James 2:14- 26
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
I want to start by telling you a story about my granddaughter. She was talking to her mom about heaven and mom was answering a lot of questions! Then at one point, my little five-year old granddaughter said something significant. “Mom, I don’t think I’m ready to go to heaven. I would miss my friends.” What I am really proud of is that my daughter said back, “Well, if you tell your friends about Jesus and heaven, then they can all be there with you one day.”
That’s really a great reason to do evangelism. If your concerned that being a Christian might mean losing some friends who might think Christianity isn’t cool, you really should be all the more motivated to try to actually lead them to Christ so they will get to be in heaven with you one day! Don’t let your fears stop you, because if they do become Christians, they will be for your friends forever, literally forever, not just for this brief life.
And one more thought, what if you don’t tell your friends the gospel, but somebody else does, and you meet them in heaven one day. You don’t want your friends to ever have to say anything like, “Why didn’t you tell me I could be saved from sin and forgiven by God’s grace?” If you really care about your friends, you will tell them. Caring is the whole point of this message.
We read the NIV as a pretty good translation of the Word of God. But sometimes, Eugene Peterson’s, The Message, does an amazing job of saying it even better. The NIV version makes James 2:24 sound like something a good reformed person would want to argue with, because, we are saved by faith alone! So, to help with that, I want to read this whole section of James again, from the Message. Then you will hear just how much the text actually agrees with reformed theology.
Here we go: “Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.”
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?
Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?”
End of quote. And I am not going to preach from the text of The Message, but I do want to go back and highlight one thing. I have always wondered why James wrote, “But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” That sounds backwards when he was obviously arguing with people who were all talk and no action, or all faith and no deeds, to use his words. Why did he switch it around as if his opponents were saying James could have the faith and they would have the deeds? When James was raising the objection his opponents would raise in the argument for salvation by faith, shouldn’t he have written that they would tell James he could have is works? The line should read as if James’ opponents would say, “You, James, have deeds. I have faith.”
Peterson helped me see it. James has a reason for saying it backwards from what we would expect. He did not give his opponents any credit for having any faith, because they did not have the faith that saves! So, he ascribed works to them as compared to the faith the himself really did possess. And if you don’t have the faith that saves, faith in Jesus, then you actually have, only deeds!
So, James was laying things straight! James’ opponents were trying to argue that faith and deeds could be separated out. And by doing that they were showing they didn’t know anything about true faith, so all they had were deeds. Anybody who doesn’t do things the Bible way is still actually operating from a works righteousness of supposed good deeds. But the deeds they had were not love for others. It was love for themselves.
All they were doing was the self-righteous self-talk, and empty deeds like vain acts of worship, or going to church and living by so called faith. That’s why James had to make his opponents say, “You have faith. We have deeds.” As in, “You James, have the faith that saves. All we have are some kind of deeds we can be proud of and think were saved.”
You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. But let’s put it in the form of an equation because that really helps us see the relationship between faith and works.
James wrote his book because some Christians, even so long ago, believed that Paul’s formula, “salvation by faith alone” meant that works had no important place in Christian life and theology. They would have expressed it as “Faith = Salvation.” (Slide) Both they and James would agree that we can’t say, (click to next slide) “Faith + good works = Salvation.” That’s wrong (click to red circle) because it makes it sound like salvation is something that we achieve when we have faith and works. But James was pointing out that there was still another way to look at it. (click to next equation on this slide) “Faith = Salvation + good works.”
That is the Reformed view we still maintain. Salvation and good works BOTH arise out of a true Faith in Jesus. Jesus has achieved our salvation. All we can do is believe in that. The same faith in Jesus also leads us to believe what God says about the good works he has prepared in advance for us to do. So, as a result, we get to work.
Now that we have established that, I really want to use the text in James to talk about what kind of works are produced by a true and fruitful faith. To sum it all up ahead of time, it’s not about religious stuff. It’s about caring for other people. And the reason you can devote so much more of your resources to caring about others is because you know, by faith in Jesus, that all your needs are met in Christ, have already been promised to you in Christ. All your needs, past, present and future are secured in Christ.
