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R.C. Sproul: Justification By Faith Alone, But Not By Faith That Is Alone

“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” -James 2:17

Why there has been a long drawn-out debate on this topic, I know not. If we are saved by faith alone, do we do the works or not?

Are we doing the works to get saved (Justified), or do we do the works because we are saved (Justified)? Is Paul saying one thing and James another? Are they contradicting one another? Was Paul first, or was James first?

With the aid of R. C. Sproul, let’s go through the simple explanations that are given throughout the Scriptures, only to come to an end resolve, so that a child may understand.

“For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. -Romans 4: 3-5

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

“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.

Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?

And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” -James 2:14-26

Let us begin.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic community did not roll over and play dead at the feet of Luther and the Reformers, they had a response to the assertion that justification is by faith alone, without any reference to work, and they found their source for that in the Scripture itself, principally in the letter from the apostle James.

I’ll just take a second to read a portion of chapter 2 of James, which was cited on more than one occasion later on at the constable in the sixth session of Trent.

In the Roman Catholic’s response to the Protestants, we read in verse 21 of chapter 2 these words, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar, do you see then that faith was working together with his works and by works faith was made perfect and the scripture was fulfilled that said Abraham believed God and it was a counted to him for righteousness, as he was called the friend of God.”

“You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only.”

Then, verse 25, “Was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the strangers and sent them another way.”

So, here we have the explicit statement in sacred Scripture that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

You would think that single verse would be the crushing blow to the article that Luther said was the article upon which the church stands or falls. So, how do we reconcile what Paul teaches in Romans with what James teaches here?

Some people think that it’s an impossible task, that they’re simply irreconcilable. There’s a debate historically as to which epistle appeared in print first, James or Romans, and that question focused on an attempt to understand how this difference could arise in the pristine church (Unspoiled-its original condition).

Some argue that Romans appeared before James, and James wrote his epistle to repudiate and refute what Paul had taught. Others believe that James appeared before Paul and Paul was trying to refute James.

So, there’s a divided house on that question historically about whom was trying to refute whom, but classic orthodoxy (Sound in the Christian faith; believing the genuine doctrines taught in the Scriptures; opposed to heretical; as an orthodox Christian.) would say that neither one of them was trying to refute the other and that the two positions are not contradictory though on the surface they seem to be. This issue is so significant that it’s worth the philosophy of a second glance.

Part of the problem is compounded by the fact that both James and Paul use the same word here for justification. It would be nice to see that they use different words and obviously add different ideas in mind.

The matter becomes even more severe when we see that both of them have the same person that they use as exhibit A to prove their point.

Paul laborers the point of Abraham’s being the father of the faithful and that he was justified by faith and counted righteous before he had done any works, been circumcised, or offered Isaac on the altar. So, Paul has Abraham justified in chapter 15 of Genesis whereas James doesn’t have Abraham justified until chapter 22, which is the chapter that records his offering of his son Isaac on the altar.

So, in a sense, the plot thickens, and this is one of the things that made Luther question the canonicity of James when he said at first that James was an epistle of straw, or a right straw epistle was another translation, but later repented of that judgment.

Because he challenged the canonicity of James, a host of scholars have used that challenge as an attempt to show that Luther didn’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. He did believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. He said the Scripture never errs.

However, we can see that in Scripture, though the same word is used both by James and Paul here on justification, that term does have more than one meaning. One verse with which you are familiar is in the Gospel when Jesus says that wisdom is justified by her children (Luke 7:35).

Obviously, in that particular statement, the word that is used does not mean that wisdom is reconciled to a holy God with an imputed righteousness that wisdom gains by having babies. No, it is simply showing the evidence to the claim to be wisdom by its fruit. This is a principle of wisdom found throughout the wisdom literature of Scripture.

By the way, many New Testament scholars would say that of those books that are considered wisdom literature in the Bible, you not only have the books in the Old Testament of Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job, and so on, but they would include in that list of wisdom books the book of James in the New Testament.

Because so many of the literary forms that you find among the wisdom books of the Old Testament are also found in James, now in the sense of the way in which Jesus used it by saying that wisdom is justified by her children, the meaning of the term justified there is to “demonstrate or to manifest” the truth of something.

If I said to you that I could run a mile in less than 4 minutes, I don’t expect you would believe that. Instead, you would want to see it to believe it with an accurate stopwatch in your hand.

In fact, the only way I could prove to you my statement is to demonstrate it by running the mile in under 4 minutes. So, if I would say to you I can run a mile in under 4 minutes, you would be wise not to believe my claim. The word justified is used to prove the truth of a claim.

Now, when studying various philosophers in order to understand their thinking, it seems like you would have to have a certain kind of mind to do well with philosophy. However, it is often abstract, and OFTEN, I would struggle.

In order for you to understand the work of a given philosopher, you want to go to the beginning and ask the question, what problem is this philosopher trying to solve, and why?

So, I want to apply that same principle to this thorny question that we have of the relationship between Paul and James, and to understand James, we have to ask the question what problem is he trying to solve, what question is he trying to answer?

I think the answer to my question here begins in verse 14 of chapter 2 where James writes this, “What does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith, but not have works, can that faith save him?”

So, the question he’s asking is, what good is it to make a profession of faith if you don’t have any works? What profit is there in that?

So, he’s dealing with the question of people who make a profession of faith but don’t manifest any fruit of it. In our day and age, we have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have made professions of faith but who have never demonstrated the reality of the faith they claim to possess.

So that’s the question that James is answering. It’s not the same question Paul is asking. Paul is asking, how can an unjust person stand in the presence of a just and holy God? His concern for justification is before God, and that’s where he says that we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law. However, James is asking, what about the person who professes faith but has no evidence of it?

