One of the emphases of the Christian faith is the fact that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It was one of history’s greatest “Ah ha” moments when Martin Luther came to realize that it was impossible for one to earn one’s salvation through good deeds and following the Law. As obvious as it sounds to us today, it was a revelation for Luther, who then became the figurehead in the Protestant Reformation. If it weren’t for him standing his ground on this point, we may not be sitting here this morning in a United Methodist Church. However, what we often see in history is that when the pendulum has swung too far one way, it tends to come back too far in the other direction.
As pivotal as Luther is in the history of the Church, he didn’t get everything right, as is often the case with any of us when it comes to trying to understand Scripture and live out our lives theologically. Luther was not a fan of James. As hard as he hit the idea of faith alone, he moved far away from anything that even remotely mentioned the importance of works in the Christian journey. And certainly, verse 14 of today’s passage would have given him all sorts of fits. “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”
I think that if Luther could have, he would have ripped the entire letter out of his Bible and every Bible that he ever came across. I’m sure that there are parts of Scripture that we all wish we could tear out. Some scholars come up with fancy ways of doing this by supposing some random source that may or may not have ever existed in the first place. The Jesus Seminar (who I refuse to call scholars) did it by voting with red, pink, gray or black beads on whether or not they thought Jesus actually said some of the things in the gospel. Some theologians do it by simply ignoring the importance of Scripture. And some of us do it by how we live out our faith. Or, more appropriately, how we fail to live out our faith.
The problem with this approach is that we really can’t do it with any sort of integrity. If we say that we believe in Scripture as the divinely-inspired Word of God, then we cannot pick and choose which parts of it we want to believe and which parts we think don’t really belong. The fact is… Scripture says we are saved by faith alone. There is nothing that we can do to earn our own salvation. God doesn’t owe us anything, regardless of how good we think we are. However, Scripture also says, like it does here in James, that our faith is not just an intellectual acknowledgement of a set of facts. Faith is not just about agreement.
You don’t just believe the right things to get into heaven. You don’t just say the right things to get into heaven. And you don’t just do the right things to get into heaven. In fact, I would go so far as to say that what we learn from Scripture is that our faith is not about “getting into heaven” at all, but rather, our faith is about being in relationship, right here and right now, with the living God. Yes, down the road, at the end of the line, we do go on to eternal life with God, but if that’s all faith is about then how we live our lives in the meantime, quite frankly, doesn’t matter. I don’t think that is what Scripture tells us. There is more to the Christian journey than what happens at the end.
In his day, Luther was fighting a flawed religious system, and anything that remotely supported that system was looked at as a threat. Luther didn’t like James because James points out that there is more to our faith than strictly belief, and faith alone. Luther didn’t like James because James reminds us that what we do, how we live out our faith is just as important as believing in Jesus Christ. While we are not saved by our works, our works are an important part of what it means to live by faith. Unfortunately, what Luther ended up doing was pushing the pendulum too far to the other side as a reaction to the abuses of an wrongful understanding of works in relation to faith. We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.
Luther’s insistence that works have nothing to do with salvation pushed Christianity into this realm in which faith became entirely personal. It became about an individual’s decision; an individual’s right to believe whatever he/she wants. It led to the assumption that faith is a private matter that is best not to be discussed with other people. Here’s the problem: faith is not just about the individual.
The Christian journey is not a journey that one takes alone. From the very beginning of Christianity, we see believers constantly together in groups; learning from one another, sharing with one another and taking care of one another. In fact, we rarely read about an instance where one of the early Christians is alone. For some reason, contemporary Christians have come to believe that faith is a solo journey; that all that matters is the individual’s beliefs. But, again, that’s not what Scripture tells us, and that’s not what our theological tradition tells us either.
In his fourth discourse on the Sermon on the Mount, John Wesley makes two key points. He says, “I shall endeavour to show, First that Christianity is essentially a social religion; and that to turn it into a solitary one is to destroy it. Secondly, that to conceal this religion is impossible, as well as utterly contrary to the design of its Author.” When he says that Christianity is essentially social, he means that it is a religion that is lived out in the midst of society. If we don’t live our faith, and if we don’t share our faith (or conceal it), it will die. Faith is something that we do alongside others, and our faith is seen when we live it out in the context of the world around us. In other words, what we do is a reflection of who we are. This is why James says that showing your faith by what you do is so important.
It seems as though there were some places where Christians were showing partiality to those who were wealthy. The rich people were getting the best seats at the assembly, while the poor people were getting ignored and pushed to the side. In showing partiality, in giving preferential treatment, there was a failure to live up to the command of Scripture to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And that is what James is really getting fired up about here – the failure to live up to one of the most basic commands of the faith.
Last week, in Mark 7, we saw that Jesus jumped all over the Pharisees for paying lip service to God; because they were more concerned with appearances and rituals of the faith. They weren’t showing their faith by their actions. They weren’t living it out. In some sense, that is what James is doing something similar here as well. He is getting on these people for not living out their faith. He is jumping all over those who are giving preferential treatment to the rich. And he pounds this point home in verses 14-17. He’s saying, “What good is your faith if it doesn’t cause you to care for those in need? I hear you saying that you have faith, but I’m not seeing it.” And that’s the key. How are people going to know about the faith that we proclaim if we don’t share it by our words and our actions? They aren’t. Period.
Again, turning to John Wesley, we see the words, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.” Wesley is really picking up the theme that James is pointing to in today’s Scripture. Faith is not entirely about the individual, but it is about how we live it out. Our personal holiness is for naught if we aren’t sharing Christ with others and if we aren’t being obedient to the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. It is crucial for us to have a living faith in which we share it and show it.
I had a conversation with somebody this week. It was a totally random conversation, and it really had nothing to do with why we were talking with one another in the first place, but this lady said that her generation was constantly told that it was rude to talk about politics and religion with other people. She said that people needed permission to talk about their faith with others. I don’t know if that’s the case for people here this morning, but let me tell you. You have permission to share your faith with others. You have permission to move faith from something personal and solitary to something public that’s lived out alongside other people. Not only do you have permission to share your faith, it is your responsibility to share and live out your faith.
In fact, if we aren’t living out our faith, if we aren’t sharing it with others, then we are missing out on something that is crucial in our own spiritual lives. James calls out the reader as people who are paying lip service to their faith because he couldn’t see any evidence of it in their lives. James isn’t saying that they would receive salvation because of what they are doing. It doesn’t work that way. What he is saying is that if Jesus is truly working in our lives, then the fruits of our faith would be seen by our actions.
That’s our challenge for this week. Are we living out our faith in tangible ways? Can people look at our lives and know that there is something different about us, or do we blend in just fine? It’s important to relate to the culture around us, but it is also important that the culture around us knows that there is something different about us. Faith is lived out in the world around us. Faith is seen by the actions that we take.
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