# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S144
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

144 James’s Doctrine of Justifying Faith.

A justification by works alongside the fullest acknowledgment of justification by faith, without confusing the two with each other—this is the result of our interpretation, which is now confirmed in turn by the content of the preceding verses 22 and 23. Since verse 24 states what we are to see in the discussion of verses 22 and 23, it must naturally contain the same doctrine that is expressed there. In them, however, we see

1. Abraham’s works as signs and proofs of his faith, as the basis for the justifying declaration that it was rightly said of him: Abraham believed, and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. And again we see

2. Abraham’s faith as that which was counted to him as righteousness. Thus, in verses 22 and 23, James already indicates a twofold justification: first, justification by faith, and then, as its consequence, justification by works. The same James could never thereafter call upon us to see with him in that twofold justification a single justification, namely, one whose condition was to be not faith alone, but faith and works together. Just as little can it be expected that he would now suddenly regard the works that he had just viewed as the consequence of justification by faith as a condition of that justification.

What James calls justification by works is the event in the life of the believer in which, on the basis of or as a result of his works, he is acknowledged to possess justifying faith. Yet insofar as works, because they are the basis of the justifying judgment, may also, by a kind of figurative speech, stand for that which pronounces or declares the judgment, we may also describe James’s justification by works as the proof, testimony, or demonstration of justifying faith in good works. Its relationship to justification by faith becomes clear from considering the distinction and connection between the two.

1. Their distinction lies

a. in what is ascribed to us by the judgment of justification. Justification by faith is the declaration that we truly possess the righteousness of Christ that avails before God, because we have received it through faith. What James calls justification by works, by contrast, is the declaration that we truly possess the faith that justifies, because we prove it in our works. Through the former, therefore, we have righteousness, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation; justification by works, by contrast, occurs wherever righteousness, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are already present, and it bears witness to them.