James begins with a question aimed at a claim. 14"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?" He asks whether such a faith can save. The word that matters is says. James is testing a self-report that has never been checked against a life.
He then draws a picture. A brother or sister is cold and hungry, and one of you says, 16"Go in peace, be warmed and filled," and gives nothing. The words cost nothing and change nothing. 17"So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." A blessing that leaves the coat in the closet has not helped anyone, and a faith that leaves the life untouched has done no more.
James then meets an objector, and the exchange clears up what he means. The objector treats faith and works as two gifts held separately, one friend with money and another with time. He asks the objector to produce faith on its own so that it can be examined: 18"Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works." Then comes his sharpest line. 19"You believe that God is one; you do well." Then the sting: even the demons believe, and shudder. Agreeing with true statements about God proves nothing, since demons agree too. What the demons lack is trust, and trust shows up in what a person does.
His two witnesses are Abraham and Rahab. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Years later he offered Isaac on the altar, and James says 22"faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works." The offering did not earn the verdict God had already given. It showed what the faith was. Rahab, a foreigner, said that the LORD was God in heaven and on earth, and then she hid the spies (Joshua 2:11; Hebrews 11:31). Her belief and her risk arrived together.
Is James contradicting Paul, who wrote that 24one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Romans 3:28)? The two men are answering different questions. Paul is asking what grounds a person's standing before God, and the answer is grace received by faith. James is asking what a claim to faith looks like when it is alive, and the answer is a life that moves. Both would say that a root that produces no fruit is dead.
James closes with a picture: 26"as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." Faith is the life in the body, and a body that does not move is not alive.
Who is cold or hungry near you this week? Give them the coat before you give them the blessing. John says the same thing: love in deed and in truth, and not merely in word or talk (1 John 3:18).
Prayer
Father, keep us from a faith that only agrees with true statements. Give us a trust in you that moves our hands. Forgive us for the times we said "be warmed and filled" and did nothing. Thank you that Jesus gave himself for us, and let the faith he gave us show itself in what we do for the ones you have put in front of us. In Jesus' name, amen.