The Test of True Saving Faith: Part 1 - James Lesson 14

 I want to invite you to turn to James 2 with me this morning. We will be looking at verses 14-19 today. This will be part one of the test of true saving faith. James presents us with the test of saving faith in verses 14-26. Today we will examine closely verses 14-19. Next week we will come back for part 2 from verses 20-26. Let’s read this passage together.

 If ever there was a time in the life of the church for a test of true saving faith, now is the time. The church has always had those who possessed a counterfeit, non-saving faith. If it hadn’t been a problem in the early church, James would not have needed to include these verses in his letter to the brethren. It was a problem then, so he did include these verses. The Holy Spirit knew that this issue needed to be addressed in James’ day. He also knew we would need it in our day. Every generation of followers of Christ have needed this test of genuine faith.

 The reasons for this need are obvious. Satan is the master of counterfeit faith. He is a deceiver. He loves to fabricate counterfeit versions of genuine faith and deceive people into the belief that they are indeed a part of the kingdom of God. The Bible has a lot to say about the reality of a non-saving faith. Jesus gave that chilling warning in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:21-23 regarding many who would claim to belong to Him because they called Him Lord, and they prophesied in His name, and in His name cast out demons and performed many miracles. Jesus declared them as apostate because they did not do the will of His Father in heaven. They had a counterfeit, non-saving faith. Yet, these people described by Jesus in that chilling passage all believed they were truly part of the kingdom of God.

 In John’s gospel there are a few examples. In John 2, verse 23 John tells us that many believed in His name, observing the signs which He was doing. Verse 24 says, “But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men.” Jesus knew they had faith, but not saving faith. In John 3 you are familiar with the story of Nicodemus. Nicodemus verbalized a measure of faith. He said, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” To this Jesus responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” There can be a faith that does not result in being born again. Nicodemus believed the truth about Jesus but he was not born again.

 John 3:31 says, “So Jesus was saying to those who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine, and you will know the truth, and the true will make you free.’” There were many Jews who believed in Jesus but not having genuine, saving faith. Jesus recognized many who believed in Him who were not truly disciples and therefore not free. They were still slaves to their sin.

 1 Cor. 15:1-2. “…unless you believed in vain.” Paul was concerned that some of them may have had a non-saving faith. Paul wrote about non-saving, counterfeit faith to Titus in Titus 1:16. “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.” Professing to know God indicates the presence of some kind of faith, but not saving faith.

 Perhaps the best example is found in Acts 8:4-24.

 In verse 14 James asks a question. It is an important question. It is important because the answer to the question has eternal implications. James asks, “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” James does not give a direct answer to this question by saying, “No, this kind of faith cannot save him.” But from what James does tell us we can easily discern the correct answer. The answer is, “No. This kind of faith cannot save him.” It is a useless faith. It is a dead faith.

 This is a relevant question for us today because we live in a culture where a lot of people, perhaps the majority of people have had a lot of exposure to the Bible. Most people say they believe in God. Most can tell you the basic truths of the gospel message. They would even tell you that they believe the gospel message is true. But if their life is void of any fruit, if they lack any evidence of a transformed life, if they are essentially the same in their character and conduct as one who has not claimed to believe in the gospel, is their faith enough to save them in the day of judgment? The answer is no.

 There are some who appear to have faith, not in the gospel, but in their faith. They are trusting in their “belief” in Jesus rather than in the evidence of the work of regeneration. They are trusting in the promise they were given that if they would pray the prayer and ask Jesus into their hearts they would be eternally secure. I don’t care how deep your faith is or how strong your faith is. If your faith is in a promise of eternal life that does not produce new life, your faith does not save. If your faith is in an experience, and yet that experience did not produce a transformed heart, your faith does not save you.

 There are three non-negotiable aspects of saving faith. The first non-negotiable is the truth about God. If your faith is in a god other than the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible, your faith is in a god who will not save you. Your faith is in a god who is no god at all. Your faith is in a god of your own making. And there are a lot of people in our world today who have faith in a god who does not exist. They have defined a god of their liking and believed in him, or her.

 The second non-negotiable is the truth about man and the sin problem from which we must be saved. So many people misunderstand the truth about man’s sinful condition. So many people believe that man is basically good, and that all we need is a little help to get over the hump. Unless we understand the utter sinfulness of sin and the absolute corruption of our hearts apart from Christ, we will see no real need for someone to rescue us and deliver us from the wrath of God to come. This is why the soil of the heart must be plowed deeply and the sinfulness of sin exposed and the certainty of judgment for sin. This is why you hear me say so much about the flaws of the modern gospel presentation. Jesus didn’t die to save us from meaningless existence.

 The third non-negotiable is an understanding of the work of salvation itself, especially regarding what it requires and what results it produces. People must understand that salvation requires everything. We must strive to enter the narrow gate. We must leave everything behind and enter with nothing. We surrender our lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and we embrace Him as our Savior. We see Him as the most valuable treasure of life and we sell all to obtain Him. We count the cost and we turn from sin and we take up our cross and follow Him.