Your past is past. There’s only one thing you need that has anything to do with your past: forgiveness. That’s done, all taken care of in Christ Jesus. There’s also only one basic need you have for the future and that is to know that you will end up in heaven and live forever. That’s taken care of, done for you by Jesus Christ who is already there preparing a place for you.
And for the present, there’s only three basic needs you have at any given time on any given day in the present; food, clothing and shelter to maintain your health. You can even be deprived of any of them temporarily and you will still survive. But all these are promised you by Jesus’ personal word when he told us in Matthew 6, “your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”
I would add that Jesus cared about the human race the way he did, and did everything he did, because he knew that he already had everything else he needed. John 13: “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so, he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.” He was about to wash his disciples’ feet because he knew he could expend every ounce of his resources on caring about them. Ultimately, he did exactly that when he died for us.
But look at the very practical service he performed to show his love to his disciples and to show how much he cared about them. It was so mundane, so humble, so easy really, and so humiliating. It made a huge impression on them because in their view it was so beneath his dignity. Similarly, James spends a lot of time in his very practical book telling his Christian brothers and sisters exactly what kind of good works are produced by true faith.
James listed acts of loving service to those who have physical needs. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” This is the first step in understanding the needs we may meet, and how to care for people in distress. Listen to their stories! Care enough to listen.
Right after, “keep a tight rein on your tongue,” which is something you have to do in order to listen well, James adds, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Look after widows and orphans, help them receive their three basic needs for existence.
In chapter 2 he talks first about honoring the poor. Give them dignity. Do not favor the wealthy. All are human beings worthy of utmost respect, just for being human. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s pretty all encompassing. But it boils down to making sure that everyone else is just as comfortable in life as you want to be, to the best of your ability to do so. It goes a lot further than just not having enemies to speak of. That’s an easy way to claim you love everybody. But in our text, James’ practical take home point is, be sure you do offer food and clothing to those who need it. If you claim to love your neighbor, put that attitude in to action! Failure to act is proof of little or no love.
All these are ways we have to show people that we care about them. They may not care about church, but they do care about themselves and their own needs. We can help with that. But a key principle that we need to remember is that we are not doing this for church growth. We are not even really doing it for evangelism. We’re doing it because we love people. Our ministry services should be given as a gift to the community. When you give a gift, you want it to be meaningful, something that the recipient will appreciate. It takes wisdom and thoughtfulness to figure that out. That’s the real reason that it’s the thought that counts, so you give a good gift.
As a congregation working together on the mission God has in mind for us to pursue on his behalf, we have to do some praying and thinking to know what our community needs and what we can give them that will match that need, and that they will thank us for. What do we have to offer? What do they need? Where do the answers to both questions match up? Let’s do that kind of giving!
I remember when I first sensed a call to ministry it was centered around this idea of caring about people. I was at a prayer conference. One presenter was talking about his ministry to the homeless. He showed a picture of an elderly homeless woman, sitting on the church steps. It was cold and the lady had rags wrapped around her feet instead of shoes. The man talked about how he met her and what he did to get her a warm place to stay and how grateful she was and how it led her to ask Jesus into her heart. My heart reached out and responded, “I want to do that too!”
But God did not lead me to work in a homeless shelter. He led me back to college, and many years later, to finish seminary and become the pastor of a church. I remember thinking how exciting it would be to lead a whole congregation in worship and in service to the Lord. I had been happy to serve the Lord as an ordinary church member before seminary. I was janitor and deacon and Sunday school teacher and VBS director and special music, just about anything that I could do for the church, I was willing and eager. So, I figured all God’s people were like that. In both of my two former churches, I encouraged community service and connection and continue to believe that faith generated good works, caring about people, loving them tangibly, is the best way to share the gospel, or at least get an opportunity to share the gospel.
That’s why I am so excited about Community Hope making it possible for us to get involved with Open Table and with Kid’s Hope. These are tried and true ministries but they can be expensive to get into. Not anymore!
