The Lamb of God 10 min read Lesson 10 of 12

Not of works, says Paul; not by faith only, says James; and the tax collector who went home justified before either of them wrote a line

Faith Alone, and the Works That Follow

Sola fide, by faith alone, was the Reformation’s shortest sentence and its longest argument. The phrase itself appears once in the Bible, in James, with the word not in front of it. Paul says a person is justified apart from works; James says a faith without works is dead. Both quote Abraham. This lesson reads them together, marks where the churches divided over them, and holds the reading the series has been building toward.

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Lesson 10 of 12 · The argument

By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast; and then, in the next breath, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Ephesians has the whole matter in three verses, and the order is the matter: works are what a saved person is made for, not what they are saved by. That is what the Reformers meant by faith alone, and they added at once that the faith which justifies is never alone, because it produces what it was made for. James is not their enemy. He is answering a different question, put by a man who says he has faith and has nothing to show for it, and James’s answer is that such a faith is a corpse. Paul answers the question of how a person is made right with God: by nothing they do. James answers the question of what a person made right looks like: like Abraham on the mountain. The churches divided in the sixteenth century over whether righteousness is credited to a believer or poured into them, and the division is real and marked here. This series holds the first, and holds with it that the credited righteousness goes to work.

Not of works

The letter to the Ephesians says it in the plainest sentence the New Testament has on the subject, and then keeps going.

for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them. — Ephesians 2:8–10 · WEB

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them. Grace is the ground, faith is the hand, works are the walk. Verse 9 rules out boasting; verse 10 rules out idleness; and neither verse can be read without the other, which is how the passage guards itself against both the man who thinks he earned it and the man who thinks nothing is asked of him. The ninth lesson’s Abraham is here in the word gift.

δικαιόω dikaióō G1344

from δίκαιος; to render (i.e. show or regard as) just or innocent:--free, justify(-ier), be righteous.

To justify — to declare or treat someone as righteous, to acquit, to vindicate; in a court, the verdict for the defendant. The argument of the Reformation turned on this verb. The Latin Bible rendered it with a word that sounds like "to make righteous," and the medieval church read it so: justification as a change worked in the person. The Reformers went back to the Greek and to its Old Testament use, where a judge justifies a defendant by declaring for him and cannot make him anything, and read it as a verdict: righteousness credited, not infused. The verb in Luke 18:14, where a tax collector goes home justified after one sentence of prayer, is the same verb, and it is hard to read it there as anything but a verdict.

The tax collector

Before Paul or James wrote a line, Jesus told a story that used the word.

But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” — Luke 18:13–14 · WEB

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The tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his chest, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. The other is a Pharisee who has fasted twice a week and tithed everything, and thanked God for it, and whom Jesus does not accuse of lying. The tax collector has nothing to report and reports it, and the verb of the prayer, be merciful, is the verb of the mercy seat: be propitiated toward me. He goes home justified, Jesus says, before he has done anything, on the strength of a prayer that asked for the lamb without naming it.

James

Now the letter that Luther called an epistle of straw, which he nonetheless printed and preached.

You see then that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. — James 2:24 · WEB

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You see then that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith. The sentence has to be read in its argument, and the argument begins ten verses earlier with a man who says he has faith and has no works, and asks whether that faith can save him. James’s answer is that the faith in question is dead, a body without breath, and that the demons believe God is one and shudder; and his example is Abraham, offering Isaac, in whom faith worked with works and was perfected. He is not describing how Abraham was made right with God; the second lesson noted that James himself quotes Genesis 15:6 as the earlier event that the mountain fulfilled. He is describing what a living faith does, and saying that a faith that does nothing is not the thing Paul was talking about either. Paul’s opponent wants to add works to faith as the ground; James’s opponent wants to subtract works from faith as the fruit. Both apostles say no, to different men.

“Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself. Yes, a man will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” James 2:17–18 · WEB
Faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself; show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works: the challenge, and the only proof of faith another person can see.
“yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.” Galatians 2:16 · WEB
A man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law: Paul’s sentence, three times in one verse, to Peter’s face at Antioch.
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision amounts to anything, but faith working through love.” Galatians 5:6 · WEB
In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision amounts to anything, but faith working through love: Paul’s own version of James, in the letter most against works.
“not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:5–7 · WEB
Not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy he saved us, that being justified by his grace we might be made heirs: the whole order in a sentence, mercy first, justification, then inheritance.

Where the churches divided

The reader should know the shape of the argument, because it is the largest in Western Christianity and it was fought over these verses. The Reformers held that justification is God’s verdict, on the ground of Christ’s righteousness credited to the believer, received by faith alone, and that good works follow as fruit and add nothing to the verdict. The Council of Trent, answering them in 1547, held that justification includes the pouring of righteousness into the person, that faith must be formed by love to justify, and that works done in grace increase it; it condemned the phrase "by faith alone" understood as the Reformers meant it. Both sides quoted Paul and James. Both agreed that grace comes first and that a faith without works is dead. The difference is whether righteousness is credited or infused, a verdict or a transformation, and it has not been resolved, though the two sides have spoken more gently to each other since 1999. This series reads with the Reformers, because the ninth lesson’s ledger verb and the tax collector’s verdict seem to it to require that; it reads with James, too, and says that the credited righteousness goes to work or was never received.

Peace

Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; — Romans 5:1 · WEB

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Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The result of the verdict is not anxiety about keeping it but peace, and the peace is with God, which is the fourth series’ word shalom and the third lesson’s household behind the door: the judgment has passed over. The eleventh and twelfth lessons are about what people at peace with God do, which is worship and walk. Neither is done to earn the peace.

What faith alone asks

It asks a person to stop keeping two ledgers, one of what Christ did and one of what they have added, and to close the second. That is harder than it sounds, because the second ledger is where a religious life keeps its self-respect. Faith alone does not ask for fewer works; James forbids that reading and Paul never made it. It asks that the works be done by someone already justified, as a walk and not a wage, and it promises that the person who believes this will find themselves doing more of them, not fewer, because they are no longer working for their life.