James

[0:00] So James chapter 2, and James chapter 2 is quite a controversial, we're going to be hitting the meat of controversy here when it comes to faith and works here in James chapter 2.

[0:13] We've already kind of gotten into it, but this is more of the meat of James's focus here on the importance of works.

[0:27] And how it compares to faith. And so before we jump in, we're going to be starting here at verse 14. I wanted to just talk about this whole faith versus works debate, give a little bit of an overview.

[0:43] So in thinking about this, I thought, well, I can think of about four major viewpoints when it comes to the topic of faith versus works.

[0:54] Our salvation, our justification, our eternal life. What is required for that? It's a big question. It's an important question. And so the Bible talks a lot about faith.

[1:08] But in a lot of places in the Bible, it talks about works, too. For salvation, for eternal life. And you read it in the epistles. You see both in the epistles.

[1:20] You see both in the gospels. And you even see both in the Old Testament. And so what is the correct view?

[1:33] Is it faith alone, as the reformers said? Or many of the reformers said? Or is it faith plus works? Now, I don't know of really anybody that says, well, salvation is by works and there's no faith involved.

[1:49] I don't think anybody really says that. So everybody says, well, there's an element of faith. But the big question is, is it faith by itself or is it faith and works? So here are the four viewpoints, especially when it comes to what James is saying here on this whole controversy.

[2:07] So some say James is counterbalancing, providing an adjustment to Paul's teaching about faith without works. So Paul kind of focused mostly on faith.

[2:20] And he didn't focus a lot on works. And so James is just providing the counterbalance. You know, we got to make sure that our religion is nice and balanced, right? So we don't want to get too overboard on one thing or another.

[2:33] That's kind of how a lot of people view it. Now, when it comes to certain things, I think that we need to be very overbalanced, right? When it comes to love, we need to kind of balance that out with some hate.

[2:49] We need to make sure we have a little bit of love and a little bit of hate. Well, to a certain degree, you might say that you don't want to love what is evil. In fact, the Bible says to hate what is evil and love what is good, right? Despise what is evil and love what is good.

[3:02] But when it comes to like loving our children, you know, we want to go overboard with that, right? Anyway, that's a little bit of a bunny trail. The second view is that James is teaching not that salvation is by works, but he's showing us that we have to do good works in order to prove that our saving faith is real.

[3:28] Has anybody ever heard that? So you don't have to do works, but if you don't do good works, then that proves that your faith that you say you have is fake.

[3:43] Okay, that's another view. The third view I could think of was, and this is interesting, this is becoming more popular, is that there are actually two kinds of justification.

[3:57] You have an initial justification where you're justified by faith alone. And then there is a final justification when it comes to standing before God on judgment day.

[4:11] And that one requires faith plus works. And probably one of the most popular Bible teachers today is John Piper. Anybody heard of John Piper?

[4:23] Desiring God Ministries? If you search the internet for Bible stuff, his website comes up a lot, really popular. This is what he teaches. He teaches that justification, that you have an initial justification, which is by faith alone.

[4:39] But if you want that final justification, you have to do good works in order to merit. And he probably wouldn't use that word, merit, because maybe he would.

[4:50] I don't know. But, you know, a big question is, which is the justification that matters most? Right? When it comes right down to it, what happens when we stand before God is what matters most.

[5:07] And so, for a lot of people, they add works. They kind of make a separation. There's two types of justification. Or two, yeah, two types, I guess we could call.

[5:19] The fourth one is that James here is teaching not a justification before God, but a justification before men. Anybody ever heard that viewpoint?

[5:31] Okay. I just read that a few months ago in an article. It kind of piqued my interest because I'd never heard it presented before.

[5:45] But he made, the author, and I don't remember his name, sorry about that, but the author made a pretty good point and it hinged on how we use the word save, the soteriology, because the scripture does use it in various ways.

[6:04] Right. That's true. And that really brings James more in line with Pauline doctrine when you see that, especially when you view it in the opening statement where James says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials because there was persecution going on.