In their words on their website: Open Table trains congregations and their members, to form communities –called Tables - that transform the vocational and life experiences of members into tools our Brothers and Sisters can use to develop and implement plans that create positive change.
For just one example from their website, one person wrote: “We just became one whole family. It no longer became what they could do for me or how they could serve me, but what we could be for each other. I am now a homeowner as of February of last year…it has brought together so many people, so many organizations. We’ve built relationships with neighboring churches and different communities.”
The Open Table process is a catalyst for the collaboration of faith communities. That means instead of just giving things, we give ourselves to the people we care about. While congregation members join Tables to help others, they soon realize they are changed forever by the relationships they create through community. Through the Open Table, relationship is mutual: love, healing, purpose, faith and transformation given by each other for each other. God gives everyone human potential and the Open Table model allows us all to use it to give lives of meaning to each other.
Several of us have already expressed an interest in being trained for this ministry and I’m excited about that. You will be contacted next week, and if you haven’t signed up yet, just let me know of your interest.
An easy one for an individual to do is to volunteers for Kid’s Hope. The Kids Hope web page describes its ministry this way: One simple thing will make a big difference in the life of an at-risk child: One-on-one, positive attention from a responsible, caring adult.
Kids Hope USA develops these one-on-one relationships through the creation of church-school partnerships that pair church members with at-risk kids in supportive, mentoring relationships. Kids Hope USA mentors spend just one hour per week, reading, talking, playing and listening to a child at school. By helping the child feel loved and valued, they help that child to learn, grow and succeed. You can change a life…and that’s no small change.
I want to do that! And I want to see a whole lot of you doing that. Then we will have stories to tell as we celebrate the ways that God is blessing other people because we show up.
True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It must show up in all righteousness and works of love. It becomes unselfishly otherish! It cordially seeks, serves and fears God. It clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; comforts the sorrowing; shelters the homeless; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord. It seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and preserves whatever is good and lovely. If any persecution, suffering or anxiety occur because we are devoted to the truth of the Lord, we take it as a glorious joy and consolation. Amen.
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
I want to start by telling you a story about my granddaughter. She was talking to her mom about heaven and mom was answering a lot of questions! Then at one point, my little five-year old granddaughter said something significant. “Mom, I don’t think I’m ready to go to heaven. I would miss my friends.” What I am really proud of is that my daughter said back, “Well, if you tell your friends about Jesus and heaven, then they can all be there with you one day.”
That’s really a great reason to do evangelism. If your concerned that being a Christian might mean losing some friends who might think Christianity isn’t cool, you really should be all the more motivated to try to actually lead them to Christ so they will get to be in heaven with you one day! Don’t let your fears stop you, because if they do become Christians, they will be for your friends forever, literally forever, not just for this brief life.
And one more thought, what if you don’t tell your friends the gospel, but somebody else does, and you meet them in heaven one day. You don’t want your friends to ever have to say anything like, “Why didn’t you tell me I could be saved from sin and forgiven by God’s grace?” If you really care about your friends, you will tell them. Caring is the whole point of this message.
We read the NIV as a pretty good translation of the Word of God. But sometimes, Eugene Peterson’s, The Message, does an amazing job of saying it even better. The NIV version makes James 2:24 sound like something a good reformed person would want to argue with, because, we are saved by faith alone! So, to help with that, I want to read this whole section of James again, from the Message. Then you will hear just how much the text actually agrees with reformed theology.
Here we go: “Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.”
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?
Wasn’t our ancestor Abraham “made right with God by works” when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”? The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,” includes his action. It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?”
End of quote. And I am not going to preach from the text of The Message, but I do want to go back and highlight one thing. I have always wondered why James wrote, “But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” That sounds backwards when he was obviously arguing with people who were all talk and no action, or all faith and no deeds, to use his words. Why did he switch it around as if his opponents were saying James could have the faith and they would have the deeds? When James was raising the objection his opponents would raise in the argument for salvation by faith, shouldn’t he have written that they would tell James he could have is works? The line should read as if James’ opponents would say, “You, James, have deeds. I have faith.”
