Faith That Breathes: The Anatomy of Justification
Introduction: The War on Dead Religion
We live in an age of flabby Christianity. For many, the gospel has been reduced to a transaction, a fire insurance policy you take out by mumbling a prayer, after which you can go on living however you please. This is the great evangelical heresy of our time: the belief in a disembodied faith, a faith of intellectual assent that makes no demands, costs no blood, and bears no fruit. It is a faith that can be tucked away in a private compartment of your life, brought out on Sundays for an hour, and then safely ignored Monday through Saturday. It is a faith that is neat, tidy, and utterly useless.
Into this sentimental fog, the letter of James comes like a bucket of ice water to the face. James is not interested in your pious feelings or your correct doctrinal checklists if they are not attached to a living, breathing, working body. He is at war, not with faith, but with a counterfeit faith. He is at war with a theological corpse. And in this passage, he puts that corpse on the autopsy table and shows us, with unflinching clarity, why it is dead and what living faith actually looks like.
Some have foolishly tried to pit James against the apostle Paul, as though the Holy Spirit was confused about the doctrine of justification. Martin Luther famously called James an "epistle of straw" because he struggled to reconcile it with Paul's glorious doctrine of justification by faith alone. But this is to miss the point entirely. Paul and James are not fighting each other; they are fighting back to back against two different enemies. Paul is fighting the legalist, the man who wants to climb to Heaven on a rickety ladder of his own good works. James is fighting the antinomian, the man who thinks that because he has a ticket to Heaven, he can live like hell. Paul is at war with dead works; James is at war with dead faith. The enemy is death, not faith or works.
This passage is therefore intensely practical. It forces us to ask the most basic question: Is my faith the living kind, or is it the dead kind? Is it the faith of Abraham, or is it the faith of demons?
The Text
What use is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead by itself.
But someone will say, "You have faith; and I have works. Show me your faith without the works, and I will 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? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS COUNTED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
(James 2:14-26 LSB)
The Useless Corpse (vv. 14-17)
James begins with a direct, rhetorical punch. He is not setting up a straw man; he is describing a common character in the church.
"What use is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?" (James 2:14 LSB)
Notice the setup: "if someone says he has faith." James is dealing with a verbal claim, a profession. The issue is not whether a person can have true, saving faith that somehow fails to produce works. The question is whether a claim to faith, when it is demonstrably barren, is any good. James's answer is a resounding no. "Can that faith save him?" The Greek is emphatic. Can that kind of faith, the kind that is all talk, save anyone? Of course not. It is a counterfeit.
He then gives a painfully practical illustration. Imagine a fellow believer in desperate, physical need. He is hungry and cold. And you, a professing Christian, offer him nothing but pious platitudes: "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled." You wish him well, you pray for him, you have all the right sentiments. But you don't give him a coat or a sandwich. James asks, "what use is that?" The answer is obvious. It is of no use whatever. Your words are empty air. They are a mockery of true compassion.
And then he drives the point home in verse 17: "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead by itself." This is the central thesis. A faith that does not act is not merely a weak faith or an immature faith. It is a dead faith. It is a corpse. It might have the outward form of faith, just as a corpse has the outward form of a man, but the animating principle, the life, is gone.
Demonic Orthodoxy (vv. 18-20)
James now anticipates an objection. A man might try to separate faith and works into two different categories, as though they were spiritual gifts distributed to different people.
"But someone will say, 'You have faith; and I have works.' Show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." (James 2:18 LSB)
James's response is a brilliant challenge. He says, in effect, "Fine. You say you have faith. Prove it. Show it to me." But how can you show someone an invisible, internal disposition? You can't. Faith is invisible to the human eye. The only way faith can make itself known is through its constant companion: works. Works are faith made visible. I can't see your faith, but I can see you bring a meal to a sick neighbor. I can't see your trust in God's provision, but I can see you write a generous check to the church. James says, "I will show you my faith by my works." The works are the evidence, the proof, the fruit that demonstrates the life in the root.