[6:29] And then he said, then the soteriology, in this viewpoint that you're presenting, the soteriology comes in, the faith that carries me through is faith that I've been acting on before.

[6:43] And I pondered that and I thought, you know, there's a lot to that because just saying something is one thing and even believing it is one thing.

[7:00] But if I don't obey, when the going gets tough, I may not live the life that shows to the world the truth of the gospel as in Ephesians.

[7:16] And I got to pondering it and I thought, you know, Paul, when he told Timothy, this is what you look for when you ordain a bishop or an elder.

[7:30] Yeah. And he said, and I went back and reviewed it and, yeah, the profession of faith is understood that everything he says is practical.

[7:47] So, just for what it's worth, that got me to thinking and I kind of chased that out a little bit and I said, well, there's, that's a plausible argument.

[8:02] Okay. So, this, it wasn't a guy named Michael Pearl, was it, that you read it from? I can't answer that. It was in Israel, my glory.

[8:13] Oh, was it? Okay, probably, I imagine probably not then. Michael Pearl is really well-known or mostly well-known for child training type stuff.

[8:23] He wrote a book called To Train Up a Child and a lot of people, especially in the homeschool community, I know really have gotten a lot from his material. But he's also a Bible teacher and he wrote this little booklet called Justification in the Book of James.

[8:37] And so, that's his viewpoint. And one of the things I appreciate about it is he, this view tries to preserve Paul's view of his teaching on justification, that it's by faith alone.

[8:51] And so, but again, but he reads James and it's like, wow, this looks on his face like it contradicts. And so, he takes the approach that the justification that James is talking about is basically showing other men, not God, the reality of our faith through our works.

[9:13] That we don't need to be justified before God, but we do need to be justified before men. And he gives a, I don't know if I'll call it a compelling case, but definitely robust. I mean, he shows a lot of scripture verses.

[9:25] And to your point, Roger, on salvation, not every time, like he uses, in fact, this first verse that we're going to read, he says, what does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him?

[9:40] So, it sounds like he's talking about salvation. And I think he is talking about spiritual salvation. But some people will make the point, well, the Bible, the word saved, really it's just a word, sozo, it means rescued.

[9:52] And so, it doesn't necessarily mean rescued from eternal death or rescued from judgment day, though that's the typical way as Christians that we use it. Sometimes the word salvation is used for some other salvation, some other rescue from something else.

[10:06] And so, when we're reading through the Bible, sometimes we should consider that. Is this talking about a spiritual salvation, a spiritual salvation from judgment or from eternal death?

[10:17] So, I can't remember if he talks about the whole salvation thing or not in here, but an interesting, an interesting viewpoint to consider. But, the, the, I don't, well, we'll get into why I think, I don't think his case is, can hold water.

[10:37] We'll get into it a little later on. But, those are the four kind of major viewpoints. And, there's not very many people who would say, like we're teaching here, that, well, James is actually teaching that justification is by works because he's teaching under the dispensation of the law.

[10:55] Not very many people would say that at all. So, that's a very unique viewpoint. Interestingly enough, so, Luther is known, Martin Luther was known as the, four, bringing this whole concept of justification by faith kind of back into the public eye.

[11:14] It was a, it was something that he rediscovered, if you will. And, it was a big part of the Reformation. But, even he, and I've got a few quotes from him, what, I don't, I want to, I was going to use the word waiver.

[11:32] I don't know if it's the word waiver, but, here are just some quotes to consider, he said, idle faith is not justifying faith. Idle faith is not justifying faith.

[11:46] So, what does idle mean? It means it's not working. Alright? It's a faith that's not working. So, basically he said, if it's a faith that's not working, it's not a justifying faith.

[11:59] And this was a, this was part of his commentary on Galatians 5, 6. And then, another quote, and I guess I don't have a reference to where this is from, but he said, it is one, it is one thing that faith justifies without works.

[12:12] It is another thing that faith exists without works. And so, well, what is that, you know, what does that mean? There's, it's faith, faith justifies without works, but faith doesn't exist without works.

