James on James 2:14-26

Good morning. Once again, my name is James Sutton. I'm the associate pastor here. Jeff Bradford, our senior pastor, is out of town this week. And so that means it's time for James on James.

For those of you that are visiting our church, our senior pastor named this sermon series James on James, and I've really leaned into that. My name is James. Obviously, the book is James, and we've been studying, and it's been great. I've really enjoyed doing the study with you and having the opportunity to successively preach passages of scripture instead of just inserting myself into whatever Jeff has been preaching has been a joy for me. So thanks for letting me do that.

We're looking at the second half of James chapter two this morning. And before we get to the passage, I just want to say this is a passage that is regularly cited often by non-Christians to say that the Bible contradicts itself. And I hope that you can be understanding to them as they say that. And in order to cultivate some empathy, I'd like to highlight some of the other passages that our passage is about to read oftentimes seem to contradict.

Now spoiler alert, there's no contradiction and we're going to work through that. But the Apostle Paul spends a lot of time in Romans and Galatians and Ephesians talking about our salvation by faith alone. Our justification by faith alone. All of which of course is from the grace of God, but Paul really hammers this point that it's our faith, not our works, that save us. So here are some examples:

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justified the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. — Romans 4:5

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. — Romans 5:1

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. — Galatians 2:16

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. — Galatians 3:24

For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not the result of works so that no one can boast. — Ephesians 2:8-9

Do you get the message? We are saved by faith alone, not by works.

Now, let's read our passage for this morning which comes from James chapter two verses 14 through 26. Let's read it together if you would stand.

What good is it my brothers and sisters if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, stay warm and be well fed, but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith if it does not have works is dead by itself. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works. You believe that God is good. Good. Even the demons believe and they shudder. Senseless person, are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? Wasn't Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was active together with his works. And by works, faith was made complete. And the scripture was fulfilled. It 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 justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, wasn't Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. — James 2:14-26

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we do pray that you would illumine our understanding of your word, that you would help us to understand how all of your teaching, all of the word of God connects with one another and teaches the same fundamental truth. Lord, would you help us to see that today? Would you root us and ground us in our love for Christ? Would he become more beautiful as we consider this passage? It's in his name we pray. Amen.

You can be seated.

Okay. So having read the passage and having looked at those passages of Paul, can you have a little empathy for the non-Christian who would say these passages contradict? At first glance, they can appear to.

In fact, one of the founders of our Reformed tradition, Martin Luther, called the epistle of James an epistle of straw because he was so enamored and so in love with the doctrines of justification by faith that when he came across this passage, he felt like it was calling him back into the prison of his own works and his own abilities and his own need to achieve his own salvation. Eventually, he got over that. But you can see how there is this apparent contradiction.

We're gonna look at three things this morning. First, I wanna look at what James is saying, and specifically with the question of whether it's a contradiction of what Paul says. We're gonna look at the two examples that James uses to highlight his point—Abraham and Rahab—which interestingly enough appear in other parts of the New Testament as examples of how we're saved by faith. So that's interesting. We're gonna look at the characteristics of a saving faith, and then we're gonna conclude with some points of application. That's where we're going today.

What James is Saying

Let's look at what James is saying. Recently, ever since I got glasses and my hair turned gray, I've decided I'm just gonna lean into looking old and being old. I'm gonna go for the Gandalf vibes, try to be a cool old person. When I was a kid, my grandfather every morning would sit at his kitchen table and do the New York Times crossword puzzle. I really liked my grandfather. I thought he was pretty cool. So you know what I've started doing? I've started doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. There's an app you can download on your phone and it just pops up. You don't even have to subscribe to the paper. It's great. Anyway, I was working on a puzzle this week, and I got about halfway through when I realized that the creators of that day's puzzle had made every single three-letter word in the puzzle be the word "set." And at the last one, it gave away kind of why they did that. Do you know that the word "set" has 400 different uses in the English language? It's maybe the most diversely used word in our language. That reminded me that lots of times people talk and use the same words but mean different things.

