Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 198 · July 17
Being Alone
“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”
The most quoted opinion about this verse was written into a book preface in 1522. Luther, introducing his German New Testament, ranked the books by how plainly they preach Christ and said that James, set beside them, is a right strawy epistle. The phrase is gone from later editions. The book stayed.
Look at what James argues against and the heat drops. He opens with a room. If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? The dead faith in this chapter is a sentence. A warm thing said to a cold person by somebody who then goes home.
Then he runs a chain. The devils also believe, and tremble, so bare assent is a thing demons manage. Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar. Rahab the harlot named in the same paragraph as Abraham. Then the summary: as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
The verse that sends people back to Luther is where James quotes the sentence Paul quotes. Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. Paul builds Romans 4 on it: to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. James builds this chapter on it to say the believing is visible. One answers a man who thinks he can earn it. The other answers a man who says he has it and can show nothing.
So take the promise in Paul's words. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Then the line straight after: we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. The works were prepared before you were. Faith that God gave does not sit alone, because he never built it to.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 198 is Revived in Trouble (Psalm 138:7).