Faith and Good Works: A Meditation on James 2, for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost

 

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and

have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or

sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one

of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and

filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which

are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even

so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works:

shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee

my faith by my works.

The Epistle of James has troubled many a soul since it’s writing, and that was likely its intent.  St. James writes about various aspects of Christian life, cautioning his readers against an unholy life which can only bring forth death, and having a ridiculous hypocrisy of favoritism toward the rich when earthly riches are all passing away.  When he writes at length about the nature of Faith and Good Works, he concludes his section at the end of chapter two with these haunting and frightening words:

For as the body without the spirit is dead,

so faith without works is dead also.

Many errors in the Church have come about by failing to read St. James properly.  First, it should be noted, that St. James is right.  He was an Apostle, and as such had the seal of the Holy Spirit so as to teach the Word of God rightly.  The Church recognized St. James’ writings for what they were, and included them in the canon of Holy Scripture, thereby putting his inspired writings out for all the faithful to read and believe.  Even if his writings may be hard for us to understand or accept, we ought not try to pull them out of the canon of Scripture, or cast doubts upon the author.  Rather, like all of Scripture, we should learn from it and submit ourselves to it, because it proceeds out from the very Word of God Himself:  Jesus Christ.

Secondly, we must be careful not to pit St. James against St. Paul.  The same Holy Spirit which inspired St. Paul to bear witness to Christ, is the One who inspired St. James to do likewise.  St. Paul and St. James were not at odds with one another, but taught the same body of doctrine given by God through the Old Testament and our Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry.  St. James and St. Paul should be read together as brothers in the same faith, hope, and love which united the whole Apostolic band.

So, without throwing either St. James or St. Paul out the proverbial window, or dreaming up a rivalry between the two, how do we understand this relationship between faith and works?  Precisely by listening to them both in their own words.  St. Paul will teach in Ephesians 2:  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not of works, lest anyone should boast. ¹⁰ For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” and St. James will teach that, “faith without works is dead.”  The reconciliation comes in understanding what living, saving faith actually is.

Faith, first and foremost, is a gift from God.  It is not the product of degrees and education, or any other work of mankind (as evidenced by so many wealthy and educated unbelievers in the world, and so many heretics with a wall full of degrees.)  It is not a creation of man, but a gift of God, which clings to God above all things.  It hears God, loves God, obeys God, and lives in God by His grace.  This living, saving faith is a divine gift which comes by divine means, for as St. Paul will also write in Romans 10, “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”  It is God who creates the kind of faith St. Paul is talking about, which brings forth repentance from sins and works the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the lives of all who are born from above by Water and the Spirit.  When St. Paul speaks of saving faith, he speaks of a living thing that gives life to the believer, which cannot do anything but bring forth good works in accordance with the same Word which brought forth this faith.  It is a faith born of grace, which abides in grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God.  It is a faith which alone receives grace and salvation in Jesus Christ, but a faith which by its own definition is never alone (never without the good works of faith.)

On the other hand, the faith St. James is writing about is not saving faith.  It is something more like theoretical knowledge, or studied opinions.  Such a faith which abides only in the mind and does nothing to transform the whole life of the Christian, is no faith at all—it is a dead, hypocritical, and vain thing.  St. James rightly observes that “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.”  The devil and all his accursed fallen angels also fully know who God is, and understand that He exists.  But the devil and the demons cannot love and trust God, because they do not believe that He loves them.  They live under the curse of the Law, knowing God only as Judge.  Such intellectual knowledge will not save them, and it will not save us.  If you share the same vain intellectual faith of the devil, you’ll end up in the same hell with him.

There is no way you can seek out a faith which will save you.  You can’t work yourself into a saving faith, nor can you earn it with a lifetime of merits.  Such faith only comes from God, and it only comes through His Word.  This Word is more than the Word of the Law, which shows us how much more like the devil we are in thought, word and deed—things we’ve done, and things we’ve left undone.  This Word which creates a saving faith in you is the Word of His Holy Gospel:  that Jesus Christ has come to save you, precisely because you could not save yourself.  His great and boundless love for you is manifested in this, that while we were yet sinners, He died for us that our sins might be forgiven.  This Holy Gospel is what comes to us from above, and creates in us a saving faith which loves God for His mercy.  Having imbibed of the wondrous waters of life He gives to us through His merciful grace, out flows from us works of love, mercy, compassion, and grace to all we come in contact with.  The Word of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for you, is the Word which the Spirit uses to create living, saving faith in you.