[12:32] And so, some people try to tease it out that way. Well, it's not your works that justify, but your works kind of define your faith and the faith justifies. So, everybody is trying to get works in there somehow.

[12:44] Because, how can you say that God would make you righteous if you don't do anything? What kind of absurd idea is that? And almost nobody can barely believe it.

[12:57] But this is, and this is what Paul gets so excited and riled up about in Galatians. Is, I know it doesn't make any sense and I know there's lots of people and they've got great arguments and they want to deceive you, but you need to hold on to this faith thing.

[13:16] Calvin said this, actually this quote is often attributed to Luther. But Calvin says this, it is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.

[13:28] Has anybody ever heard that? It's a common quote, and a lot of time, most of the time I hear it's from Luther. So, it is therefore faith alone which justifies, so it's the faith that justifies, but it has to be like connected with works.

[13:48] So, it's just the faith that justifies, but it's got to have the buddy of works along with it. So, everybody, you got to get the works in there. And are good works bad?

[14:00] Should Christians avoid good works? Absolutely not. But when it comes to this idea of what justifies, what makes us righteous, we have to make sure that we are with Paul saying, God forbid that my works, the things that I do, should in any way contribute to my righteousness.

[14:23] righteousness. We've said this before, but one of the things I want to point out is James, so a lot of people teach, James is kind of, he's following up on Paul.

[14:37] Do you know that it's almost certain that James wrote this before he ever even heard Paul's message of grace? I mean, you'd have a really difficult time arguing that James was written after anything that Paul wrote.

[14:51] I mean, you really struggle to try to make that point. Most scholars say James' epistle was the first epistle of all the epistles in the New Testament.

[15:03] And so, James almost certainly had never even heard of this whole idea of justification by faith alone. Probably never even heard of it. So, I think it's a difficult case, though a lot of people make it, to say that James is trying to make some adjustments to Paul's, you know, getting off too far on one side of the ditch.

[15:27] And again, I think James is teaching. He's just following up with his brother, Jesus. And Jesus taught people that they need to keep the law.

[15:37] In fact, we'll look at that more in a little bit. When we're looking, especially at this last part of James chapter two, one of the most important books or passages to compare it to is Romans chapter four.

[15:51] Romans chapter four. And if you read Romans chapter four and James chapter two together, and you don't understand kind of this mystery thing that happened in the Bible, this plot twist that happened with Paul being the apostle to the Gentiles and all that kind of thing, you will be so confused because they say almost exact opposite things throughout those passages.

[16:16] Romans chapter four and James chapter two and we'll look at them more closely in a minute. Some questions to ask as we read through this passage and we'll read through it in a minute.

[16:28] What is faith? What is faith? What does it mean to have faith? What is works? Works is many things and maybe we'll talk about it a little bit, but faith is believing a certain thing.

[16:41] And some people, a lot of times when the Bible talks about faith, they think, oh, it's talking about a specific faith in a specific thing. But you can have faith in all kinds of things, right?

[16:53] So, the important thing when the Bible talks about faith is to try to understand, try to discern, what is the object of faith that is being discussed?

[17:04] Because it's not always the same. And if we don't understand what the object of faith is that the Bible is speaking of, whether it's Jesus, because for a Christian, for a New Testament, I'll say a grace believer, what is, when we talk about our faith, what is the object of our faith that is paramount?

[17:25] What is the object? What are we believing? The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are believing that Jesus died for our sins, according to the scripture.

[17:39] That's it. That's what we're believing. And so, but when you read about faith in the Bible, in the New Testament, and even here in James, is that what's being spoken of here?

[17:50] So we'll look at that. What is works? Works can be both, you know, doing good things, but it can also be avoiding evil things. It can be around moral good, or it can be around ceremonial requirements, right?

[18:06] Works could be a ceremonial cleansing, or the kinds of food that you eat. For the Jew, part of doing good works, or part of doing works, was keeping like the dietary law, for example.

