"Dear friends, do you
think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words
but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that
a person really has it?" (James 2:14)
Today's verses actually
remind me of the very holiday we are celebrating today. In the United
States, we are celebrating our independence from Britain, written up
and submitted on July 4, 1776. The cool thing about this, the part
that is comparable to our verses, is that the American Colonies
talked a good talk about wanting independence. For years, they
grumbled about wanting to be free and then one day, everything came
to a head, and they did it. There was, of course, a whole lot more to
it than that but this isn't a history lesson. The point is that they
declared they were independent.
But that declaration wasn't
the end. It was only the first of a long list of actions that they
had to take in order to make their dream come true. People died for
the dream. There was a war that lasted eight years involving multiple
countries. Our own country was a wreck that needed fixing when it was
all over. This isn't much different from being a person who loves
Jesus today. All over the world, there are Christians who love Jesus
and just want to share the amazing news that he died for us all and
they are being persecuted for it. They are dying for the dream of
sharing Jesus with everyone. Those are huge actions.
Let's look at an example
from James:
"For instance, you come
upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, 'Good
morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy
Spirit!' and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of
soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk
without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?" (James 2:15-17)
Ouch. This one hits too
close to home because we do it every single day. We see a need that
must be addressed and we just hope someone else will take care of it.
But what if we are the very "someone else" that Jesus had
in mind when that person crossed our path? We are missing out on an
amazing opportunity to help a fellow human, to possibly introduce
them to Jesus, and to demonstrate our own faith with a little bit of
action. We are far too passive here in America. We are comfortable
and are rarely willing to step outside of our own bubbles to help
someone else whose bubble has popped.
"I can already hear one
of you agreeing by saying, 'Sounds good. You take care of the faith
department, I’ll handle the works department.'
Not so fast. You can no more
show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith
apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together
hand in glove." (James 2:18)
Those are technically James'
words from thousands of years ago, but they are still completely
applicable now. I am apparently full of examples today because I have
another one to share. This one is a little more personal.
When I was a teenager, I
made a ton of bad choices. If you asked me then if I loved Jesus and
if I was a follower of Christ, I would have said, "yes,
absolutely." But you wouldn't have believed me. Do you know why?
Because I wasn't showing my love for Jesus in my actions. My actions
said that I was a spoiled rotten, bratty teenager of the world who
acted entitled to whatever she wanted. That's not Jesus.
It was like a game of
mini-golf gone terribly wrong. I was still carrying my tiny little
ball of faith around with me, but I had dropped the club I needed to
launch my faith into the windmills and castles and across the moats
of the world. So instead of playing the game with those around me, I
just put my little faith ball in my pocket. From the outside, it
looked like I wasn't playing the game. No one else knew except me. So
it didn't matter how good I was at tossing my ball toward the little
goal. No amount of holes in one were going to make me a winner
because I wasn't really playing! I had no actions to back up my
claims.
Do you know what James says
about my pathetic faith?
"Do I hear you
professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you
complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful?
That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them?
Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith
and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?"
(James 2:19-20)
And by the time I was 19,
that was exactly what I had- a corpse. I had dropped about as low as
I could go. I was a single mom and already divorced. Yes, there were
still some amazing things in my life- my incredible blessing of a son
being the biggest one and my supportive mom being a close second. She
came alongside me and helped me pick up the pieces of my broken, dead
faith. She walked me back into church, she prayed with me- she had
the actions that my faith lacked. And that's when things finally
turned around.
Just like Abraham and Rahab
did in the Bible, I needed to back my faith with some actions. Here's
what James says about them:
"Wasn’t our ancestor
Abraham 'made right with God by works' when he placed his son Isaac
on the sacrificial altar? Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are
yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works
are 'works of faith'? The full meaning of 'believe' in the Scripture
sentence, 'Abraham believed God and was set right with God,' includes
his action. It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham
named 'God’s friend.' Is it not evident that a person is made right
with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?
The same with Rahab, the
Jericho harlot. Wasn’t her action in hiding God’s spies and
helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what
counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you
end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same
thing: a corpse." (James 2:21-26)
Read that last verse again:
"The very moment you
separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith
and works and you get the same thing: a corpse."
Let's fast forward from 19
year old Kristi to 35 year old Kristi (that's me today, by the way).
If you asked me again today if I was follower of Jesus, the answer
would still be yes. And I'd like to believe that you could closely
examine my life and see the actions that back that claim up. I'm
doing my best to show the world that I love Jesus.
How about you? Do you have
the actions to back up your claim of faith? It's easy to say you're a
Christian. It's far harder to act like one. I pray that we all figure
this one out and demonstrate our faith to the world through our
actions.
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