Faith and Actions Work Together

James 2:14-26

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 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. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Faith and Actions Work Together

Have you noticed this? Over the last couple years you hear play say this phrase less and less: “thoughts and prayers.” Back in the day, when a tragedy struck, it wouldn’t have been uncommon to hear a newscaster conclude his comments by saying something like, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and people involved.”

Lately, though, it’s not quite as common. In fact, I’ve even heard callers on the radio lay into the radio hosts for saying that. I remember one caller in particular saying, “I don’t want your prayers. I want your help.”

Without judging that person’s understanding of what prayer is, it reminded me of a Peanuts cartoon I saw a couple years ago that has stuck with me ever since. Charlie Brown and Linus see Snoopy shivering in the cold. Their hearts go out to him. They want to help him, so they go up to him and say, “Be of good cheer, Snoopy. Yes, be of good cheer,” and then they walk away, leaving Snoopy not only still cold but absolutely bewildered.

The cartoonist Charles Schulz is practically quoting the Apostle James:

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” and does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?[1]

Have you ever said, “I’ll pray for you,” and then you did, but that’s all you did? Then James would say that your faith is dead.

Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by actions, is dead.[2]

Sure, you may go to church. You may believe in the God of the Bible. You may sincerely desire that someone else’s situation improves. But if you have the ability to help someone else, and you don’t, then your faith is worthless, and you are a fraud – a pretender, a hypocrite, someone who likes to signal virtue but not actually follow through.

James gives us a few examples of what faith is supposed to look like:

Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?[3]

Abraham had prayed to God for a son for years. Then, after decades of waiting, Sarah finally gave birth to Isaac. He was the apple of Abraham’s eye, the desire of Sarah’s heart. He brought a laughter into their life that they had waited a literal century to enjoy. But a few years later, God asked the unthinkable: “Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son, your only son, for me.”

Can you even imagine? How many times have you balked at something far less than that?

“God, I love you, but that’s a step too far. I’m happy to go to church every once in a while, but every week, that’s a bit much, Lord.”

“I know you tell me to give you my firstfruits as an offering and to trust that you’ll take care of me, but this month looks tight and I’m not sure how things will shake out. So, tell you what I’ll do God. I’m going to wait until the end of the month, and if I have anything left over, then I might give some to you.”

“I know you tell me to love my neighbour as myself, but I really don’t like them; they hurt me, I don’t want to be nice to them. How could you even ask me that knowing what they did?”

“I know you tell me to let my light shine and to let others know about you, but I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird. Not today, God. Maybe tomorrow.”

That’s not really faith, is it? It’s just knowledge about God without any trust in God. It’s a willingness to acknowledge that God exists, but a refusal to live in any way that would reflect that. Real faith, on the other hand, inevitably yields good works.

Like Abraham. God asked the unthinkable and Abraham didn’t hesitate. He didn’t overthink. He didn’t back out. He put his faith in God and followed through with his actions. Abraham was more than just a believer; he was a doer too.

And this is how good God is. In the book of Hebrews, we learn what was going through Abraham’s mind:

Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from the dead.[4]

Abraham fully thought that he was going to have to kill his son but he also trusted that God could still keep his promise to raise a great nation through Isaac by raising him from the dead. Abraham’s reasoning was sound – God does have the power to raise the dead – but it was still wrong. That wasn’t God’s plan. And yet, even with faulty logic, Abraham’s faith was properly placed – in a God who does not break his promises and has the power to do anything to take care of us.

Think about what that means for you. You don’t have to have perfect logic. You don’t have to be able to see into the future to trust in God. In fact, if you could, it wouldn’t be trust anymore, right? Trust is doing something even though you can’t know how it will turn out, and yet still putting your confidence in God to see you through.

And God does just like he did for Abraham. Abraham did not have to end his son’s life that day. God interrupted him in the best way possible:

“Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him.” Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.[5]

God provided an alternative sacrifice for Abraham. He challenged Abraham to demonstrate his faith, and, to his everlasting credit, Abraham rose to the challenge… this time. But this wasn’t the only test of Abraham’s faith in his life. There were other times that God pushed Abraham to go beyond just words and prove his faith by what he did, and Abraham failed. Like when, not once but twice, Abraham protected himself by using his wife as a human shield, or like when he lost his patience and didn’t trust that God would give him a son through Sarah, so he slept with her servant Hagar instead.

Abraham wasn’t perfect, but that’s why I think James uses the perfect example here. James doesn’t refer to Abraham’s faith when he left his home and his family behind to go to the Promised Land. He doesn’t reference Abraham’s faith when pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah. He references this episode with Isaac precisely because it calls to mind our Saviour.

