Books of James & Jude - Faith and works - Expanded - James 2:18-20
James 2:18-20 · JD McCulley · May 12, 2013
James & Jude, No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926351261268

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, well Roger mentioned it. Another tough one. I think 14-26, chapter 2, 14-26 has been one of those sections of scripture that has thrown Christendom for a loop. I know Martin Luther had that experience and wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I think his, if I remember correctly, I think his description was quite a straw-y epistle.

I think one of the things that as I tackle some of these more difficult passages and think through them, I just always ask for clarity in that. But I also ask for just a growing understanding. And I think that over the years as you continue to invest time and energy into the word, you grow in an understanding of certain things. I think this epistle would be one where I've grown quite a bit as I've studied it, and so I'm thankful for the opportunity to teach it. And I also just would kind of add that the way that I'm learning and the things that I have come up with to teach today is totally a work in progress, and so I look forward to hearing feedback and being able to discuss things in that way.

But I will say that what seems very difficult in a lot of ways in the scripture, with a larger perspective of law and grace as an overriding framework, has really helped me understand things in a simpler way than before. I would usually tackle these verses much like other Christian teachers and initially start with, this is going to be so hard. But what's interesting, I think, is that as you start to understand position and condition and law and grace, some of these more difficult passages, while the Greek can be challenging in certain instances and getting the right assignment to the right person who's saying this and that, I think the overall writing principles of the This particular passage are clear in other areas as well. And so there's nothing kind of out of the out of the norm here This is this is scripture and it flows really well that way So we'll just dive in and and see what the Lord has to teach us this morning.

So I'll read James 2 18 through 20 and But someone may well say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without the works and I'll show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. The demons also believe and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? In some translations, rather, that useless is dead. So we'll talk about that, too, if you see that. That's one of the big, I think, big words that throw people off initially. I think New King James Version and King James uses the word dead.

But we'll get into that. So this is a passage that's best seen in context. And so 14 through 26 should kind of be taught all together. And it is a challenge for us to to kind of pick up where another teacher has left off and continue a thought along those lines. And so what I've tried to do is go back and just give myself some context for this. I try to go back through these reviews in my own mind before I attack any scripture and trying to understand it.

But James, again, just to remind ourselves, his focus is on applying and doing of what one reads. So he's in the reality. James focuses on how things look to others. He's concerned about being a doer. So this is not new to us. We've talked about this a lot. Doing is James' focus.

Paul, on the other hand, which James did not have all the information that Paul did about this, His job was to communicate the beholding side of it, so the how, how that doing gets done. And I think Jeremy made that point in his last slide, in the last lesson, that James' job is to explain the doing and Paul's job was to explain how that doing gets done via the beholding of Christ Himself through His Word. So Paul points out looking at Christ and how He sees us.

So, two different perspectives and one is not the only thing that you need. You don't need just Paul and you don't need just James. You need James and Paul in order to get the clear picture. And so, if you were to jump into James and read James and that was what you had for Christian living, it would be like jumping in the middle of a movie and trying to figure out what happened in the previous 45 minutes that you missed. In the same way, if you jump in the middle of Paul, it would be like jumping at the end and trying to figure it out. So, you need both perspectives and the additional perspectives of the other epistles in the New Testament in order to get the clear picture, to get the full story. So, we're looking at a part of the story, but it needs to be thought of in context, and this is helpful. Just a couple little notes that I've mentioned in the past. James is written to Jewish believers. Paul was focused on the Gentiles, and his epistles are written to them. James is written to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad. So, James 1-2. probably earliest New Testament epistle.

Remember, what he had was largely his half-brother's words on the Sermon on the Mount. That was the most recent revelation, and I've got a handout, we'll talk about that in a little bit. But the parallel passage, you know, when you teach Ephesians, you teach Colossians alongside it, or you are constantly referring to Colossians. They're parallel books. And in the same way, James is a very close parallel to the Sermon on the Mount. So James is continually echoing the words of his half-brother on the Sermon on the Mount. James was written in anticipation of a soon return of the Lord.

He did not understand the whole church age is expanding out to the point where we are today. I believe, anticipated a soon return from the Lord, as we'll look at in Chapter 5 at the end of this class. So, he has that in view, and so he's concerned about doing, the Lord's coming back, this is who we are, this is what we do, so let's get busy. There was an urgency there, and I think that same urgency should be continually in mind for us today. The soon return of the Lord is something that is taught even for us in this age. And so, not to say that James had an imminency of the Lord's return that we shouldn't also share. Is that the right word? Imminent? Yes, imminency. Imminent. Imminent return, not imminency, but imminent. And for the record, I do like to make up words.

