# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

James’s Doctrine of Justifying Faith. 145

b. The two are further distinguished by that on which the justifying judgment or declaration is based. In justification by faith, it is based precisely on faith—not because faith is itself a work or the beginning and source of good works, but because it lays hold of the righteousness of Christ that avails before God. By contrast, in justification by works, the works themselves form the basis of the judgment—not because they are themselves a righteousness that could avail before God, but because they are fruits of justifying faith. James, therefore, has no thought that the works of the believer should in any way count as merit in order to bring about justification by faith; it does not occur to him to intermingle the two kinds of justification.

A third distinction between the two would be that the one is the ground and the other the consequence; but this also expresses at the same time

2. the connection between them. Justification by works follows from justification by faith, just as good fruit comes from a good tree. If you are justified by faith, then you will be justified by your works; that is, your conduct will be such that on its basis the testimony will be given that you have faith and that your faith has been counted to you as righteousness. Conversely, if your works do not testify that you have justifying faith, then do not presume to have it; what you then call your faith is a dead assent to the truth. Just as little in Abraham as in other children of God has justifying faith remained without the fruit of good works. If it does not produce such fruit, which James calls justification by works, it remains incomplete and dies away; only in this fruit does it attain its full being and continuance, for being active through love belongs just as much to its essence as having a consequence belongs to the essence of a ground generally; Galatians 5:6.

In agreement with Paul and the whole of the rest of Holy Scripture, James proclaims the ancient message of Genesis 15:6: that God acquits the poor sinner who receives the promise, or the Gospel, in faith, declares him righteous, and forgives his sin on account of this faith. When he then emphasizes with great earnestness that being active through love belongs to the essence of this faith, he likewise does so in fullest agreement with the whole of the rest of Holy Scripture. The task we set in the title of this article would thus be resolved. Verses 25 and 26 add nothing that would in any way call our interpretation into question or confirm it. The example of Rahab presented in v. 25 was evidently added only because, as Hebrews 11:31 shows, her faith was praised even though she is called a prostitute, and therefore lazy Christians appealed to her, or because James wished, with another well-known example of faith, to [illegible]

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