That same Word will continue to call you to repentance of your sins, that you might turn away from the works of darkness.  It will call you to works of mercy for your neighbor, beginning in your own household.  It will show you the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.  But more than this, His Word will give you a faith which can walk in these sacred paths, can turn from evil, and reflect the love of God to a lost and dying world.  You cannot earn this grace—it is given to you freely for Christ’s sake, and born to you by His free and Eternal Word.  Hear His Word call you to faith and repentance today, that you may live forever in Him, bringing forth His good works both now and for eternity.  Amen.

Don't follow your heart: A meditation on Mark 7

The number of pop-psychologists, TV personalities, and personal “life coaches” who advise people to follow their heart are astounding.  From popular culture movies to books, this oft repeated phrase shines through, with the implied conclusion that whatever your heart desires will make you happy.  And, at least on a superficial level, this can be true.

Do you want money?  Being without it might make you think you’d be happier with it (as the contemporary country song croons that money might not buy happiness, “but it can buy me a boat.”)   Do you want power and prestige?  How about sex?  Do you want a faster or cooler car?  Do you want your own private island off the coast of Baja Mexico?  Do you want a castle in northern Scotland?  Do you want to be a woman or a man, fly like a bird or run like a lion?  Perhaps you want softer things, like love and warmth and safety.  Maybe you want books stacked from floor to ceiling, or a world without war and famine.  Maybe you want a Church that is pristine and a government that is honest.  Whatever it is that you want, shouldn’t chasing it down and capturing it for yourself be the path to happiness?

Unfortunately, as repeatedly demonstrated in both history and Scripture, the pursuit of one’s heart’s desires does not often end well.  The problem isn’t with wealth, or power, or sex, or islands, or castles.  Plenty of people have been happy with or without all these things… and plenty of people have been miserable with or without them, too.  The problem isn’t with the things as they are encountered in their proper created order, but with our own heart.

God teaches us that our hearts are deceptive beyond all things, and Jesus brings this point home in our Gospel lesson for this week.  After our fall into sin, we are tempted to think that it is things that enter into us or surround us that either make us holy or unholy, clean or unclean, happy or unhappy.  The food we eat, the ceremonies we observe, the habits of our cultural time and place—all these things cloud our vision about what makes a person good or evil.  Instead, Jesus directs us to look deeper into ourselves, and examine the seat of our own intellect and emotions.  There at the base of our existence, at the very root of our being, we find the corruption that actually defiles us.  Theologians have called this concupiscence, which is our inclination and desire toward evil.  We weren’t originally made with corrupt desires, but after the fall, no human being has been able to escape the twisted contortions of their own heart.  Like a fouled fountain that pollutes all the streams it flows into, our fallen and sinful heart leads us to seek good things in evil ways.  We seek power and money and sex and everything else under the sun, not according to the good order and use for which God made it, but for selfish ambition and prideful gratification.  Our heart’s desire toward endless satisfaction will build hatred of those who have what we covet; slander and murder of those who stand in our way; theft, sorceries, adulteries, treacheries, fornications, and every other evil under the sun.  Our heart is corrupted by sin, deceives us into thinking we and our intentions are pure, then drives us into the most heinous acts of evil.  Our heart tells us lies we want to believe, and borrows the devil’s lexicon to lead us into hell.  Indeed, out of our heart comes all the things which defile us, revealing that we are twisted and corrupted at our very core.