As a dad, one of my favorite ways of enjoying that is the pun, the dad joke. I'm not gonna abuse the Father's Day privileges and subject you to one, but you know what I'm talking about. When you think somebody means something by one word and they actually mean another and it winds up being very funny. That's what James and Paul are doing. They're using some of the same words, but they're using them differently.

Two Different Kinds of Faith

Let's start with the first one. James is talking about faith. Right? And Paul is talking about faith. But faith is one of those words where if I say, "Hey, I have faith," there's lots of ambiguity in that. Faith in what? What does that faith look like? What does it mean? What exactly do you mean by faith? A lot of times people will hide behind this. They have some sort of insecurity about what they believe or whether or not those beliefs are in conflict, so they retreat to the word "faith" because there's lots of people who have faith. Not necessarily in Jesus. Right? But if you just say "faith," maybe we can all fit under the same umbrella.

What James is doing versus what Paul is doing: Paul is talking almost exclusively about one kind of faith. He's talking about a saving faith. James is talking about two kinds of faith. Notice that in verse 14, right at the beginning, he asks the primary question of this passage:

"If someone claims to have faith but does not have works, can such faith save him?" — James 2:14

That's implying there are two different kinds. James is comparing two different kinds of faith and asking: can this one kind that has no works that come with it, that's alone, can that be a saving faith? He's using the word "faith" in multiple ways in this passage, which is how you can reconcile his teachings with Paul's.

Two Different Meanings of Justification

A second word that is used throughout this passage and in Paul's writings that's used in two different senses is the word "justification." For Paul, anytime he uses the word "justification," he's referring to forensic justification—that is, legally being made righteous, legally declared righteous. And that's often how we use the word "justification." If someone is justified, they're made righteous. But we also use the word "justification" in a different way. For example, if one of my sons says to me, "I am the greatest soccer player who ever lived," I might say to them, "Justify that statement." What do I mean?

Do I mean make yourself into the greatest soccer player that ever lived? No. I'm saying prove it. Show me that you are the greatest soccer player that ever lived. And so that is the way that James uses it in this passage. It's almost always used to demonstrate or to prove that faith is actually real or saving. So the words justification are used differently. The words faith are used differently. And how to understand what both of these things mean and how they fit together, I want you to imagine that I'm doing some gardening.

I hate gardening. My wife loves gardening, but I hate it because it's a lot of work and I always just feel like we can get the same stuff at the grocery store a lot easier. It winds up actually being cheaper sometimes. Anyway, that's a tirade. That's not the point.

But I want you to imagine that my wife and I have two different trees. They've been uprooted and we're gonna plant them in our yard. And in my anti-gardening phase, I'm like, listen, we're not planting that tree until it shows me that it can actually produce some fruit. Like if it actually produces a really good peach or an apple, I'm willing to do the work of digging the hole and putting it in the ground and then we can harvest from that tree. That'll be fine.

My wife, on the other hand, who loves gardening, she might take this position. She might say, you know what? This tree is never gonna bear any fruit until we actually plant it in the ground, water it, fertilize it, show it some love. That is the distinction between salvation by works and salvation by faith.

The tree that gets planted—imagine it's a person—it has trusting in my wife to do all of the things to nourish it, to nurture it to health, and to see it flourish. I'm approaching it with like, I just want that tree to die so I don't have to dig a hole. It's gonna have to show me that it's worth something to me before I give it any love.

Paul is very clear, and James is very clear at other points in his book, that our salvation is by faith, by trusting in the gardener. We don't have to earn something. We simply trust in him, allow him to water us, plant us, fertilize us, and he takes care of us.

