ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 80 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Doesn't James tell us we are justified by works and not by faith alone? I'm sure some day I will have to lead a Bible study on James. And I'm concerned I will not be able to do so as well as I should, especially considering the strong influence of Catholicism in my area. >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Eric, this is, in fact, one of the major passages that especially Roman Catholics will bring up against the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. And the passage you're referring to is James 2:24 where he says, "You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone." So you can see obviously why that would be a challenge to doctrine of justification by faith alone. But I would like to take a few minutes and just look at this passage from James. In fact, I would like to look at most of Chapter 2. I'm not going to read through every word here. But just to set up the discussion in which this statement occurs. In Chapter 2 Verse 14, we get a sense for James' major concern when he says, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds. Can such a faith save him?" So James is concerned about people who say they have faith but then they don't do works. And that same concern shows up at the end of Chapter 2 as kind of a bookend when he says at the very end of Chapter 2 "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." And so here the discussion concerns the issue: How is it that you demonstrate that you have faith? Can you claim to have faith, that is present your faith to someone else, by just saying you have it? Or do you present your faith to someone else by actually doing good works? And James' point here is very clear. That it doesn't do any good to brag about your faith. The way that you show your works is -- I'm sorry; the way you show your faith is by doing good works. Now, it's instructive that like Paul in Romans 4, James picks the example of Abraham. Not only does he pick the example of Abraham, but he actually cites exactly the same passage that Paul does in James 2:23 -- well, let me back up a bit here. He cites Abraham as the example of his position. And let me start in James 2:20. "You foolish man. Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac an 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 justified by what he does and not by faith alone." Now, what's really interesting here is Paul wants an example from the Old Testament that the righteousness of God, Jews, comes a- -- justification comes apart from the law. He picks Abraham and he picks the passage in Genesis 15. "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." James wants an example of the same -- of an Old Testament example of someone who is justified by works. And he picks Abraham. And he picks the same passage from Genesis 15, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." Now, on the first reading, this may seem to present a problem for our understanding of scripture as the inerrant word of God because it looks like Paul and James are citing the same Old Testament passage and coming to opposite conclusions. That for Paul, Genesis 15:6 means that we're justified by faith apart from the law. And for James, Genesis 15:6 means we're justified by works and not by faith alone. But if you pay a little bit more careful attention to the question of when was Abraham justified according to Paul and according to James, I think it comes clear that Paul and James are using the word justify in different ways. And if you recall in Romans 4, Abraham is justified when he believes God's promise to him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars that are in the sky. That is Paul's definition of justification is this crediting as righteousness that happens in Genesis 15 when Abraham believes. But listen again to what James says. "Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous or justified actually for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?" You see, for James, Abraham is justified not when he believes in Chapter 15 but when he offers Isaac in Chapter 22. So James is operating with a different definition of justify or at least a different facet of justification than Paul is. Because for Paul, justification happens for Abraham in Chapter 15 in Genesis and for James it happens in Chapter 22. Now, what happens in Chapter 22? And I think this is very instructive for what James means by justification. What happens is Abraham is -- binds his son Isaac and puts him on the altar. And he's about ready to go through with the sacrifice. And then the angel of the Lord comes and stops him and says, "Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your only son." You see, what's going on here is that Abraham's actions were a demonstration of the faith that was mentioned in Chapter 15. His actions in Chapter 22 are what elicits this response from the angel of the Lord. "Now I know that you fear God. Now I've seen the evidence." So what you've got going on is that for Paul, justification means the imputation of righteousness. Whereas for James, justification means that your righteousness is shown to other people. And Lutheran theology has never had a problem saying that we are -- that we show our faith by our works. And I think if we recognize the way scripture uses the language and that it has -- that the word dikaioo has this double sense, that James presents no problem for us. Because Lutherans have always said that faith without works is dead. And we've always said that you show your faith by your works. And this is exactly what James is talking about. You can't show your faith just by faith. Because no one can see your faith. You show your faith by your works. And this is what happens in Matthew actually in the story of the sheep and the goats in Chapter 25. Because if you think about that scene of judgement, Jesus separates the sheep from the goats. And he tells the sheep to come and inherit the kingdom that's prepared for them for the foundation of the world. So on the one hand, their kingdom is an inheritance that was theirs already. But then he says, "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat." And he goes through a list of works that they did. So what's going on at the judgement is the good works of the sheep are, in fact, being cited as evidence of the faith that they had. Or to use more the language of Matthew, they are being cited as evidence of the fact that they have, in fact, inherited the kingdom of God, that this was the kingdom that's prepared for them. And so I think that the answer to the question of James 2:24 is that when James says, "You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone," that what he means by justified is that you show your faith by what you do. You can't show your faith by faith alone. Because no one can see that. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***