James 2026

James chapter two starting at verse 14.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But if someone will say, you have faith, I have deeds, Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe there is one god. Good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. You foolish person.

Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in the direct... In a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Good evening, everyone. If we haven't met, my name is Thomas.

I'm a member here at Cornerstone. It's my pleasure to bring you our next installment in the book of James that we've been going through in our evening services. And before we dive into the second half of chapter two, let me pray for us before we begin. Father God, we thank you for this time we have together this evening to look at your word. And we ask father that you would give us humble and open hearts ready to listen to what you have to say to us.

Let us be challenged tonight by your word, father, and let us, you know, take that challenge well. Let us go away from here, praising your name, loving your son more and kind of thinking about these truths and really trying to apply them to ourselves. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, one of my favorite, clips online, I don't know if any if any of you have seen it, is of a debate between a Christian and an atheist.

In this particular debate, the Christian stands up and he says says to the atheist, yes, I have I have faith in the Bible, but you, you have faith in science. You have faith that science is a reliable way to establish the truth, and you have faith that the conclusions that science gets you to are, you know, reliable. Well, the atheist stands up and he says, no, no, no. I don't have faith in science. I have confidence in science.

I have confidence that science is a reliable way to establish truth. Well, the Christian stands up again. He says, okay. My atheist friend here doesn't have faith in science. He has confidence in science.

Confidence. Well, that's from the Latin, confide, meaning with faith. Now I love that clip, because not only is it a sort of great mic drop moment in that debate, but I think it kind of... It gets to the heart of a kind of tension that we have in our culture around the nature of faith, what faith is, what it means, what it means to have faith, and what it what it is that Christians think they have when they say they have faith. I mean, if we were to go out into Kingston and do a kind of survey and ask people, you know, what do you think faith is?

What do you think Christians mean when they say they have faith? I think common answers would be something like, oh, faith is when there's no evidence for something, but you believe it anyway. You can't you can't really back it up, but you just... You want to believe it, and so you sort of cling on to that belief. Or maybe it's in spite of the evidence.

In fact, you know really deep down that there can't be a God. The Bible can't be true. But you need it as a kind of crutch. And so you kind of muster up all these feelings inside you. You sort of hold on to those feelings as a kind of faith, as kind of crossing your fingers and just hoping at the end of your end of your life, it turns out to be true.

Is that what Christians think faith is? Is that what the Bible says faith is? Well, it's interesting because the Bible defines faith like this. The writer of the Hebrews says, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. I think we can have it on...

Oh, it's up there. Great. It's not there for me for some reason. Anyway. So the Bible defines faith in terms of confidence and assurance, not some nebulous feeling that we have to work up.

A commentator puts it like like this. Faith is confidence that God's word is true and conviction that acting on it will bring blessing. So as opposed to a kind of vain hope and kind of crossing our fingers, we know that Christian faith to be one of, as the song goes, blessed assurance. There's confidence that our sins are forgiven in Christ and assurance that his ways are best for us. There's there's more that could be said about what faith is for the Christian, but fundamentally, it's that confidence in the truth of God's word.

And then we enter into the time of James because the people of James' day, it seems, are also a little bit confused about faith. See, James appears to be speaking to people who haven't quite understood or are confused what it means for faith to work itself out in the life of the Christian. Like, when a Christian claims to have that confidence in the truth of God's word, well, what does that look like? So verse 14, James says, what good is it to my brothers and sisters if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?

In other words, it seems like James is getting at this idea of how do you know if someone's profession of faith is genuine? And that is the question that we are interested in tonight, because James wants to clarify for us what faith should look like in the life of the Christian. So my first point, this evening is faith without deeds is dead. Now, James illustrates, his question in verse 14 like this. He says, well, imagine somebody walks into church now and they they say they're cold and they ask for clothes to keep warm and they say they're hungry and they would like some food to fill their stomach.

And your reaction is just to go, sorry about that, mate. That is tough. Well, keep warm. Just... I'm so sorry to hear that you're cold, but, you know, keep warm.

I'm sorry to hear you're hungry. Be well fed. Have a good meal. That's what James says it's like. Let me break down...

Break it down a little bit. I mean, have I understood the message that has been communicated to me? Oh, yes. I understand that this person has insufficient food and clothing. Do I believe that this claim is true?

Oh, yes. I believe it. I have confidence that it is true. And so James says, what? You you actually believe that and your response is just be warm and well fed.