Now, on the other hand, the tree that doesn't get any water, it's gonna shrivel up. The tree that gets planted by my wife, it's gonna actually do really well. She planted this garden this year and it is amazing. We're having a great garden this year. It might change my opinion. But you see the difference. Like at the end of this process, we might have a conversation. And Katie might say to me, you know, I was right. We planted this tree and it flourished and it started bearing fruit. Your process of just waiting for it to bear fruit without doing any work, that didn't really work, did it? So her process, we could say, is justified. My process is not by the outcome.

So that's what James and Paul are talking about and how they're reconciled. James and Paul are both saying, God takes us as a seed or a tree and plants us, loves us, gives us the gospel, promises all sorts of things, fulfills those promises, gives us everything that we need, gives us Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. All I have is Christ. He gives us that, and that's all we need to flourish.

But James is saying, hey, if you're not flourishing, have you really trusted the gardener? Are you really engaged in this process that Paul is talking about? Or are you engaged in faith in something else like yourself or some other thing?

So that is the distinction between what Paul is looking at and what James is looking at. It's two aspects of the same truth. And in the reformed tradition, we also reflect this by saying not only are we saved by faith alone, but we also say a saving faith is never alone. It's never alone. Because once you have Christ, you flourish. You're transformed. You're changed. You become more and more like him. And so that's essentially what James is saying and how it reconciles itself with what Paul says.

The Examples of Abraham and Rahab

But now let's look at the two examples: Abraham and Rahab. First of all, note the diversity of these examples. You have Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel. You don't get much more Jewish than Abraham, really. And then you have Rahab who is a prostitute in Jericho. You don't get more not Jewish than Jericho, the city that stood in opposition to the people as they came into the land.

So what you have is a Jewish and a Gentile example. You have a male and you have a female example. You have someone who is widely regarded by James' audience as a righteous person and someone who was a prostitute who made money from having sex with other people and who lied in order to save people. There is a great amount of diversity in these examples.

And what the point of that is—it's a very subtle point—is saying that none of this is a respecter of persons. None of this matters in terms of who you are, what your pedigree is. None of it matters if you don't have faith that produces works, then you don't have real faith. That's why he's using these examples.

But let's look at how these are examples of what both Paul and James make as points. So Genesis 15 is where we find Abraham. He's promised children. Do you remember this story? He's promised children. Sarah, his wife, laughs when she hears that promise because they're so old. They take matters into their own hands. Abraham sleeps with Hagar, his handmaiden or Sarah's handmaiden. They have Ishmael. That doesn't work out. That is not what God promised. That was not the way that God intended for them to take it into their own hands. And then eventually they have their own son. They have Isaac. And then God says, "Hey, take him up on a mountain and sacrifice him." Can you imagine? Happy Father's Day. I'm gonna take you boys up to the mountain and one of you is gonna die. Let's go. That would be. And then think about Abraham and Sarah. Their whole existence has been dependent upon the realization of this promise and now God wants them to kill this son? But Abraham in an act of faithfulness and love to God goes up on the mountain fully intending to sacrifice his son. But God stays his hand and says, "Hey, listen. Don't do it because now that you have actually made your way up here, I know that you fear me, that you love me. You have shown your love and your faith and your trust by following through on this act." And then he provides a sacrifice to cover for Isaac and the boy lives.

What's the point of this story? Paul says in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, he says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. His righteousness was credited before he did any actions. His belief—that Genesis 15 is pointing to, the belief that resided in his heart—is what saved him. And he's particularly concerned with showing the priority of that faith and belief over Jewish rites of sacrifice and circumcision as well as good works that follow the moral law. Acts of sacrifice and circumcision didn't save him. It was his faith. If it was the sacrifice, then he would have had to sacrifice his son. You see? That's Paul's point.

James' point here says Abraham's lack of faith was displayed in most of his life, but his faith-directed action of taking Isaac up the mountain proved that that faith was actually there. His actions justified the statement that was said before—that his faith was the source of his justification. And it proved that because the fruit of that justification was bearing itself out in this ridiculous act that was a sign of his obedience and love of God. So Paul is saying, Abraham was saved by faith alone. And James chimes in and says, "Yes, but his faith was not alone."