And the operating principles of grace and unification with Christ had not yet been revealed to James. So that being said, we have to take this for the part of teaching in the Christian life that it is, and it has to do with man-word focus. And so we'll do that.

Just a little bit of an outline in terms of chapter 2 I think Jeremy provided a running start to that was a little bit more based on chapter 2 last week I just kind of backed up and looked at it from I think this comes from the the Bible knowledge commentary But chapter 2 14 through 26. I like this expression of true faith being 14 through 17 which would have been what Jeremy taught on last week and And then two there, evidence of true faith. So we're going to look at the evidence side of things. We want to see the kinds of forensic proof that something is true. And Paul builds off on a scenario that he talked about in verses 14-17. and he creates these hypothetical people that ask questions and he answers those questions based on these things. And so here we're looking at evidence and then next week we'll look at examples of true faith in Old Testament historical context, which would have been just ideal for a Jewish group of believers in Jerusalem.

So background, Sermon on the Mount. In writing to Jewish believers, James chose to reference some of the most recent revelation he had access to, that being the Sermon on the Mount. I found a comparison, it's a supplemental handout at the back of your notes there, the parallels and possible allusions of James to the Sermon on the Mount. I thought that's helpful, that will keep in mind what was going on in James' head when he was thinking about some of these passages. So in this case, Matthew 7, 21 through 27, Al, if you don't mind, just maybe read that passage, Matthew 7, 21 through 27, and we'll kind of download the background to what James was likely thinking of when he was communicating some of these things. Computer language, there you go. Download. What did you say? Download. I'm the wrong generation for that. Okay, Matthew 7. Yeah, it's an old-fashioned way with pages of books. That's all right. No problem. 21 through 27. Yeah.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

So, there is a lot of allusions in the book of James to weather and nature and echoing the words of Christ himself. In this case, we talk about not knowing Christ, even though professing a certain amount of information, not actually knowing. Christ himself and then also the issue of demons comes up here again so there's a lot of parallels here to knowledge of God in certain contexts but not true knowledge and personal knowledge. That's one of the difficulties of English isn't it? Paul says that I may know Christ doesn't mean some kind of intellectual information about all the facts.

It has to do with an intimate knowledge. Intimacy, like a man and a wife. To get the real meaning in English is sometimes difficult. And as you correctly say, you've got to compare scripture with scripture and get it in context. I do a lot of work so you get the English. That's right. And that's one of the neat things about Greek is that a single word has so much more packed into it.

And that's neat that the Lord chose to communicate His truth through that language. You know, we talk about the fullness of time. Christ came. History and language was all ripe for the communication of God's Word and what we needed in that. So that's really interesting. Background, as far as Jewish believers, this comes from...

How do you pronounce his last name? I keep wanting to say Heibert. I'm not sure, actually. I said... Anyway, Hebert, Heibert, Edmund. So this treatment, this larger section of verses, was apparently necessitated by the tendency of some of the readers to go from one extreme to the other. This is background here.

Before their conversion to Christianity, this is the Jewish believers that James is talking to, these Jewish Christian believers had shared the prevailing Jewish emphasis upon the efficacy of works. That was their background, that's how they were raised, that's how they were taught, that's what they were thinking. And after they saw and accepted the evangelical message that salvation is by grace through faith, without meritorious works, they went to the opposite extreme, rather. And now, they were now prone to assume that works were not needed at all.

So, this is the Jewish. It's very black and white. You know, you go from one extreme, okay, well, that sounds good. We believe. Now we'll go to the other extreme. And James is writing this passage to help correct the Jewish believer who's running to both ends of the extreme. James was seeking to combat a moral indolence that was seeking to fasten itself upon their assurance of the doctrinal correctness of their faith. So that's Hebert, or Heibert. And I think it was helpful because here they're running to both ends. And so James is saying, no, actually it's a balance here.

And I want to show you how there's a really healthy biblical doctrinal balance. because you look at James and what you're saying there, and then you look at Galatians, which is kind of, oh yeah, we have grace, but now we need to have... and I think it says a lot about human nature, but it's also about how effective scripture is, that those are basically the types of things Christianity is dealing with today.

The same issues of, well, we don't... okay, we have grace, so that means we can go do whatever we want. No, and it's not that, it's not the other end, but we still need to have all these works in. The issues that you see these, some of these epistles are specifically dealing with, with the early believers and whether they're Jewish or Gentile, those are the same issues that believers today are struggling with. And yet, God in his wisdom gave us all the knowledge that we need to correctly view and deal with those different viewpoints.

