Work? James 2.

While at the beginning of his letter James fired off a bunch of instructions in rapid succession, in this section (chapter 2), he took the time to deliver extended arguments about acting with prejudice, and not acting at all.

The heart of chapter two is in verses 14-26, where James talks about having faith, but not acting upon it. What James has to say makes sense and yet also looks somewhat contradictory to what we read at the end of Hebrews and in Galatians. As I've read these verses, I've been trying to figure out how they fit into the context of the letter. The catchphrase, "my brothers," could be seen as a way to separate out this section from other thoughts in the book. That's a common way people have interpreted it. But I'm still not certain whether James is shifting the argument, or summarizing all the instructions that went before.

What I do know is that I'd like to handle the question of exactly what James is talking about, in dialogue. So if someone wants to talk about it here, write a comment and we can do so. Otherwise, we'll look at these verses in greater detail in class on Sunday.

However, without talking about the precise idea James is stating in verse 14, when he says, "Can such a faith save him?," there's no difficulty about what he says about faith without works being dead. And his example in verses 15 and 16, of not helping someone but giving only lip service to their needs, is right out of Jesus' story book.

There's no question about it -- a living faith is always expressed in our actions. Remember the ideas contained in the Greek word, pistis, translated as "faith" or "belief" or even as "trust"? There are three concepts contained in pistis:

belief - intellectual assent to the truth of something
trust - actions based on belief
loyalty - acting faithfully to a person, ideal, custom, cause, or duty.

As James says, while it's good to be right-thinking in your understanding about God, even the demons have that belief. What the demons are missing, is the rest of faith - acting in trust and being loyal to the one you put your faith in. In other words, faith without works.

Now why do you think James wrote all of this? And why do we need to hear it today? Rather than answer that, I think I'll just leave that as an open question to think about.