There you go. What's the point in those words? Well, in the same way, I might understand the message of the gospel. I might say, yeah, I know. I'm a sinner.

I deserve God's judgment. I know that Jesus died for me, and he came to set me free from God's judgment. I believe that there is a God. I believe it's true that Jesus really came and he lived and he died. I might even be able to articulate my belief in Christianity really well.

I might be able to argue for it. I might be able to have, you know, complex discussions on the kind of finer theological points of the Christian faith. But then nothing to show for it in my life. Well, the writer John Bunyan, I think puts this... So illustrates this kind of faith really well in his story, The Pilgrim's Progress.

So in The Pilgrim's Progress, it's about... It's sort of an allegory for the Christian life. It follows a character called Christian. Christian leaves the city of destruction and go... Goes on a journey to the celestial city.

On the way, he meets all kinds of, you know, dangers and troubles. And he meets a lot of crazy characters as well. One such character is called Talkative. Now Talkative, as his name suggests, loves to talk, and he loves nothing more than to talk about his faith. He loves talking about all things Christianity.

He loves talking about, you know, grace and sin and repentance and all of these good things. And Christian and his mate, Faithful, are walking down, the road and they see talkative and faithful things. Oh, let's go. Let's bring him in. Let's chat to him on the way.

And Faithful's having this conversation with him. And, you know, you read the conversation. You read the things that Talkative is saying and you think, ah, you know, seems like a Christian. Saying a lot of good things, a lot of true things coming out of his mouth. And faithful goes up to Christians who was like, hey, this this talkative chap.

And Christian, I quote, responds, hang on. He talks of prayer, of repentance, of faith, and of the new birth, but he only knows how to talk about them. There is no prayer offered in his house nor any sign of repentance for sin. And I love the way the narrator describes talkative as Christian and faithful see him from a distance. The narrator says, well, he was a tall man and more handsome at a distance than when close at hand.

And I think that's just a... It's a brilliant little metaphor because the faith that talkative has, and the faith that James is addressing here, is so much more beautiful when you kind of stand at a distance and squint at it. You sort of see this fuzzy outline of what appears to be genuine faith. But as you kind of look closer and you add more and more details to the picture, you find that this faith is just completely empty. It's just talk.

It's pious words masquerading as a changed heart. Instead, when you kind of lift the hood, you just find a heart unmoved, a life completely unchanged. And James calls this kind of faith dead. Verse 17, he says, in the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Well, in the Greek, that word dead, it could be translated barren or idle.

In other words, it's faith that just doesn't do anything. It's faith that just sits around talking. It seems to only impact the realm of the intellect. It's purely an experience in the mind. And I wonder as you're hearing this and maybe as, you know, as we were reading this section in in the book of James, maybe there were kind of names and people appearing in your head.

Maybe you're sort of thinking, oh, I know somebody that needs to hear this. Alright. I never see her on it... On any serving Reuters. People don't know the sin that he's dealing with.

And he claims to be a Christian, but I know what's going on in his life. Maybe maybe that's what's going through your head. Or maybe you think, oh, no. It's our church. We're fine.

You know, we we teach the Bible at this church. And, you know, we've got all these activities, all these ministries. Look. We're clearly people that, you know, we we we believe the word, and now we go out and we live it out. Now this is talking about other churches.

This is talking about the ones where there's just kind of spiritual experiences, but then no real change in their lives. Or it's churches that have kind of just gone along with the flow of the culture. You know, as the culture has changed its views on various things or has adopted various political movements, the church has just kind of gone with it. Now they're the church... The...

These are the churches that are claiming to be Christians, but really have nothing to show for it in the way that they behave. And that's what... That's who James is talking about. Maybe you're thinking that. But I would ask, do you need to hear this?

I think Rory in his sermon a couple weeks ago asked quite a helpful question in this regard. He said, you know, if we were to ask the non Christian people in your life, acquaintances, friends, family, colleagues, ask them about you and your your faith. What what would they say? Would they talk about somebody who stands out, who's different? Or would they just say, oh, I didn't know he was a Christian?

Or would just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, does does church, but you know, everyone needs a everyone needs a kind of hobby or a community, I suppose, you know, it's just an ordinary bloke really, apart from that. So is is your faith evident in your life? That is the challenge I think James wants to extend to you tonight. Or is it just words? Well, James takes his point a little further as we move on.

My second point is that faith without deeds is demonic. And I've called it that because if you look down, verse 19, James says, you believe that there is one God. Good. Even the demons believe that and shudder. Now, James' audience at the time would have mostly been scattered Jewish, Christians.

