“Justified By
Works” Genesis 22:15-19 (James 2:14-26) August 30, 2009
SI: We are studying the life of Abraham,
Genesis chapters 12-25.
Last
week we looked at the most significant episode in Abraham’s life—
the sacrifice of Isaac. And we saw a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ
in Abraham’s offering of Isaac, and the
Lord’s provision of a ram as a substitute.
We
continue the story this week and have already read, earlier in the service,
what the Lord said to Abraham. How he praised his obedience
and promised blessing and salvation on
account of his obedience.
The
book of James has such an important interpretation of these part
of the story, that I’m going to do something
a little different this morning.
I’m
going to focus on the James passage primarily, and use it as a NT lens
to see what was going on spiritually when
the Lord spoke to Abraham
after the sacrifice. And we’ll see how that applies to us.
Once
again, reading from the English Standard Version.
Excellent and very literal translation
which is important for understanding this
passage.
INTRO: A few months ago I got into a
theological conversation
with my Catholic neighbor, as we sometimes
do.
And
in this particular conversation, we got to the most important topic of
all.
How are you right with God? He said:
Through
faith in Christ and the merits of our obedience.
And
I said: (What do you think I said?)
No, we’re right with God through faith in
Christ alone.
Our
obedience counts for nothing in making us right with God.
The only merit that counts is the merit of
Jesus’ life and death.
Our works have nothing to do with it.
Then
I quoted Ephesians 2:8-9,
“For
it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God, not by works,
so than no one can boast.”
And
my neighbor responded with a gracious comment.
That’s what I admire about you Protestants,
you know the Bible.
But
what if he had responded with his own Bible verse?
What
if he had pulled out James chapter 2?
“You see that a person is justified by
works, and not by faith alone. Was not
Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the
altar? You see that faith was active along
with his works, and faith was completed by his works.”
How
do you explain those verses? It’s
especially challenging when you remember
that Paul, in Romans uses the very same
words and seems to say the opposite.
He
says bluntly in Romans 3, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith
apart
from observing the law.” And then he also appeals to the example of
Abraham,
and says that Abraham was not justified by
works.
James
says Abraham was justified by works.
Paul says he wasn’t. It’s as stark as that.
So is the Bible contradicting itself? Not at all.
We
know historically that both of these men were in complete agreement.
They met together at the first Jerusalem
Assembly that dealt with this very issue.
There were in complete agreement on the
relationship of faith and works.
What’s
going on is simply that Paul and James were using the word “justified”
in two different ways to make two different
points.
Justify
can mean to make right.
If you paid off a debt and made things right
between you and your creditor.
You could say you were justified. You were made right by that payment.
But
justify can also mean to prove right.
Someone could say to you, “Justify that
statement.”
That doesn’t mean make it true but prove
it’s true.
So
Paul is saying you can’t be made right with God, can’t be justified,
except through the merit of Jesus Christ,
received by faith alone.
Your works have no part in making you right
with God.
James
is not contradicting that. Not saying,
Yes you can be made right by works.
He is saying that your works prove that you
are right with God.
They don’t make you justified, they prove
you are justified.
A
mere profession of faith in Jesus is not enough to prove you are right with
God,
there must be works in your life that
accompany and complete your faith.
So
James looks at this great episode in the life of Abraham—offering of Isaac,
and he says, Abraham was justified by
that. His faith was proved true.
Just
to show once more that James is not saying that we earn our salvation
by his obedience, just look a few verses
earlier in chapter two.
Those who are rich in faith “inherit the
kingdom he promised to those who love him.”
An
inheritance is not something you earn by working. It’s not a wage.
It doesn’t come by effort but by
relationship. It’s who you are by virtue
of grace.
James doesn’t say we earn salvation—but we
are heirs of salvation.
So
James is making a different point from Paul.
It’s not how you get saved—but how you know
you are saved.
What does true, saving faith look like? Or living faith, as James calls it.
Faith
like Abraham’s brought with it God’s commendation
and the renewed promise of blessing and
eternal life?
