James 2:18-26 in the Sermon on the Mount and the Wisdom Books

A while back I wrote about why James sounds like the Sermon on the Mount, and I said there that once you see the pattern you cannot unsee it. Our Sunday class has now walked into James 2:18-26, which is the hardest paragraph in the letter and the one people argue about most, and I want to try the same exercise on it.

What follows is not an argument about justification. That question deserves its own treatment and it gets one. This is something simpler. I want to walk through James's paragraph a movement at a time and set beside each move the place where Jesus said the same thing on the mountain, and the place where the wisdom writers said it before either of them.

I find this useful for a plain reason. When a verse is contested, we tend to read it as though it dropped out of the sky by itself. James 2:24 did not. Almost every sentence in this paragraph has an older echo behind it, and hearing the echo makes the sentence less strange.

James 2:18, showing faith by works

James says he will show his faith by what he does. The point is that invisible faith becomes visible.

Jesus said it first, and said it as a command. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). He said it again as a test. "Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" (Matthew 7:16). And once more as a summary: "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20).

James says, in effect, show me. Jesus says you will know them by their fruits. Both are making outward conduct the evidence of an inward reality.

The wisdom writers had been doing this for centuries. "Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right" (Proverbs 20:11). "A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth: and the recompence of a man's hands shall be rendered unto him" (Proverbs 12:14). The wisdom tradition almost never evaluates a person by what he claims. It watches what comes out of his life.

James 2:19, the faith of demons

James reaches for the Shema. "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Then he says the demons believe that much, and tremble.

His point is startling and worth stating plainly: correct theology by itself is not saving faith. The demons hold accurate information about God. They even respond emotionally. What they do not do is trust Him, love Him, or obey Him.

Jesus made the same distinction, and made it about people who were sure of themselves. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). He pressed it further. "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?" and the answer is, "I never knew you" (Matthew 7:22-23).

Set the two side by side. James says correct belief without obedient faith is dead. Jesus says correct confession, even with remarkable religious activity attached to it, is not the same as being known by Him.

Wisdom had already refused to let knowledge stand alone. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Proverbs 1:7). Knowing true things about God was never the finish line.

James 2:20, useless faith

The word James uses is argē, which means idle, inactive, ineffective. Faith that does nothing.

Jesus closed the entire Sermon on this, and it may be the strongest parallel in Matthew 5 through 7. "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock" (Matthew 7:24). And the other half: "And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand" (Matthew 7:26).

Line the two up and the correspondence is hard to miss.

Jesus on the mountain	James
Hears Jesus' words	Professes faith
Does them	Demonstrates faith through works
Wise	Living faith
Hears but does not act	Believes but does not act
Foolish	"O vain man"
The house collapses	The faith is useless, dead

This is also why James 1:22 and James 2:14-26 belong together. "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only" is the Sermon's conclusion in James's own words.

James 2:21-23, Abraham

Here James does something bold. He puts two events together that are separated by many years.

First, "And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Then, long afterward, Abraham obeys God on the mountain in Genesis 22.

James's key sentence is that Abraham's faith and his works were working together. The obedience did not stand on its own. His faith produced the obedience, and the obedience showed what the faith was made of.

Jesus described exactly this combination: hearing, trusting, and doing. "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them" (Matthew 7:24). And He tied greatness in the kingdom to the same union. "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:19).

The wisdom parallel here is almost too apt. "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6). Genesis 22 made very little sense from where Abraham stood. The command appeared to threaten the promise God had made through the very son He was asking for. Abraham leaned on God rather than on his own understanding. Hebrews 11:17-19 tells us what he was thinking: he reckoned that God could raise Isaac from the dead.

James 2:23, the friend of God

James adds that Abraham "was called the Friend of God," a description he most likely draws from Isaiah 41:8 and 2 Chronicles 20:7.

That phrase is about relationship, not about assent. And the wisdom writers knew the same intimacy. "For the froward is abomination to the LORD: but his secret is with the righteous" (Proverbs 3:32). The Hebrew there carries the sense of God's close counsel, the confidence a man shares with a friend.

Now put that next to verse 19 and you have the whole argument in two pictures. The demons believe facts about God. Abraham believed God, and was called His friend. James has just shown us the difference between believing that and believing in.

James 2:24, not by faith only

This is the famous sentence, and it is worth noticing what James is not doing with it. He is not denying that faith is necessary. He has just quoted Genesis 15:6 approvingly, and Genesis 15:6 is a verse about believing. What he rejects is a faith that stays by itself, a profession that produces nothing.

Jesus drew the same line between profession and possession. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:21). "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them" (Matthew 7:24).

And the wisdom books end on it. "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Reverence and conduct were never two separate subjects.

James 2:25, Rahab

Rahab is the counterpart to Abraham, and the pairing is deliberate. Abraham was a patriarch, a man, a Hebrew, respected. Rahab was a woman, a Gentile, a prostitute, and a resident of a city under judgment. James puts them in the same paragraph as though the comparison were obvious.

What they share is that both acted on what they believed. Joshua tells us her reasoning. "I know that the LORD hath given you the land" (Joshua 2:9), and, "For the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath" (Joshua 2:11). She did not merely grant that Israel's God was real. She risked her life on it.

There is a quieter connection here too. "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7). Rahab showed mercy to the spies and received mercy in return. And that lands right on top of what James had said a few verses earlier, at the close of the previous lesson: "mercy rejoiceth against judgment" (James 2:13).

James 2:26, the body without the spirit

James finishes with an image. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.

Works are not decoration on faith. Their absence is a diagnosis.

Jesus used a different image for the same idea. "Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit" (Matthew 7:17). "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (Matthew 7:18).

James goes body, life, activity. Jesus goes tree, life, fruit. The principle underneath both is that life produces visible evidence of itself.

The wisdom writers used the tree as well. "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life" (Proverbs 11:30). "The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin" (Proverbs 10:16).

The strongest parallels

If I had to carry only a few of these into a class hour, these are the ones I would take.

• Matthew 5:16, that they may see your good works.
• Matthew 7:16-20, you will know them by their fruits.
• Matthew 7:21, saying Lord, Lord, against doing the Father's will.
• Matthew 7:24-27, hearing the words against actually doing them.
• Proverbs 20:11, a person is known by his doings.
• Proverbs 3:5-6, trusting God and then walking in His ways.
• Ecclesiastes 12:13, fear God and keep His commandments.
• Proverbs 11:30, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.

The single strongest parallel, in my judgment, is Matthew 7:21-27. Jesus and James are making the same pastoral warning in different words: hearing the truth, knowing the truth, and professing the truth, without acting on it, is dangerously inadequate.

One more thing worth seeing

Follow one thread through the letter itself and this paragraph stops looking like a detour into theology.

• James 1:22, be doers of the word and not hearers only.
• James 2:18, I will show you my faith by my works.
• James 2:22, Abraham's faith wrought with his works.
• James 2:26, faith without works is dead.

James 2:18-26 is not an isolated discussion of justification that wandered into a practical letter. It is the letter's central theme arriving at its sharpest point. Inward faith becomes observable in an obedient life, and James has been saying so since chapter one.

The question of what James means by "justified," and how that sits with Paul, is a real question and I have not answered it here. I have taken it up separately in the verb behind justified and in Paul and James on Abraham.