I think that's a good point. I myself, personally, am still dealing with certain extremes, right? And I can look back in my past and my understanding and there were times where I remember years gone by where I was focused on an extreme to the degree that I was confused and I just thought, what can be done here? I don't understand, you know? Issues that plague the New Testament church today. Al?

I love a quote that I ran across from Blaise Pascal. where he says, God gave us enough information that even a child can have faith in God. He gave us enough to believe. kept enough of it as a mystery to keep us humble. We haven't arrived yet. That's right, and we have to stop where Scripture stops. That's a really good point. So, salvation by grace. Just thinking about deliverance also being another word for salvation, being delivered. This comes from our Maryman who has influenced a lot of the way I think about this particular passage.

You've got phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3. Phase 1 being saved from the penalty of sin, phase 2 being saved from the power of sin, and phase 3 being saved from the presence of sin. So where do we fit right now? As believers, we've passed through phase one in our faith, and now we are being delivered from the power of sin in our lives. How is that done? Well, Paul talks about that.

But one thing that we have to be careful of doing is looking at terms and assigning the same meaning of that term, irregardless of the context of it. And so I think that one thing that I needed to do in order to make this clear in my own mind was go back to the verses that you taught last week and study them for myself. And I summarized some of the things that I learned from that, and I realized that I didn't listen to the lesson, I worked through all your notes and thought through them. But there might be some variation of thinking and I'm definitely open for discussion on that. But in terms of just reviewing through what I had to download in my mind to make sense of these verses today, these were the assumptions that I'm building on. That would be helpful, I think, for you to understand in terms of what I'm going to teach today.

So James, in 14a, the first part of 14a, what's the prophet? James' concern is prophet man-ward from a faith that is not productive. And he is addressing believers in this entire book. He's not talking to unbelievers. This is believers. James' questions are meant to stimulate thought by believers in phase two. So being delivered from the power of sin, these passages are written to believers regarding salvation in a phase two context. The relationship between faith and works is they impact other believers about being word doers versus verse 122 and not just listeners. So what's being said here has already been said quite a bit in terms of being doers and not just hearers. strung up on those verses a long time ago, but we made those clear through this kind of teaching, and I think that these verses apply in the same way.

So these questions have nothing to do with unbelievers. It's not an issue of salvation from the penalty of sin. This is about salvation from the power of sin. And the word saved in the second part of verse 14 is often used of Christians who are delivered from some undesirable fate.

So 1 Corinthians 5.5 talks about that. We're not gonna go through all these, but for reference, these are the assumptions in the back of my mind. James uses the word of a Christian's possible fate in, so in 121, that salvation could likely refer to the penalty. 515 and 520, but in terms of the way he's using saved in verses 14 through 26, the context would communicate that it's referring to a Christian delivered from an undesirable fate at the judgment seat.

So, this is not about salvation from the penalty of sin, but rather from the power. So, when we think about ourselves being at the award ceremony of the judgment seat of Christ, these are verses that will guide us in terms of having a more profitable experience at the judgment seat versus having a less profitable, so losing reward. and having our works burned as 1 Corinthians 3, 12-15 communicate. Not a salvation thing from the penalty, but a salvation thing from the power.

On Jeremy's behalf, I'd like to just mention one thing I thought was really good last week. And actually it came from Macaulay, basically, the term lip faith, or profession faith. That's really where 14's focus. Somebody's professing this stuff, And you're saying, so that's an overriding kind of view as you get in there. And so that's why the contrast, and just saying you're saved, does that do anything for you? And it doesn't. So anyway, I think that's kind of important to pull out of this as well. Just lip profession of faith is not true faith.

You can say anything. People do. People make all kinds of professions about this. I think verse 19 of today's lesson talks about an aspect of lip faith that even the demons and even Jews have. And so there definitely is that component as well. And just to add a little more to that, I think it's also very important to, as you mentioned on the last slide, that he is talking to believers here. And I think that is very clear throughout. I mean, even that passage, you know, verse 14 says, my brethren.

So, I think in the background there is the understanding that, I think that the, um, non-spoken assumption is that you have been saved from the penalty of sin. And so now let's work, as you're talking about, on the power of sin. It's assumed, as Vern has said to me before, position is assumed by James. So there's a lot that is not spoken, but as you begin to study this, it becomes clear that James is assuming these things are true.