Isaac was so special to Abraham in part because he was his only son, but also because God had promised that the Saviour of the world would come through Isaac. And in a way, Isaac became a type of Christ; he foreshadowed the coming of your Saviour. Jesus was God’s one and only Son, just like Isaac was for Abraham. God was willing to sacrifice his one and only Son, just like Abraham was. But unlike Abraham, God followed through with his sacrifice so that he could forgive you for when you fail to follow through with your faith.

Are there times you promised to pray for people but forgot to? Jesus never did. Even on the night before he died, with a thousand other, much more pressing, things on his mind, he prayed for you and for me – for the generations of Christians who would some day, long in the future, come to believe in him.

Are there times you offered to help – “If there’s anything you need, let me know” – and then you never followed up? Jesus never did. He promised that he would help you with your greatest need – forgiveness for your sins and salvation from hell – and he followed through, all the way to the cross and the grave. There were no rams caught in a nearby thicket to be sacrificed in his place. He followed through to the bitter end, and God did raise him from the dead, just as Abraham believed he could, for you, as proof that God meant it when he said he loves you and forgives you. He doesn’t hold your sins against you anymore.

Now, it doesn’t matter how many opportunities you’ve missed or how many times you’ve failed. Now, in the light of God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus, it’s about the opportunities that are ahead and the many different ways that God has equipped each one of you to make the faith you do have complete by what you do with it.

That’s a topic that I would dearly love to talk to each of you about, but it’s hard to do in a sermon, because each of you are so uniquely blessed with different gifts, resources and opportunities from God. We’re going to do a deep dive into specific acts of service that specifically apply to each of you in Bible class in a couple weeks. I hope you can be part of that conversation.

In the meantime, let’s not content ourselves with simply calling ourselves believers. Let’s show our faith by what we do, in service to God and to one another. Let your faith and your actions work together, so that your faith can be made complete by what you do, in Jesus’ name and to his glory forever and ever. Amen.

[1] James 2:15,16

[2] James 2:17

[3] James 2:21

[4] Hebrews 11:19

[5] Genesis 22:11-13

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Cultivate Genuine Gospel Relationships

Philippians 1:3-11

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with
joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Cultivate Genuine Gospel Relationships

There was a TED Talk a couple years ago on the subject of friendship. It was largely based on research done by a renowned “evolutionary psychologist” by the name of Robin Dunbar who theorized that on average a normal person has the capacity to maintain 150 relationships, ranging from casual friends to close confidants.  

At first 150 seemed like a lot to me, but when you realize that they are not all people you tell your deepest darkest secrets to – that some are like that barista whose name I still don’t know but greet like a friend anyway – then it began to feel a bit more manageable. Humans are relational creatures. We can form bonds with other people quickly and over the smallest things.

But while we may have the capacity to maintain 150+ casual relationships, how many relationships do you have that you could talk about the way Paul did about his relationship with the people of Philippi?

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.[1]

Is there even a single person in your life that you feel that way about? If you’re married, chances are that you love your spouse more than anyone else in the world; but the chances are also pretty good that there are times when you’d rather not see their face. If you have kids, chances are that they opened up corners of your heart and expanded your capacity to love beyond what you thought possible; but the chances are also good that they have introduced you to levels of frustration and anger and insomnia-induced delirium that you never knew before. Friends are great, but they can disappoint. Grandparents spoil you, but they can also be grumpy. Is there a single person in your life that without fail – in every memory – you always, only, ever feel joyful about?

These are strong words from Paul about people that he spent only a few months with. And it’s not as if his time with them was always sunshine and rainbows. Paul’s time in Philippi was not a honeymoon period. He ended up in prison for doing a good deed. The citizens turned against him. The city leaders ordered Paul and Silas both to be stripped and severely beaten. Philippi may have been Paul’s first foray into Europe with the gospel, but it was far from a honeymoon-type experience.

And yet, he can still speak so positively about the Philippian Christians – not because he had selective amnesia and chose to forget about the pain, not because the Christians were perfectly pure in an otherwise despicable metropolis. Paul was able to speak so positively about those Christians because of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,[2] and because no matter what their past experience or present circumstances were, they were all sharers together with Paul in God’s grace.[3]

Let’s think about that second part first. Paul wasn’t able to be so positive because they were all so perfect. He was able to be so positive because they all shared the same grace from God. The jailer participated in Paul’s brutal beating, but when Paul preached the gospel to him – the good news about God’s salvation through Jesus – that jailer was cut to the heart. He regretted his actions; he repented of his sins; he asked for forgiveness and found it, not only from Paul but from Jesus.

And before we start to think about how magnanimous Paul is for forgiving this man who brutalized him, let’s remember what Paul’s background was. He described himself as the worst of sinners. He was a murderer and a persecutor of Christians. He had done far worse to others than what that jailer had done to him. But God forgave Paul too.

