# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S146
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

146 James’s Teaching on Justifying Faith.

wanted to reinforce the impression made by what was shown in Abraham. Verse 26 concludes the entire argument with the declaration that the principle stated in verse 17, which James promised to prove (verse 20), has now indeed been proved. James means that they now know that faith without works is dead. But he portrays this death once more with the strongest image he uses anywhere in this entire discussion. Faith without works is like the body without the spirit. Thus, although it has every capacity to give living evidence of its nature, just as the body does, if it is without works it is like a corpse, an abomination to God and human beings. If faith is not active through love, then it is not justifying faith either, for justifying faith always reveals itself in good works; but if you cannot call your faith justifying faith, then simply confess that it is dead. James has proved this irrefutably and has thereby accomplished the purpose of his argument stated in verse 20.

James differs from the other holy writers of Scripture, however, in calling the demonstration of justifying faith in good works justification by works. Admittedly, ordinary usage permits him to do so, since “to declare righteous” or “to justify” may be connected with anything that attests to a person’s righteousness. We can also understand quite well why James speaks of works using the very expressions that Paul especially chooses when presenting justification by faith. In doing so, he is not opposing Paul’s doctrine, but rather those Christians in name only who misused God’s Word concerning justification by faith as a pillow for their unconverted hearts and as a pretext for their ungodly conduct. To shame them and convict them of the disgraceful misuse they made of the chief article of the entire Christian doctrine required forceful words of such a kind that they were compelled to apply them to themselves; for people who use the Word of God to excuse their sinful lives are more hardened than heathens or frivolous sinners. Therefore, just as we may refute a base assertion or vulgar excuse with the same words in which it was expressed, so James, as it were, hurls back into the faces of empty or idle Christians their own words, by which they falsely claim justification by faith for themselves. “Our faith is not dead; we are justified by it,” the idle Christians might say. You, justified by faith? James replies: I tell you, if you are not justified by works, then you are not justified by faith either. Thus chosen in order to destroy quickly and surely the soul-destroying delusion of idle Christians, this manner of expression is not in the least intended for instruction in the Christian doctrine of faith, as though from now on we might call the demonstration of justifying faith in good works justification by works. In Romans 3:2 Paul once refers to the gos-