James, Paul, Works and Faith
In an undergrad discipleship class, my classmate Sarah wrinkled her nose at our professor's assignment. We were supposed to read Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline and pick a spiritual discipline to practice.
"I don't like this," Sarah announced. "Spiritual disciplines feel too much like works. It's too legalistic."
I remember staring at her. The disciplines we were talking about were thinks like prayer, fasting, meditation on Scripture—practices that have shaped Christian formation for two millennia. But Sarah had been so thoroughly trained in the Protestant fear of "works" that anything requiring effort or intentionality felt dangerous. As if any sort of works was opposed to being a Christian.
Which is sort of preposterous when you think about it.
But this is what happens when we create a false war between James and Paul, between faith and works. This past week, reading James 2 for the lectionary, I was struck again by how we've misunderstood this relationship. "Saved by faith alone" has been turned into theological rallying point that actually prevents the very transformation it's supposed to protect.
The False War Between James and Paul
Some folks love to pit James and Paul against each other. James says, "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). Paul says we're saved "by grace through faith, not by works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). And then everyone picks sides...and let the gladiators begin!
But this misreading misses what both apostles are actually doing.
Paul had to work constantly to correct the idea that works (or misreadings of the Law) are what grant salvation. Paul's emphasis is on the faithfulness of Christ, which provides salvation to all in order for us to accomplish good works. And that's obviously the case—Paul cares about good works or else he wouldn't bother writing his angry letters otherwise!
James seems to be correcting probably a misreading of Paul or Paul's proteges that says, "Well, I have faith and that's all I need." No, James argues, the way that you know faith is working is by the production of good works. Otherwise, something has gone terribly wrong.
Look at James 2:22: "You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected." This is in perfect harmony with Paul's writing in Ephesians 2:8, 10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith...created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand."
They're not contradicting each other. They're addressing different errors and working in harmony.
The Translation Problem
What's infuriating is that our English Bible translations have been shaped by Protestant anxiety about works in ways that actually distort what Scripture says.
When ergon means seems to imply legalism, the NIV uses "works." But when it's something Christians are supposed to do, the translators choose "deeds" or "actions" or some other substitute.
Look at James 2 (the "faith without 'works' is dead' chapter). The NIV translates ergon as "deeds" six times in this chapter alone. "Show me your faith without deeds." "Faith without deeds is dead." But the Greek word is the same one Paul uses in Ephesians 2:9—ergon. Works.
This is theological bias shaping how we read Scripture, creating a nervousness around the very concept of works that I believe both James and Paul would find baffling.
The Deadly Downstream Effects
This fear of works has created some truly awful theology. You can watch it play out in churches that can obsess over legalistic issues sexual purity and swearing while completely ignoring racism, nationalism, and economic injustice.
There's this complicated relationship in Christianity where you can have both very legalistic systems that demand conformity to group norms—what you wear, whether you're allowed to swear, your sex life—and yet that same legalism is completely unwilling to deal with deeper issues like racism and sexism.
It has been claimed that progressive Christians don't care at all about sin. But that's not true; we care deeply about sin. For instance, we think the President's felonies and authoritarianism and racism are deeply odious. We think the nation's sins of colonialism, sexism, and environmental injustice are terrible. But we care about sin defined as things that cause harm rather than just adherence to group norms.
Conservative churches can be guilty of using "faith alone" as a way to avoid justice work entirely. "It's not up to us to make the world better," they'll say. "Only God can do that at the second coming." It's an abdication from the responsibility that God has given us to care about the world, to care about the poor and the marginalized.
There was a school shooting last week. The inevitable conservative response is "thoughts and prayers." But thoughts and prayers that aren't matched with action are dead, as James would say. If somebody comes up to you hungry and you say, "Be blessed, have food," and you don't do anything for them, that faith is dead.
We can't just pray for justice. We have to work for justice. As the proverb goes: when you pray, move your feet.
Breaking the False Binary
This whole mess is a false binary has been erected that neither James nor Paul would recognize. Faith and works must work together.
The anxiety is always going to be new forms of legalism. The left gets accused of purity tests, of kicking people out for doing the wrong thing. And I'll admit that's a real concern. In a hundred years, the progressive movement in Christianity will likely swing the other direction and become just as legalistic. We always have to be awake to not just recreating the systems we escaped from.
At its worst, a works orientation can lead right back to the indulgences that Luther had to reform in the first place. You can't abandon the faith piece of this. You have to have a foundation of the inherent dignity of all humans in the Imago Dei, and God's posture toward humanity of love and non-condemnation.
In my own life, I don't serve and honor my wife Emily or my children because I'm trying to earn their love or afraid that will smite me and send me to hell if I act poorly. I do it because we're all in a loving relationship with each other and I care for them, just as they care for me. There's mutuality there.
If I'm serving God out of fear that they'll stop loving me, then my mindset is wrong.
I serve God and my community and my neighborhood and society because I deeply care for them. Our faith—our religion—is not one merely of mental assent. It's not just signing the dotted line on a set of propositional beliefs. It's meant to be embodied and practice-oriented. It's meant to imitate the way of Jesus and the saints who came before us.
This is why I'm much more likely to assign the Civil Rights Movement the title "A Great Awakening" than any other so-called revival that doesn't actually lead to liberation and freedom for people.
Working Alongside God
What James and Paul both understand is that we are called to work alongside God—synergeo with God. Faith is giving our attention and focus and hope to the reality that God is working in the world, that God will accomplish their purposes, that God intends goodwill for all people at all times. And that creates in us the need to work alongside God as well.
The call here is for holistic formation. We should care for ourselves individually, as souls and bodies. We should care for our immediate communities—our families, our churches. And we should care about the neighborhoods and societies we're part of. This is how we work out our faith with fear and trembling.
Using "faith alone" as a way to avoid justice work is abominable. It's a dramatic misunderstanding of Jesus' ministry. Look at what Jesus did—he healed and cast out demons, which can be seen as a way of talking about systems of oppression. If we try to have a faith-alone sort of faith that ignores the work of Jesus, and if we make Paul into a caricature who was only about faith while James was only about works, then we're misunderstanding entirely what both of them were trying to do.
James and Paul aren't fighting. They're singing harmony. Faith without works is dead. And works without faith misses the point entirely. But when faith and works dance together—when we root our activism in grace and let our theology get its hands dirty—that's when we join the real Great Awakening.
So when you pray, move your feet.
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