David Pawson on James 2:14-26

The purposes of providing this transcript are 1) because it is faster to read than to watch, or listen to, the video, and 2) reference can be made to certain parts of interest after watching the video.

"James Part 6 - chapter 2 verse 14 to verse 26 Faith and Works part 2 Theological"

Formatted Transcript

“Houston, We Have a Problem”

Well, now we come to the rest of chapter two. I'm not going to read it again, but I'm going to tackle it from a very different angle—a theological angle.

The big problem with chapter two is that there's a problem.

I remember vividly the American astronauts on their way to the moon who said, “Houston, we have a problem.” What an understatement. Part of the space vehicle had exploded and lost, but they got back safely, fortunately.

Now theologians who read this second half of James 2 say, “We have a problem,” and it's a big one. It's very simply stated: it's nothing less than an apparent contradiction in the New Testament, where Paul seems to say one thing and James says the opposite.

Both are in our New Testament.

It's a real problem for those who believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, especially for those who follow Paul as their main heavyweight in theology. Most evangelicals have probably made Paul their major source of truth and judge the rest of the New Testament in the light of Paul's letters. Others do it the other way round.

James was the Lord's step-brother, presiding elder over the Jerusalem church, which was the mother church in the early days. Paul, as you know, was the missionary to the Gentiles and wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else.

But they're both in the New Testament, and they knew each other.

They'd both taken part in the famous Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where Paul and his mission to Gentiles [were] arguing that they didn't need to become Jews to believe in the Jewish Messiah and therefore didn't need to be circumcised. James, as the Jewish leader of the Jewish church in Jerusalem, chaired the debate. If you read Acts 15, you know the outcome.

Now this is not a secondary matter.

This is about salvation.

The most fundamental subject in the New Testament is:

What must I do to be saved?

Paul apparently says, “Nothing except believe.”

James says, “You'd better add works to your belief or it won't save you.”

Now who is right?

Which is right?

James has made five statements in this one section of chapter two—just thirteen verses. Five times he states categorically:

Faith without works cannot save.

Faith without works is dead.

Faith without works is no good at all.

And yet Paul says:

We are saved by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves; it's the gift of God.

He says the exact opposite.

Followers of Paul have gone along with Paul rather than James. It was for this reason that Martin Luther and others have played down James and just don't get what he's after, because they are so full of what Paul had said that James can't really get a look in.

Paul, James, and Abraham

There are three possible ways of handling this problem. But I think before we do it, it might be wise to read just three portions of Paul to hear what Paul has to say about this.

The first is in Romans chapter 4 and the first two verses.

Notice that both Paul and James appeal to Abraham as the ground of what they are saying.

So Paul says in Romans 4:

What then shall we say that Abraham our father discovered in this matter? If in fact Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. What does the Scripture say?

Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Notice the words “credited to him.”

That's what justified means.

That's justification he's talking about, and he says, “Not of works.”

He later in chapter 4 points out that that statement about Abraham's faith—“and it was credited to him for righteousness”—was said before Abraham did anything, before he circumcised himself and the others, before he did anything about it.

God credited him with righteousness.

This is Paul.

Interestingly enough, James appeals to the same statement, which is in Genesis chapter 15, verse 6. James appeals to the same statement to prove his point that faith plus works is needed for justification.

Let's turn to Ephesians—no, first Galatians, in order of the letters in your Bible.

Galatians chapter 3, verses 6 to 8:

Consider Abraham. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

There's the same verse from Genesis.

Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

And then we turn to Ephesians chapter 2, and we read the verses I quoted already:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

I'll read the next verse because I'll be coming back to it later:

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Now those three quotes from Paul tell you Paul's position, and it is that it is by faith on its own that we are justified, whereas James says the exact opposite.

Both of them appeal to Abraham.

Both of them quote the same verse from Genesis—that Abraham believed God and it was reckoned, credited to him, as righteousness.

However, they interpret that verse differently.

Paul interprets that verse to mean that right then, immediately, God accepted Abraham on his faith, and from that moment he was justified.

James doesn't interpret it that way. He interprets that statement as a prophecy which was fulfilled later.

So there's a difference of interpretation.

Paul says it happened right then. Abraham was justified, and he makes a point that was said to him before he did anything with his faith.

But James is saying, no, he was justified when his faith was completed, when he did something about it and sacrificed his son.

So there is a real difference.