 The results are a transformed life. We are made to be new creations. Our old self dies and we are made heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We put off the old and put on the new. We are transformed and our lives produce fruit which provides evidence that we have been saved.

 This is an important question. What use is a faith which is void of works? Can a faith that has no evidence of works, which are the proof of saving faith, really save? We need to understand the background of the people to whom James wrote this. The Jews to whom James wrote were saved out of a merit-driven, works based righteousness system. It was not the way God designed the Old Testament system of worship, but it had degenerated into a system where favor with God was earned. A good relationship with God was based on human effort and religious performance.

 People were crushed under this system. They never knew how much they had to do. They never knew how high the bar had been set. They never knew whether or not what they had done was enough. They lived in bondage to fear that they may have given their best, but their best would somehow not be good enough. To them, the concept of grace in the true gospel was a breath of fresh air. Grace set them free from bondage. They embraced grace with open arms. They loved the idea that they were saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

 They were taking grace too far. If you take grace to far, and abuse grace, you arrive at a place where you decide that nothing you do really matters, so you don’t have to do anything at all. Since salvation is by grace alone, you are saved and you need not worry about devotion, piety, good works, or the manifestation of fruit which is in keeping with repentance. Everything is covered by grace so relax and enjoy the ride all the way to heaven.

 James is confronting the error in thinking that had developed by these people. They had come to believe that believing was all that was required. Believing and faith are synonyms. James is confronting a corruption of the truth about salvation by grace. That corruption was the idea that believing was enough. James asks, “Can a faith that believes, but does not produce any good works associated with the faithful Christian life, really save a person from the wrath of God on the day of judgment? What would James’ answer be? It would be a resounding “no!”

 Critics of this passage argue that James and Paul are contradicting one another. A casual reading of this text and some of Paul’s writings found in Romans 6, Ephesians 2, and Galatians 2 might lead some to think that James and Paul held different views of how one is saved. For example, James says in 2:24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

 James and Paul are not standing face to face battling one another. They are standing back to back fighting different enemies of the truth of grace. James is combating those who had taken grace too far, saying that good works were not necessary because salvation was by grace and because God had done everything we don’t need to do anything. Paul was combating those who taught that good works had to be added to faith in order to obtain salvation. James is fighting the heresy of licentiousness, or the idea that because we are under grace we are free to do whatever we want. Paul is fighting the heresy of legalism.

 Both are fighting distortions to the truth of the gospel because if the gospel is distorted, the salvation it produces does not happen. James is not explaining how someone comes to faith and salvation in Chapter 2, he is explaining what happens because someone comes to faith and salvation. Their lives will produce good works to show the reality of their conversion. He has already explained how salvation happens in chapter 1. Verses 19 and 20 describe the need for humility in hearing and submitting to the message of God’s righteousness. Verse 21 describes the necessity of repentance, putting aside all filthiness and wickedness, and in humility receiving the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Then, prove yourselves doers of the word because those who are merely hearers have deluded themselves.

 The point of James’ question in verse 14 is this. God is not impressed by a faulty confession. God is not convinced with an empty confession. If all a person has who stands before God on the day of judgment is a bunch of empty claims of faith, God will not give that person the get out of jail free card. An empty claim to faith, a claim that is not accompanied by the good works that prove one to be more than a hearer only, will be a worthless claim on the day of judgment.

 James goes on in verses 15-17 to show that God is not impressed with phony compassion. He describes a scenario where a brother or sister has an obvious need. James identifies the one in need as a brother or sister. These are fellow Christians. These are your brothers and sisters in Christ. And they come in without clothing. This does not mean they are not clothed at all. It means their clothing is insufficient to keep them warm. They are poorly clothed. They lack the necessities for life. The fact that they are in need of daily food means they are hungry.

 In the face of this obvious need there is an expression of phony compassion. James describes someone who looks at the need, and sees that the need is real, but their response to the need is to say, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled.” It is as if the person with this kind of faith is saying, “God will take care of you.” This might be the equivalent of “I will pray for you.” The person in need has got to be thinking, “I don’t need your prayers, but I sure could use a blanket to keep me warm, or something to eat because I’m hungry.”

 This response reveals that the person who sees the need has no intention of being the channel through whom that need would be met. The Greek construction could indicate a cruel indifference. It may be that the person is looking at the one in need and saying, “Go warm and feed yourself.” It ignores the fact that if the person had the necessary clothing to stay warm, and the food to feed themselves, they certainly would have already done so. 

 The apostle John spoke in terms that were even more black and white than James. He speaks to the heart of the issue. In 1 John 3:17-18 John says, “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

 And did not our Lord speak to this clearly in Matthew 25? When Jesus sits on His glorious throne and judges the nations, and the sheep and goats are separated and sentenced, is it not those who are invited into the kingdom the ones who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, show hospitality to strangers, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, and visit prisoners in need? Those approved will say to the Lord, when did we do all those things to You? He will answer, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.”

