Email from Church of the Redeemer

Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

November 18, 2024

Invitatory

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

James 2:14-26

What good is it, my brothers and sisters,^* if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

Meditation-Rebecca Northington

How pleased I was to find this as the day’s lesson! Just yesterday morning Scott Carter and I taught the Protestant Reformation to the Confirmation class. It was an exciting class full of dates, publications, persecutions, executions, and no small amount of theology. It was a movement, the kids quickly learned, that led to the development of our country, socially, religiously, politically and constitutionally in the separation of Church and State. Many religious communities abandoned their countries of birth and the battles being waged there for religious freedom in the New World. The Mennonites, the Huguenots, the Pilgrims and Puritans who became Congregationalists, Anglicans, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Lutherans, Quakers, and Catholics all found homes among the 13 colonies and were able to live in relative peace here.

When we consider contemporary wars and the struggle for territories, we forget that our own Protestant history is saturated with blood from Great Britain through Western and Central Europe. Even within the diverging Protestant sects we battled, and often over theology or interpretation of scripture, as well as over power, territory and authority. This passage directly relates to the conversation we had with the kids yesterday regarding “sola fide”; which was a key argument in the reformation and a belief that we are made right with sin through faith alone. Not all Protestants understood this the same way or agreed that salvation is attainable through faith alone. This passage wrestles with exactly this tension the Reformation tried to resolve, the complicated relationship between faith and works: how one understands the role of their own faith and how it should instruct their actions. “Can faith save you?” James asks.

We introduced the term “works righteousness” to the kids and explained the more legalistic understanding of earning your way to salvation by good deeds or good behavior. For many Protestants this was a slippery slide back to Catholicism and jumping through hoops for salvation including the purchasing of Indulgences which was central to Luther’s criticism of the Catholic Church. I believe Luther argued that our actions are not righteous if our faith is not first and central. Faith is not abstract in this case but has a real world effect, as James argues in the passage above. “Show me your faith without works?”, he asks, and uses Abraham and Rahab as his examples of faith being completed through the work of the person.

Their actions are a product of their faith however, an important distinction I believe. And many people act through their faith in different ways, and who is to judge how those ways rank? For the ancient desert fathers and mothers they prayed, they wrote and they ministered-were those works righteousness or manifestations of their faith? If our faith dictates who we are in the world, does that not count as works? But if we are busily trying to keep an account of our good deeds towards salvation what is motivating us? Our faith? Or our eagerness for eternal life-which is about us, not love of God.

Hugh Whelchel cites Tim Keller in his article Is the Faith and Work Message an Attempt to Earn Our Own Salvation. “ In it Keller ‘explains the difference between these views in this way: Religion says, ‘I obey – therefore I’m accepted.’ The Gospel says, ‘I’m accepted – therefore I obey.’” Whelchel goes on to say, “our obedience to God is critically important. It flows out of our love and gratitude toward God for what he has done on our behalf through Christ. True Christianity has always maintained that faith necessarily expresses itself in action. During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin taught that while good works could not in any way merit salvation, they did prove the genuineness of the individual’s faith. We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves us will never be alone. It will always be accompanied by good works.”

Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those

who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.