And,
of course, the more personal question is:
How do you know that you have living faith?
That’s
James’ concern. That’s why he wants us
to look at our father Abraham.
So let’s do so, under two headings.
1.
Insufficient signs of saving faith.
2.
Sufficient signs of saving faith
We’ll study and apply to ourselves.
MP#1 Insufficient signs of saving faith
James
starts by looking in a direction that is very surprising—demons.
He starts by looking at the faith of demons.
We
don’t know much about the angelic world.
Bible doesn’t tell us much.
But
what we do know is that demons are fallen angels.
Before God created the physical world of
animals and mankind,
he created a spiritual world of angels. Angel means messenger. Sent one.
Angels were made to be sent by God to carry
out his purposes.
At
some point there was a rebellion against God among the angels, a fall.
Bible hints that one third of all the angels
rebelled, led by Satan.
These
angels are now called demons or evil spirits.
So demons are thinking, emotional, personal,
spiritual beings.
They are committed to evil and rebellion
against God.
James
says, look at the faith of demons. There
are two things their faith has
that are fine things in themselves, nothing
wrong with these things.
But
if you have just those things, you can still be a demon.
What are they?
First,
sound doctrine.
“You believe that God is one; you do
well. Even the demons believe . . .”
The
statement “God is one” is from Deuteronomy 6, passage called the Shema,
The Shema was like the Apostles’ Creed of
the OT church.
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord
is One.”
So
James is not just referring to one simple believe in the existence of God.
The oneness of God is the first heading of a
statement of faith.
James is saying that the demons know and
believe all of theology.
Jonathan
Edwards wrote a sermon on this verse titled:
“True Grace Distinguished from the
Experience of Devils”
Says
demons are great theologians. This is
the way he puts it:
“The devils have all been to the greatest
divinity school in the universe,
the heaven of heavens.”
The
devils have been to seminary. Your
pastor has been to seminary and the
demons have too. And what a seminary—the throne room of God.
So
they know more sound doctrine and more about God,
than the greatest saint on earth.
And
there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing
wrong with sound doctrine.
In fact, you ought to do all you can to grow
in sound doctrine,
and a deeper understanding of spiritual
things.
But
you can have that, and still not have saving faith.
I
had a professor who told how he was once hitchhiking home during
his college days (back when college students
did that). Picked up by a trucker.
He
started witnessing to this truck driver.
And man displayed a perfect command
of the Christian faith. In fact he said, I believe Jesus is the son
of God.
I believe he died on the cross for my
sins. I believe he’s coming again.
Then
he said, But it’s like this: I love the
ladies.
And I have one in every city. And I want to have my fun.
Dr.
Doriani asked: Can such a faith save?
Will that kind of faith unite him to Christ
for eternal life?
He
had sound doctrine and he believed, but you can have that and still be a demon.
I think that’s pretty easy for us to
see.
But
then James adds something that’s really sobering.
Second,
not only do they have sound doctrine—
“the demons believe—and shudder.”
They don’t just know it. The believe it so strongly that they shudder.
Let
that sink in for a minute. The demons
have such a strong belief
in the power and greatness and wisdom of
God,
such a strong belief in who he is, and what
he can do,
and what he will do on the day of judgment,
that they shudder.
People
can do the same. They can believe in God
so strongly that they
are afraid of him, afraid of his judgment,
afraid of hell.
They respect God. They know he sees all that they do.
Oftentimes
that belief makes them very religious. Often
it makes them very moral.
Unlike the man Dr. Doriani met, they avoid
blatant immorality.
But
what is all their religion and morality?
It’s shuddering.
It’s hedging their bets so that they come
out ok on the day of judgment.
And
there is a more comprehensive point that James is making.
This
word shudder is really a broader word than just shuddering in fear.
It’s a word used to describe a purely
emotional response.
So
James’ point is that
even an emotional response to God is not
enough to save you.
Even
if you had a great feeling and shouted and wept and spoke in tongues—
those highly charged emotions do not in
themselves amount to saving faith.