You see? Rahab, the prostitute, is picked up in James in verses 25 and 26, but the story is told in Joshua chapter 2. Do you remember that story? Rahab the prostitute's in Jericho. Jericho's the one that they marched around and blew the trumpet and the walls fell down. But they sent some spies first, right? And the people of Jericho were after the spies, and Rahab basically sends them another way in order to spare the spies whom she sent away. She said they went that way, but they went that way. So she was saving God's people as an act of her love.

And that again is Paul's point—I'm sorry, it's actually the author of Hebrews, which might be Paul, but probably not.

By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. — Hebrews 11:31

It's a nice way of putting it. James says Rahab is justified by works when she sends the spies along a different route. So again, the author of Hebrews is harping on the fact that it is Rahab's faith that saved her. And James is coming in and saying, "Yes, but her faith was not alone. She acted out of that faith. That faith produced some kind of action."

So what do these examples have in common? What is it that I think both Paul and James want you to see? It's this: when you have faith, when you have the kind of faith that is a salvific faith, you do ridiculous acts of love and devotion for the one who has done a ridiculous act of love and devotion for you. In other words, if you actually were to have on the front of your mind, if you were to think enough to where the actual statement that the Lord God sent his only son to die for you because of his great love for you.

And if that filtered into your heart, if that infected your soul to the point where you're just overwhelmed, that is such an overwhelming display of affection. Think about that. The perfect one, his perfect son, he sent him to die for you. That's how much he loved you. When that infects your heart, you're prone to doing really ridiculous things.

We see this in human relationships, don't we? I'm in love with my wife. I love her a lot. I loved her a lot almost from the moment we met in Lee Quinn's apartment. I was just enamored with her. And you know what I found through some initial interactions, she was kind of into me, which was really surprising. Kind of like the gospel is really surprising. It's really surprising that God was willing to give up his only son for you.

Katie loves me. I don't know why. But you know what? When I realized that or I started to realize that, I really wanted to show her that I loved her. And so one day after school got out, I drove all the way to Albemarle where she was working and I brought her a dozen doughnuts because she had told me, "I hate flowers but I love doughnuts." A woman after my own heart. So I brought these doughnuts down there. She was in some meeting. I didn't wind up getting to see her, but I left the doughnuts with a note and drove back. I got a phone call on the way back. She's like, "You are nuts, and I love it."

That's what these people are an example of, both Rahab and Abraham. It's nuts to think that, "Hey, I'm a special person because God has promised to bless me with a huge number of offspring. I have one. I'm now gonna go kill him." That's nuts. The only reason you would do that is because you love the person that's asked you to do that. Because you realize that he loves you that much and he's that powerful.

What he did was incredibly nuts. What Rahab did was nuts. They have this fortified city. The Israelites are gonna lose by all human standards. And yet she sides with the spies. It's nuts. So that is the point of both of these examples, both from Paul's perspective and from James' perspective.

The Characteristics of Saving Faith

But James, I want you to see what he's saying. We spent a lot of time on what he's not saying and how that fits with what Paul's saying. But let's look at the passage and look at what he is really saying. So what are the characteristics of a saving faith? That's the question that he asked at the beginning. Can such a faith save him? There's he's making the point. There is this kind of faith that doesn't save you, but there's some that does. So what are the aspects and characteristics of saving faith that he's highlighting?

First of all, verses 15 through 17:

If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, Go in peace, stay warm, be well fed, and you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith if it does not have works is dead by itself. — James 2:15-17

He's saying that a saving faith is alive. Did you catch that? Without works, it's dead. Works reveal that it's alive.