While we may have a hard time accepting the painful Word of Law which reveals us for what we truly are, our Creator has known us from the beginning—the beginning of creation, the beginning of the fall, and the beginning of our own individual lives.  He knows the lies the devil planted in our hearts, and He knows how powerless we are to rip them out.  He knows that without His mercy and grace, there is no hope for any person whose heart will inexorably lead them into eternal death and despair.  And so, into a world of sinners who’s hearts reverberate like hammered strings in the devil’s harpsichord, the Son of God descended to make satisfaction for our sinful hearts and all the evil they produce.  Jesus Christ, there at our beginnings, is also there at the Cross, that He might take our hellish ending upon Himself.  Our Creator has become our Redeemer, the sacrifice for our sins and our own sinful nature, that we might also be forgiven and free from the hell our diseased  hearts yearn for.

But more than this, He does something to the human heart no one other than the Creator and Redeemer could do:  He gives us His life and His nature, even as He drowns that old nature in the waters of our Baptism.  He puts His Holy Spirit into our spirit, His heart into our heart, His life into our life.  Now, born from above by His Water and Spirit, He raises us up unto a new life in Himself—a life that can never die, and is never motivated by wickedness or pride.  This new life is one of purity, sanctity, holiness, love, and compassion.  This new life we have given to us by grace through faith in Christ alone is a sanctified and holy life, making us His holy saints.

Our God who is our Creator and Redeemer, has also become for us our Sanctifier.  Through His Holy and Eternal Word, our God comes to us and restores us to fellowship with Him.  He puts His divine name upon us:  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God now and forever.  He puts His life into us by His Word, and leaves His Spirit both with and within us to guide us by His Word.

Put away the self inflated voices of popular culture that tell you to listen to that deceptive heart of yours.  Hear instead the Word of the Lord which calls to you, raises you up, and gives you a life fulfilled for eternity in your Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.  Turn away from the words of death the devil wrote in your fallen flesh, which fallen people write into every human medium of their own creation. Hear instead the Word of Life, which always gives what it promises.  Amen.

Traditions and Doctrines: A Meditation on Mark 7

In the opening verses of Mark’s seventh chapter, and engagement begins between Christ and the Pharisees.  Attempting to accuse Jesus and His disciples, the Pharisees (acting in their vocational office as teachers of the Law) challenge them as to why they eat without washing their hands.  Such ceremonial washing was a common tradition among the Jewish people, and the Pharisees accused Jesus and His disciples of erring against the traditions and the elders.

Of course we should remember, that ancient peoples like the Jews and Romans had no concept of what modern medicine would eventually identify as bacteria, viruses, and pathogens.  The Jews were not washing because they thought it would bring health benefits, but because it was a way of separating themselves from the pagan or worldly activities going on around them.  When Jesus addresses the befouled hearts of the Pharisees, He is not telling folks to stop washing their hands, nor is He ignorant of the creation which He spoke into existence as the incarnate Word of God.  What Jesus will respond to is a problem of the Pharisees which is also common in our day:  confusing man made traditions with God’s inspired Word.

Jesus pointed out how rightly Isaiah had prophesied of this generation, in their outwardly looking very pious, but inwardly being far from God.  To make His point even more brutally, He exposed one of their traditions which specifically violated the Word of God regarding the care of mother and father—a tradition where a person could claim that all their worldly goods would be given, upon their death, to the religious authorities, and thereby was no longer to be used to care for an ailing father or mother.  Not only had the Pharisees misused their tradition of hand washing to accuse Him and His disciples of doing something evil (i.e., that their tradition was equal to a divine requirement,) but they had built traditions which expressly contradicted divine commands.  Lest the Pharisees and the crowd be left in the darkness of thinking their humanly contrived traditions were equal to or greater than the Law of God, Jesus took this opportunity to teach them how vain and empty it was to attempt to worship or serve God through the constructs of men.

This is something we need to keep straight, too.  Human traditions are not bad in and of themselves—they are simply human, and as such, are subject to human flaws and sin.  You may have a family tradition regarding who carves the turkey when you celebrate Thanksgiving, and this tradition may be good and useful.  We may have community traditions about how to conduct a festival or parade in our home towns.  We may have national traditions around when to stand and how to hold one’s hands during the playing of the national anthem.  Good though they be, they are merely human constructs, and as such are not equivalent to the Word of God.  Because a human tradition is born of sinful and short sighted men, such traditions will always be earthly, temporal, and prone to change when situations require it.  No matter how grand or beautiful they may appear, man’s word of tradition cannot rise above the common condition of men.