[18:19] So you have both moral good, and also just obeying the rules that you have been given. Also, what is salvation? We talked about that briefly.

[18:29] Salvation is not always just spiritual salvation. It's not always talking about eternal life, things like that. So we need to make sure that we consider that anyway. And then what is justification? What is justification?

[18:42] And so, like I said, some people teach, well, in this case, justification is justification before men. And I think there are times in the Bible where the word justify is used without talking about being made righteous before God.

[18:55] And so, you know, we should consider that. But the big context to keep in mind as we read through James is this is James, the brother of Jesus, following up on his brother Jesus' ministry to Gentiles?

[19:14] No. To Jews who have trusted in their Messiah, Jesus Christ, who was buried and raised, who died and was risen from the dead.

[19:27] And what is the huge focus for these believers? believers, it's the coming kingdom and preparing for that kingdom and also making sure that you endure to the end of the tribulation that's going to come before that kingdom is entranced.

[19:46] That is the big context. And so, in this context, when James is talking about works, he's talking about doing the law, which is what the law teaches.

[20:00] the law says, you must do these things. Doing the law is not optional for a Jewish believer who's under the law. When you're under the law, the law is not optional.

[20:14] When you're not under the law, well, things change when we're under grace. So, under the law, salvation, and when we read the Gospels, Jesus talked a lot about salvation.

[20:28] salvation. And one of the parts of salvation was entering into the kingdom. Do you want to enter? Because, ultimately, there's going to be a separation, right? The sheep and the goats. Jesus talked about that.

[20:40] And salvation was, are you going to be part of the sheep, or will you be the goats who will be cast away? And so, being saved is being saved to enter into the kingdom.

[20:51] And under law, to enter into the kingdom, which is part of the, part of this law system, it required faith and works, both.

[21:03] You have to have both. It's not optional. You can't just pick one or the other. You have to do both. Yes? So, with the faith and works under the law, is that where in Revelation, he's talking to the church of Sardis, that they don't have works, and that they need to repent and do their works so that they will not be blotted from the book of life?

[21:32] I believe so, yes. That's going back to the law at the Revelation point of it. Yeah, I think the book of Revelation is speaking to people who are going through a tribulation period, that James is also speaking to, to enter into the kingdom, and they also need to bring works along with their faith, keeping the law, doing good, those types of things.

[21:55] Yeah, for sure. Even the book of, or the church of Laodicea talks about you need to be either hot or cold, not lukewarm, and he talks about doing good works.

[22:09] The church at Laodicea, you need to do good works. So it's all the same context. That's a kingdom context as well. All right, so let's read.

[22:20] Verse 14, what is it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? Or really, that kind of faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?

[22:46] Thus also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

[22:57] Well, show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God, you do well. Even the demons believe and tremble.

[23:11] Man, that's a good point. Well, I guess we'll get into that in a second, but it's hard not to, it's hard to just keep reading. But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

[23:22] Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect or complete?

[23:35] And the scripture was fulfilled, which says Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

[23:54] Likewise was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.

[24:07] So, this is, man, this is a tough passage if we're trying to figure out how this fits in with faith without works, which is what Paul teaches.

[24:21] So, let's see. We talked about this. What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can faith save him?

[24:33] And then he gives an example. If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, so you have a friend, they don't have any clothes, they don't have any food, they're starving, and one of you says to them, depart in peace and be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?

[24:58] He uses that word profit again. What's the profit if you do that? What's the profit specifically to them, right? So, somebody has a need and you speak a blessing.

[25:09] You say, be warmed and be filled, but do your words actually meet the need? No, they don't. It says, thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

[25:22] I remember in the past I've read this and I thought, oh, he's talking about the need to do good works of feeding people and clothing them, but even though that may be the case, that they ought to do that, that's not his point here.

[25:39] He's providing an illustration. And so he says here, thus also, he's comparison. He said, here's an illustration of where just saying words doesn't accomplish anything.