If we go back to our tree illustration, right, after a couple of days my tree's gonna be looking dead. Katie's tree's gonna be looking okay. It's gonna be nourished and fed. It's gonna be greener. Mine's gonna be starting to turn brown. She might have flowers on her tree. I got leaves falling off of mine. Right? So he's saying if your faith is really a saving faith, it's alive.

When I was a kid, when I was a little kid, I grew up in a Presbyterian—I'm a Presbyterian of Presbyterians. Have I told you that? I am. Because when I came to faith when I was like five or six years old, I was led in a prayer by a woman named Jane Calvin. I'm not sure that she's directly related. Probably not. Anyway, the point is, like, she led me in a prayer of faith, which I think was a genuine expression of my little six or seven year old mind's understanding of the gospel.

When I got to college, I was doing a membership interview with the church that I joined. The elder that was doing my membership interview, he said, "What is the present value of your faith?" The present value of my faith? He was using investment terms. Like, in other words, has it grown since you were five? See, that's the picture of a saving faith. When you come into contact with Jesus, you just know this much about Jesus. But as you spend your life reveling in the beauty and power of the gospel, suddenly, that faith grows. Your understanding of the beauty of who Christ is grows, and that value grows.

You know why? Because your faith is alive. And Jesus is alive. And the spirit is alive in you and it's producing all this growth. So one thing that James wants you to do, he wants you to understand like, look, if you say you have faith, but there's not this growing appreciation, there's not some sense in which that's growing and that growth is producing something, like fruit on a tree, then it might not be a saving faith.

You might need to spend some more time gazing at Christ and understanding the promises and the faith that is offered to you in the gospel. Don't make the mistake of hearing all the different ways that people talk about faith, the ambiguity that comes with that, and assume that just because you have said some words or prayed a prayer that that faith is living and active inside of you. He said, don't do that.

Saving Faith is More Than Knowledge

Secondly, he says that a saving faith is more than knowledge. Verse 19 is where this comes up.

You believe that God is one good. Even the demons believe and they shudder. — James 2:19

So knowing isn't just believing. Right? I don't know a stronger way to make that point than the way he did it. There are demons in hell that believe intellectually some of the same things that you believe intellectually, Christians. And sometimes people will say, I believe, meaning intellectual belief, that doesn't actually filter down into my heart. What they're saying essentially is that I know truth. I'm not trusting in that truth. I'm not trusting in the deliverer of that truth. I'm not trusting in Christ. I just know who he is and what he's done, and I've said the right things. I've got it here, but I don't have it here. Right? That is a very scary thought and something to wrestle with—to think about the fact that oftentimes the same things that we're saying to one another that we believe, the demons believe. If we don't trust in the things that we say we believe, then we're just not exercising a saving faith, James is saying. So it's a living faith. It's more than knowledge.

Saving Faith is Visible

Verses 18 through 19, he makes the point that it's visible.

But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without works, and I'll show you my faith by my works." — James 2:18

Right? That's a clever way of putting it. Like, I've got faith. You've got works, he says. Notice that that person is separating faith and works as though they're two different things, two different ways you can get to heaven. I've got faith. You've got works. We'll both go. Right? James is saying, no, no, no, no. Faith and works are intricately bound together. Works are the revelation of a real active faith in your life. And the only way that you can actually see faith is through the manifestation of that faith.

As people fall more and more in love with God through Jesus Christ, as they understand more and more what that love looks like, they start doing the crazy things that Abraham and Rahab did. They start looking more and more like these young lovers who want to just out of sheer appreciation for one another show forth their gratitude for the love that the other feels towards them by public displays of affection. Right? So he's saying it's visible. There's no Gnosticism in the Christian faith. There's no way in which we can say, hey, I have faith. You gotta trust me. There's nothing that I'm gonna show you. It's real. It's visible. It's tangible.

