Biblion Bible Commentary
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Justified by Works
James 2:24-26
24 You see then that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. · WEB
The sentence that has caused the most difficulty is read in the paragraph that produced it, and the second example is chosen to make the point unmistakable.
Verse 24 states the conclusion: a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. The final word is the one that carries it. The letter is not denying that faith justifies; it is denying that a faith which is only faith — only stated, only assented to — does so. That qualification is not read into the sentence, it is in the sentence.
Everything in the paragraph points the same way. A man who says he has faith James 2:14. A creed the demons share James 2:19. A demand to show James 2:18. And a righteousness credited years before the act that fulfilled the verse James 2:23. Read in its own paragraph the argument is coherent and it is not about the ground of salvation at all.
Verse 25 adds Rahab, and the pairing is deliberate. Abraham is the patriarch; Rahab is a foreign prostitute whose recorded work is hiding two messengers and sending them out another way. If the point were the merit of works, she is an impossible example. If the point is that real faith acts — that she believed enough about Israel's God to risk her life on it — she is the perfect one.
Verse 26 closes with an image that settles the relation for good. Body without spirit is dead; faith without works is dead. Works are not the body's companion in that comparison. They are the breath — the sign that what is lying there is alive.
settled What this mark means