[25:51] He says it's the same thing with faith. If you just say the words, if you just believe something, but you don't do the works, then it doesn't profit anything. So, here's where we get into the question, well, what kind of faith is he talking about?

[26:14] So, faith here is believing believing in God and his authority. Faith is, when it comes to the faith that James is talking about, faith is, as Jesus talked about, hearing the law, knowing the law, but not doing it.

[26:38] Did Jesus talk about that a few times? Yeah, he had lots of rebukes. In verse 19, he actually talks about the kind of faith that he's referring to.

[26:52] He says, you believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe, and they tremble. So, he's talking about a belief in God. Really, it's monotheism, right?

[27:04] You believe that there is one God. Well, how far does that get you? For the Jew, was it enough to believe that there is just one God? If you were a Jew, and you were a monotheist, but you just neglected the law, was that sufficient?

[27:23] No. You had to also do the law. Now, could you also neglect faith in one God? No. You had to do that, too. You had to do it all.

[27:34] You had to believe that there was one God. In fact, what is the passage from Deuteronomy? It's called the Shema or something. Hear, O Lord. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

[27:46] Right? That's a huge part of the Hebrew faith, is our God is one. And that is important. But as James points out, even the demons believe that.

[27:59] Right? So, is that sufficient? No. I think we can actually apply this to even ourselves as grace believers. Right? Even today. Is it sufficient for somebody in the age of grace to just believe that there is one God?

[28:18] Or is there a requirement that they believe more than that? And we just talked about what is the object of our faith? Is the object of our faith that there is one God and that his name is Jehovah? That's not it.

[28:29] We do need to believe that. We ought to believe that. That is because it is true. But our faith as grace believers is in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins.

[28:40] That's what we need to believe and hold on to. There are many people who go to church and you talk to them and you ask them if you're a Christian. Yes, I believe in one God. But they don't believe that Jesus died for their sins.

[28:55] And it's shocking sometimes when you talk to people and they don't know that even though they go to church sometimes or used to go to church or even still do sometimes. So, as we read through this passage in James, one thing I'd like us to consider is what is he talking about when he's talking about faith?

[29:18] And I think it's very clear he's not talking about faith in the blood of Jesus shed for us. I think the faith that he's talking about is faith, well, in God, you know, the monotheism.

[29:32] But also in the law because that is what God gave to the Jews. And they had to believe in the law. They didn't have, but they had to do more than just believe in it.

[29:43] And part of believing in it was actually doing it. So, if you, and I've done this exercise before, read through James chapter 2 and wherever it says faith, replace it with faith in the law.

[29:58] Just that one word. Wherever it says faith, read faith in the law. And just try doing that and seeing if it makes more sense. Because a lot of times people do read it, they read faith in Christ or faith in the blood of Christ.

[30:13] And I don't think that's what's happening at all. And that's where a lot of confusion comes in. The Pharisees taught the law. But did they do it? Well, Jesus had this to say.

[30:25] Matthew 23 is quite a chapter in the Gospels. Matthew 23 is the book of woes. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees.

[30:38] I don't know how many times he says it, but he says that a lot in chapter 23. But he says this in Matthew 23, verse 2 and 3, he says this.

[30:50] The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do. But do not do according to their works.

[31:04] For they say, and they do not do. So Jesus said, the Pharisees are telling you the right thing. They're telling you you need to keep the law. You need to keep the Sabbath, the dietary law, all these things.

[31:17] You also need to do righteous works and all these moral good that the Bible talks about, that the Hebrew law talks about. And the Pharisees are telling you the right things, but they're a bunch of hypocrites.

[31:28] So do what they say. Don't do what they do. And this is a faith and works thing, isn't it? The Pharisees, their faith was in the law.

[31:40] They were even teaching it. But they weren't doing it. Now a question to ask ourselves, even though we're making this big contrast, right, between what was required for the Hebrews and what's required for us under grace.

[31:55] But we would be remiss if we didn't look at some of these words. We would be able to do the warnings and apply them to ourselves. Could we as Christians, even though we enjoy salvation by grace alone, we don't have to do any works.