That’s why God sent his Son into this world – to shower sinners like us with an affection that we never deserved. You think it’s impressive for Paul to talk so glowingly about the Philippians – how about how God looks at you? There’s no way that God should look at you and always be joyful about everything you think, say and do. You may not have persecuted Christians like Paul did or imprisoned innocent people like the jailer did to Paul, but have you mistreated others – even or especially your fellow believers? Have you spoken a harsh word? Have you held a grudge? Have you broken someone’s trust or hurt someone who’s just trying to help you? Have you ignored someone who needed you or allowed a difference of opinion or even just a difference in personality to divide you?

There’s no way that God should look at you and be happy, but he does, because when he looks at you he sees Jesus. He sees the Son he sent in love to show you love. He sees the Jesus who embodied love, even to enemies, who prayed for their forgiveness while they nailed him to the cross. When God looks at you, he sees the Son who sacrificed his life as the payment and penalty for you sin so that you and I – and every other believer who calls on his name – could be sharers together of his grace.

And that creates a special bond. We are all – you and I – sharers together of God’s grace in Jesus. We are all forgiven. All our sins were paid for. God doesn’t hold a single one against a single one of us. So, even if though someone in this room may have done you harm – or you to them – we can still sit side by side as brothers and sisters in a family defined by God’s grace and forgiveness – first, receiving that forgiveness from him to us, but then also, by his grace, freely giving that forgiving love to each other too.

That’s how Paul can always pray with joy when he even thinks about those imperfect Christians in Philippi – not because he has selective amnesia, but because he sees them as sharers of God’s grace in Jesus. They deserved God’s love as little as he did, but, just like him, they received it as God’s gift anyway.

That’s what defines our relationships too. And that’s what makes this a special group of people. Have you ever thought about this – that you would probably would have never met at least half the people in this room, if it hadn’t been for the simple fact that you share God’s grace in Jesus? I know I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have a job. I wouldn’t live across the street. I wouldn’t be in this city or country. But God’s grace transcends so many boundaries and barriers and binds us together into a family of believers.

The Christian Church – and especially our congregation – is not just a group of people who share a common interest. We’re not Swifties. We don’t just root for the same team. We don’t have the same hobbies or senses of humour, but what we do have is what we heard before – a “partnership in the gospel.”[4]

The Apostle Paul wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all of the church in Philippi. When he left, the people there took ownership of the gospel. They continued to meet together, even without their founding – or a formally trained – pastor. They continued to study God’s Word and encourage each other. They continued to share Jesus with the other people in their city. They weren’t passive observers or silent spectators, and neither are you. You are partners in the gospel too.

As sharers of God’s grace, you are uniquely qualified to share God’s grace with others – to tell them what his forgiveness means for you. As sharers of God’s grace, your unique experiences equip you to encourage others who are going through the same or similar things that you did. As sharers of God’s grace, your background and insight allow you to learn and grow together as you share your story and hear others’ during your study of God’s Word.

But none of that would be possible if we didn’t have a relationship with each other. Can you be a Christian and not go to church or be a member of a congregation? Technically, yes, but the ceiling for your personal growth and the service you can offer your God is much lower than if you were a member of God’s family with other believers.

If you don’t come to worship, you can hear my sermon online, but you can’t raise your voice in praise or profess your faith with people of diverse backgrounds who nevertheless share your faith. If you don’t come to Bible class – either on Sunday mornings or during the week – you can’t hear Amber’s amazing contributions or share your own experience and see how it benefits someone else. If you don’t partner with your pastor and your fellow members in reaching out with the gospel, then our collective pool of resources and people to reach out to gets exponentially smaller.

But together, we can give glory and praise to God in a chorus of various voices. Together we can grow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. Together we can defend and confirm the gospel and bring it to the people in our lives by pooling our resources and partnering together.

This is what Jesus prayed about on the night before he died. This is what we find demonstrated among those early Christians – a devotion to God and to each other, a desire to cultivate genuine relationships together as sharers of God’s grace and partners in his gospel.

It is right for us to feel this way – to thank God for each other; to pray for each other with joy; to long for each other with the affection of Christ Jesus; to grow in knowledge and love; and to share the confidence of the Apostle Paul, i.e. that this unique bond and special relationship that we enjoy – the fact that you can walk into a room full of strangers and feel at home – that special relationship doesn’t come from us – from any shared interest or experience – but from Jesus and the sacrifice that he made in love to make us brothers and sisters in his blood.

I may be able to maintain about 150 casual relationships, but these are the ones I want to cultivate because you are my family in Christ. Amen.  

[1] Philippians 1:3,4

[2] Philippians 1:5

[3] Philippians 1:7

[4] Philippians 1:5

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