From: James 2:14-24, 26
Faith Without Good Works Is Dead
[18] But some one will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your
faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. [19] You
believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.
Examples from the Bible
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Commentary:
14-26. This passage forms the core of the letter. The sapiential method (often
used in the Old Testament) and pedagogical style of the passage help to engrave
the message on the readers’ minds: unless faith is accompanied by works, it is
barren, dead. This basic message, with different variances, is stated up to five
times (verses 14, 17, 18, 20, 26), in a cyclical, repetitive way.
The initial rhetorical question (verse 14) and the simple, vivid example of a person
who is content with giving good advice to someone in urgent need of the bare es-
sentials (verses 15-16), catch the disciples’ attention and predispose them to ac-
cept the core message, which is couched in the form of a sapiential maxim
(verse 17).
The narrative retains its conventional tone, with a series of questions; we are
given three examples of faith: firstly (a negative example), the faith of demons,
which is of no avail (verses 18-19); contrasting with this, the faith of Abraham,
the model and father of believers (verses 20-23); and finally, the faith of a sinner
whose actions won her salvation, Rabah, the prostitute (verses 24-25). The last
sentence once again repeats the essential idea: “faith apart from works is dead”
(verse 26).
14. This teaching is perfectly in line with that of the Master: “Not every one who
says to Me, `Lord, Lord’, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does
the will of My Father who is in Heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
A faith without deeds cannot obtain salvation: “Even though incorporated into the
Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains
indeed in the bosom of the Church, but `in body’ not `in heart’. All children of the
Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results not
from their own merits but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in
thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they
shall be the more severely judged” (Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium”, 14).
In the Christian life, therefore, there needs to be complete consistency between
the faith we profess and the deeds we do. “Unity of life”, one of the key features
of the spirituality of Opus Dei, tries to counter the danger of people leading a dou-
ble life, “on the one hand, an inner life, a life related to God; and on the other, as
something separate and distinct, their professional, social and family lives, made
up of small earthly realities [...]. There is only one life, made of flesh and spirit.
And it is that life which has to become, in both body and soul, holy and filled with
God: we discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things” (St. J.
Escriva, “In Love with the Church”, 52).
15-16. This very graphic example is similar to that in the First Letter of St. John:
“If any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his
heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17); and the
conclusion is also along the same lines: “Little children, let us not love in word
or speech but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). St. Paul gives the same tea-
ching: “the Kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power” (1 Corinthians
4:20). Actions, works, measure the genuineness of the Christian life; they show
whether our faith and charity are real.
Almsgiving, for example, so often praised and recommended in Scripture (cf.,
e.g., Deuteronomy 15:11; Tobias 4:7-11; Luke 12:33; Acts 9:36; 2 Corinthians 8:
9), is very often a duty. Christ “will count a kindness done or refused to the poor
as done or refused to Himself [...]. Whoever has received from the divine bounty
a large share of temporal blessings whether they be external or material, or gifts
of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting
of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the ste-
ward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others” (Leo XIII, “Rerum Novarum”,
24).
17. As well as involving firm adherence to revealed truth, faith must influence a
Christian’s ordinary life and be a standard against which he measures his con-
duct. When one’s works are not in accordance with one’s beliefs, then one’s
faith is dead.
Christian teaching also describes as “dead faith” the faith of a person in mortal
sin: because he is not in the grace of God he does not have charity, which is as
it were the soul of all the other virtues. “Faith without hope and charity neither
perfectly unites a man with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body.
Therefore it is said most truly that `faith apart from works is dead’ (James 2:17ff)
and useless” (Council of Trent, “De Iustificatione”, 7).
18. The Apostle makes it crystal clear that faith without work makes no sense at
all. “The truth of faith includes not only inner belief, but also outward profession,
which is expressed not only by declaration of one’s belief, but also by the actions
by which a person shows that he has faith” (St. Thomas, “Summa Theologiae”,
II-II, q. 124, a. 5).