Think about it this way. If it's just our faith, if it was just believing that it was all that mattered to God, that he didn't really care whether it was visible or not, wouldn't we believe and then instantly be just whisked up to heaven? Why are we here? Why are we still here? Well, different passages suggest that it's because God is patient, not wanting any to perish. You know what he wants? He wants other people to see the visible manifestation of your faith. He wants other people to go, what is that person so crazy about with this God? He wants those acts to actually matter, to be visible.

Saving Faith Produces Useful Works

And along with that, verse 20, James makes the point:

Senseless person, are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? — James 2:20

Right? He's saying, there's no use if we're just having this faith and then there's nothing to it. It's just useless beyond that. Like, no. He's saying no. The actual works that that faith produces are the things that are useful in the expansion of the kingdom. Not only are they useful to others who see that, it's also useful to you to remind you and to show you that what is actually going on in your heart with the Holy Spirit is actually producing something. Your works are useful for displaying your faith.

And then also he says in verse 22:

You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete. — James 2:22

There's a sense in which our faith is kind of the beginning. It's the seed that's planted. Our works are the completion of that faith's work in our hearts. It's the completion of that transformation. We believe in something called progressive sanctification, meaning that we don't start out looking just like Christ the minute that we believe in him. We believe that slowly over time the Spirit works to transform us and make us more into the image of Christ, and that is the completion of that work of faith's purpose in our life.

When we get to heaven, we will all be glorified, perfected beings that will worship God for eternity. All why? Because of our faith which was visible, useful, will be useful for eternity as it sings praises to the God that saves us.

A couple years ago, maybe a year ago, I read the book The Intentional Father, which is a really great book on fatherhood. One of the things that it challenged us to do was to make family values and communicate those to our sons or daughters. I'm not a big fan of all the corporate language of values and mission and all that stuff. I think those things are great. I think they're necessary, but I don't really love that and I kinda balked at that suggestion. I'm gonna go home and okay, boys and girls, now I, your father, will tell you our family values. Listen up. But I wondered if my kids get it.

So my 15 year old daughter, Josie, we sat down and I said, "Josie, what do you think our family values are? If you had to pick five, what would you pick?" I was so proud of her answer. This is what she said: "Our values are God, family, community, fun, and Armadillo Grill."

Sadly, Armadillo Grill is closed, but we used to go there every week. So that displayed our love for Armadillo Grill. But I'm so pleased that the first three were not things like that. It was God. It was family. It was community. We were living out the exhibition of our love for our savior. Enough to where our 15 year old daughter got it without me ever having to put a business brief in front of her. That is what James is saying. He wants us to live in a way that our values are displayed because of the work of God within us.

Application

As we close, I just want to make a couple points of application. James wants you to take stock of your life and evaluate whether your faith is genuine. That is the point of this passage. Is your faith a saving faith? Don't buy into the pretenders, the pretender faiths that aren't real, that aren't really living, that aren't really gonna change you. Buy into the one faith in Jesus Christ, the only one who can save you, the only one who gave up his life for you. That is what you should be focusing on.

But remember this: it is the gospel, not your effort. That's how you grow. Don't make the mistake of walking away from this sermon going, "I need to do all the good things in order to make my faith a salvific faith." You would totally miss the direction of what James is saying if you did that. You would totally be putting your faith back into yourself instead of in Christ.

So if you go home and you're feeling twangs of, "Hey, I don't know that I see this active living faith in my life," don't think that the solution to that is I automatically need to just go do all the good things. The solution is for you to spend time gazing at your savior who loved you, did everything that is necessary for you to be saved. It's only in the platform of that security and safety and knowledge of the gospel that good works can actually proceed from your life. Don't go home and try harder. Go home and spend time with Christ. See him for the beautiful savior that he is.

Remember also that our sanctification is progressive. If you go home and you take stock of your life and you're like, "Is there activity coming from my heart that reflects the faith that I have?" Guess what? It's gonna take time for faith to take root and grow in your life. It's not always gonna be the faith that immediately after you put your faith in Christ, you become exactly like him. It's a process. It takes time. And so you should expect that. James is not saying you have to be perfect in order for your faith to be salvific. He's saying you should see fruits coming out of it. You should see growth. You should be looking for that.

