In the days of the Reformation, a huge emphasis was placed on what it meant to understand and receive the unearned Grace of God and what it meant to uphold a personal commitment to faith, by the Protestant Reformers. This was a needed theological exploration and emphasis at a time when faith had become hijacked by cultural humanism, political affiliation, and more – all of which had crept into the church. Biblical Truth was a huge emphasis in the Reformation, you hear that in quotes from Martin Luther who said things like, "The gospel cannot be truly preached without offense and tumult." The Reformation produced convictions that salvation is by grace alone, that it is received by faith alone, that it is achieved by Christ alone, that we relate to Jesus through the revelation of the scripture alone, and that we live for the glory of God alone.
However, at the same time, all change comes with its share of negativity as well. Whenever the pendulum is swung, there are places in which it is swung too far. The Reformation was not all good. Despite the disunity and new state affiliations it spawned, the persecution, and the culture of division that emerged for the next few hundred years, there were also aspects of the reformation that emphasized intellectualism to the point it undermined everyday people, it emphasized personalization of the faith to the point where it undermined the need for community, and it emphasized faith at the point to where some might have missed the missional nature of God. In some cases, it created pastoral leaders with no accountability and created arm-chair theologians who can accurately quote chapter and verse, and explain their theological convictions about God, but have become apathetic about discipleship, evangelism, and the missional nature of God in the places where we live, work, worship, and play.
Menno Simons, a peculiar individual and excommunicated catholic priest, in the later days of the Reformation, looked to bring integrity, and communal focus, and Early on his is journey, he began to describe himself as evangelical, rather than sacramental. He developed the theology of believers’ baptism, non-resistance, and more. I've worked through his complete writings, and they weren't overtly exciting, but he did argue for an evangelical faith that was not dormant, apathetic, or passive. Simmons wanted to see the church actively living out the love of God in the places we live, work, worship, and play. In a world where theology was emphasized, Simmons emphasized action.
Simmons is perhaps most known for his quote about true evangelical faith. However, that quote that is used is often used out of context and truncated from its original context. An extended version of his famous quote reads, “For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves, and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; // consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. // The persecution, suffering, and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the Lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.” Sadly, in this era, the lines of righteousness and destroying all lusts and desires are often snipped from this quote. However, in an area that was exploring faith, Menno Simmons wanted people to understand that faith is evangelical, meaning it is for others, and such a faith cannot be just an intellectual ascent, but it is an active engagement of God’s love and healing in the places we live, work, and play. This morning we are going to see that when James says, “walk this way,” he means that “a true evangelical faith cannot lay dormant.”
This morning we are going to continue looking at the book of James. James was known by the early church to be the brother of Jesus. He was a Bishop and leader in the early Jerusalem church. James is the teachings and instructions to the Jerusalem churches from James, who had become an overseer and bishop of the Jerusalem churches. Early Christian writers reported the great esteem that fellow Jerusalemites, especially the poor, had for James and his leadership. Church history says the upper rich did not care for him much, because of his focus on the everyday people.
James is a book that carries a prophetic punch. If your spiritual ears are on and listening, you can’t read James and not feel conviction or challenge. It has been that way from the beginning. The teaching of James even upset his contemporaries, and after the death of Festus, a high-ranking priest had James and some others killed, probably right around the time this book was written. James is part wisdom, but really probably a collection of sermons from James, that was edited by James or one of his followers to keep a unified work. It is meant to help the church to know what following Jesus looks like, it is meant to say, “Walk this way.”
James to me is one of the most practical and essential reads for followers and church communities of Jesus who want to know how to live and love like Jesus in a world that has become distracted, broken, and ruled by evil. James gives us practical insight into how to live free from the ways of the world, and to live out God’s healing in the darkness around us. It is a book about how to find wisdom, it is a book that tells us to walk this way.
This morning we are looking at James 2:14-18. Let me just share that I opened with that Menno Simmons quote because what James is doing here, is what Menno Simmons was doing in his lifetime. Menno was convincing people who were already convinced that faith was enough, that a true faith expresses itself in action. James is doing the same thing in his day. Sometimes people struggle with James 2:14-18 because Paul makes the argument that it is faith alone. However, James and Paul are not in conflict, as we will see in a minute, though many have tried to elevate one over the other for various reasons. Before this passage, James talks, as we saw last week, that how we walk as followers of Jesus must relate to how we interact with others, especially the least of theses. That is a type of faith we are to walk this way. In James 2:14-18, James’ next point reads like this:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 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? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.18 But 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.