Can't both be right?

Well, let's slowly go into it and see if we can find a way of bringing them together.

Superficially, you have to say they can't both be right. There is a direct contradiction, superficially.

But we're going to go deeper, and we're raising a huge question which is relevant to us:

What must I do to be saved?

What must you do to be saved?

James says, “Faith plus works.”

Paul says, “Faith only.”

What do you do?

This affects all our evangelism and how we lead others to Christ.

Augustine, Pelagius, and Human Responsibility

Now through the Church's history—forgive me going through the centuries just a little—this issue has been a controversy in the Church ever since.

It boils down to the question:

Who does the saving?

Does God do it all, or do we have something to contribute?

When a person is saved today, is that all God's doing, or has that person cooperated with God and contributed something to his salvation?

That's a huge issue.

The first time it surfaced in Church history was in the fifth century, when a man called Augustine, who was a bishop in North Africa—you may have heard of Augustine's Confessions; that's when he wrote his testimony—and he took the line:

Salvation is all God's doing.

It's not our doing at all; it's God's doing.

Of course, this led to an extraordinary series of implications. It meant that God chooses who is to be saved.

We don't make any choice; it is God who chooses us.

He chooses some to be saved and some not to be. He chooses some for heaven and others he leaves for hell.

Now that's an extraordinary position, but Augustine was the first really to take it.

It's because he believed in the use of force. He built an awful lot on a text in the parable of the Great Feast where the owner of the feast says, “Go into the byways and highways and persuade,” is one translation.

But he took it: “Force people to come in. Compel them to come in.”

Therefore he saw God's grace as an irresistible force which compelled people to be saved whether they chose to be or not.

Therefore he began to teach that repentance and faith are not something we do at all, but something that God does in us.

Therefore, it's not up to me to do anything.

God will produce repentance in me. He will produce faith in me.

He even went so far as to say that you must be born again before you repent and believe, because otherwise you couldn't do either.

Now these are quite radical things to say, but Augustine was the first man to take that line.

Therefore he was highly critical of a British monk called Pelagius.

Pelagius was a British monk who went to Rome to live.

He was horrified by the decadence of the Roman churches—no holiness—and he was just horrified by what he saw.

So he swung to the opposite extreme and said:

It's up to you.

The lack of effort means the lack of holiness.

You need to do this.

Therefore he put so much emphasis on human responsibility in reaction to Augustine's emphasis on divine responsibility.

I would agree that Pelagius was wrong.

He said we didn't all get born with sin in us. We were all born innocent and we chose sin. We are entirely responsible for what we are.

Now this is the basic issue:

Who's responsible for saving people?

Augustine said God is entirely.

Pelagius took the opposite view and said man is entirely.

It's a man's own fault if he's going to hell. It's a man's own responsibility to accept Christ as his Saviour.

Therefore he put all of it on the human will.

Now I'm simplifying this to try and make it clear to you.

However, there was a bunch of French bishops in between the two.

They said salvation is a combination of what God does and what we do.

He saves; we do the repenting and believing; and the result is salvation.

So can you see these three positions?

Augustine said God is responsible for saving us entirely.

Pelagius said the opposite. He said we are entirely responsible for our salvation. We do the choosing.

He does the choosing; we do the choosing.

In the middle, the French bishops said:

You're both wrong. We believe that it's both.

God calls us, and we call on him for salvation.

It's both.

It's a cooperation.

To put it as simply as I can to get it across, it's the difference between believing that we are in a state of having been drowned and therefore we can do nothing for ourselves and God rescues us; or that we are drowning and somebody is throwing a life belt to us and telling us to grab hold of it and will then pull us to the shore; or that we are strong swimmers and are not drowning at all and just need to decide to swim to the shore.

Does that make that clear to you?

The French bishop said the gospel is:

God is throwing us a lifeline, and it's our responsibility to grab it and hold on until he pulls us to the shore.

Unfortunately, Augustine was a very clever man and he labelled the French bishops “semi-Pelagian.”

You could have just as easily called them “semi-Augustinian,” but he didn't.

He called them semi-Pelagian, which stuck that label of Pelagius onto those in the middle.

That finished them off in people's eyes because the Church accepted Augustine, and he is regarded as the greatest Church Father of all.

I'm afraid I can't ever think that, but that's what the Church did.

I come firmly in the middle with the French bishops.