[32:09] We don't have to do any of it in order to be in Christ. But can we be hypocrites too? Is it possible for us? Without a doubt, right?

[32:20] We could also do the exact same thing. But may it never be that we would do something like that. We teach the whole world. Here is God's standard for moral righteousness.

[32:32] You know, you should not commit adultery. You should not murder. You shouldn't steal your neighbor's things. Those things are good. We ought not to do those. And as Christians, we ought to live that out.

[32:43] It doesn't in any way impact our justification before God. We are righteous without doing any of those things. But still, we ought to. And we ought to do it without hypocrisy.

[32:55] We shouldn't just teach. And one of the things that brings so much disperchment to the body of Christ is some famous preacher out there who's a preacher of righteousness.

[33:07] And then it comes out that what? They've been living a hypocritical life for years and years. And how many people have rejected considering the gospel because of that?

[33:19] And so, we should take these kinds of things seriously. We don't want to try to make this a requirement of our justification of our being true Christians.

[33:31] And even for those people that do it, many of them are real, true believers who are hypocrites. Is it possible to be a Christian hypocrite?

[33:42] It certainly is. And so, we, even though hypocrisy is not, our salvation is not dependent on our not being hypocrites.

[33:53] Still, as believers, may it never be that we would be called hypocrites. Oh my goodness, we only got a few verses in.

[34:06] So, we'll, I'm going to wrap this up. We didn't get very far. But talking about what does the Bible say about us being under grace, especially in light of this.

[34:17] So, I guess I never, we have this, we have this illustration of saying something to someone instead of actually giving them what they need.

[34:30] And so, the illustration is the same. Neither of them profit. It doesn't profit the person that's in need if you just say something. If you are under the law and you just give lip service to the law, it doesn't profit you because that's not what the law teaches.

[34:46] The law teaches that you have to do it. Not just speak it. Not just believe it. But you have to do it. And so, it doesn't profit you. So, in both of these cases, they're similar because one doesn't, both of them don't profit.

[35:01] And so, that's his point. You have to do it. Under grace. Under grace, faith without works, without works of the law, is exactly the kind of faith that we ought to have.

[35:18] Faith without works. Turn to Romans 4. We'll spend the rest of our time in Romans 4. One of the things, when you say a statement like that, oh man, it's so controversial.

[35:36] And people think that what you're saying is, is that you should sin. If you want to be a good Christian, you should sin. That's what people think.

[35:51] But if people, if people think that, you tend to be in good company. Because Paul says, you know what some people accuse me of? Some people, because I say this, he says, Paul says, some people accuse me of saying that you should sin more than grace might abound.

[36:09] He says, God forbid that anyone would ever teach that. But that's what people say about me. And so, if you go through your whole life and nobody ever accuses you of that, then, you know, maybe you're not preaching grace strong enough.

[36:25] Can I say that? Because it happened to Paul. Paul got accused of saying, oh, you should just forget about doing good and righteousness so that grace might abound.

[36:36] But that's not what he taught. Romans 4. We'll start with verse 1. What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh?

[36:47] For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And here's the kicker in comparison to James.

[37:00] James, now to him who works, the wages are not committed as grace, but as debt. So you can do works and it'll be counted to you as a debt. You earned it.

[37:12] Verse 5. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted as righteousness. So is it the one who brings works along with his faith that's justified?

[37:28] No, it's the one who does not work. He's justified. Now does that mean with our faith we've got to make sure that we commit as many sins as we can so that we make sure that our faith doesn't have any works?

[37:44] No, that's not true at all. But those works provide nothing. They provide no value. They don't provide value either direction because some people focus on your works making you more righteous and then other people focus on, wow, my works make me really unrighteous.

[38:04] Right? Depending on how good you are at it. Some of us are pretty good at good works. Right? We're actually pretty good. We've been doing this a while and so we're pretty good at good works. And so, hey, I can earn something.

[38:17] And other people, man, they stink at good works. They've, you know, they took to the bottle early on and they just can't seem to get through life without messing up every single day.