And many of them would have recited a daily prayer called the Shema. The Shema refers to a verse in Deuteronomy, which goes something like here, oh Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. It's called the Shema because in Hebrew, Shema means here. And so he's talking to people who would have recited that prayer almost every day, you know, declaring that they believe in one God. And he's saying, well, those pious words in themselves are not saving faith because look, even the demons believe those things.

Now if you, go to the gospel accounts where Jesus meets demons and you sort of analyze the things that demons say to Jesus, you you actually find some quite remarkable things. Few examples. One, when Jesus encounters them says, what do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God.

Another says, he shouted at the top of his voice, what do you want with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? At face value, those are all quite encouraging statements. Demons, they they... They're not atheists. They believe that God exists.

They even believe that Jesus is the holy one of God, the son of the most high God. They seem to have some kind of understanding of the the trinity, of the incarnation, and of Jesus' place in the heavenly realms. I mean, if you heard these statements from, you know, a person, you might think, well, these are kind of statements of faith. These are things that Christians say. You find some real remarkable understanding of biblical truth from the mouths of the demons.

Now James isn't just reiterating... I mean, he is reiterating his point from 14 to 17, but he's he's actually going further here than just repeating that point. Because notice he adds, even the demons believe that and shudder. I mean, if you read the gospel accounts, you might... You'll note that whenever the demons encounter Jesus, they are absolutely terrified of him because they know who he is.

So their faith, the faith of the demons, if you can call it that, it's emotional since... Sorry. It's intellectual. They they know... They know...

They believe sort of a lot of true things, but it's emotional as well. Their faith has kind of elicited a kind of emotional response in them. Their hearts are moved to emotional response by the truths about God and about who Jesus is. Now many of you may know this, but like it's it's very common, I think, for Christians to talk about not feeling anything when we encounter Jesus. When we're reading our Bibles or when we're praying or when we're singing or when we're kind of, you know, hear...

Hearing a sermon, when we're hearing the gospel, it's very common for us to say, just wish that when the... When I did those things, I had some kind of emotional response. I I just wish I felt something. I wish my heart was moved by those things. Instead, it just feels so cold.

We might look at other churches, other people that we know, and we sort of see how overcome by emotion they can get. You know, when they're when they're worshiping, their their emotions just seem to collect inside of them and just pour out. We might look at that and we think, well, I just wish I had that kind of faith. I wish my faith was that strong. Because we think if I just felt something, if I had some real feelings when I encountered the gospel, then I would know that my faith is genuine.

I'd know that that my faith is real if I felt something. But James is telling us to be careful. He says even the even the demons respond emotionally. You might object at this point. You might say, hang on, Thomas, apples and oranges.

We're talking about the fear response of the demons versus the response of joy in in in the believer. But I would note here that the parable of the sower. So the parable of the sower, Jesus, is talks about a sower who's sowing seed. The seed represents the word of God. And that seed gets spread on four different soils.

The four different soils represent responses to hearing the word of God. And on the rocky ground, Jesus describes these people as people who receive the word of God and initially receive it with joy. They're people who hear of the gospel. They hear about how Jesus has come and he's taken the punishment that they deserve for their sin, and they've been set free. They've been given Christ's righteousness, and they are overjoyed by it.

But then they... The the root that springs up withers and dies. Because when trials and tribulations come, it's found to have no deep roots and it withers away. Now I'm not saying here that emotions don't have a place, you know, in our lives, in our worship, and that it's not good to have an emotional response when we hear the gospel or when we worship. Like, it is...

That those are all good things. The point here, I hope you can see, and the point that James is making is that they... They're not a measure of faith. He wants us to be careful. Do not mistake mere kind of intellectual agreement with the truth of Christianity or an emotional response with genuine faith.

Because we could... They they can so easily deceive. We can so easily think, oh, just... I I know. I just believe the right things.

Like, I must I must be a Christian just because I believe the right things. I mean, I don't have to... My life doesn't actually have to change. I just... It's all about just, you know, having...

Believing that correct bit of truth. Or I've had this amazing emotional response that must mean my faith is genuine. Because these things masquerade very well as genuine faith and they can fool us into thinking that we that we... That that the faith is genuine. He said James' point here is that there is a missing piece to that puzzle.

Saving faith, yes, it impacts the intellect. It impacts the emotions. But crucially, it must impact the will of the believer. So the third point is that faith with deeds is made complete. Now to make this point, James uses two examples from the Old Testament to illustrate what genuine saving faith looks like in the believer.