You can call me semi-Pelagian or semi-Augustinian.

Both apply.

I believe it's both God's responsibility and our responsibility, and that we need to preach the gospel emphasizing both.

Nobody can save themselves.

Nobody can earn salvation.

Nobody can deserve it.

That's grace.

But grace needs to be accepted and used, and it's our responsibility to do just that.

Just to try and make that even clearer, you ask any of the three:

Whose fault is it that some people are not being saved?

For it's very obvious that not all are being saved.

The Augustinian would say: entirely God's choice. It's his responsibility that many are not being saved.

Pelagius would say: it's entirely man's choice and it's our responsibility.

People in the middle would say: it's both.

We need to hear God's call, and we need to call on him.

The two calls that you find in Acts 2, for example, you'll find all through the New Testament—this combination of God's responsibility and ours.

It does not mean that we can save ourselves, but it does mean that it's our responsibility if we're not saved.

The Reformation

Now that was how the tension between James and Paul surfaced in the fifth century.

Let's turn the pages of history quite quickly to the Reformation.

I have to say that Luther was an Augustinian monk and Calvin was a student of Augustine.

His magnificent two tomes called the Institutes of the Christian Religion are little more than a systematic Augustinian view.

So the major Protestant Reformers were on the Augustinian side of this question.

You find that there was another point of view—the Anabaptists particularly, and others—who said:

No, human responsibility is real.

It's not all God's responsibility that people are not being saved; it's partly ours.

Therefore they taught that being saved is the result of God's decision and ours, and that the two are needed, and that there is a cooperation between the two.

Now this resulted in a Reformed theology—sorry I'm getting so theological, but I did warn you.

The Reformed theology has highlighted this because it has over-emphasized the responsibility of God for salvation and under-emphasized the human part in being saved.

Therefore it tends to emphasize faith in God's part and not works, which are man's part.

That's where the tension of faith and works really reached a head.

The result was that Reformed theology added a word to Paul which he never used, and it was the word alone—the word sola in Latin:

sola fides — faith alone.

And that word is never in any of Paul's letters, but it's assumed that that's what he taught.

He never actually used the term “alone.”

That was added in by the Reformers, later the Puritans, and today by many Reformed preachers.

But he never actually used it.

The only person who ever used the term “faith alone” was James.

He said:

It's not by faith alone.

But he wasn't directly contradicting Paul because Paul never said it was by faith alone.

That's the first thing I want to say this afternoon.

It's assuming that Paul said “alone” that is the heart of the apparent contradiction.

Paul never did say “faith alone.”

James did, but he said it's not by faith alone.

You're still with me, I hope you are.

So let's move on from there.

“Once Saved, Always Saved?”

Let's bring it right up to date.

Those who believe that salvation is God's responsibility, not human, tend also today to believe and preach “once saved, always saved.”

Because their argument is that if God has done all the work of salvation, he will keep you.

It's all his responsibility.

Perseverance is his work in you, not your work.

That's why Calvinism as such believes in the perseverance of the saints.

What they mean by that is: God—it's his responsibility to keep you as well as to save you.

It's all of God.

Now that's why I wrote a little book called Once Saved, Always Saved?, which is proving extremely popular, if that's the word.

It's going into other languages because it's got a question mark in the title.

It's published by Hodder & Stoughton, who also published a book entitled Once Saved, Always Saved—without a question mark—by no less than a man called Dr. R. T. Kendall, who was then minister of Westminster Chapel.

So both books come out by the same publisher.

I tell people:

Buy both and read both, and then go back to your Bible.

I point out in this book that there are over eighty passages in your New Testament that tell you you can lose your salvation and that you have a duty to keep up your side of the relationship.

I firmly believe that.

But the majority of Reformed teachers and preachers today would disagree profoundly with me.

I'm trying to make this a real issue for you so that you realise it has profound implications for how you get saved today.

“What Must We Do?”

On the day of Pentecost the disciples were confronted with the question:

“What must we do?”

According to the Augustinian-Calvinist side, they should have been told, “Nothing.”

They should have been told, “Only believe.”

But they weren't.

They were told to repent.

They were told to get baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

They were given an honest, straight answer to a straight question:

“What must we do?”

You need to do this.

They did it, and three thousand were saved that day because they did what they were told—to do.

I've told you that do is the main key word in the epistle of James, and you can see why it's not terribly popular among Reformed theologians.

