Faith vs. Works - James 2:15-26

2:15-18 - If we believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior but don’t care for “a brother or sister (who is) naked, and destitute of daily food,” James asks “what doth it profit? I’ve always wondered how faith is related to good works? These two concepts just seem so independent of each other logically, so how do I reconcile them? I understand that Jesus taught good works and having faith in Him means doing them, but how do we exercise faith in Jesus Christ by serving others? I guess one explanation might be that it’s not necessarily just that we are commanded to serve others, the commandment could be anything, bark like a dog on Thursdays or wear pink on Wednesdays, and then we demonstrate our faith by doing those arbitrary actions. With helping other people, that is at least meaningful, so really God could command us anything and we would do it if we had faith. But is it simply a matter of just blind obedience? Let’s face is, we don’t always want to go out of our way to help people, it can be exhausting and we just want to do what we want to do all the time. Helping others allows us to feel important, it’s uplifting, and brings a positive energy to our lives. Plus, desiring to serve others or at least a willingness to do so allows us to build a relationship with the Spirit so that we understand promptings, etc. It also gives us the ability to see others as God sees them, build a little bit of empathy and compassion for them. Plus, we need help sometimes too, and receiving that help builds stronger relationships with our rescuers and be put into a position to rely on others. But it’s really a good question, if you believe in Jesus but don’t use that belief to do good things, then what good is that faith to you? How are you benefitted? How is your life improved? If we believe that Jesus will save us then do we just continue on doing whatever we want because we’re saved either way? We know that that’s not true because that would just be mercy robbing justice. Jesus atoned for our sins, the price has already been paid, what if Jesus just forgave everyone for their sins regardless of the repentance status? I can think of a couple reasons why that wouldn’t work, plan of salvation wise. First, it would be unjust. I think about the people in my life who have hurt me terribly and if they just got away with everything scot free, never even having to acknowledge that what they did was wrong, that wouldn’t be fair, and everything has to be fair in the end, either through individual repentance or paying for our own sins. There would be a hierarchy concerning who has the most quantity and most grievous sins, and those who don’t have that many. Everyone would be rewarded the same regardless of what they had done and that would be wildly unfair to pretty much every single person. The second reason why blanket total forgiveness wouldn’t work is because the goal is to get everyone back together as a family with Heavenly Father and in order to stand in the presence of God, we have to have certain characteristics, a certain level of personal purity. The only way for us to achieve that level of worthiness is by growing spiritually through Jesus’ atonement, and the commandments are the stepping stones that we need to embark on that journey of personal growth. So we can see that James was accurate in his assessment “faith, if it hath not works, id dead, being alone.” We show our faith by being obedient to the commandments, even when we don’t want to, even when they don’t make sense, that’s what James means when he says “I will shew thee my faith by my works.” 2:19-26 - When we believe in God but don’t do his works or keep his commandments we are “the devils” who also believe in God, but as the JST tells us, “thou hast made thyself like unto them, not being justified.” This verse is also cross-referenced with Acts 16:17 which says, “the same (devils) followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most might God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” There were also another couple of times during the Savior’s mortal ministry when evil spirits testified of His divinity. It’s interesting because at first I didn’t understand what James meant here, but the evil spirits believe that Jesus is the Christ, they believe that he is the one who is able to save, but they don’t do good works, they don’t keep the commandments, so they are truly an example of faith without works. James continues with examples of people who demonstrated their faith by their works, starting with Abraham “when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar.” It’s this refining process where we have a little bit of faith and do our best to keep the commandments, then we grow spiritually, then a little more and a little more until finally we become perfected. James also references “Rahab the harlot” who was a gentile living in Jericho during the time of Joshua and who hid two Israelite spies in her house. This was counted as faith to her, so I clearly don’t understand the whole story here because I don’t get it, but this was another example he cited. This chapter ends with a powerful analogy saying, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”