19. St. James goes as far as to compare a faith without works with the kind of
faith devils have, for they do believe: they are forced to believe by the evidence
of the signs (miracles and prophecies, for example) which support Christian tea-
ching (cf. “Summa Theologiae”, II-II, q. 5, a. 2). However, that faith is not saving
faith; on the contrary, it causes them to cringe by reminding them of divine jus-
tice and eternal punishment.
Commenting on this verse, St. Bede says that it is one thing to believe God, a-
nother thing to believe in God, and another to believe “towards” God (”credere in
illum”). “Believing Him is believing that what He says is true. Believing in Him
is believing that He is God. Believing `towards’ Him is loving Him. Many people,
even bad people, believe that God tells the truth; they believe it is the truth and
they do not want to, are too lazy to, follow the way truth points. Believing that
He is God is something the devils are able to do. But believing and tending to-
wards Him is true only of those who love God, who are Christians not in name
only but whose actions and lives prove them to be so. For without love faith is
of no avail. With love, it is the faith of a Christian; without love, it is the faith of
the devil” (”Super Iac. Expositio, ad loc.”).
20-26. The original addressees of the letter (Christians of Jewish background
steeped in Scripture) would have been very familiar with the two examples from
the Old Testament (Abraham and Rahab).
The patriarch Abraham is a model of faith (cf. especially Hebrews 11:8ff). St.
James highlights the fact that his faith was manifested in deeds (verse 22),
so much so that he was ready to sacrifice his own son when God, to test him,
asked him to do so (cf. Genesis 22:1ff). The text of Genesis 15:6 quoted here
(verse 23) is also used by St. Paul in his polemic against the Judaizers, to show
that “first justification” comes from faith and not from works of the Mosaic Law
(cf. Romans 4:1-25; Galatians 3:6-9); that is, Abraham was justified from the
very moment he believed in God; his works would not have any value without that
direct reference to God. In Abraham, as in every Christian who acts consistently,
faith and works totally imbue each other: works show forth faith, and faith inspires
and performs works (verses 22, 24).
The story of Rahab (verse 25) is told in the Book of Joshua (2:1-21; 6:17-25): this
woman, who was living among the Canaanites, saved the lives of two Israelite
spies whom Joshua had sent into Jericho, and for this reason she and her family
were saved when the Israelites took the city. Her actions showed her faith (cf. Jo-
shua 2:9-14; Hebrews 11:31), and led not only to her coming out unscathed and
becoming a member of the people of Israel; it also won her the honor of being one
of the four foreign women mentioned in the Gospel in our Lord’s ancestral tree (cf.
Matthew 1:5).
These two examples clearly show that God calls all men to believe and that all
can and should manifest their faith by exemplary living.
22-24. The Magisterium of the Church quotes these verses when it teaches that
justification, righteousness, received as a free gift in the Sacrament of Baptism,
grows in strength as the Christian responds to grace by keeping the command-
ments of God and of the Church; the righteous, the just, “increase in the very
justice which they have received through the grace of Christ, their faith is com-
pleted by works (cf. James 2:22), and they are justified the more, as it is written,
`Let the righteous still do right’ (Revelation 22:11), [...] and again: `You see that
a man is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24)” (Council of
Trent, “De Iustificatione”, 10).
23. “It was reckoned to him as righteousness”: St. Paul (cf. Galatians 3:6 and
note) uses these words of Genesis 15:6 to explain that righteousness is attained
not just by Abraham’s descendants but by all who believe the word of God, whe-
ther they be Jews or not; St. James, from another perspective, quotes this text
to show that Abraham’s faith made him righteous, that is, holy. Both teachings
are complementary. Abraham believed in the divine promise that he would be
the father of a great people despite his age and his wife’s sterility; but that faith
was reinforced and manifested when it met the test God set—that of sacrificing
his only son, while still believing in the earlier promise. The same thing happens
in the case of the Christian: his initial faith is strengthened by obedience to the
commandments, and he thereby attains holiness.