There
are many, many people who say they know their faith is real
because they once had a strong emotional
response when they heard the Gospel,
but their faith is never justified by their
works.
Simon
the magician in Acts 8 is an example.
It
says that he believed and was baptized.
That he followed Philip and the other
disciples and was astonished
at the miracles they performed. There was a strong emotional component.
But
his faith was proved to be false.
Peter said to him, May your money perish
with you.
In
fact, conversion experiences aren’t even limited to Christianity.
Malcolm X’s conversion to Islam while he was
in prison is quite famous.
It was accompanied by very strong emotions
and significant behavior changes.
Listen
to what James is saying. Nothing wrong
with having sound doctrine.
You have to know who God is. You have to know who Jesus is.
You have to understand sin and the cross and
salvation.
Nothing
wrong with having a vivid sense of God’s power and holy hatred of sin.
And having a sensitized conscience and a trembling
at God’s judgments.
And
there is certainly nothing wrong with having a profound emotional
response to the Gospel, and a dramatic
experience you never forget.
We
love conversion stories. Not greater
story than Paul being knocked off his horse
by the appearance of Christ. And we love to hear people tell of
how
they heard the Good News and were overwhelmed with emotion.
But
those things alone are insufficient for saving faith.
So
the personal question that hits you between the eyes is this:
Is my faith more than that?
Is
it more than doctrinal belief and emotions?
And if it is more than that, then what is
it?
That
brings to second point . . .
MP#2 Sufficient signs of saving faith
James
calls saving faith, living faith. For a
person to be alive, you don’t just add
up the parts. He has legs and arms and heart—so he must be
alive.
There has to be vitality. There has to be this mysterious life force.
It’s
the same with living faith. It has a
life force that shows itself in two ways.
Saving faith is alive toward other people
and alive toward God.
First, saving
faith is alive toward other people.
James
starts with a negative example:
“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed
and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed
and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is
that? So also, faith by itself if it
does not have works is dead.”
You
may hear that and say. Oh, no. I’m in trouble.
I’ve never served in a soup kitchen. I’ve never helped in a food bank.
Where can I do it? Where can I sign up? That’s not what this means.
James
is not saying that you have to add the activity of helping the poor
and that makes your faith saving faith. Even pagans can add activities.
There
are many moralists and do-gooders who think they are earning points
with God by helping the poor and homeless.
Their activity is just shuddering
religion.
He
is saying that if you have saving faith in Jesus Christ, that faith will be
alive toward people. You will see people. You will have compassion for them.
If
they are suffering, you will move toward them and enter into their
suffering and do what you can to bring
comfort and help.
I’ve
been reading a book called “Love Walked Among Us” by Paul Miller.
The seed for the book started when Paul’s
wife Jill asked him one evening,
“Paul,
do you love me?” They were going through
some hard times then,
and it was at the end of a particularly hard
day. He thought she just needed
to be reassured. He said, Yes, Jill, I love you.
But
then she asked him again: Do you love
me?
And then a third time: Do you love me? Each time he said yes.
He
went to bed making a list in his mind of all the things he did for his
wife.
All the problems he fixed. All the chores he did.
But
her question gnawed at him and so he asked himself,
How did Jesus love people? Started to read the Gospels to answer that
question.
So
that’s what the book is about. It’s about
the way Jesus loved people.
One
of the first points Paul Miller makes is how many times the Gospels tell us
that
Jesus saw people and looked at people.
Over 40 times.
And
after he looked at them, he moved toward them in compassion.
The
miracle at Nain is a good example. A
crowd was following Jesus.
As they came into this village, another
crowd is going out—funeral procession.
They were carrying the body of a young man,
only child of a widow.
Where
did Jesus’ eyes immediately focus? On
the widow.
“And when the Lord saw her, he had
compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’”
So
out of this large crowd, Jesus’ eyes were on just one person.
He really saw her. And then he moved toward her to alleviate her
suffering.
You remember what happened next. He raised her son from the dead.
When
he did, the crowd started shouting in amazement that a great prophet
had appeared. So Jesus was suddenly the center of the
attention of both crowds.