He depicts Abraham and Rahab. They're two very well chosen, examples because Abraham, he's a man. He's a Jew. He's kind of perceived as godly. He wasn't sinless, but he was perceived to be a godly man.

And he was called friend of God. On the other hand, you have Rahab. She's a woman. She's a Gentile, so non Jew. She's perceived as sinful because she's a prostitute.

And she's among the enemies of God because she is living in a land that God has given to the Israelites to occupy. And so together, they create this complete picture of what genuine faith looks like among God's people. So the writer of the Hebrews puts it like this. He says, by faith, a prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. Well, the story of Rahab can be found in the book of Joshua.

And at this point in the story of Israel, they've, you know, they've been freed from Egypt. They've been wandering around in the wilderness. And now the time has come for them to occupy the land that God has promised to give them. God promised Abraham way back in Genesis that he would give him land, people, and blessing. And now the time has come for Israel to occupy that land.

Before they do, they send out a couple spies. The spies go into a place called Jericho. And in Jericho, they meet Rahab. And Rahab takes them in and hides them because the king of the king of Jericho finds out that there are Israelite spies in Jericho and sends people out to have them captured and killed. And Rahab declares to the spies her faith in God.

The the word of God has reached her. And she says, look, I know God has given you this land. I know he's promised it to you. And she says, and I know that your God is the one true God. I know he's the one true God of heaven and earth.

She expresses her faith in the truth of God's word that has reached her. And then her whole life changes because she knows that she must join the people of God from then on. Her whole life is turned around. Now remember this letter is written to scattered Christians from a Jewish... Mainly Jewish background.

And the other examples that we get in the letter of James are people like Abraham who will come on to Elijah and Job. And therefore, Rahab's a, you know, the odd one out here. The Jewish people listening probably would have been tempted to boast in their ancestry. That's certainly some... A theme that comes up in the letters of Paul.

And it's certainly something you see in the character of the Pharisees in the gospels. When Jesus encounters them, you know, they boast in their ancestry and they also boast in their standing, their kind of status as the religious elite of the time. But the example of Rahab just blows any of these ideas completely out of the water because real saving faith is not reserved for a particular kind of people group or people in a certain kind of standing or status or kind of religious elite. But this Gentile prostitute is an example of saving faith, is real and working. And as an example, James calls us to no matter our background or our kind of social standing.

James, he's... He really wants to rub home the point in this passage that genuine faith is faith which works. But he's not saying that work save you. And so what are we to make of his conclusion in verse 24? You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

Well, the question of the place of faith and works in salvation was at the center of the Protestant Reformation, which was a movement in the sixteenth century against the Catholic church's teaching on salvation. And the reformers quickly went to places like Paul, like Romans, which we mentioned earlier with the seminars, where Paul argues that salvation comes by faith alone. And he uses the example of Abraham to show that. In Genesis 15, Abraham, is old and his wife is barren is told that he will be the father of a great nation and he will have many offspring. That is the promise.

That is the word of God that is given to him. And he believes that promise, even though it seems completely incomprehensible. He believes it. And then we are told that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Well, James uses the example of Abraham as well.

Says, was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. The key thing here, there are sort of two key things to realize here, I think. Firstly, Paul and James are not trying to answer the same question. They both go to the life of Abraham to make their points, but they're not trying to answer the same question.

Paul's question in Romans is how can a sinner be justified in the eyes of God? And he says, well, look at Abraham. He believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness before he had gone out and done anything. Well, James' question, remember, is not how can we be justified before God. His question is how do you know if someone's claim to have faith is genuine?

So he says, well, look. Look at look at Abraham's life. Look at Rahab's life. Look how their faith turned to action. And crucially, when Paul appeal...

Sorry, when Paul appeals to Abraham, he appeals to appeals to Genesis 15 when he's declared righteous. And James appeals to Genesis 22 after he's been declared righteous. When when when Abraham puts his faith into action, the bit that James is referring to is after he's been declared righteous in God's sight. Now there's a there's a verse in in one Samuel sixteen seven. It says, man looks on outward appearance, but God sees the heart.

I'm paraphrasing it a bit. It might not be exactly like that. So once genuine faith dwells in the heart of the believer, God can see it because God can see your heart. He does not need to wait for that faith to kind of show itself in your life. So he knew when Abraham believed his word, that his faith was genuine and it was credited to him as righteousness there and then.

