Faith without works means I’m dead?

Yesterday I was writing a piece about Bible study and stressed the importance of being teachable. This morning, I asked the Lord to teach me, to speak to me, to give me something that I need to hear. He did, and what I am hearing is a profound challenge.

All my Christian life I’ve been taught that Paul wrote about salvation by faith alone to those who tried to justify themselves before God with good works. However, James wrote about the need for good works to those who abused Paul’s teaching. James stressed that faith was not genuine without good works because they proved that a person is actually saved. Today, I am challenged to see this differently. First of all, the focus is on this verse:

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? (James 2:14)

I’ve understood it this way: What good is it if someone claims to be a believer but there is no evidence in his life. Can that kind of ‘faith’ save him? In other words, faith will produce good works, so they are inseparable. The faith saves a person, and the works prove it.

However, two of my commentaries suggest a different approach. The first one says that James was trying to “combat the Jewish tendency (transplanted into their Christianity) to substitute a lifeless, inoperative acquaintance with the letter of the law, for change of heart to practical holiness, as if justification could be thereby attained.”

In other words, the original readers of James were Jews who had been converted to Christ. Their problem was that they brought into their belief in Jesus the old tendencies of their past where they rested on their Jewishness rather than doing what God wanted them to do.

Note this, James was not writing to unsaved Jewish people. He wrote to “my brethren” and “to the twelve tribes scattered abroad” (James 1:1) who were Jews that believed in Jesus and were being persecuted. His words about faith and works were to people who were already saved, and not a recipe for salvation to those outside the kingdom of God.

The second commentary backs this up. Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary says this, adding even more challenges to my prior thinking.

Some claim the faith mentioned in this passage is not genuine faith that produces eternal life. But James addresses this section to believers (“my brethren” in v. 14), that is, people who have exercised genuine faith. The issue in this paragraph is not true faith versus false faith; it is faith that is alone, meaning without works (v. 17) versus faith that is accompanied by works. “Saved” (Greek sozo ) is used five times in James (and) each time it refers to the saving of the temporal life, not saving from the penalty of sin (see 5:15). In this context James is referring to being “saved” from the judgment without mercy at the judgment seat of Christ (v. 13) and possibly the saving of one’s life from physical death (1:21). Works are actions that follow the “royal law” of love (vv. 8, 15, 16). James is implying in this verse that faith in Christ will demonstrate itself in love for others . . .

If I interpret James this way, then other ideas come into play. For instance, God saves people then leaves us here on earth to be His witnesses. We are to tell others about Jesus Christ and our lives are to be evidence of His glory. But what if we don’t?

I’ve known Christians who genuinely believed, but insisted on hanging on to a blatant and obvious sin. Their lives were not fulfilling their purpose as believers and they died, suddenly. While I don’t know for sure, it seemed as if God took their physical lives in the way this commentary suggests, rather then leaving them here as a terrible example of what it means to be His children.

A less tentative thought is a definition of dead. James says in 2:17, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” In the Bible, dead means separation. A spiritual dead person can be physically alive but is separated from God by sin. A physically dead person is separated from their body, but present (in spirit) with the Lord. So what kind of “dead” is James talking about?

Could he be saying that faith without works describes the life of a person who believes that Jesus died for their sin, has been born again, but because they are not responding to God (perhaps because of some pet sin, or they are just not obedient) they are thus disconnected from Him? Does dead mean that these people do not have fellowship with God and that their lives are ‘lifeless’ in the sense that the life of Christ who lives in them cannot be seen?

Whatever James means, it is a warning to me. If Jesus lives in me, then I am to step aside from all my own wants and desires and let Him be seen. I am to pay attention to what He says to me and obey Him. Otherwise, the faith that I have is separated from the evidence that shows it, and that faith is useless. If I know the Savior yet live in sin, I might as well be in heaven as mucking about here on earth.