Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 198 · July 17
Being Alone
“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”
The best-known opinion about this verse comes from a preface written in 1522. Martin Luther was introducing his German New Testament, and he sorted the books by how plainly they preach Christ. Set beside the best of them, he said, James is "a right strawy epistle." That phrase was dropped from later editions, and the letter of James stayed in his Bible.
When you look at what James is arguing against, most of the heat goes out of the quarrel. He begins with a scene. Suppose "a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food," and one of you says to them, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled," but gives them nothing they need. James asks, "what doth it profit?" The dead faith in this chapter is a kind word said to a cold person by somebody who then goes home to a warm house.
Then James builds a chain of examples. He says that "the devils also believe, and tremble," so simply agreeing that God exists is something even demons manage. Next comes "Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar." Then comes Rahab the harlot, named in the same breath as Abraham. Finally he sums it up: "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."
The verse that sends people back to Luther is the one where James quotes the same sentence from Genesis that 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 show that real belief can be seen. The two men are facing different people. Paul answers someone who thinks he can earn God's favour, and James answers someone who says he has faith but can show nothing for it.
So take the promise in Paul's own words: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Then read on to verse ten: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." God prepared the good works before you ever arrived. The faith He gives was never made to sit alone, and He will see to it that yours does not.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 198 is Revived in Trouble (Psalm 138:7).