I think there's some level you can look at verse 14 and say, there is some understanding of the penalty of sin, but he, like you say, he's interested in the reality. That's true, so then how is this going to affect your life right now? Absolutely. Yep, I agree. Definitely.

So as a final point there, hell is not in view here, but rather deliverance from sins, degradation, and phase two. the backslider or the, you know, however you might want to view it. One who is struggling through sanctificational processes. And it wasn't James' job to explain all of sanctification. James is just talking about the outward, manward attitude and actions that he has when he is walking by true faith in the Christian life. So that's what we're getting into. Same as verse 122.

You know, in terms of consistency, which you talked about before, you can go all the way back to counted all joy when you fall into persecutions and trials of all sorts. Isn't that, I don't know how best to put it into words, but faith and hope work together, a true faith. has that long-range perspective, and its hope is in God, not in the events of this present day, literally. And therefore, if you have your eyes fixed on Jesus, looking unto Jesus the author and completer of our faith, etc. If you have that faith, that you're looking to Him to ultimately deliver you from the presence of sin, then That gives you the urgency to work on following through in this present age where the power of sin is dragging you down. Let us lay aside every weight that so easily tangles us. It's a unified message. As you said earlier, if you put it into the total picture, who he's writing to and how he's writing and what his main concern is, it makes very good sense. Yes, it does. Absolutely. Good point.

So the scenario in verses 15 through 16, we need to have that fresh in our mind as we tackle these three verses. And you're going to see that I think I'll be able to move rather at a nice pace through these verses when all of this is seen in context. I knew for myself in studying this, I had to go back to your lesson last week and get that clear in my mind before I could tackle these. And so that's why I'm doing this.

And I'm sorry for belaboring a little bit of what happened last week. The scenario that James paints in verses 15 and 16 is of some hypothetical Christian brethren who have physical unmet needs, and another fellow Christian observes this, wishes them well, and ignores their obvious needs, and so doesn't supply them what they actually need. It's like, hey, you know, you're hungry. I hope you find some food."

So that's the idea, and obviously this kind of thing was happening for these believers. They had struggled with Christian love, which is the context of chapter 2, 1 through 13. They needed to be clear, doctrinally speaking, on how to treat one another, and now he's talking about how that treatment gets lived out in the balance of faith and works. So James has the faith of Christians in view in this entire section, not the faith in the gospel that makes one a Christian. He asks, what profit or benefit is your faith in this scenario? It's unprofitable, right?

And that was the conclusion. Faith without works, or as we'll see today, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time like I normally do going over the meaning of words in the Greek because there's not really many new words here that we haven't already covered. So I'm coming at it from a little bit higher level commentary perspective this week. But this faith without works, works being production of divine good in this life, is dead or useless, is a better, I think, translation.

That is separated from profit or benefit manward. Separated from the divine intent. So faith's intent, divinely speaking, is that men profit from faith. that your fellow believers profit from your faith in Christ, from the power of sin. And whether you be a widow or an orphan or a fellow believer, your faith produces a profit to them as well as a profit to yourself. And that's what's in view here. It stands alone, which is not God's intent for faith. So, faith is profitable for those that are in the presence of it and for yourself.

It's not meant to be something that happens in a closet and then doesn't have a manward visible evidence, as James points. And he agrees with Paul. This is something that we read in Ephesians 2, 8-10. Literally the phrase, created in Jesus Christ unto good works. You know, Paul talks about this. And Titus, again, they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.

Oh my gosh, you know. But no, this makes perfect sense. When Christ does the living, you walk in the works that have been created beforehand for you. And things are evident. It's just the natural reality of being a believer. You actually can bring the vine and the branches too. Food is expected. Food is not a surprise. Food is expected. Absolutely. It's a natural result of that life.

So verse 18, what? You were talking about the comparisons with the Sermon on the Mount. A perfect one here for what you just said. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. That's right.

The purpose of the good deeds is not just to meet the human needs. but to show the reality of the faith and the power of God working in and out of us. What's so great is that we know, because Paul taught us how that works, we don't have half the story in James. We have the full story in James and Paul and John and so forth. But the Lord does the doing. And that's the exciting thing. There's works in the Christian life. There is works. In fact, there's works for salvation too. It's just not your works. It's always the substitute.

