Genuine faith rests entirely on what Jesus finished at the cross, and a faith that real cannot stay hidden. It shows up in mercy, forgiveness, courage, and love.
Who is a Christian? It sounds like a simple question, but how you answer it changes everything. Get it wrong, and you can spend twenty years in church, speak in tongues, even preach from a pulpit, and still miss the very thing your soul was made for. So let's start there, and then let James ask us a harder question: can you actually see your faith?
Who Is a Christian?
A Christian is a sinner, someone with a real and sinful nature, whom the Lord has declared righteous. Paul says it bluntly in Romans 4: salvation comes to people who believe that God justifies the wicked. Not the polished. Not the deserving. The wicked.
But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
Romans 4:5
To rest your whole weight there, you have to believe two things.
- That you are completely and hopelessly lost, that in you dwells no good thing, and that even your best efforts to be good fall short. You are not a sinner merely because you sin; you sin because you are a sinner.
- That God, purely out of His love for you and not because you earned it, has already taken away all your sins, past, present, and future, by laying them not on you but on Jesus at the cross.
He made Him who knew no sin to become sin, so that in Christ you might become the righteousness of God. Because you place your faith in that finished work, and not in your record or your religion, you are a saint, a child of God, washed and made new. In other words: a sinner, saved by grace. This is what a person has to believe, all the way down, in order to be saved.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
It is the same gospel Paul preaches in Romans 10: confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved. There is no difference between one person and another; whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
A Faith You Can See
Now the harder question. How many of us actually believe this? And how many of us are saved because we believe it? James stands up and says the only way to know your faith is genuine, the only way it can be proved, is by the life that flows out of it.
Hear this carefully, because it is easy to twist. The life you live does not save you. You are not saved because you feed the poor, clothe the naked, or visit the sick. You could fast, pray, come to church every Sunday, and give away everything you own, and still not be saved, if you have never believed that you are a lost sinner rescued by sheer mercy.
But the reverse is also true. You cannot truly believe you are a hopelessly lost sinner whom the Lord has shown grace, and then go on living as though nothing happened. If you have really believed, these things will pour out of your life like water from a fountain. That is the whole point of what James says next.
Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.
James 2:18
We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that stays alone.
Even the Demons Believe
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
James 2:19
This verse should humble every one of us. James names two things about demons that are painfully common among Christians. First, they are doctrinally correct. They believe God is one, and it does not make them any less demonic. You can prove fine points of theology, exegete the nature of Christ, master God's standard of holiness, and be, in James's own picture, just another devil. God has never asked us to be one hundred percent doctrinally accurate. Even Abraham did not know God's name; that was first revealed to Moses. But God does expect us to walk in love.
Second, demons fear God. They tremble at His judgment, and it changes nothing. So be careful. "I am afraid of going to hell, so I will clean up my life" does not, by itself, make you any different from a demon. Ask yourself honestly: if there were no hell to run from and no heaven to gain, would you still love God? Would you still come? Many of us serve God the way a man avoids an affair only because he fears the consequences. Remove the consequence and the real heart is exposed. Fear can restrain behavior, but only love proves faith. The way to show you are not a demon is not flawless doctrine or dread of punishment. It is to show what you have believed about Jesus by the works your life produces.
How You Treat Your Brothers and Sisters
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?
James 2:15-16
James says you cannot claim saving faith while it never shows in how you treat other believers. When someone in real need comes to you and you send them off with "be warmed and filled" but give nothing, there is usually a reason underneath. Somewhere you believe you are better than they are, that they haven't worked hard enough, prayed enough, or managed things as well as you would have. Somehow, you decide, they deserve it.
But if you truly believed the gospel, how poor and bankrupt and helpless you were when God found you, you would remember someone just as destitute: yourself. Like the prodigal son who wasted everything in a far country, you came to God with nothing in your hands. And your mercy would open up and flow. The old hymn puts it plainly.
Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to Thee for dress; helpless, look to Thee for grace.
Rock of Ages
None of this means everyone who gives generously is automatically saved. But you cannot have grasped how God saved you, how, though He was rich and had everything, He gave it all up to come to this earth and find you, and still look at a brother or sister in need and offer only words. If they could simply warm and fill themselves, they would not be destitute. And if you could have saved yourself, why would God have had to send you a Savior?
The same is true of forgiveness. Jesus told of a servant forgiven an impossible debt who then seized a fellow servant over a tiny one, and the Lord's verdict on him was severe. If you find it nearly impossible to forgive, it may mean you do not really believe you yourself have been forgiven. Who are we, having been forgiven everything, to withhold forgiveness for anything? God has already forgiven the person who wronged you, in the very same mercy that covered you. Am I greater than God, that I would hold on to what He has released?
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:32
A Faith Willing to Risk
Genuine faith also shows in the risks you are willing to take. Rahab hid the spies and staked her life on a God she had only heard about, because she believed. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego told the king, "Our God is able to deliver us from the fire, but even if He does not, we still will not bow." Many of us cannot lay anything down for what we say we believe, because deep down we do not yet believe anything worth laying our lives down for.
Abraham and the Friendship That Changes Everything
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
James 2:21-23
Here is the deepest layer: real faith shows in how you relate to God Himself. Abraham was willing to lay Isaac on the altar. Why? Not because it was one of the Ten Commandments, because it wasn't. Not because it was step three in some program for a breakthrough. The covenant God had sworn to him decades earlier was unchangeable, and Abraham could add nothing to it. He offered Isaac freely because God was his Friend, and when God is truly your Friend, nothing is too costly to give.
So why is there so little fire to serve God among us? Often because we serve Him on the lowest possible terms, forever asking, "Is this a sin? Is that allowed? Should I tithe on gross or net? Is this skirt too long or too short?" Do we really think God cares more about the color of our lips than the color of our hearts? Abraham did not haggle at the minimum. He went after God with everything he had, because he loved the God who rescued him when he was perishing, brought him out of Ur, and bound Himself in an unbreakable covenant, showing him the stars and saying, so shall your seed be. Set beside a God like that, what is an Isaac? What is a skirt, or a tithe?
That is the settled heart the gospel produces. Even if there were no hell to fear and no heaven to gain, if it would make God happy, I would still do it. He deserves it. He deserves my love; He deserves my Isaac, and far more than my Isaac. If I gave Him all, it still would not be enough.
Show Me Your Faith
So let James turn the question gently toward you. Is there something you are holding back? A hurt you will not release, a grudge you keep warm, a habit or addiction that feels too costly to give up? It is possible the struggle isn't mainly about willpower. It may be that, somewhere underneath, you have not yet believed how deeply you were loved and how completely you were forgiven.
The good news is that the answer is never to try harder to earn what is already a gift. Works don't produce faith; faith produces works. Go back to the cross, look long at what Jesus finished there, and let it sink in that you were the poor, naked, helpless one He came to clothe. When that becomes real, the fruit follows on its own: mercy, forgiveness, courage, and love flowing out like water. Faith and works were never rivals. The works are simply faith made visible.
Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Show me your faith. Show yourself your faith. Show that you believe, not to be saved, but because you already are, by what you do today.