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense or seem important to us? It is because real faith isn’t mere knowledge of God; it is trust in Him. This is something that we teach our young people in catechism class, that faith isn’t just believing that there is a god. It isn’t even just knowledge of the true God from the Bible. It is rather a relationship of trust in Him as our Savior. One of the Bible passages in the catechism that makes this point is one from the Psalms that points out the lack of faith among the children of Israel in the wilderness: “They did not believe in God, and did not trust in His salvation” (Psalm 78:22). They didn’t believe in Him as the God of their salvation who loved them and would surely help them, even if He let them struggle for a while.

James makes this point in our text most powerfully when He says to those who made empty boasts about their faith, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!” If we believe that there is one true God, we are right. But we also need to remember that even the devil knows that much; indeed, he knows it better than we do. Even the devil is not so foolish as the atheist or the scoffer who consoles himself with thoughts that there is no God. But the devil is God’s enemy; he opposes God in everything that he does. And the thought of God makes him tremble in terror.

True Christian faith is trust in God as our Maker and Redeemer. It is a trust that the Holy Spirit works and strengthens in us through the Gospel. We trust in God because we have come to know Him in Christ as the one who loves us, who redeemed us at great cost. He chose us and called us by His grace. Faith is something not to be taken for granted but to be nourished and strengthened in us by the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. And the more the Spirit builds up our faith the more it will be evident in our life. Amen.

—Rev. John Klatt

Watertown, SD

---

Ministry by Mail is a weekly publication of the Church of the Lutheran Confession. Sermon archives, and subscription and staff information may be found online at www.clclutheran.org/ministrybymail. Audio Sermons are available at: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ministrybymail

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.