[38:29] And so they live life in depression and anxiety and fear because they think I'll never be able to live up to what God requires of me. You know what? That's true. They won't.

[38:42] But they don't need to because God provided a gift of righteousness. Romans 3.28, I won't have you turn there, says this, for the sake of time.

[38:53] We're almost out of time here. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. And then Galatians 2.16 says this, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

[39:16] For by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. So our faith under grace is, like we said earlier, not just believing, not just being monotheists, not just even believing that Jesus is the Messiah.

[39:31] Some people think that, oh, Jesus was the Messiah for the Jews and that's what our faith is. No, our faith is that Jesus died for your sins. Believe that.

[39:41] Believe that. Wow, I have all these, I have like 20 verses here about how under grace Christians ought to do good works because, you know, it's important after saying all this and just slamming works, right, this whole idea we have to do works to be righteous, it's good to follow up with a lot of Paul's teaching that we need to do good works.

[40:14] So for the sake of time, since we just have a couple minutes, I'm going to just read through, I don't know, maybe five or six verses. We do ought to do good works as Christians. We ought to follow our faith that's in Christ's blood with good works.

[40:31] Good works ought to follow but they don't have to. They should. But sometimes they don't, unfortunately. We ought to be mature Christians but we're not always.

[40:45] works do not give life to our faith. They don't confirm or prove our faith but they ought to follow our faith.

[40:55] Ephesians 2.8 For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. We were created. That was in the past. God gave us new life. We are a new creation right now and as part of that new creation, we are created to be a new creature that does good things just like our father and our brother as the Bible calls him Jesus Christ.

[41:20] 1 Timothy 2.10 But that which is proper for women professing godliness with good works. Talks about good works specifically for women. 1 Timothy 5.10 It's well reported for good works.

[41:34] Oh, he's talking about I think the widow here who is in need saying that she needs to be well reported for good works if she has brought up children and she has lodged strangers and if she has washed the saints' feet if she has relieved the afflicted if she has diligently followed every good work.

[41:50] And then later on in that chapter Likewise, the good works of some are clearly evident and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden. In 1 Timothy 6 he says this Let them do good that are rich I'm sorry Let them do good that they be rich in good works ready to give willing to share.

[42:07] I've got five more but we're just going to finish up there for the sake of time. As believers we ought to do good works. We ought to do good works. We ought to do good to both those in the body of Christ and others around us.

[42:23] We should never ever, ever, ever look at our good works and allow those things to either improve or diminish our confidence in who we are in Christ.

[42:40] Christ made us we are in him we live in him we have righteousness we have holiness we are set apart the Bible talks about all the riches that we have in Christ by our faith alone.

[42:53] We want the works to follow but never, ever, ever put any confidence in those works they'll fail you and even when they succeed in giving you confidence they'll make you a poor Christian because of it.

[43:08] God forbid that we should ever boast in anything that we ever do. Amen. I'll finish up there and see if there's any questions or comments to follow up. Roger. Romans 7 and 8.

[43:20] Yeah, Romans 7 and 8. Yeah. Oh wretched man that I am Oh wretched man that I am deliver me from this body that thanks be to God in Christ Jesus and the Lord.

[43:30] Yeah. Amen. Dave. One of the problematic things for people is where James was put in the Bible.

[43:41] Okay. The location. That's why we have to really study it out. Yeah. Who was written to and what time and all that. Yeah, if we rearrange the Bible to where you have James and the other Hebrew epistles kind of in the Old Testament or something like that adultery and they're flaunting it don't even eat with that person.

[44:03] Kick them out of your church. I mean for a lot of people that's wow that's really severe. Shouldn't we have grace? Well you know that's a whole different thing. You know we acknowledge if they're trusting in Christ that that trust in Christ is sufficient.

[44:17] So we don't overlook sin but we don't put any confidence in our flesh in our sin or in our practice of good works or lack thereof.

[44:30] All right. Thanks everybody. A G