In this passage, James’ teachings address the churches and followers of Jesus who make up the church communities in Jerusalem. They are living in a time where it is getting dangerous to put your head up and say, I am a Christian. It can feel like we are getting to those times again, sometimes. However, in those times when it is difficult to have a life of convictions and faith, it can be hard to live a faith out loud. I think James is slightly concerned with that as well. For James, even in these tough times, it is important that we live out faith in a way that is part of our salvation process, a life that cares for those around us. James argues that genuine faith is one that is not just some assent to a theological point or doctrine, it is not enough to just say I believe and honestly believe, but genuine faith has expressions of belief, of faith, like nondiscrimination, nonviolence, and a faith that is lived out with the concern for others.
The care for others was not a Christian mandate, it is a mandate that has been with the people of God, from the beginning. In Deuteronomy 15:7-8, God commanded the people of God to care for the poor among them, and even in the towns around them that God was bringing to them. God warned them to "not be hardhearted or tightfisted." God commanded them to be "openhanded and [to] freely lend them whatever they need." It is this underlying foundation that James is building on as he addresses the followers of Jesus. He reminds them to “walk this way,” not being hardhearted and tightfisted, but openhanded to all who need it, to give clothes and food to those in need. There is no need to wish people a good blessing if you aren’t willing to be the blessing to that person. God intends us to be the hands and feet of his blessings to others. The earliest followers of Jesus understood this, Acts testifies to that. Acts 2:44-45 reports, at the start of the church, "All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need." Later on, Acts witneses that the foundations of the early church continued to be one in which "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. // And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need” (Acts 4:32-35). James intends the churches and followers of Jesus in which he was responsible for, to “walk this way.” The church community was to be one of interdependence. To fail to be the hands and feet to others, to be an evangelical faith that lies dormant, was once that disobedience and ineffective. The declare peace upon someone, or even to send someone in peace, was a common blessing in this day. However, as with anything, the blessing for someone’s wellbeing when regulated to a saying or a prayer, a blessing or a wish, is nothing. Those in need, those James calls us to focus on earlier, receive God’s blessing through our hospitality. In tough times, tough places, it can be hard to stick out, extend our help when we are hurting ourselves, when it endangers us at some level, but we are part of God’s heart, God’s ways, and we even experience salvation, or in this case deliverance, when we do the same for others. The Christian life is built on paradoxes, we experience forgiveness as we forgive others, we experience God’s blessings for others as we bless them.
James says a faith without action is dead. The Greek philosopher Epictetus and others like him would also use this term as a way of suggesting something as “useless.” James’ point is that a faith that is so personalized that it does no earthly good for others, a faith that lies dormant, is not a useful faith. It is not doing good for you or anyone else. Such a useless faith has no benefit for you, or someone else. Perhaps we are lacking provision in our life because we aren’t being the provision to others that God asks us to be. A useless faith isn’t living and breathing with the spirit of God as God intended. We have been equipped with the power of the Holy Spirit, givin blessings in our life, with a responsibility to steward these talents well.
In this passage, James is using a common way of making a point, setting up an imaginary opponent, and then setting forth an argument to further the point. In James’ day, the humanists, or moralists, they would have used the show me argument as a way of proving a truth to be a truth. James only intends to tell his followers that we deceive ourselves to say we are Christians and not to walk out in obedience to what we read. James tells us what we read, and what we believe, is useful if it doesn’t change the way we act toward others. One scholar rights, “Genuine faith will always produce thoughts, words, and deeds that reflect God’s character and his lordship,” to others. A character that is not tightfisted and hardhearted.”
All of us know what it is like to have someone say they care about us, or pretend to deeply care about us, but then you see no actions behind it. There are people that say that about God as well. “If you claim he loves us…” That is because we have allowed our theology rather than our faith to lead. There are poor people around us left and right, physically, spiritually, mentally, financially – the poor are those with the least, those in last place, and those spiritually lost. These are people that James expects us to be the hands and the feet of Jesus too, these are the people our faith should motivate us to actively bring God’s healing and peace too. It is through us that they learn that God loves the whole world and that he sent his son, so that they will not parish, but experience God’s salvation now and for all eternity.