And in the case of salvation from the penalty of sin, it's the substitute on the cross and in the empty tomb. And in the case of the believer in sanctification or being delivered from the penalty of sin, it's the substitute of Christ doing living through us, and we don't use that word in the same way. We call it identification and reckoning, but He still does the living. It's through the person of the Holy Spirit that the enablement, empowerment, and energizing all comes to do those works. That's background. That's not in the book of James, but we know that to be the larger context.

So let's jump into the actual text itself, verse 18, but someone may well say, someone is here, I think you cover this as well, Jeremy, a reference to someone or something indefinite, hypothetical, imaginary. He's bringing up the scenario to help build his case so that he makes clear to these Jewish believers what faith and work balance is actually about. And obviously it would have struck to the heart in that they would have struggled with these very things, but he doesn't point out a particular person. Instead, he uses the hypothetical someone. And they may well say, they may speak or talk with an apparent focus on this particular subject. And it's interesting that say is in the future tense, so that implies that this is an anticipated objection.

So scripture does this a lot, Romans 9, 19, 11, 19, and so forth, uses hypothetical future scenarios to help someone clarify in their mind. You might not agree with what I'm saying, so I'm going to create a hypothetical situation to clear it up before you even get to ask it.

It's actually a really unique approach to teaching, I think. I've had another teacher that I've worked through a lot of the scripture with, and he often would bring up objections, and in his instances they were largely apologetical. You may see this kind of scenario in Buddhism, or you may see this kind of scenario here, but here is where the scripture prevents one from thinking that way. Before you even get to say, Don't all roads lead to the same path?

He already assumed that you were going to say that and brought up the hypothetical situation. So it's nice to be able to think from the perspective of your audience and raise the question yourself rather than have to be asked or have to deal with it in person.

So it's one of those tools that apostles use to communicate. So in this, and I have this question, is this person objecting to James or the hypothetical person in verse 16? And I think that this is probably a very difficult question to answer here, and I've chosen for the purposes of teaching today, as is the responsibility, to make a call on that. But there's some challenges with the Greek here. And me being humble enough to admit there are varying views, there's lots of views on how this lays out. I chose to go along the same lines as Ron Merriman did with this because it made the most contextual sense to me. So that's what I've done here.

So we're going to come back to that at the end of the slide, but let's just introduce the word faith and works. We've already talked about these, but just as a reference, to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance, we have to ask is that, what kind of faith is this? Is this faith for salvation or is this faith for being delivered from the power of sin? And that's how I'm referring to it here. So it's an internal reality, faith being something that happens in the mind, it's a decision that one makes, believe, trust, or other words that could be used, and works is the outward or manward result of that faith. So it's an external reality, production of divine good in a believer's life.

So here we have this part of the passage, and I've just highlighted in the colors here to differentiate you and I. But it goes like this, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith. without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." So we just color-coded it to kind of get a clarity on it. The question is, who is you and your, and who is I, me, my? Right?

And again, it gets a little confusing at first blush because he's talking about hypothetical people here. A guy that he's brought into the scenario in verse 16, now he's got another guy that he's bringing in in verse 18, and they're having dialogue. These hypothetical someones are having dialogue about the potential problems with faith and works. So here's the way that I laid out the logic of this particular verse. The imaginary speaker is arguing against faith without works. So he is supporting James' view and objecting to the person in verse 16. His reasoning is as follows.

So you, on the left hand side, you are having faith without works. Show your faith without works. What's the result? There's no evidence. You got faith, no works, no evidence. Faith is not perceived by man. Man cannot see a benefit and there's no profit to anyone as a result of that scenario. But he's saying, I am having works that show my faith and I will show you my faith by my works and as a result there is evidence and faith is perceived by man. Remember, James is talking about the outward appearance and the reality of faith and how it affects a person's life as well as their fellow believers.

Does this make sense? So the objector's perspective, this is Macaulay, Note that the demonstration of faith spoken of here is not toward God, but toward men. Show me, James says, the pronoun me shows that the demonstration is directed manward, not Godward. That's Paul's job, right? He explains that aspect.

God can look at the heart and tell what is genuine. Man cannot, man must have some kind of tangible evidence, which is why I use that term evidence, evidence, evidence. James was attacking the confusion, the doctrinal confusion about works not being needed. And, well, sure they're needed. They're evidence of what has happened, both at a salvation perspective, but also that you are being delivered from the power of sin. So, it's really easy.

I mean, we get hung up because we silo ourself on a particular subject, in this case faith and works. If you are going to grow in faith as a Christian, there will be works that are accomplished through that process. Patience, peace, joy, kindness, gentleness, self-control. All of these fruits of the Spirit are a natural part of the growing process, and they happen in varying degrees and in different ways. We also know that the very sin in our life is present during that sanctification period to teach us about the insufficiency of ourselves.