“The friend of God”: Scripture also gives this touching title to Abraham (cf. Isaiah
41:8; Daniel 3:35, New Vulgate) and our Lord uses it to describe His Apostles: “I
have called you friends” (John 15:15). These are not just isolated examples, for
God calls all to be His friends; He wishes to be as intimate with everyone as He
was with Abraham and the Apostles: “We do not exist in order to pursue just any
happiness. We have been called to penetrate the intimacy of God’s own life, to
know and love God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and to love
also—in that same love of the one God in three divine Persons—the angels and all
men” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ Is Passing By”, 133).
26. In speaking of “the spirit” St. James is referring to the “breathe of life”, “brea-
thing”. The comparison (like all those in the letter) is very graphic: we recognize
a body to be alive by its breathing: if it is not breathing it is a corpse; similarly, a
faith that is alive expresses itself in actions, especially in the acts of charity.
“Just as when a body moves we know it is alive,” St. Bernard explains, “so too
good works show that faith is alive. The soul gives life to the body, causing it to
move and feel; charity gives life to faith, causing it to act, as the Apostle says,
`faith working through love’ (Galatians 5:6). Just as the body dies when its soul
leaves it, so faith dies when charity grows cold. Therefore, when you see some-
one who is active in good works and happy and eager in his conduct, you can
be sure that faith is alive in him: his life clearly proves it to be so” (”Second
Sermon on the Holy Day of Easter”, 1).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Mark 8:34-9:1
Christian Renunciation (Continuation)
[1] And He said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who
will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power.”
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Commentary:
35. “Life”: in the original text and the New Vulgate the word literally means “soul.”
But here, as in many other cases, “soul” and “life” are equivalent. The word “life”
is used, clearly, in a double sense: earthly life and eternal life, the life of man here-
on earth and man’s eternal happiness in Heaven. Death can put an end to earthly
life, but it cannot destroy eternal life (cf. Matthew 10:28), the life which can only
be given by Him who brings the dead back to life.
Understood in this way, we can grasp the paradoxical meaning of our Lord’s
phrase: whoever wishes to save his (earthly) life will lose his (eternal) life. But
whoever loses his (earthly) life for Me and the Gospel, will save his (eternal) life.
What, then, does saving one’s (earthly) life mean? It means living this life as if
there were no other — letting oneself be controlled by the lust of the flesh and the
lust of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:16). And losing one’s (earthly)
life means mortifying, by continuous ascetical effort, this triple concupiscence —
that is, taking up one’s cross (verse 34)—and consequently seeking and savoring
the things that are God’s and not the things of the earth (cf. Colossians 3:1-2).
36-37. Jesus promises eternal life to those who are willing to lose earthly life for
His sake. He has given us example: He is the Good Shepherd who lays down
His life for His sheep (John 10:15); and He fulfilled in His own case what He said
to the Apostles on the night before He died: “Greater love has no man than this
that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
38. Each person’s eternal destiny will be decided by Christ. He is the Judge who
will come to judge the living and the dead (Matthew 16:27). The sentence will de-
pend on how faithful each has been in keeping the Lord’s commandments — to
love God and to love one’s neighbor, for God’s sake. On that day Christ will not
recognize as His disciple anyone who is ashamed to imitate Jesus’ humility and
example and follow the precepts of the Gospel for fear of displeasing the world or
worldly people: he has failed to confess by his life the faith which he claims to
hold. A Christian, then, should never be ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1:16);
he should never let himself be drawn away by the worldliness around him; rather
he should exercise a decisive influence on his environment, counting on the help
of God’s grace. The first Christians changed the ancient pagan world. God’s arm
has not grown shorter since their time (cf. Isaiah 59:1). Cf. Matthew 10:32-33 and
note on same.
9:1. The coming of the Kingdom of God with power does not seem to refer to the
second, glorious coming of Jesus at the end of time (the Parousia); it may, rather,
indicate the amazing spread of the Church in the lifetime of the Apostles. Many
of those present here will witness this. The growth and spread of the Church in
the world can be explained only by the divine power God gives to the mystical bo-
dy of Christ. The Transfiguration of our Lord, which is recounted in the next pas-
sage, is a sign, given to the Apostles, of Jesus’ divinity and of the divine powers
which He will give His Church.
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.