James' Agreement with Paul

James was an advocate of the law of God. If you read James, it's clear as can be. For example, in 2:8 he says, "If you really fulfill the royal law according to Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing well." So, follow the royal law. The royal law is law of the king — Jesus is the king, this is the law of Jesus. He said, like the Old Testament, love your neighbor as yourself. And that should be shown practically in caring for orphans and widows and the hungry and those who don't have enough food and clothing. And just a little bit later he says, "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it," because "he who said 'Do not commit adultery' also said 'Do not murder.' If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law…" and on it goes. Now, that's a surprising statement: if you keep the whole law but break one part, you've broken the whole thing. We don't think of the law that way. We think of the saw as a series of discrete commands, things we can do, and we say, today I honored my parents and I controlled my tongue, I didn't take God's name in vain, and a couple of days ago I observed the Sabbath day, and, but you know, I did fall into coveting of someone who has some abilities and gifts that I don't have. I didn't kill anybody, nor did I want to. So I had a pretty good day. James says, well, it's really not like that. It's not that the law has all these discrete parts; you keep some and you don't keep others. The law is a whole. The whole thing tells us how to love God, how to love our neighbor. And the whole thing is a reflection of God's character. The reason why we keep the Sabbath is because God observes the Sabbath. And the reason we honor our father and mother is because God created authority structures. And the reason why we don't murder is because God gives life. The reason why we don't commit adultery is that God is faithful. We don't covet because God is generous, and so one. So, if you break any law, you're violating God's character, so you've broken the whole thing because you're against God, after a fashion. Somebody once said we think of the law as a stack of bricks and, you know, you do good things and the stack gets higher, do bad things and the stack gets lower. But as long as the stack is getting higher, you're in good shape. But he said it's more like taking one of those bricks and firing it through a sheet of glass and the whole thing is shattered, because when you pick and choose, he says, you know, God says don't murder, God says you shall not commit adultery. If you say, "Well, I'll obey one of God's commandments but not the other," you're deciding which of God's commands you'll obey, which means you're making yourself God, and you're not actually following the Lord. You prove you're following the Lord when you obey commands you don't want to obey, when they're hard to obey. And so, obedience to the law in its parts but also as a whole is a sign of true religion, true faith, that you actually believe in the living God and are willing to engage in real and often painful subordination as an act of trust, loyalty and love.

It's rather famous that Paul and James appear at first blush to contradict each other because Paul says that we're justified apart from works, and James seems to insist the opposite, that we're justified, he almost says, by our works. Maybe I can read the key text. And, of course, James knows we're justified by faith, and he says that. He says in chapter 2: "The Scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God and it was counted — or reckoned — to him as righteousness.'" So that's the language of forensic justification. He believed, and as we know from the background of that text, he believed at a low point when he was kind of talking back to God and saying, "Hey, where's that son you promised," and God said, "Look, I know you don't have any yet, but look at the stars. So shall your offspring be." And he believed it, and it was reckoned as righteousness to him. That's justification by faith. James knows that quite well. But almost as if to push his audience on the importance of works, he then says, "And he, Abraham, was called a friend of God" in the next phrase. And, "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, and in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another say?" So, he knows, James knows we're justified by faith, but he then says by works. So, what would the work be for Abraham? Well, it's kind of close to what Paul says in Romans 4, that he kept on sleeping with his wife. As Paul says it, he saw or considered the fact that his body was as good as dead, but he kept on sleeping with his wife, so that's believing that God would give him children and acting both. Rahab case if very similar. I mean, she heard about the God of Israel who was sending his people into the Promised Land, and she believed it. But what good would her faith actually have done her In that instance when they came, if she hadn't acted on it? So, the deeds vindicate or verify her faith. And that is a use of the word justification to… someone is justified, sometimes they're vindicated, so… Jesus says in one place, "Wisdom is justified by her deeds," meaning vindicated. That is to say, you know wisdom is truly wisdom when it works, when we practice it. In the similar vein, you now faith is really faith as opposed to false faith when it proves itself by deeds. So it was with Abraham; he's justified by faith, he trusts God. And then we have proof that he really believes in God when he keeps sleeping with his wife so he can have children. And Rahab really believed in God, the God of Israel, and it's proven or demonstrated when she sends the spies out another way. A different way to say it is Paul and James are in perfect agreement on the basic question, what's the relationship of faith and works? So, the religions of the world all say the same thing: good deeds get you right with good. We might say, good deeds lead to justification. And classic Catholicism says faith plus works leads to justification. Truncated Protestants say faith leads to justification, but if you read the Bible, what it actually says is this: faith leads to justification plus works, that is to say, works are a necessary consequent reality, not an antecedent reality. They don't precede justification, they follow it. But they follow it necessarily. Faith without works is dead. James says that three times over, and then he illustrates real faith by saying, okay, here's the faith of Abraham, here's the faith of Rahab; they said they believed and they proved it by their deeds. And that's the way it should be for us. You know, our deeds sometimes lag behind our faith, but there should always be some deed, some tangible proof that we not just saying the words, we're actually following God in our bodies, in our hands, in our feet, in our mouth, in our head, on our backs in all that we are and all that we do.