Peterson helped me see it. James has a reason for saying it backwards from what we would expect. He did not give his opponents any credit for having any faith, because they did not have the faith that saves! So, he ascribed works to them as compared to the faith the himself really did possess. And if you don’t have the faith that saves, faith in Jesus, then you actually have, only deeds!
So, James was laying things straight! James’ opponents were trying to argue that faith and deeds could be separated out. And by doing that they were showing they didn’t know anything about true faith, so all they had were deeds. Anybody who doesn’t do things the Bible way is still actually operating from a works righteousness of supposed good deeds. But the deeds they had were not love for others. It was love for themselves.
All they were doing was the self-righteous self-talk, and empty deeds like vain acts of worship, or going to church and living by so called faith. That’s why James had to make his opponents say, “You have faith. We have deeds.” As in, “You James, have the faith that saves. All we have are some kind of deeds we can be proud of and think were saved.”
You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. But let’s put it in the form of an equation because that really helps us see the relationship between faith and works.
James wrote his book because some Christians, even so long ago, believed that Paul’s formula, “salvation by faith alone” meant that works had no important place in Christian life and theology. They would have expressed it as “Faith = Salvation.” (Slide) Both they and James would agree that we can’t say, (click to next slide) “Faith + good works = Salvation.” That’s wrong (click to red circle) because it makes it sound like salvation is something that we achieve when we have faith and works. But James was pointing out that there was still another way to look at it. (click to next equation on this slide) “Faith = Salvation + good works.”
That is the Reformed view we still maintain. Salvation and good works BOTH arise out of a true Faith in Jesus. Jesus has achieved our salvation. All we can do is believe in that. The same faith in Jesus also leads us to believe what God says about the good works he has prepared in advance for us to do. So, as a result, we get to work.
Now that we have established that, I really want to use the text in James to talk about what kind of works are produced by a true and fruitful faith. To sum it all up ahead of time, it’s not about religious stuff. It’s about caring for other people. And the reason you can devote so much more of your resources to caring about others is because you know, by faith in Jesus, that all your needs are met in Christ, have already been promised to you in Christ. All your needs, past, present and future are secured in Christ.
Your past is past. There’s only one thing you need that has anything to do with your past: forgiveness. That’s done, all taken care of in Christ Jesus. There’s also only one basic need you have for the future and that is to know that you will end up in heaven and live forever. That’s taken care of, done for you by Jesus Christ who is already there preparing a place for you.
And for the present, there’s only three basic needs you have at any given time on any given day in the present; food, clothing and shelter to maintain your health. You can even be deprived of any of them temporarily and you will still survive. But all these are promised you by Jesus’ personal word when he told us in Matthew 6, “your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”
I would add that Jesus cared about the human race the way he did, and did everything he did, because he knew that he already had everything else he needed. John 13: “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so, he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.” He was about to wash his disciples’ feet because he knew he could expend every ounce of his resources on caring about them. Ultimately, he did exactly that when he died for us.
But look at the very practical service he performed to show his love to his disciples and to show how much he cared about them. It was so mundane, so humble, so easy really, and so humiliating. It made a huge impression on them because in their view it was so beneath his dignity. Similarly, James spends a lot of time in his very practical book telling his Christian brothers and sisters exactly what kind of good works are produced by true faith.
James listed acts of loving service to those who have physical needs. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” This is the first step in understanding the needs we may meet, and how to care for people in distress. Listen to their stories! Care enough to listen.
Right after, “keep a tight rein on your tongue,” which is something you have to do in order to listen well, James adds, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Look after widows and orphans, help them receive their three basic needs for existence.
In chapter 2 he talks first about honoring the poor. Give them dignity. Do not favor the wealthy. All are human beings worthy of utmost respect, just for being human. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s pretty all encompassing. But it boils down to making sure that everyone else is just as comfortable in life as you want to be, to the best of your ability to do so. It goes a lot further than just not having enemies to speak of. That’s an easy way to claim you love everybody. But in our text, James’ practical take home point is, be sure you do offer food and clothing to those who need it. If you claim to love your neighbor, put that attitude in to action! Failure to act is proof of little or no love.
