February 8 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 39—James 2:14

¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

Devotional:

We value learning and articulating sound doctrine. That is important! God says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hos. 4:6). At the same time we'd better heed our God's probing through James. "What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?"

Notice that the "faith" this verse condemns is one of profession ("someone says he has faith") without practice ("but does not have works"). In other words, it's articulation with no corresponding action. It's all talk and no walk. This is the religion of Talkative, the counterfeit Christian in Pilgrim's Progress.

"Religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation [behavior], all he hath lieth in his tongue and his religion is to make a noise therewith."^†

Through James, God asks two rhetorical questions. "What good is it?" The implied answer is, "No good at all!" Second, "Can that faith save him?" The implied answer is, "NO!" "That" kind of "faith"—faith that's all talk and no walk—is not genuine saving faith.

What then is genuine saving faith? The Larger Catechism helpfully summarizes:

Justifying faith is a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby he, being convinced of his sin and misery, and of the disability in himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assenteth to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receiveth and resteth upon Christ and his righteousness, therein held forth, for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation. –Larger Catechism #72

Genuine faith is a "grace" that our Lord himself sovereignly works in the sinner's heart.

^† John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Oxford World's Classics paperback, 2003 edition), p. 77

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.