So we need both. We need the lack of works to teach us how we are unable And we need the presence of works to literally recognize the process of being conformed to the image of Christ. And so this is really, I mean, it's basic stuff. It's just very confused by a law-centered Christianity, and that's the problem here. is that you do things and you're the one that pulls up your bootstraps and does it. And that's not what James is saying, but he is saying that works are present in the life of a believer, and they're evidence of a faith that is placed in the Lord Jesus. Yes. The verses that people quote over and over again, Ephesians 2, 8, 9. But they go on and attend to say that God has created these works ahead of time. I don't have to create the works.

And after 60 years of being a Christian, I have to sadly admit that I'm just now coming around to that. I shared in the last chapel with my guys there. I said when I came in here the first time, it was all about me. Even though I said we're going to worship God, I was worried about how I would look, how I would come across. I said now, It's still up to me to do my best and to prepare and study and bring something worthwhile. But now I know it's not about me.

It's about God working in me and through me. And that's how He's going to work in you and any other believer. That's right. That's good. God helped me spell it out. That's awesome. Praise Him. Absolutely. But to encourage and to edify. The more I look at scripture, the more I see That's what we do in the Fellowship of Believers. We encourage one another to keep going out, and we build up in the faith.

You know, it's interesting, when we think about encouraging, if you were to take just James here, you'd say, well, you should get busy. You should consider being a Sunday school teacher. Or you should consider, if we took a law center, you want people to get busy, right?

But I think the overriding theme in this body, and I'm so thankful for it, I think of us as being privileged and not being special, but just purely privileged for having a clear teaching of the Word. We're very much that body that is privileged. But we talk about the beholding. We don't talk about the doing.

Why? Because that doing is a very personal thing that's a result of beholding and it's done by Christ doing it. In fact, Vern is probably misunderstood in many instances by saying, don't do anything. That's a confusing way of thinking if you haven't been here and understood that, oh, you're going to do things. I mean, it's going to be through your body, through your voice, through your attitude, through your presence in a certain situation, but it is going to be the Lord that does that living through you, and it's not going to be a result of you being encouraged by another believer to do it. It's going to be a result of being encouraged by another believer to behold the Lord so that He does it.

And that's the really mature perspective that I didn't get for many years. You're starting a lot earlier than I did, so praise the Lord for that. We all have to learn. Just a personal testimony along that line. I had a breakdown of a relationship and I asked the person involved, isn't there anything I can do to make you believe me or trust me?

And there was some hemming and hawing, and as soon as that happens, you know that, no, there isn't anything. And it eventually got around to, it wasn't what I did, it was who I was. It was the being, not the doing. And of course, that's harder to show without the doing. And so I was hung up on a catch-22 there.

There are those instances, there's no doubt. But that is a common problem in communicating it to the world and sometimes even sadly to fellow believers. Well, we could go on about that. I think there's a lot to be said about how we encourage one another to not do works, but to behold the Lord through his word, and as a result, those works get done. Because James' point is that faith produces evidence and works.

And it doesn't produce it instantly. Sometimes it takes 60 years. Not to be picky, but that's a tenet of Jewish faith, and not a tenet, although that idea is pretty good too. Wait a minute, you said not to be picky? That's like saying, not to change the subject. So God is one. The idea here is monotheism. This was also taught.

Deuteronomy 4.6. This would have been in the background. They would have heard it millions of times. Hero Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one.

Mark 12.29, Jesus reestablishes that perspective. The foremost is hero Israel, the Lord God is one. Lord. James speaks of an incorrectly spelled tenet of Jewish faith that is focused on the monotheism of God, the allied objector says that this faith in the unity of God is correct, but was it enough? And he uses the same illustration that Jesus did there on the Sermon on the Mount.

So the demons also believe in shudder. They believed in the monotheism of God. They didn't have a problem with that. But monotheism can be believed by men and demons without benefit. But faith fulfilling the divine design produces works that bring profit or benefit, and I like the word profit, to the producer and the receiver. What James is saying is this, it is good you believe there is one God, but even the demons believe that.

The issue is that your faith is unproductive. So there's a type of faith that goes beyond lip faith, right? And it's a divine faith, it's real faith, true faith as we might refer to it. And this is what he continues with in verse 20. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?"

