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Faith and works | Is there a conflict between Paul and James

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JEFF TURNER

Nearly five hundred years ago, Martin Luther sparked one of the most significant religious transformations in history by recovering the ancient gospel truth that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The Reformation that followed reshaped the landscape of Christianity in the Western world. Yet Luther himself struggled with the letter of James, famously referring to it with some unease, precisely because of a verse that can appear to contradict the very principle he had championed. James 2:24 declares: “A man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” How do we hold that alongside Paul’s declaration in Romans that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law?

The resolution lies in recognising that Paul and James, while using the same vocabulary, are addressing different questions and different audiences. Paul is answering the question of how a sinner stands righteous before God: the answer is by grace, through faith, not by any human effort or merit. James is addressing a different question: how do we know whether someone’s faith is genuine? And his answer is: by the evidence of their life.

Works do not provide salvation. But works do demonstrate salvation. Faith, by its very nature, cannot be seen. It is an internal disposition of trust and reliance upon Christ. The watching world, whether believers or unbelievers, cannot examine a person’s faith directly. What they can examine is conduct.

Paul himself captures this harmoniously in Ephesians chapter 2: we are saved by grace through faith, and we are saved unto good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to walk in.

Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

A plan formed before the world began

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JEFF TURNER

Before a single atom of the physical universe was called into existence, God already knew what would happen. He foresaw the fall of humanity. He understood the full weight of what sin would cost. And, most importantly, he planned our redemption.

Think about it. God chose, before the foundation of the world, to redeem fallen human beings through the blood of his Son. The plan was not a response to an emergency. It was not a contingency formed after the fact. It was woven into the eternal purposes of God before time itself began its count.

What this plan actually required is where the mind staggers. God the Father, in his infinite wisdom and love, purposed to send his only begotten Son into the world, to let him live among humanity in mortal flesh, and ultimately to allow him to bear the weight of human sin on a cross, shedding his blood so that your sin and mine could be forgiven.

To grasp even a portion of this is to be undone by gratitude. The God who made the stars looked ahead to your need and made provision for it before he made the morning itself.

For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you

1 Peter 1:20

God speaks through his Spirit

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will guide believers into all truth.

God never makes a mistake. He does not always act as people want, at the time they want, in the way they want or for the reasons they would choose. He permits things that people dislike and things they cannot understand, yet he makes no errors.

I believe that when a believer is walking in obedience and listening, and God wants to give a sense of direction, he impresses the believer’s spirit so strongly that the person simply knows they have heard from God.

What are your thoughts?

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God.

Romans 8:14

Becoming all things to all people without compromise

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

The apostle Paul once wrote that he had become all things to all people so that he might by every possible means save some. This is something today that gets used to justify church strategies aimed at appealing to the surrounding culture. But is this what Paul meant?

Properly understood, I don’t think Paul was describing compromise. He didn’t advocate for adopting sinful behaviour in order to identify with those who practice it. Wouldn’t this run counter to everything in his character and calling? Instead, Paul was describing a willingness to remove any unnecessary offence from his approach. He adjusted his sensitivity depending on whether he addressed Jews, Gentiles, or weaker believers. He even abstained from meat entirely if eating it caused a fellow believer to stumble.

I don’t see that Paul’s goal was to become like the people he was reaching. He wanted to avoid needlessly offending them while still proclaiming the truth.

Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to sin.

1 Corinthians 8:13

A Conversation About Paul, Part Three: A Vision or a Real Encounter?

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DAVID INGRAM

In the last two articles, I responded to two points raised by an acquaintance who approached me in a spirit of dawah, the Islamic practice of inviting others to consider Islam. The first article addressed whether Paul had any real connection to Jesus since he never walked with him in person. The second addressed Paul’s violent past as Saul, before his conversion. Now I want to turn to his third complaint.

His argument was that Paul claims that Jesus spoke to him in a vision on the road to Damascus, not in a physical, in person meeting. Since this was only a vision, the argument goes, it carries less weight than an actual, physical encounter with Jesus, and he claimed that it raises doubt about whether Paul truly received authority to teach in Jesus’s name.

I want to respond to this honestly and directly.

It’s true that the accounts in Acts describe Paul encountering a bright light and hearing a voice while traveling to Damascus, rather than sharing a meal with Jesus or walking beside him on a road the way the twelve disciples did. But the word “vision” can be misleading if we assume it means something imagined. According to Acts 9, the men traveling with Paul also experienced this event. They saw the light and heard something, even if they didn’t fully understand the words. Paul was struck blind for three days afterward, a physical effect that lingered well past the initial moment. This was not a private daydream or an inward feeling. It had outward, physical, and lasting consequences that other people around him witnessed.

Paul also describes this event elsewhere in a way that treats it as a genuine appearance of the risen Christ, not a lesser kind of experience. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul lists the people Jesus appeared to after the resurrection, including Peter, the twelve disciples, more than five hundred believers at once, and then he adds, “last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” Paul places his own encounter in the same category as the others, as a real appearance of the risen Jesus, not a separate or lesser category of religious experience.

It’s also worth remembering that the resurrection itself is central to the Christian message. If Jesus rose from the dead, then he was no longer limited to walking dusty roads with a small group of followers in Galilee. A postresurrection appearance to Paul, even if it came through blinding light and a voice rather than a shared meal, fits within the pattern of how the risen Jesus is described appearing to others in the Gospels as well, sometimes recognized immediately, sometimes not, sometimes appearing suddenly in a locked room.

So while the nature of Paul’s encounter was different from how the twelve disciples first met Jesus during his earthly ministry, it does not follow that this makes it less real or less authoritative. It was a genuine encounter with the risen Christ, with physical effects witnessed by others, and Paul treats it with the same weight as the other resurrection appearances recorded in the New Testament.

This is the third point my acquaintance raised. The next article will address his claim that the details of this event are described differently across different verses in Acts, which he offered as evidence of contradiction.