But
instead of saying to himself, I’ve fixed her problem, I can move on to the next
thing on my agenda, he continued to focus on
the widow. Gave son to her.
Paul
Miller applied it this way. He said, I’m
good at raising dead sons and
then
looking for the next dead son to raise, but it’s hard for me to look at people.
In
other words, it’s easy for me to fix problems and do chores, and treat people
as
projects.
But it takes a living faith in Christ to really be alive to people.
What
about you? How’s your faith. Are you alive to people so that you see them,
especially in their suffering and then move
toward them?
That’s
risky, isn’t it? You don’t know what is
going to be demanded of you.
You don’t know what it might require in
terms of your time, emotions, resources.
James mentions Rahab as an example. Courage and risk she took with spies.
There
are people in your life who you need to serve.
You can’t. Too selfish.
Look at them, move toward them, and
pray: Lord, help me to justify my faith
by
my works. Help me prove my faith in Christ is real by
the way I treat this person.
Second, saving
faith is alive toward God.
Now
we finally get to Abraham. Let me read
you again what James says.
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son
Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his
works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was
fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as
righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
Did you catch those last
words? Abraham was God’s friend.
That means Abraham didn’t obey
because he wanted something from God.
He didn’t obey because he was scared of what would happen if he didn’t.
He didn’t obey purely out of duty.
He obeyed to get closer to God.
He obeyed as a living expression of his friendship.
And that really is the difference
between dead faith and living faith.
Dead faith can see lots of things about God.
It can see the power of God, the
holiness of God, justice of God,
even something of the love and kindness of God.
But this is what dead faith can’t
see: the loveliness of God, the
desirability of God.
Living faith delights in God as God.
Living faith wants to please God
because of who he is,
not for what you can get from him.
We have a young driver in our
family.
And she will say, can I take the car and go see my friends?
We will say, how long will you
be? Don’t know.
Where are y’all going? Don’t
know.
What will you be doing? Don’t
know.
Is there an agenda for this
outing? What’s the purpose?
And, of course, there is no
agenda. That’s what you do with friends.
You just hang out. You just enjoy
their company.
You delight in them as your friends.
You do things for them and with them because they are friends.
And if you go to spend time with
them in order to get something from them,
then you are just using them.
Works performed in hopes of
gaining God’s favor are worthless.
They are just attempts to use God.
God, I’ve lived right, now you owe me.
But there is another motive for
works.
The Bible says that faith works through love, it says that works
demonstrate faith.
The knowledge that God has been
gracious to us when we were unworthy
and helpless always produces a desire to please God with good works—
obeying his commandments, serving his cause in the world.
And that’s what we have here in
Genesis 22. Exactly that sequence.
Abraham believed God. And through his faith he received Christ’s
righteousness.
And then being a believer, and knowing God’s love and grace to him,
he loved God in return.
He demonstrated that love in the
confidence he placed in God’s word,
and the obedience he offered to his God and Savior, even when hard.
Here’s what it comes down
to:
The Christian life is a life of
faith in God, trust and confidence in his Word,
and in the mercy offered to us in Christ—
And, it is also a matter of
obedience to God, doing what our Savior says,
no matter what.
Make sure, that like Abraham, you
are trusting Christ for your righteousness
with God, Jesus and nobody else.
And, at the same time, put on holiness
and obedience in the conviction
that only faith followed by works is true, saving faith,
and only works done in faith and love amount to anything.
It has to be both—Just like
Abraham.
Never excuse your lack of
obedience by appealing to the fact that you believe
in Christ, and never imagine that your works are enough to make you
right
with God, only faith in the one who died for you.
And that’s where you must
continually look—to the death of Christ, to the cross.
God said to Abraham on the mountain.
Stop. Don’t slay your son.
Now I know your heart.
But on that hill outside
Jerusalem, God did not stop himself.
He sent his only son to death for you and for me.
And you can look at that and
say: God, now I know your heart.
Now I know your love. And that’s
where you get the faith for a life of obedience.
faith in God and a life of obedience to him.