In the life and ministry of Jesus, we see Jesus pronounce a judgment on a fig tree in Matthew 21 that produced no fruit. James makes the same move here. “Claiming to have faith is different from actually having faith, because genuine faith is evidenced by actions.”
Though Paul argues that it is faith alone that saves us, James is not contrasting that, he is using faith differently, showing a different side of the same coin. James is not advocating works-based salvation, but he is showing us the test of those who claim to be saved. Faith is evidenced by its fruit, and in James’s time, and perhaps in ours, there are too many trees producing no figs. Faith results from a changed life, with changed motivations, who wants others to experience that change and desires to be a taste of that change for them. It is easy to explain away the need to act, but in doing so, we not only create a docile faith, but we hijack ourselves from being utilized by God, which means we are in essence not experiencing everything God has for us to experience, that can only be experienced when we are his hands and feet. We are not experiencing the love of God, when we aren’t loving others, we aren’t experiencing all of God’s best and blessings, the power of a spirit-filled life, when we aren’t being those things to others.
This is hard. I work hard for what little I have. You work hard for what you have. The world tells us to buckle down and defend it. The hard times we are around tell us not only that we will be taken advantage of, but that we deserve what is ours, and others can get there too if they work hard enough. There is always some truth in all of this. However, the life of the follower of Jesus is a stranger in this land, one not defined by how much or how little they have in their bank account, but by the way they bring God’s goodness to others, with whatever they have in their life to steward. The more we give away, the more we get, one of the weirdest paradoxes of this faith journey we are on, and I don’t have secrets on how to do this better. Doing it out of obligation won’t get us into the state James wants us to experience either. It has to come from our heart, from being okay by being defined by a standard that is not of this world. It is a willingness to look foolish among our friends and family who live by worldly standards.
This morning, we reflect on the powerful message from James and the example set by the early church, let us commit to embodying a true evangelical faith that cannot lay dormant. Here are three practical prayers I think we can incorporate this active faith into our daily lives:
Pray that God will break your heart for the people in the places you live, work, worship, and play. In the way God promised Ezekiel that he will put a new heart and spirit in him, removing his heart of stone, may our prayers ask for the same. May we look at the people in our lives with compassion, as Jesus did when he saw the crowds. May something in us spurn to lament with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice. Let us pray that God will give us his heart for those around us.
Pray that God will reveal what inventory you have in your life to steward for the sake of the Kingdom. Perhaps it is not money, but clothes, perhaps it is not clothes but a lawn mower, perhaps it is not a lawn mower but a contagious sense of faith – perhaps you can just sit with someone.
Pray that God will help you notice who is in need around you that you can help. Sometimes it is not the busyness of life that stops us from seeing the needs of others, it is our own need and hurt. This prayer asks God to help us to pump the break and be concerned with the concerns of others as much as we are concerned with our own convers.
Sometimes I think how it works with God is the more we answer that one inkling or whisper, the more we get (prophetic words)
So start a new habit and Find a way to engage in one daily act of kindness each day this week. This can be as simple as offering a listening ear to a coworker who is having a tough day, helping a neighbor with their groceries, or buying a meal for someone in need. Make it a habit to carry out at least one act of kindness each day, no matter how small. These actions can make a big difference and reflect the love of Christ to those around us. If you mess up one day, start again the next. The more we are faithful in a row, the deeper the intimacy with the heart of God, the more our heart desires what God’s heart wants, the more we become people after God’s own heart.
In conclusion, let us remember that our faith is not just an intellectual belief but an active and living response to God's love. As we go forth this week, may we be inspired to engage in daily acts of kindness, build relationships and offer support, and live out the gospel in our decisions and actions. By doing so, we demonstrate a true evangelical faith that brings glory to God in all that we do. But it also takes us deeper with God.
“For true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all forbidden lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves, and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves that which is sound. The persecution, suffering, and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the Lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation.”
Faith that doesn’t look like this is of no use to us or the Kingdom of God, and it keeps us out of God’s best for our lives.