And then another thing that I would suggest is that you remember the familiarity effect. You know what that is? It's when you look at yourself in the mirror every day, you don't really think you're changing, but then you see someone ten years later and they go, "Wow, your hair is really gray." Right? That's familiarity effect. You are probably the worst person to evaluate whether there's growth in your life because you look at yourself every day and that growth is so measured and small. But if you ask people who know you, who love you, they see it more clearly.

Looking at Christ and trusting in him and finding your rootedness in that as opposed to your own works, let me tell you what that looks like. There are every single one of us in this room struggles with some sort of sin. I can guarantee you that when I started preaching this sermon, most of your minds went to that sin. You're like, "I still struggle with that sin. I wonder if my faith is salvific." James isn't saying you need to eradicate that sin in order to prove that your faith is salvific.

What he's saying is your heart ought to be one that hates that sin, that wants to see it gone, that struggles with it, that fights against it. Even the apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 7. He never got rid of all of the sin in his life. He was never able to always do what he wanted to do. He always did what he didn't want to do.

That's us. — Romans 7

So if you're looking for evidence of faith in your life, if you're fighting sin, if you're combating it, then that's evidence. That's evidence that the progressive sanctification of the Holy Spirit is alive in your heart and that one day you'll defeat it. It'll be gone even if it's not yet. That completion will come.

Another way to think about this is like loving the poor. That's a big theme in the book of James, and it's a big thing that we talk about. Like what does it look like to actually love the poor? Well, if you just kind of go at this and you go home and you say, "I've gotta love the poor in order to prove that my faith is salvific," that's not gonna work. Because you're not really loving the poor. You're just trying to earn your salvation. But if you go home and you spend some time meditating on who the Lord Jesus Christ is, how you were worthless apart from him and yet he loved you, that inspires you when you encounter somebody that the world sees as useless or lowly to act similarly towards them.

So don't go home and try harder. Go home and focus on the gospel.

For Non-Christians

For those of you who are not Christians, if you're here today, awesome. We're so glad you're here. Oftentimes, non-Christians think that Christians are really just about good works, that we're good people or that we at least think we're good people, and that we're sitting around somewhere in a meeting judging you. That's not the case. We are a bunch of broken, fallen, sinful people that have been rescued by a perfect loving God. What we want to talk about when we get together is him. And when we talk to you, we don't want to talk to you about how awful you are or how awful we are. We want to talk about how great he is.

So if you're a non-Christian and you're here today, would you afford us the opportunity of that conversation? Would you find a Christian that you know and trust and say, "What's so amazing about Jesus that you would do something like give up your Sunday morning to worship him? What's so amazing about Jesus that makes you actually have compassion for the poor? What's so amazing about Jesus that actually makes you want to change?" Ask them those questions because those are the questions that as Christians we love to have because all we want to do is display the love of the one who has loved us so perfectly.

The Lord's Table and Prayer

We're gonna have an opportunity in just a moment with the Lord's table to consider more clearly the work of Christ and to celebrate it. So I'm gonna pray for us and then we're gonna go after we sing to the Lord's Supper. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we do thank you for the work of your gospel. We thank you and praise you that you have saved us, not because of anything good that we did. But Lord, we thank you that you saved us by grace, through faith, in order to do good works through us. Lord, it is a great privilege to be invited into the family business of redemption. Lord, would you help us to live and to love both you and our neighbors in such ways that it reflects the deep love that we have for you because of the deep love that you've displayed for us.

Lord, help us to be about that. Help that to be clear to the world, work in and through us. And Lord, bring us home at such a time as you see fit where we will be glorified and perfected, no longer struggling with sin, no longer struggling to show our affection for you, but instead we will unfettered worship you for eternity in a glorified state. Lord, we long for the day. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen.