I was listening to an Anabaptist preacher explain how to reconcile Paul and James when he stated, “Faith without works is dead. It’s a counterfeit. It can’t save you at all.”

Is dead faith a counterfeit faith? Is that what James meant?

Recently, our GE electric cooktop stopped working. Abby went to make supper, found it wouldn’t turn on, and shouted, “The cooktop is dead!”

What did she mean?

Did she mean it was a counterfeit cooktop?

No.

Was she saying someone had installed a fake cooktop in the middle of the night?

No.

Did she mean that, after all these years of making supper, it turns out it was never a real cooktop to begin with?

Absolutely not.

No one would ever assume that something being “dead” means it is counterfeit.

Instead, Abby meant it had stopped working. It worked the day before, but now it was useless for cooking.

With that in mind, reconsider what James meant by “dead” faith:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself” (James 2:14-17, emphasis added).

Why would anyone read that and think James was saying faith without works is counterfeit? That’s not his point. The whole epistle addresses believers whose faith will be tested by earthly trials. In other words, it is settled that their faith is genuine. The question is whether they will put it into practice.

You need to put your faith into practice because earthly trials will test your faith, and the testing should produce “endurance” with the result of becoming “mature and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:3-4). Put differently, James wants us to be doers of the word, not just hearers. And if you do, you’ll be “blessed” (James 1:25). Maturity and blessing are at stake.

However, if you don’t put your faith into practice during those trials—if you merely hear the word without doing it—you won’t mature, and you won’t be blessed. Your faith will be “dead” in the sense that it has stopped working.

Just as a dead cooktop is useless for cooking, a dead faith is useless for receiving blessings through trials.

Send your questions or comments to shawn at freegrace.in.

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