They don't really like to preach from it.

James is saying:

God will do his bit if you do yours.

There are things that he can do and will do for you if you do your bit.

If you repent and believe, he will save.

It's as simple as that.

But it's a huge issue with so many Christians today, and I've tried to show you how it is.

Nothing we can do can merit salvation.

Let's be clear about that.

You can do nothing that deserves to be saved.

You can do nothing to get something in God's credit account for you.

Faith is the only thing that will get you into credit with God.

That's the meaning of Genesis 15:6.

I'm trying to put this so simply and clearly that you really understand.

Wesley and Whitefield

In the eighteenth century the whole thing came up again between two of the greatest evangelists of the eighteenth century, John Wesley and George Whitefield.

George Whitefield left his evangelism in charge of John Wesley and said, “I'm heading off for America.”

He was instrumental in leading to the great revival in the middle of the next century in America.

But George Whitefield and John Wesley profoundly disagreed over this whole question:

Who does the saving?

John Wesley was very clear that it's a question of both.

We have something to do and God has something to do.

It's only when those two get together that salvation is the result.

So they had this great difference in the nineteenth century, and it's lasted until today.

If I put Billy Graham on one side and Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the other, I'm not far off.

The real question is:

What must we do?

I believe the clear answer of Scripture: there are things that you must do if you want to be saved.

They will not merit salvation.

They will not deserve it.

They will not earn it.

It's all of grace.

But grace doesn't force itself on anybody.

Grace is for those who are willing to receive it and live by it.

I'm off to Singapore shortly, and that's going to be my main burden because there's a teaching coming out of Singapore in our day which is being spread through the mass media and widely accepted because it's a popular message, and that is that you don't need to do anything.

Grace is free.

But then the question remains:

Why then is grace not reaching everybody?

It's not God's fault because the gospel of grace is being freely distributed around the whole world by mass media, and still people refuse.

The truth is grace is not an irresistible force.

Grace is an undeserved favour which you can refuse and which you can turn down.

And you grieve the Holy Spirit when you do, but you are free to refuse the gospel.

You're free to turn it down.

That's, I'm afraid, the truth why many are not saved today, especially in rich countries like this.

Three Possible Solutions

Well now, what's the solution?

There are three possible solutions, and they centre around the three words that we'll put up in a moment.

The three words are:

Contradictory

Compatibility

Complementary

Not complimentary, but complementary—meaning that they support one another.

Solution One: Contradiction

Now the first solution to the tension between James and Paul is to accept that they are contradictory.

If you do that—and many Christians have done that—if you take both at face value, they are contradicting each other.

And therefore that forces a choice on you as to which you prefer and which you believe and which you will live by and which will save you.

Now when you have a choice between James and Paul, many people prefer James and many others prefer Paul.

Who prefers James?

Well, the liberals on the whole prefer James because it panders to human pride.

Because if you can decide your salvation, if it's up to you, then you can say:

“I decided to become a Christian. I chose it all. It was all me. It was my choice, my decision.”

And that really keeps your pride.

You don't have to come and say:

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling.

That's very humbling to sing or to say.

And so you keep your pride.

It's what we call the do-gooding kind of Christianity, and that is preferred by many.

The number of people [who] have said to me:

“I'm as good as anyone who goes to your church.”

You've heard it, haven't you?

The do-gooding version of Christianity keeps your pride.

And the more good you do, the more proud you are.

There are a lot of people, even in church, who are relying on the good things they've done.

Grace and the Baptist Women's League

I was once asked to go and speak to the Baptist Women's League.

Now I confess that's not my scene.

I went, and I met this rather overpowering lady who said, “I'm the chairman”—or “chairwoman,” I think she said—and she said:

“What are you going to speak on?”

I said:

“I'm going to speak on grace.”

“Oh,” she said, “that sounds nice.”

I said:

“Well, I'm going to say two things.

“Grace means, first of all, that your bad deeds need not keep you out of heaven.”

She brightened up and smiled at that.

I said:

“The second point I want to make is that your good deeds won't help you to get there.”

That, I'm afraid, was the wrong thing to say to her.

She got quite flighty and she said:

“Are you trying to tell me that all my good deeds are wasted?”

I said:

“They weren't wasted as far as other people are concerned. They helped other people, but they won't help you a bit.”

