INTRODUCTION:
“Clothes make the man.” I am
sure this must be the favourite quotation of men’s tailors and haberdashers
around the world. Mark Twain originally coined it many years ago when he
made the astute observation, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no
influence on society.” While he was right, of course,
the
quote obviously refers to the fact that when people see a person who
is well dressed, they assume that person is a professional—intelligent,
capable, and moving up in life. Therefore,
employment counsellors will tell you that you should dress the way you want to
be perceived. If you dress like the president of a Fortune 500 company, people will see your
potential and take you more seriously, getting you closer to one day achieving
your goal. On the other hand, if you show
up dressed in raggedy clothes, with messy hair, and 10 lbs. of piercings,
people will conclude you probably will not take the job seriously and will
never achieve much in life, so they will hire someone who looks more promising.
We all understand the concept of dressing correctly for the job at
hand. There is such a thing as “appropriate dress” for every occasion. If I attend
the opera I should be dressed in a suit, with white shirt and tie. If I am
a steel worker I should show up for work with steel-toed boots, leather gloves,
and a hard-hat, not flip-flops, Bermuda shorts, and a Hawaiian aloha
shirt. If I am a police officer, I should show up at rollcall in my
uniform, wearing my tactical vest, and with my weapons cleaned and ready.
TRANSITION:
The dictionary defines the words faith, love, hope, mercy, and service as nouns—things,
objects. Grammatically speaking that is correct. However,
theologically speaking these things are all verbal in
concept—words of action. Why do I say that? Because the Bible
makes it clear that…
- Faith unapplied is not
faith at all
- Love unshared is not
genuine love
- Hope left unfocused and
free-floating is useless
- Mercy not extended in not
real mercy
- Service left undone is of no
value
These
things all involve work and effort. They are not emotions. They are
not mere concepts or mental constructs. They are words of action and
accomplishment.
In
our text for today James takes up one of the major themes of his letter, “Faith Dressed
in Work Clothes.” He tells us that faith dressed in a pretty outfit just so
that it will look nice and draw attention at church is not real faith, but
rather a counterfeit faith, a cheap knockoff of the real thing.
MAIN BODY:
Verse 11: For He who said, “DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,” also
said, “DO NOT COMMIT MURDER.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do
commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
- James
here is obviously referring to the Ten Commandments given to Moses as part
of the Law revealed to him at Mt. Sinai. He is pointing his readers
to Exodus 20:13-14, to the 6th and 7th Commandments.
- Also,
you will notice that this verse is a continuation of the context that we
looked at in our last study, where James has been talking about the fact
that Christ’s “royal law” forbids showing favouritism or
partiality. To do so is sin and is a transgression of the law (vs.
9). While some may think this is a small matter, James says in verse
10: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one
point, he has become guilty of
all.”
- You
see, it is important to remember that these are God’s Laws, not
man’s. Moses did not make them up; God handed them down. These
are sins that God takes very seriously. Moreover, these laws are meant by
God to be taken as a whole, not
individually. They all hang together, interwoven, like the threads in
a tapestry. If you break one you have broken them all. The
murderer cannot comfort himself by saying, “Well yes, I murdered someone, but at least I didn’t commit adultery.” And the
adulterer cannot defend himself by saying, “OK, so I cheated on my wife, but lighten
up. It’s not like I killed someone!”
- James
says that under God’s system of reckoning, if we break one of God’s rules,
we have broken them all and stand guilty as transgressors, whether we have
broken one or all ten.
Verse 12: So speak and so act [toward the poor] as those who
are to be judged by the law of liberty.
- Here
James gives us his summary exhortation. He points out that the Law of
Moses has no liberty. It has no
wiggle room. If you break one little part, you have broken it
all. You are much better off to submit yourself to the “law of
liberty” that Christ announced. It contains grace and mercy as well
as justice and holiness.
Verse 13: For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown
no mercy, [but] mercy triumphs over judgment.
- This
verse is a warning. James is saying that if you want to go with the
Law per se, then the same law you use to judge others will be used to
judge you. And brother, you will not like where that takes
you! If you go the route of self-righteously judging others then just
know that your judgment will be without mercy, too. You will get what
you dish out. Jesus went into this teaching in detail in Matthew
18:21-35.
- But
I love the second half of this verse: “…[but] mercy triumphs over
judgment.” Now
that is Good News! We can see the truth of this in the way God deals
with us. We deserve His wrath and His strict
judgment. However, He has chosen to deal with us in mercy. For those
who believe in Him for their salvation, His mercy forestalls His
judgment. His mercy trumps the demand for judgment in those who turn
to Him.
Verse 14: What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that [kind of] faith save
him?
- The
two questions that James poses here both call for a strong negative
response. To that second question we shout, “NO! That kind of faith is
worthless!” For you see, faith that is barren, that has no
accompanying evidence, no credentials, no fruit, is not genuine faith, but
merely words. A false faith, that is barren and dead, is of no value to
anyone. James is not talking here about works as a means of
salvation, but rather, works that proceed from faith, the ethical
outworking of true godliness and especially the work of “loving your
neighbour” spoken of up in verse 8. FAITH WORKS you see.