But from the human perspective, we cannot see people's hearts. And so we don't know that faith is genuine until you see it transform into a changed life. So we're declared righteous in heaven when we have faith by the God who sees our hearts, then that is proven to be true in a changed life in a kind of finite temporal realm that we occupy. Now I think the the place of faith and deeds is actually... I I don't think it's that difficult to understand.

This is the the the main thrust of this section that we're looking at tonight. And I think if it still seems confusing, I think if you kind of substitute faith for something else, it immediately begins to make a little bit more sense. Like, for example, if I were to say to you, I love golf, and I'm a golfer. I'm an avid golfer. But then you look at my life, and I've...

I don't even own a set of clubs, and I never play, and I never watch it. I never do anything to do with golf. Well, you'd be like, well, that's a bit weird. Why are you going around claiming that you are a golfer and that you love golf if your life clearly does not reflect this? Well, in the same way, James is saying, look, if you're a Christian, if you're claiming to love the Lord Jesus, you're claiming to follow him, but then nothing changes?

And you just go back to living the way you were living before you'd heard the gospel? It doesn't make sense. What use is it claiming to follow and trust in the Lord Jesus if there is no evidence in your life? Now faith without deeds is a kind of double minded ness. James is...

He he loves this idea of double mindedness, and he sort of goes after it again and again. Because faith without deeds, it's like looking in a mirror, seeing your reflection, turning away, then immediately forgetting what it is you look like. It's like looking at Jesus. It's like looking at him on the cross, seeing what he had to endure to take the penalty that your sins deserve, seeing what he had to do and seeing his love for you in substituting himself there in your place, turning away and then immediately forgetting it. That's what it's like.

Now his letter is... I don't... His letter is not a call to sort of make sure that everybody knows that your faith is genuine. It's not go away from here, do lots of good things, so that everybody looking at you will know, oh, Thomas, he's got some genuine faith. It's pretty clear.

It's also not a call to kind of nitpick the faith of other people. It's not a sort of, oh, I'm not sure if... Not sure I see enough evidence there or maybe I could need a bit more confirmation on that one. It's also not really a call to go out and do lots of good things in the hope that will kind of make your faith more genuine. It's not like we we go away and say, oh, James says the genuine faith needs to result in action.

So I need to just... If if I just sort of do lots of good stuff, if I sort of read my bible, I pray and I go to church or whatever it is, that's gonna make... That will kind of assure me that my faith is genuine. It's gonna make it more and more genuine as I keep doing that. This is...

It's not what James is saying. I think fundamentally, this is a call to reflect on your own heart because we can so easily deceive ourselves. So ask yourself the question, like, how do you know your faith is genuine? James wants to challenge you with that question. He wants you to chew it over.

Is your faith just ideas? Is it just emotions? Or is it a changed heart and a changed life? Now, don't wanna suggest that the change that I'm referring to is some immediate change into Christ likeness once we have faith. No, the Bible is pretty clear that the Christian believer goes through gradual transformation, becoming more and more in Christ likeness as we go.

There's a sense in which our life and actions are always catching up to what we believe in. Sometimes only you will know the ways that the gospel has changed you. There's not always gonna be, you know, really obvious or visible to people around you. Sometimes only you will understand it. Like, example, if if if you struggle with resentment and bitterness, maybe you feel like people don't accept you and you're upset and angry about that.

And you have this resentment in your heart towards people. But then when you see Jesus, when you look upon him and you look and you see how he's accepted you into God's family, how he has adopted you as a son or daughter, then all of that resentment that not being accepted by other people just kind of melts away. It could look like that. So how do we have faith that works? Well, faith has to have an object.

It has faith in something. And who is the object of our faith? Well, it is the Lord Jesus. Tilly last week, he talked about the royal law, which is, you know, love thy neighbor as yourself and love, the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, which sums up all the law and the prophets. And Jesus kept both those things perfectly.

He loved his neighbor perfectly and he loved the father perfectly and he paid the penalty for your sin. And so on the cross, when he's substituted for you, he takes your sin and his perfect righteous record is credited to us. And that's why we sung this morning. Christ is all my righteousness. And therefore, the call is to fix your eyes on him.

Look how the writer of the Hebrews puts it. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our... Of faith. It is as we fix our eyes on him that our faith is perfected and works out in a changed life. Now I'm gonna give you, a few seconds on your tables to reflect, on the things that we've just heard.

And then after maybe thirty seconds of reflection, why not turn on your tables and discuss the things that we've just been hearing and maybe pray about them as well.