She never spoke to me again, and I never got invited back to the Baptist Women's League again.

But grace means:

Your bad deeds needn't keep you out of heaven, but your good deeds won't help you to get there.

That's what grace means.

Liberals prefer a gospel that says you can save yourself.

Funnily enough, Peter, on the day of Pentecost, said:

“Save yourselves from this wicked generation.”

Save yourselves.

He was then pointing to the responsibility there is on humans to do their part.

When they wanted to know what it was, he said:

“Repent and be baptized.”

That doesn't make you feel proud.

Repenting kills your pride because you're admitting that you're a sinner.

You're admitting that you've done wrong.

But you know, when you come to Christ, you even need to repent for your good deeds.

Did you ever realize that?

You need to leave all the good things you've done behind because they're not going to help.

Do you understand what I've just said?

You need to repent of all your deeds, good and bad, and leave them behind, and come as a sinner who needs to repent and who needs to believe and who needs to be baptized.

Is Faith the Gift in Ephesians 2:8?

When you put all the responsibility on God for your salvation, you tend to downplay repentance because repentance is surely something you do.

You tend to downplay faith, and you misquote what Paul said about it.

Do you know that when Paul said:

By grace are we saved through faith, and that not of yourselves...

What does “not of yourselves” refer to?

It doesn't refer to the faith.

That's the biggest mistake people make.

Grammatically, its case belongs to the word “save” in the previous argument.

So what Paul is saying is:

Not of yourselves.

It's not faith, but the salvation part.

“For by grace you are saved, and that not of yourselves, through faith.”

Now anybody with Greek can check me up on that, but the words “not of yourselves” grammatically connect with “save,” not with “faith.”

But so many have taken that verse to mean that faith is something God does.

No.

You need to believe.

Again and again in the New Testament, people are told:

“Believe on the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.”

It's an imperative.

It's a command.

You do the believing and he'll do the saving.

It's so important.

This faith is not a gift of God.

Faith is something we do.

That's James's point too.

But you see how easy it is to mistake a Scripture and get it wrong.

So evangelicals prefer Paul.

Why?

Because the only thing you need to do to get saved is believe.

That's so simple.

Just believe and you're saved.

So many evangelistic crusades are based on just that:

Only believe and you're saved.

James will have none of that.

So true evangelicals are still left with a problem.

The problem is that both Paul and James are in the New Testament, and they are both inspired by God, and they both have something to say.

So that's the first thing people have done with this apparent contradiction.

They have accepted that it's contradictory.

I don't accept that.

Evangelicals choose Paul and liberals choose James, but we don't choose between them.

We accept both as the inspired Word of God.

So that's not the solution.

Solution Two: Compatibility

The second solution that people have come to is compatibility.

They try and make out that Paul and James are both saying the same thing.

They usually begin with Paul and point out that Paul is very keen on good works too; that Paul believed justifying faith should lead to sanctifying faith; that being credited with righteousness should lead to me becoming righteous—the one imputed and later imparted to you, to give the technical terms.

In other words, Paul in Ephesians 2 says:

We're not saved by good works, but we are saved for good works.

Good works should follow faith.

Therefore many evangelical commentaries I have read say that James and Paul are saying exactly the same thing: that faith should lead to good works or it's not real faith.

At first sight that sounds as if the problem is solved.

Most evangelical commentaries I've read take this line and feel there's no contradiction at all; that they are actually saying the same thing; that good works do matter, but that they follow faith and they should come from faith and should be a product of faith.

In other words, they come later than faith.

Faith comes first and works follow—works that the Lord has prepared for us beforehand, works that he wanted us to do.

Well now, that sounds as if we've found the answer.

It doesn't.

I can't help mentioning one unique answer which has come to the surface in a book by R. T. Kendall of Westminster entitled Justification by Works.

But he takes a completely different line to everybody else and says that justification is justification before people, not before God, and that if you want to justify your faith to other people it better be accompanied by good works.

That was a unique and totally original way around the problem.

Since he followed Martyn Lloyd-Jones during his lifetime, he went to Martyn Lloyd-Jones with his solution.

Apparently, so he says, Martyn Lloyd-Jones accepted this new insight as the answer to the problem.

But it was only one man's solution and one man's agreement, and I do not believe it's the right one.

Solution Three: Complementarity

They are not saying the same thing.

They're not contradicting each other.

They're not saying opposite things.