All these are ways we have to show people that we care about them. They may not care about church, but they do care about themselves and their own needs. We can help with that. But a key principle that we need to remember is that we are not doing this for church growth. We are not even really doing it for evangelism. We’re doing it because we love people. Our ministry services should be given as a gift to the community. When you give a gift, you want it to be meaningful, something that the recipient will appreciate. It takes wisdom and thoughtfulness to figure that out. That’s the real reason that it’s the thought that counts, so you give a good gift.
As a congregation working together on the mission God has in mind for us to pursue on his behalf, we have to do some praying and thinking to know what our community needs and what we can give them that will match that need, and that they will thank us for. What do we have to offer? What do they need? Where do the answers to both questions match up? Let’s do that kind of giving!
I remember when I first sensed a call to ministry it was centered around this idea of caring about people. I was at a prayer conference. One presenter was talking about his ministry to the homeless. He showed a picture of an elderly homeless woman, sitting on the church steps. It was cold and the lady had rags wrapped around her feet instead of shoes. The man talked about how he met her and what he did to get her a warm place to stay and how grateful she was and how it led her to ask Jesus into her heart. My heart reached out and responded, “I want to do that too!”
But God did not lead me to work in a homeless shelter. He led me back to college, and many years later, to finish seminary and become the pastor of a church. I remember thinking how exciting it would be to lead a whole congregation in worship and in service to the Lord. I had been happy to serve the Lord as an ordinary church member before seminary. I was janitor and deacon and Sunday school teacher and VBS director and special music, just about anything that I could do for the church, I was willing and eager. So, I figured all God’s people were like that. In both of my two former churches, I encouraged community service and connection and continue to believe that faith generated good works, caring about people, loving them tangibly, is the best way to share the gospel, or at least get an opportunity to share the gospel.
That’s why I am so excited about Community Hope making it possible for us to get involved with Open Table and with Kid’s Hope. These are tried and true ministries but they can be expensive to get into. Not anymore!
In their words on their website: Open Table trains congregations and their members, to form communities –called Tables - that transform the vocational and life experiences of members into tools our Brothers and Sisters can use to develop and implement plans that create positive change.
For just one example from their website, one person wrote: “We just became one whole family. It no longer became what they could do for me or how they could serve me, but what we could be for each other. I am now a homeowner as of February of last year…it has brought together so many people, so many organizations. We’ve built relationships with neighboring churches and different communities.”
The Open Table process is a catalyst for the collaboration of faith communities. That means instead of just giving things, we give ourselves to the people we care about. While congregation members join Tables to help others, they soon realize they are changed forever by the relationships they create through community. Through the Open Table, relationship is mutual: love, healing, purpose, faith and transformation given by each other for each other. God gives everyone human potential and the Open Table model allows us all to use it to give lives of meaning to each other.
Several of us have already expressed an interest in being trained for this ministry and I’m excited about that. You will be contacted next week, and if you haven’t signed up yet, just let me know of your interest.
An easy one for an individual to do is to volunteers for Kid’s Hope. The Kids Hope web page describes its ministry this way: One simple thing will make a big difference in the life of an at-risk child: One-on-one, positive attention from a responsible, caring adult.
Kids Hope USA develops these one-on-one relationships through the creation of church-school partnerships that pair church members with at-risk kids in supportive, mentoring relationships. Kids Hope USA mentors spend just one hour per week, reading, talking, playing and listening to a child at school. By helping the child feel loved and valued, they help that child to learn, grow and succeed. You can change a life…and that’s no small change.
I want to do that! And I want to see a whole lot of you doing that. Then we will have stories to tell as we celebrate the ways that God is blessing other people because we show up.
True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It must show up in all righteousness and works of love. It becomes unselfishly otherish! It cordially seeks, serves and fears God. It clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; comforts the sorrowing; shelters the homeless; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord. It seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and preserves whatever is good and lovely. If any persecution, suffering or anxiety occur because we are devoted to the truth of the Lord, we take it as a glorious joy and consolation. Amen.
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