But the Word of God is another thing entirely.  Unlike human traditions, the Word of God begins and ends with God, who is the same forever.  When God speaks, He reveals something about Himself which is immutable and eternal, untainted by sin or avarice, or the shortsightedness of temporal beings.  Therefore when God says to Moses and the people of Israel in the Ten Commandments, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” these words endure forever as a reflection of God’s own holiness and character.  We are not free to create traditions like the Pharisees did which contradict or obfuscate the Word of God.  We are responsible and accountable to God through His Word, not the other way around.

Of course, mankind is always prone to do exactly this.  If I can use a human tradition to avoid God’s Word, my own sinful flesh is greatly tempted to embrace the word of men over the Word of God.  I am also tempted to create my own traditions, and toss out those of our wise forefathers, because my love of self often exceeds my love of neighbor.  As a sinful human being I am prone not only to avoiding the Word of God through evil traditions which obscure it, but I am also tempted to destroy good traditions which highlight and accentuate God’s Word.  Both errors are equally wicked, and reveal the rebellious heart which beats within in my own chest—a heart poisoned with sin, deserving nothing but the death and hell prepared for all those who despise the only true and holy God.

Thanks be to God, that our Savior has not left us to die in our wicked rebellion against His Word.  As Christ taught the Pharisees, so He teaches us today, that man cannot be saved by the word of man, but only by the Word of God.  All men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and so no man is able to save himself, let alone his neighbor.  From the traditions of Rome to the traditions of England, France, Spain, Ireland, China, Japan, or any other nation on earth, none are able to save, because all are born of sinful men.  But the Word of God which speaks the holiness of the Law to us, also becomes flesh and walks among us, so that He might become through His Cross a Word of saving Gospel to all mankind.  That Word of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; of grace and peace; of repentance and the forgiveness of sins; of reconciliation between a holy God and unholy men:  this is the Word of God which seeks and saves sinners such as us.  This is the Word which begins and ends in God Himself, and which no human tradition can rise unto, nor outshine in its majesty.  This Word of God’s Gospel, this Word of Salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, is the Word to which we cling regardless of the shifting and corrupted traditions of men.  This Word of Christ is eternal life, for all who will repent and believe.

As we move through the season of Pentecost, it is good, right, and salutary that we examine ourselves and our traditions in the light of God’s eternal Law and Gospel.  Where our hearts rebel against good traditions which point to Christ and Him crucified for the sins of the world, we must repent of our desire to hide God’s Word by destroying such good and wholesome traditions.  Where our hearts rebel against God’s Word by holding sinful traditions equal to or greater than our Lord’s Word, we must repent and tear them down, so that God’s Word shines most clearly not only into our sinful hearts, but into the darkened hearts of the whole world.  For we know that no word of man—no tradition born of sinful men—can save either ourselves or the fallen world through which we sojourn.  But the Word of God, sent by the Father in the power of His Spirit, is the Word of Jesus Christ which saves all who will receive it by faith.  To this Word alone may the whole world hearken, that repentance and the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake be proclaimed to every darkened soul in every corner of creation, and the eternal Light of Christ’s grace fill all the world.  Amen.

Wisdom Calls: A Meditation on Proverbs 9

As I think back across the decades of my adult life, I have difficulty remembering how often any regular conversation has touched upon the subject of wisdom.  Outside churchly circles, the subjects of knowledge, study, facts and data often emerge in the course of discussing any number of things, but wisdom is almost never discussed.  While knowledge can be tied to understanding or knowing specific things (mathematics, engineering, elements of a data set, the temperature at sunrise, the biological systems in a pond, etc.,) wisdom infers the principles which assign value to those things which are known.  For example, it is one thing to discuss how to perform genetic modifications to corn plants, though the methods may be complex—but it is an entirely different thing to discuss why we should or should not genetically modify corn in any given time or place.  Knowledge speaks to the data and the processes, while wisdom speaks to the moral value or character of what we do with those data or processes.  Just as a person may have knowledge how to kill his neighbor, wisdom informs him of the moral consequences of doing so.