And they're not saying the same thing.

The solution I want to present to you is that they are saying different things that don't contradict each other but are supplementary to each other, complementary to each other—that they are both contributing to the New Testament doctrine of faith, but in different ways.

James is adding a dimension to saving faith which Paul did not include in all that he said about faith.

We need both of them together to understand what faith really is.

So I come to the third solution, which is that they are complementary to each other and they are saying different things—a real difference.

They're not saying the same thing.

Each is saying something about faith that the other hasn't said.

Now with every doctrine, if you want the whole New Testament doctrine of a thing, you need the whole New Testament.

You need to put together all that the New Testament says on a subject to understand that subject.

I could take so many examples of this.

I've written a book on divorce.

If you're going to understand the New Testament attitude to divorce and remarriage, you need to look at everything that has been said on it, not just one.

If you look at just one Gospel—in Luke—you'll come to one conclusion, or Mark, but you need to look at Matthew.

Matthew is the only one that includes exceptions to that.

You need to take that into account.

You need to study Paul in 1 Corinthians 7—what Paul said.

Only when you pull together everything in the New Testament on a subject can you have a reliable understanding of that subject.

That's why we have four Gospels, and we need all four.

If you want to understand Jesus properly, you'll need to study all four.

Each has a unique thing to say about Jesus, and John has more unique things to say than the other three.

You need everything about Jesus.

You also need the book of Revelation to understand Jesus as he really is.

Many neglect the book of Revelation and get a one-sided view of Jesus—that he's all kindness and meekness, never gets angry.

But in fact, the book of Revelation gives you a very different view of Jesus, and you need it all.

Now having said that, if you're to understand faith, you need both what Paul said and what James said, and then you'll understand true faith, saving faith, justifying faith.

See, what was wrong with that second answer was that all those answers are fitting James into Paul and making him say the same thing.

They're not saying the same thing.

There are other things wrong with that middle answer too.

Those who give that middle answer are confusing sanctification with justification.

Or, to put it quite simply, they are thinking that “works” always means good deeds.

James is careful never to describe works as “good works.”

Those are works of love, works of kindness.

But James is talking about works of faith, and that's not works of kindness.

Neither Abraham nor Rahab were works of kindness.

They were works of faith.

Faith That Works

So let's come to this complementary answer.

James is contrasting two kinds of faith:

Faith that doesn't work and faith that does work.

That's what he means by faith with works or faith without works.

Faith that is not active but passive is what he means by faith without works, and he's saying both are needed.

We need both faith without works and faith with works.

We need both to be saved.

Saving faith is faith that works.

Now this is the definition of faith that I want to just spill out.

This is a faith with content.

On the left side, faith without actions has content but it lacks confidence.

Faith that works has confidence.

Believing “That” and Believing “In”

I think I'll have to start in a simple way.

I was preaching in a church in Hanover in Germany, and I asked the congregation:

“How many of you believe in me?”

Only about half a dozen hands went up.

I said:

“Well, how many believe that I exist?”

Every hand went up.

So you've got to word the appeal rightly to get a response.

And there was a lady sitting in the front row down here, well dressed, and she looked as if she was game for a bit of fun.

So I said to her:

“Now you put your hand up to say you believe in me. I don't know if you do.”

I said:

“You've professed that you believe in me, but you've not done anything about it.”

And then I said to her:

“If you give me your money to look after, I'll know that you believe in me.”

And there was a deathly hush that came over the whole congregation—a freeze.

I thought, “I said the wrong thing. I don't know what I said.”

I asked the pastor afterwards:

“Why did they all freeze when I said that?”

He said:

“She is the richest woman in Hanover.”

He said:

“Her husband owns most of the property in the middle of the city, and he's died and she's inherited it all.”

Since we're in a brand-new church building, I thought, “She probably paid for this too.”

And there it was.

And I was trying to teach them the difference between believing that and believing in.

See, there's a huge difference.

She believed that.

She didn't believe in me, and she certainly looked as if she would never trust me with her money.

But that's understandable, since she had so much.

But are you beginning to see the difference?

You do need to have content to your faith.

You do need to believe that Jesus lived and died and rose again.

But all that's believing that.

It's a passive belief because it's entirely an internal belief.

It's not something you're doing about it.

But if you're going to have real faith, according to James, it must be faith that is confidence as well as content.