- Many
so-called Bible “scholars” like to claim that Paul’s Letter to the Romans
is a direct contradiction to what James says here. They will try and
convince you that the messages of these two writers were diametrically
opposed—that Paul promoted salvation by faith alone, apart from works, and
that James defended salvation by works added to faith. These sceptics are
what I like to call wrong! Paul and James
were perfectly agreed on the doctrine of salvation—that it is by grace, through
faith, not as a result of good works. Moreover, they both believed the
same thing about the role of good works—that they are the fruit of
salvation;
that genuinely saved people will obey and serve God, and will produce good
works for God’s glory as a result of their new life.
- Even
that hero of church history, Martin Luther, got it wrong. He had no
use for the Book of James because he thought it contradicted
Romans. What he failed to understand is that: (1) James was not
refuting Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith, but rather a perversion of it. And (2)
that Paul and James used the words “works” and “justification” in
different senses and in different contexts.
- But
here in verse 14 James is obviously talking about professions, claims of godliness. James is looking at
what people say about their
faith. In this case he is talking about those who claim to know God, to love
God, to believe in God, to serve God, etc. They are like the approximately
78% of Americans who claim to be “Christians”
yet most of whom never darken the door of any church, ever; who do not
read their Bibles; and who give off little or no evidence of the
indwelling Holy Spirit. [By the way, that number is down from 91% who
in 1948 identified themselves as some kind of “Christian.”]
- To
profess to be a “Christian” means that you have placed you complete faith
and trust in Jesus Christ to be your Saviour and Lord; that you are truly
a Christ-follower, a Christ-obeyer, not merely a Christ-admirer.
Verses 15-16: If a brother or sister is without clothing and in
need of daily food, 16 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?
- “If a brother or sister…” James here is
speaking about the plight of other Christians. Now we certainly have a
Christian obligation to show kindness and mercy towards unbelievers, but
here James is talking about how we should treat those of the household of
faith, fellow Christians.
- He
says that if you see that your brother is lacking is clothes and food and
all you can come up with is a pat on the back and a bunch of empty words
and pious platitudes about “Jehovah-Jireh, God will provide,” then you are not a real Christian and moreover, you
know nothing of genuine Christian charity. “Go in peace! Be warmed and
be filled! God bless you!” Phooey!
- His
question hangs in the air: “What use is that?” The obvious
answer? “NO USE WHATSOEVER!”
Verse 17: Even so faith, if it has no
works, is dead, being by itself.
- James
says that this so-called “faith” is not merely useless or unacceptable. It
is DEAD! It is not real faith. It is not
faith of THE FAITH. This kind of
faith is of no use to anyone. It merely serves to prove that you have
never truly experienced the life giving, transforming new birth that Jesus
offered to Nicodemus in John 3. It merely shows that you need to get
saved!
- “…being by
itself.” Faith
is not a loner. It does not live in solitary confinement. It is
not a theoretical virtue that can be held up and examined in
isolation. First of all, faith always has an
object. There
is no such thing as free-floating faith, as in, “I am a person of
faith.” There is no such thing. Faith must be applied in a direction,
toward an object. Of course, the Bible says that the only worthy
object of man’s faith is Christ Himself. Everything else is unworthy and
will eventually prove to be nothing more than fog and shifting sand. Secondly, genuine biblical
faith always bears fruit. It is never barren. Therefore, as in
the case put forth up in verse 14 where someone claims to have saving
faith, yet has no fruit to show for it, we have every right to conclude
that the person in fact does not have saving faith and is therefore still
an unsaved unbeliever.
CONCLUSION:
Does this sound harsh? Does this sound judgmental? Do not
blame me; take it up with James and Jesus! I am just a simple Bible preacher. I
do not make this stuff up.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, this is a warning
passage. In it James is challenging all of us who claim to be “Christians”
to take a long hard look at our lives and at our profession of faith to see if
there is any genuine evidence to back up who we claim to be. Real faith,
biblical faith, saving faith works, and produces good works—not to try and make
us worthy of salvation, but because
of the salvation that has already occurred.
I can claim to be a mallard duck. However, if I do not have a
big orange beak, shiny colourful feathers, webbed feet, and a girlfriend who
lays eggs then I am probably not a real mallard. Likewise, if I claim to
know Jesus, to be a Jesus-follower, and yet I have none of the personal
character traits of Jesus, I do not do Jesus things, I do not like to hang out
with Jesus people, and I do not produce any Jesus type fruit and good-works,
then I am probably fooling myself.
Let me ask you something: If being a Christian were against the
law and you were hauled into court and brought up on charges of being a
follower of Jesus, would there be enough evidence in your life to convict
you? If not, perhaps you should back up the lorry and take a hard look at
who you really are, and not just who you claim to be.
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