 This leads James to the obvious conclusion of verse 17. “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” Faith that does not produce change of heart, compassion, and genuine love for others, is a faith that lacks evidence of true conversion. It is a dead faith. It is a faith that does not save. 

 God is not impressed by faulty confessions, or phony compassion, or fruitless claims. James gives us a hypothetical scenario where someone who is genuinely saved, and whose life produces evidence of saving faith, is asking someone who claims to have faith, but whose life lacks the evidence of saving faith, to show their faith. Look at verse 18. “But someone may well say…” This someone is someone like James. This is exactly what James is doing with this passage. He is confronting those who would say something like, “I have faith.” James is saying, “I have faith too, but I also have works.” James issues the challenge saying, “show me your faith without the works.”

 “Show” means “to exhibit, demonstrate, put on display.” James is challenging the person with dead faith to put his kind of faith out there for others to see. Here is the point of this challenge. How does someone put on display, or exhibit, or demonstrate something that does nothing? How does someone display something that does not exist? They can’t. It is impossible. Genuine saving faith cannot exist without producing evidence and no evidence is proof of no saving faith.

 James says, “I will put my faith on display with my works. You can look at my faith and you will see the evidence because my life will be producing the evidence of good works. I will let my good works provide the evidence of a transformed life.

 Now, is there a potential problem with this? There can be. There can be those who are not genuinely saved, but there are trying to convince everyone else they have a real faith by engaging in all kinds of good works. They are attempting to prove something that does not exist by working harder than everyone else. Here is something Scripture makes clear. Genuine saving faith will show itself real by good works, but never by good works alone. Genuine saving faith transforms the character of the one who is truly saved. The work of salvation removes a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh.

 The good works which show the reality of saving faith are not just your external religious duties. The good works which show the reality of saving faith will also include those changes which are consistent with a transformed heart. Turn to 2 Peter 1 for a moment. Look at verse 1. Peter writes “to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours…” Is there more than one kind of faith? Absolutely. James has been describing two kinds for us. He has been describing saving faith and dead faith. That is two kinds. One saves, while the other does not. Peter tells us beginning in verse 3 that the kind of faith he had received results in God’s divine power granting to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

 Peter goes on in verse 4 to explain that we have become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Beginning in verse 5 Peter goes on to explain that because of all this we will be applying to our faith moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. All these give evidence of salvation and they are much more reliable indicators of transformation than a bunch of religious activities and ministry efforts that don’t ever really produce any results. People who try to prove the reality of their faith by working hard but never show the evidence of a transformed life, are not going to convince God.

 There is one more point to make as we close today. God is not impressed with faulty confession, phony compassion, fruitless claims, or orthodox doctrine which is not accompanied by corresponding duty. I know that does not fit the pattern of alliteration. I could not come up with something. We find this point in verse 19. “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.”

 “You believe that God is one.” This is a reference to the Shema. This is the best known, and most foundational of Jewish doctrinal reality. It is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. It says, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” James says, “If you believe this you do well.” You can believe this and do well in your believing, but you don’t prove with your orthodox doctrinal beliefs that you have saving faith. All you prove by believing orthodox doctrine is that you are intellectually capable of learning doctrinal truth. So can the demons.

 There are a lot of people who have orthodox doctrinal beliefs. There are a lot of people who believe the truth about the doctrines of salvation, but they are not saved. They can tell you the facts of the gospel, but they have not been converted by the truth they believe. There are people who know the truth about the eternal security of the believer. They are basing their eternal future on the certainty of that doctrine rather than on the evidence of a transformed life that brings forth fruit in keeping with repentance.

 There are people today who prayed a prayer as a child, and who were told when they prayed that prayer that they were saved and eternally secure in that salvation. Today they live lives that are an abomination to the Lord. Yet, they believe that because they were “saved” as a child, and because the Bible teaches that they are eternally secure in that salvation, that they are going to go to heaven when they die. They don’t need to repent of sin. They don’t need to do anything different than what they do, even though they are living in blatant sin. Orthodox doctrine does not impress God if the doctrine is not accompanied by corresponding duty to live by the truth.

 The demons believe the truth. The demons know the truth. The demons have orthodox theology. Demons understand sound doctrine. Demons could write seminary textbooks on systematic theology. They know and believe things that are doctrinally sound.

 Demons tremble at the truth they understand. They tremble because they understand the implications of the truth that God is One. Because God is the only One, and they rebelled against Him, their eternal lot is in a lake of fire and brimstone and darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. They know that one day Christ will banish them there and close the door and lock the lock and throw away the key and they tremble. 

 Listen my friends. Anyone who has a faith that is a dead faith will find themselves in the same place with those demons who also believe orthodox doctrine. Doctrine is vital. Orthodox doctrine is essential. Doctrine is worthless if it does not lead to action.

 Dead faith will be marked by faulty confession, phony compassion, fruitless claims, or orthodox doctrine which is not accompanied by corresponding duty. 

 Dead faith will lead to eternal condemnation on the day of judgment. If you do not see the evidence of saving faith in your life, humble yourself before God and cry out to Him for mercy. He will hear your cry. 

Let’s pray.