Now this is a very challenging but, I think, very understandable idea.

There are plenty of people in church who believe that—the right things.

They recite the creed.

They believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Ghost.

They believe that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, that he was crucified, dead, and buried.

They believe that he rose again, and they believe that he ascended to heaven and is going to come back.

They say that they believe that, and they do believe that.

But it's only half a faith.

It's not saving faith.

You are believing that this happened to Jesus.

But believing in him is to run a risk—to risk your future in some way, to behave in such a way that if he's not real you'll land on your face.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Real faith is not passive. It is active.

It does something about it.

Real faith shows Jesus you trust him.

That's why God said to Abraham after he sacrificed Isaac:

“Now I know. Now I know.”

It's sure now.

God was confident after that as well as Abraham.

They were sure of each other.

Abraham's faith was completed by what he did about it.

And then, says James, that became justifying faith.

That was the beginning of salvation, as justifying faith is the beginning of ours.

Profession, Possession, and Practice

Faith without works is a thing of words.

Faith with works is a thing of deeds.

Do you see the difference?

Now Paul never said this, and if you get all your gospel from Paul you won't include this.

But if you believe James has given us the Word of God as well, then you need to include this thought in saving faith.

You can be a believer in the first sort—without works—for years.

Let me ask you some delicate questions.

Number one:

When did you first believe in Jesus?

Now you can probably point to the time when you professed faith.

I am asking you:

When did you first practice faith?

There's a big difference.

Think back.

Try and think:

When did you first believe in Jesus and do something that ran a risk for him?

Or let me ask you another question:

When did you last believe in Jesus?

Don't say, “I've always done.”

That's faith without works.

That's profession.

See, the real question is not:

Do you profess faith in Christ?

but:

Do you possess faith in Christ?

Do you practice faith in Christ?

That's the real test as to whether faith is saving.

It does mean, I'm afraid, that there are a lot of people in church who have faith but no works, who've never done anything about it.

Or put it this way:

If you've not done anything about your faith, then it can do nothing for you.

That's what James is saying.

A Living Faith

So when did you last believe in Jesus?

Can you think of moments in your life when you pinned your faith to him and did something that would have been an awful risk?

I'm tempted just to give you an illustration, but my faith—my mind immediately goes back to a time when my wife and I were sitting in a train on the border of Romania, and I had a huge case full of Christian books and Bibles, which I knew was forbidden.

This was when the Iron Curtain was right up, and it was too big to get in the compartment because that was crammed with people.

So it was standing in the corridor outside.

And a horrid lady in grey uniform, looking like a concentration camp commandant, got on the train, and she went through everything with a fine-tooth comb.

She insisted on taking up the cushions of the seats on the train to see if anybody was hiding underneath or whether we were smuggling anything.

She just went through that compartment and searched us, searched the compartment.

Then she turned and she looked and was looking straight at my case in the corridor.

I thought:

“I'm for it now.”

I just quickly showed it to her and I said:

“Lord, it's time for a miracle.”

Believe it or not, at that moment a drunken soldier standing in the corridor grabbed a fire extinguisher and set it off and sprayed it into the whole carriage up the corridor.

We were covered in clouds of this smoke and dust.

This lady in the grey uniform—“Off the train,” she said.

And we had to climb down off the train and stand on the sleepers at the side.

It was about twenty minutes before the air cleared, and then she said:

“Get back on the train.”

So we got back on the train.

There was my case covered in white powder, but with everything intact inside.

And that's how we got into Romania that time.

It's a little thing, but I was risking a lot.

I said:

“Lord, it's time for a little miracle.”

When did you last do that?

When was your faith a living faith and not, as James says, a dead faith that had it all in here, had it all up here, and could say:

“I believe that—everything”?

But the test is whether we believe in.

It's not a case of faith being something you think in your mind.

It's also something you do with your will.

It's not just accepting truth.

It's trust as well.

That's what James is saying.

He's talking about the works of faith.

What makes faith a living and a saving faith is what you do about it.

That's my answer to the tension between Paul and James.

And I think we should be grateful to the Lord for both, because they've both added to our understanding of what faith really is.

Thank you for listening.

For your study of James 2, I would make Pawson's distinction between “good works” and “works of faith,” and between “believing that” and “believing in,” the centerpiece of this particular teaching. Those two distinctions explain almost everything else he is trying to accomplish in the lecture.