“You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works” – James 2:22
The faith vs works tension has been debated by the Universal Church since its birth.
Some people think, even Bible translations like the NLT translate, works as “good works”, that is acts of kindness, charity, justice and mercy.
But the 2 examples James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, raised in the passage suggest it is not “good works”. Instead, the “works” refer to any choices and actions of a person.
James was dealing with some self-centred Jewish Christians at that time. And yes they were guilty of social injustice: they favoured the rich and ignored the needs of the poor.
But in James 2, he broadened “works” as any choice and action which expresses faith. So he conceived “faith” in that passage as mere cognitive assent, mere information.
In other words, James saw a spectrum of meaning of “faith” and “works”.
The spectrum of faith is information to transformation.
The spectrum of works is decision to action.
James mentioned Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac and Rahab’s risky act of helping the Israelite spies.
In James 2:2, we see this spectrum of conceptions and we see its application in Abraham’s story.
Abraham’s faith was initially information about God. He was given a promise of a son, but didn’t believe God enough about how it would be done. So he slept with Hagar.
Abraham’s faith later led to his transformation. He realised how small his view of God was when in his extreme old age, God gave Isaac.
Abraham’s faith was then tested. He had to make the decision to take Isaac up the mountain to be sacrificed. I’m sure he took a while before the decision translated to action.
Even as he had made the decision, and even as he was carrying out the action, he probably struggled with the faith-information and faith-transformation.
But by then it was already decision and action being worked out. Still, it was enough faith-information and faith-transformation to accompany his decision and action.
And when he arrived at the mountain and proceeded with the sacrifice, the faith-information and faith-transformation was “completed” by the work-decision and work-action.
In truth, if you read James carefully, he was drawing a strawman conception of faith to deal with his stiff necked listeners. He actually was saying “faith” is the full spectrum of INFORMATION to TRANSFORMATION to DECISION to ACTION.
Faith that leads to no transformation to no decision to no action is dead. Such faith does not save a person.
Then we come back to the context of social injustice among James’ listeners. Faith without an expression of love for brothers and sisters in need, the poor, the afflicted, the imprisoned, the ill, the oppressed, etc. That is faith that does not save. That is not true faith.
In our context, it is all of those things and more. Faith that does not transform and lead us to make choices and live lives which reflect the humble destitute salvaged estate of our once wretched souls is not saving faith.
Is our faith a saving faith of transformation and action?