Relationship of Faith to Works

Driving home: It is important to remember that the apostolic epistles are not, in the technical sense of the phrase, confessions of faith. They are not systematic statements of doctrine built up with passionless exactness, but they ar…

Robert Johnstone's analogy of two groups of soldiers in the same army, appearing to fight each other but actually attacking a common enemy from opposite flanks, illustrates how Paul and James address different errors (legalism and antinomianism) from different angles.

They are soldiers in intense, earnest fighting on the plain for the honor of their Lord. They are captains marshalling their troops of arguments and appeals against various manifestations of error and of sin. Then he goes on to use a very graphic illustration. Back in the days when foot soldiery was the order of the day in a military sense, we might be approaching a certain battlefield, and we see off in the distance, men clothed in the uniform of a certain army.

21:29 - 22:04 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin begins his exposition of James 2, focusing on verses 14-17. He highlights James's concern with the *kind* of faith that saves, using the analogy of professed love without…

James's analogy of someone professing love to a naked and hungry person but offering no practical help is used to parallel a professed faith that produces no works, showing its emptiness.

Giving the next question, Luke suggests a parallel in verses 15 and 16, if a brother or sister be naked, and lack of daily food, and one of you say unto him, Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled. And yet ye give of them not the thing needful unto thekelijkies. the body. What does it profit? He suggests a parallel between faith and the grace of love. Now his question is, what good is it if a man says, oh yes, I have love, but then in a situation where love will work, there is no work of love, it profit. In the language of John, if we see a brother have need and we shut up the bowels of compassi...

29:00 - 30:09 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He concludes the exposition with James 2:26, reiterating that faith without works is dead, just as a body without a spirit is dead. Martin harmonizes Paul and James, emphasizing…

The analogy of a body without a spirit being dead is used to powerfully convey that faith without works is likewise dead, lacking the animating principle of spiritual life.

Then he draws the whole argument to its final conclusion in verse 26. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, when the spirit, the life principle leaves the body, the undertaker, the mortician takes over. The body is there in its form and substance, but it's dead. When the spirit leaves, the life principle is gone, nothing's left but the carcass.

41:25 - 41:54 Read in full sermon

The point: If you profess faith, do you seek to walk in obedience to Christ out of love, and are you pained when you fail?

A quote stating that 'repentance is the tear in faith's eye' is used to illustrate that true faith is always accompanied by ongoing penitence and grief over sin, even in advanced believers.

Someone has very beautifully said that repentance is the tear in faith's eye. And true faith is never tearless, even in the most advanced believer. The presence of sin brings grief, though it does not bring legal bondage. Though it does not bring dread of judgment, it brings pain, knowing it has displeased the object of its faith.

48:27 - 49:01 Read in full sermon