He says, “If someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says, depart in peace, be warmed and be filled but don’t give them the things that are needful for the body, what does it profit? What good is that?”

Thus, after this illustration, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. So, now he’s going to make a distinction between a dead faith and a faith that is alive.

When Luther was challenged for his doctrine of justification by faith alone, he answered in a similar way that the apostle Paul answered that same question: God forbid!

And Luther said, “Justification is by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone.”

Luther said that the faith that justifies is a living faith – a faith that is alive, and you know it’s alive when it manifests itself in the fruit of obedience.

If I tell you that I have saving faith, do you know for sure that I have it just because I said I have it? The only way you can evaluate the truth of my claim is to see if I manifest it in my life. By their fruits, you shall know them (Matthew 7:16-20). Even then, we can fool people with rotten, phony fruit.

How long does God have to wait before He knows whether my profession of faith is genuine? He doesn’t have to wait a week or two weeks or six months or five chapters to see whether the faith that I profess is genuine. So, I think it’s critical in answering this problem that we see that even though both James and Paul appealed to Abraham to make their case, they appealed to Abraham at different times in his life.

Paul makes his point that they were justified by faith apart from the works of the law by pointing to chapter fifteen of Genesis, where Abraham believed in God and it was counted to him for righteousness.

James makes his case that Abraham was justified by works by pointing to chapter 22, seven chapters difference actually between chapter 15 and chapter 22, which is the chapter that tells us about the sacrifice of Isaac on the altar.

So, when James goes on to say that Abraham is justified by his works, is he talking about Abraham being justified in the sight of God, or is he saying that Abraham is being justified in the sight of men before whom he’s made his profession?

Again, a question he’s answering is if a man says he has faith but has not works, can that faith save him? The answer he’s giving here is a resounding ‘no’!

The only kind of faith that saves is not a dead faith, but a living faith. If it is a living faith, it will certainly be made manifest by works. So, Abraham is proving, demonstrating, and authenticating his claim of faith in chapter 22, and just as we claim to have faith, we have to show forth that faith by our works.

I mentioned earlier antinomianism, which claims to have a faith that saves without having works (without regard to God’s Law). That follows the whole carnal Christianity concept of the day.

I hope that this brief explanation will help you work through the problem here and understand that the men are answering two different questions using the same word and the same example. James is speaking of Abraham’s being vindicated by his profession of faith with the works that follow, and if that’s the way this book is understood, you don’t have a contradiction, you have a difficulty of resolution.

What is it that produces saving faith in Christ, or where does that faith come from?

This question, probably more than any other, is what defines the very essence of reformed theology. If there’s one phrase that captures the essence of reformed theology, it is the little phrase “regeneration.” Regeneration precedes faith. That is the power of faith.

The power of believing is a result, not of an act of our will done independently, but it is the fruit of God’s sovereign act of changing the disposition of our hearts and giving us the gift of faith.

It’s our faith. We’re the ones who believe, but we don’t create that faith, faith is born out of the work of the immediate supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit, who quickens us from spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1) and gives us the gift of faith in our hearts.

When we talk about the order of salvation, we talk about not so much a temporal order of things but rather a logical order of things.

The difference between chronological, temporal priority and logical priority is this, when we say that justification is by faith alone, we don’t mean by that, that a person has faith and then five years later is justified. On the contrary, the second that you have faith, you are counted righteous by God, are covered with the robes of the righteousness of Christ, and have all the benefits of justification. There’s no time lapse in there.

Yet, we say that justification is by faith, meaning that faith comes logically before justification. We know that justification does not precede faith, but faith precedes justification in terms of its logical order.

If you ask the vast majority of evangelical Christians which comes first, faith or rebirth, they would say faith comes first, and as a result of believing in Christ, you’re reborn.

Go back to chapter 3 of John where Jesus has the conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus said unless a man is born again, he can’t even see the Kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Paul talks about quickening or being made alive in Ephesians 2.

When are we made alive unto faith, and what state are we in at that time? We’re still spiritually dead.

So, we say that God the Holy Spirit changes the disposition or inclination of the heart (Ezekiel 36-Titus 3:5) so now what the person refused to believe before, he now believes and embraces, and now loves what he used to hate.

One of the best sermons ever preached by Jonathan Edwards was a ‘divine and supernatural light,’ where he talks about the work of the Holy Spirit who changes our hearts and disposition so that we not only see the truth of a proposition, but see the sweetness of it, the loveliness of it, and the beauty of it, and the glory of it.

The faith that justifies is a faith that has been created in our hearts as a gift by God the Holy Spirit, so that now what we formerly refused to affirm and to follow and that was odious to us in our state of spiritual death while we were still in the flesh, we now have the nature of the spirit, and the whole rest of the Christian life is a war between the flesh, the old man and the spirit, the new man who gives birth to faith so that we are regenerated unto faith and justification.

When Paul gives an abbreviated list of the order of salvation in Romans 8, he talks about those who were foreknown that he also predestined, those whom he predestined that he also called, those whom he called he justified, and those whom he justified He glorified.

In that sequence, it’s clear, that all who are in the category of the foreknown are also in the category of the predestined, and all in the category of the predestined are in the category of the justified.

All in the category of the called are in the category of the justified.

Obviously, Paul is talking about a calling. It’s not the outer call we talk about, the outside call where we preach the Gospel to people where some respond yes and some respond no.

In Romans 8, Paul is talking about a calling in which all who are called in a certain sense are justified, and calling there in that order precedes justification. So, calling is what we’re talking about concerning regeneration, the effectual inward call of God by which we are brought to faith, a living faith, through which, and by which, we are justified.

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