So you, I see this as the believer in verse 16, possibly even 14, that's who he's talking about there, the one that in that scenario was saying, I wish you well, I hope you find some food, or I hope you find some proper clothing, because we have some, and I would not want to share it with you, but I hope you find some one day. Lip faith, right? No, you don't really hope that, or else you would give them clothing, or you would find a way to help them, or you would trust the Lord to help that person with their need. He's foolish, meaning he is literally, it could be even rendered stupid, not in a condescending sense, but in one who is lacking an understanding and insight.

So this person that doesn't recognize the difference between these two types of faith is labeled as one who is foolish. And as a result, your works are useless. Your work of saying, I wish you well, that's useless. It doesn't actually have profit for you. It's not divinely profitable, and it doesn't profit the fellow believer in this instance. Accomplishes nothing. So verse 20 reaffirms James' conclusion in verse 17. Faith without works is useless.

And 2 Peter 1.18 affirms this same truth.

Peter says, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, and when he's talking about the qualities of self-control and knowledge gained through the word of God, he goes through a list of fruits there in the previous verse. He says, if these qualities are yours and they're increasing, abounding, They render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ." So we could go through a lot of Paul's writing, a lot of Peter, John, and so forth, and see that fruit, and another word for that, works, are a result of Christian living. They absolutely are. Productivity and fruitfulness and the types of fruit and the types of productivity are lined out in all the different apostles' writings.

However, James wanted to make clear the difference between profitable fruit and the lack thereof as a result of the incorrect type of faith. Lip faith versus the true faith. So that's actually, I kept this a little bit short because I knew there would be some dialogue here, but I'll go ahead and read as a final perspective here. And what's interesting is that when you give a lot of background and you have the running start that we have in James, and we've already covered so much of this, we've done well, I think, to define terminology and words and context and larger context, you get to this, to these verses and it doesn't hang you up like you would if you had just jumped right in the middle of it. So that's why it's not far greater of an exposition than it is.

But a person will say, as for you, you have faith and I have works. Prove to me that is, your actual possession of the faith that you profess to possess, apart from any accompanying works, and I'll prove to you my actual possession of faith by my works. As for you, you give credence to the doctrine that God is one, you're doing well, the demons also give credence to that fact and shudder. But, do you desire to come to know, O senseless man, that the aforementioned faith that exists apart from works is unproductive? So we as believers can have a kind of unproductive faith that results in a wish you well, hope you find some food type of attitude and doesn't produce any fruit.

And that's all that James is really saying here. is what I'm seeing there. What we can do is back up and talk about any one of those particular areas. I honestly thought that we'd have quite a bit more dialogue, but if not we can close shop a little early on this one, but I wanted to give some time to just dialogue and talk about what we're seeing here if we need to.

The handouts didn't include the last four or five slides. Oh really? Yeah, I don't believe so. Starting with the new material in verse 18. 18 on, there was no slides. I apologize for that. Maybe I did it on purpose. I was thinking about that. No, I didn't. That would have been an error on my part.

So online will be the proper download of these materials. I think it's helpful to just maybe remind ourselves that James being that part of the story that we do have the clear teaching of Paul about how this doing gets done and just to finally summarize that and if there's no more questions we can move on.

It's the beholding that we focus on and the reason we focus there is because as a result of beholding, fruitfulness happens in a very personal, real way, as the Lord takes you into the works that He prepared for you beforehand, just like Al said, Ephesians 2 there. And so, any other further thoughts? I wonder how much of... So, you know, in the Sermon on the Mount, and in other teachings of Jesus, He focused a lot on, love your brethren. Kind of trying to summarize the law in love God and love your brother.

And James seems to be picking up on that a lot. And kind of as I said this week, and you've talked about it before, the point here is not to question your salvation. I don't think James at all was trying to get people to say, well, are you really saved? Even though that's what so many teachers nowadays, they go back to that side, well, you've just not been saved. But it's, now that I am saved, this is how it's going to work out. I wonder for the Jewish believers at this time, how much they would have heard James Epistle and the focus on doing.

And, you know, what am I trying to say? They would have tried to do it and realized, I can't do this. How on earth am I going to accomplish that? And then later we have Paul come in and Paul explains in great detail how it's to be accomplished. I mean, I know in my own life, for years, it was all these things. that I was supposed to do, and I just couldn't do it. It was so overwhelming. And then, a couple of years ago, I guess, I came here and got all this grace teaching, and, oh, that's how I do it. And I know that I can look back on my own life and see that God was able to use these things to teach me, and I wonder if that was part of God's plan with, okay, James came first, and I don't know what the next epistle is and how long it came, and I don't know where Romans and Galatians and Ephesians and all these other passages came in the timeline, but I just have to wonder how much of it was, James is giving us, okay, you've got to have works, you've got to be doing it, and it's an expansion of the law, and how much of it was, this is you're not going to be able to do it.

