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.