Given that distinction, it’s no wonder that wisdom is little discussed in our time and place.  We live in a culture that has embraced moral ambiguity for the express intent of living with very few boundaries.  Hence our schools teach “Sex Education” to elementary through college students, in greater or lesser detail explaining the “what” and “how” of sexual expresion, with very little to say about the moral value of the act.  Our businesses teach “Ethics” courses that describe various actions or processes as either acceptable or unacceptable, but are largely incapable of discussing why one action is ethically superior to another.  The evening news can describe how Planned Parenthood manipulates abortions so as to harvest the most marketable body parts of infants for bio-medical research, but cannot speak to the moral value of such grisly business.  Journalists and activists can describe the event of a police officer firing on a criminal, but cannot seem to find rational basis for moral judgment of the participants.  From business to politics to education, and countless areas in between, wisdom has been displaced by an emaciated form of knowledge, resulting in (or from) a public aversion to declarations of moral value.

Into this morass of knowledge without value, we have poured all our excuses for the sins we wish to remain unchallenged.  If we wish to live hedonistically, pridefully, selfishly, lavishly, greedily, violently, perversely, or simply to follow our own heart’s desires, we find plenty of room and license in a world without wisdom.  I can study the science of money and wealth, without pondering the moral imperatives of caring for the poor; I can study a dizzying array of sexual expression, without contemplating the moral imperatives of natural law in the created order; I can study Machiavellian processes of politics and power, without being troubled by the moral imperative to care for my fellow man; I can study physics, chemistry, and medicine without regard for the moral imperatives to help the world rather than harm it; I can study ways to make myself better, without any consideration of the moral imperative to love my neighbor as myself; I can study to aggregate more titles, honors, and peacockery to myself, while forgetting any moral imperative to humility and service before self.  These, and a countless myriad of variations, show why we naturally flee from wisdom.  We enjoy the vacuum created by its absence, so that we might fill it with our own sinful lusts.

To us, the willfully ignorant and the self absorbed, Wisdom continues to call:

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out

her seven pillars: She hath killed her beasts; she hath

mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table.

She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest

places of the city:  Whoso is simple, let him turn in

hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to

him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine

which I have mingled.  Forsake the foolish, and live;

and go in the way of understanding.

He that reproveth

a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a

wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a

scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will

love thee.  Give instruction to a wise man, and he

will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in

learning.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of

wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years

of thy life shall be increased.  If thou be wise, thou

shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone

shalt bear it.

He who is all Wisdom and Knowledge, calls to the darkest and hardest human heart.  He urges us to turn from the ways of death and destruction, and lodge where He has prepared a place for us in His boundless mercy.  Through His Only Begotten Son, His very Word and Wisdom made flesh, He has paid the penalty for our ways of death through His death upon the Cross, and thereby restored the path of unity between God and man.  Through this Vicarious Atonement, Jesus has built His House which is His Holy Church, in which He daily and freely gives forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who will repent and believe this good news.

But like a divine law of nature written into the fabric of all existence, Wisdom still speaks of the two great paths open to all mankind, and the inexorable ends of each.  He sends His Word into all the world, calling all people to faith and repentance, and shining forth the brilliant light of Wisdom’s Law and Gospel into the comfortable darkness of our hearts.  To each and every soul He calls, urging all to receive His free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, and to turn away from the path of death.  Though He desires all men to be saved, He bears witness that rejecting Him and returning to the ways of death, can only result in death and hell forever.

And so, He calls to you today.  Wisdom has built her house of salvation by the shed blood of the Son of God, with Jesus Himself as the Chief Corner Stone.  Hear Wisdom’s Word of love and grace to you, o dearly beloved sinner, that you may turn from death to life.  Come, enter Wisdom’s house by faith, where meaning and truth and value are restored to your life, that you may abide by His grace in house of the Lord forever.  Amen.