It is common knowledge that if you pull up a plant from the soil so that it's roots cannot grow, that plant will die. It is only the plant that has its roots deep in the soil that will be able to produce full, delectable, and savory fruit. Yet even as all this is common knowledge, there are multitudes of people whose spiritual experience only goes so deep as a prayer they prayed when they were ten or an aisle they walked during VBS long ago while there has never been any visible fruit of a change of direction in their lives. Jesus said that not only would these people exist on the fringes of the church, but they would be convinced of their salvation apart from actually having a saving experience and that they would be eternally condemned for a failure to have ever known Christ. In James 2:14-26, the half-brother of Jesus confronts the issue of the evidence of true saving faith in our lives and tells us that such faith will produce works or it is no faith at all.
"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe- and shudder! Do you want to be shown you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness'- and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead."
There were some in James' day who were professing faith in Jesus, but whose lifestyles denied such a claim. Is it not true today in the Christian church that men and women profess faith in Jesus and can fill pews but have not given any evidence that such a profession is genuine. James' message is just as relevant for us today as it was for him. He simply puts it like this: if your faith has no fruit, then your faith has no root. In fact, true saving faith is not only something spiritual that no human can see, but reveals itself in a visible change of life.
The great father of the protestant reformation, Martin Luther, was so confused by James' emphasis on works and faith, especially in verse 24, that he called the book of James an epistle of straw. Luther was right on a lot of things, and his translation of the Bible is still used much in Germany five hundred years later, but he was dead wrong on this. In fact, James does not disagree with Paul at all when it comes to faith and works. The difference between James' writing and Paul's was their audiences. Paul wrote against those who tried to add things to a simple repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus for salvation, while James wrote against antinomians or those who taught salvation does not mean a change in a person's relationship with God, sin, the world, and the body of Christ. Throughout the book of James, he trumpets the amazing grace of God in the gospel of Christ given to those who don't deserve it or earn it by anything they do. But James' beef is with those who claim a faith that does not give evidence of a changed heart. As John the Baptist told the religious leaders of his day, "bear fruit in keeping with repentance" (Mt. 3:8), so the same holds true for us today.
Are you a Christian? If you say "yes" quickly to that question, stop and ask yourself this important diagnostic question: Do I regularly give evidence to this faith in a hatred for personal sin, a love for God and His Word and His church, a desire to see the lost come to know Jesus? If you said "yes" to the first and "no" to the second, check your spiritual pulse and give your heart to Jesus. Understand what James is not saying…he is not saying that if you're a Christian your life is about doing a bunch of good things because that's what your supposed to do and if you don't keep it up your in for trouble. James himself claims to have sin struggles in his Christian life, but those who do not bear any fruit that Jesus has radically changed their lives cannot genuinely be saved at all. As someone has said, faith and works are simply two sides to the same coin. If you have faith, you have works and you cannot have true works without faith at the root.
In the beginning of Luke 13, Jesus tells a story about a tree that fails to produce fruit and how its owner charges the vinedresser to cut it down. The vinedresser pleaded for patience another few years to see if it bore fruit later on. When God looked at each of us before Christ, He did not cut us down but was merciful and patient with us, granting us time we didn't deserve to come to Christ and bear fruit. Are you producing the fruit of a changed heart? If you can speak Christianese and make everyone think you're walking with Jesus when you're not, what is the point of such a faith? James uses the word 'ophelos' or 'profit' here and keeps asking us what it will profit for us to have a faith that is only superficial. When you think of 'ophelos' think 'awful loss'…it would be an awful loss here and on Judgment Day to have a superficial Christianity without having Christ.
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