And people needed to see that they couldn't do it. And get to the point where, okay, now we have grace. That's how we're going to do it. I think I have a slide here from a previous lesson. So kind of looking at that stewardship principle of law and then the stewardship principle of grace, this was a helpful timeline that kind of put that in perspective.

So I don't know, I'm not sure that it dives directly into it, but you can see here, James out here in the front, and all these heavenly citizenship, identification and seeding, ascension, resurrection, all identification truths, even being in Christ, was not yet, had never been said. Right?

And so that doesn't happen until here, with Galatians. And then on into these other books, and Romans being kind of in the middle of Galatians and First Thessalonians, and then following after. So, it's interesting, if you don't understand the progressive revelation, you can think that these guys had everything. I mean, if you think about Scripture as flat, You can confuse yourself instantly.

Well, the reason is because God child trains in doctrine in a progressive way. And he uses each church or each group of believers that an epistle is written to, to draw out certain things that needed to be communicated to make up the full counsel of God's word.

And so I think there was a certain amount of confusion, and we are privileged now to be able to look back, and we should have less confusion than anyone ever. Why? There's a lot of reasons for that. But these guys had direct access to the apostle, and yet they lacked certain information as well.

And that is the way that God chose to train in doctrine using both Israel and the Church, about the main principle of law and grace. And he did that. And it's interesting, he does it in our own life too. I mean, there's a progressive revelation, not of God's Word in terms of Scripture itself, but in our understanding of it. We progressively grow in that, and it's our own failure and confusion that God turns around and uses to teach us later that, okay, now I know why I must reckon on the fact that I'm dead. Because if I try to do that again, it is just going to get really really screwed up. So the same instance applies to scripture I think as well.

You said they had direct access to the apostles. The disciples of Christ had direct access to Christ and he at times was, I don't think he was exasperated, but he certainly marveled at their lack of understanding. And they were, they were confused a lot. Why do you have to die? You don't have to die. Have I been so long with you? And you ask me, show me God?

In John 14 there where it says, well, we don't know where you're going. Well, this brings up a really interesting point. We're not going to hit it today, but I think it's interesting. You could do some teaching on what is God's use of confusion or a lack of understanding? How does God use that?

And is it okay to be confused? It seems like every people group throughout the entire scripture had confusion, and so are we so much different. Now, we do have the full scripture, and so we have a way to go about resolving that confusion, which is a huge privilege for us. But it doesn't mean that there isn't a place and a point to confusion in God's way of doing things.

He's very progressive. Let me think about raising our children, too. It's like, this is an issue. We're not going to tackle it during these years, but as a child gets older and learns more, we'll start to tackle these issues as they mature. And, you know, God is very much about growth and teaching at the right time and in the right way and in the right circumstances. In fact, He uses each of those circumstances for His good, doesn't He?

When you talk about confusion, you instantly think Tower of Babel. How does God use confusion? Let's do it ourselves and build it up and we will be our own gods. And God says, wrong! And just to say this in the last second here, I don't think God intends confusion as an end result, but I think that He uses confusion, uses a misunderstanding or lack of clarity to teach us about our need to go back to the divine source.

We are not sufficient in ourselves. I think that's the point I was trying to get at. I mean, there's certainly a pedagogical use for confusion. If you're a teacher, if you're working with your kids, give them a task that's really impossible, but the goal is not so they get frustrated and confused, but so that, well, how on earth am I going to do it? In this sense, we can't do it on our own.

Grace comes in, oh, grace, everything has been taken care of. I do think you're right. God is not the author of confusion. I know it's a different context, but it applies. But he certainly can use that to draw us in, draw us further. Independence, right?

Exactly. That's good. Well, thanks for kind of helping me fill out those last few minutes. I thought there might be some interesting discussion that could be had and this will be one that I class I'll go back to and I think we've covered on some really cool topics. So helpful.

Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for your word and that we can have clarity and that in time and through the process of beholding you through your word, we can grow nearer to you and as a result, you'll do the living and we can see productive lives both in ourselves that result in profit and also have profit that benefits others as well. Lord we thank you for yourself and again we just trust you as we continue to dive into this epistle and pray for continued clarity as we tackle future verses. In your name we pray. Amen.