To ram the point home, he brings up the ultimate example of correct theology coupled with a damned soul. "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder" (v. 19). The Shema, "God is one," was the fundamental confession of Judaism. It is absolutely correct doctrine. James says, "Good for you. You are as orthodox as a demon." The demons are not atheists. They are perfectly sound monotheists. They have correct intellectual assent (notitia and assensus). But their faith is not the kind that saves. It is a faith that terrifies. It produces shuddering, not sanctification. Why? Because it is faith without fiducia, without loyal trust and submission. They know God is real, and they hate Him. This is the essence of dead faith: correct information without transformation, belief without submission to the Lordship of Christ.
The Protestant Sticking Point (vv. 21-24)
Now we come to the section that has caused so much consternation. James provides two Old Testament examples, Abraham and Rahab, to prove his point.
"Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? ... You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." (James 2:21, 24 LSB)
There it is in black and white: "not by faith alone." Is this a flat contradiction of Paul in Romans 4, who uses the very same example of Abraham to prove that a man is justified by faith apart from works? Not at all. We must simply allow the Bible to define its own terms. Paul and James are using the word "justify" in two different senses, to answer two different questions.
Paul's question is, "How is a guilty sinner declared righteous in the courtroom of God?" His answer is: by faith alone. God imputes the righteousness of Christ to the one who believes, apart from any works he has done (Romans 4:5). This is forensic justification, the great legal declaration.
James's question is, "How is a person's claim to be justified proven or vindicated as genuine?" His answer is: by works. This is demonstrative justification. The works don't earn the verdict; they demonstrate the reality of the verdict. Think of it this way: a man is alive because he has a beating heart (faith). We know he is alive because he is breathing (works). The breathing doesn't make him alive, but it is the necessary evidence of life.
Look closely at what James says about Abraham. He was justified by works when he offered Isaac. But Genesis 15:6 says Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" decades before the event on Mount Moriah. Paul quotes Genesis 15 to show the root of Abraham's justification. James points to Genesis 22 to show the fruit. The offering of Isaac was the moment Abraham's faith was "perfected" (v. 22), meaning it was brought to its full, intended expression. His action fulfilled, or filled full, the original declaration. It proved that his faith from decades earlier was the real, living thing.
The Unlikely Saint and the Final Analogy (vv. 25-26)
As if to show that this principle applies to everyone, not just the great patriarch, James brings up Rahab the harlot.
"And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?" (James 2:25 LSB)
Rahab was a pagan prostitute in a doomed city. But she heard the reports of what God had done for Israel, and she believed. How do we know she believed? Because she acted. She hid the spies at great personal risk. She lied to the authorities. Her works were the tangible evidence of her transferred allegiance from the king of Jericho to the King of Heaven. Her faith was not a private opinion; it was a public, costly action. And for this, she was justified, vindicated as a true believer.
James concludes with an analogy that is impossible to misunderstand. "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead" (v. 26). This is the capstone of his argument. A body and a spirit together make a living man. A body without a spirit is a corpse. In James's analogy here, faith is the body and works are the spirit, the animating principle. Faith without works is a theological corpse. It is useless, it is dead, and a dead faith never saved anyone.
Conclusion: Faith that Breathes
The message of James is not "try harder." It is not a call to pull ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps. The message is that the faith God gives is a living thing. It is a gift of God, a supernatural seed planted in the heart by the Holy Spirit. And a living seed, planted in good soil, will always, necessarily, and inevitably grow and produce fruit. God doesn't give dead faith. That is the kind we manufacture ourselves.
Therefore, the call is not to staple works onto a dead faith to try to make it look alive. The call is to examine ourselves. If your life is barren of the fruit of righteousness, if your faith never moves your hands or your feet or your wallet, then you have every reason to fear that your faith is the demonic kind, not the saving kind. The solution is not to start doing things to earn God's favor. The solution is to cry out to God to do for you what He did for Abraham and Rahab, to replace your dead, useless faith with a living, breathing, working faith that is a gift of His sovereign grace.
We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone. It is always and everywhere accompanied by the works that prove it to be the gift of the living God. That is the only kind of faith there is.