James 2:20 – 26 “O foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is worthless? Was not our father Abraham justified by what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith was working with his actions, and his faith was perfected by what he did. And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called a friend of God. As you can see, a man is justified by his deeds and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute justified by her actions when she welcomed the spies and sent them off on another route? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”
Back in Abraham’s day, child sacrifice was not that uncommon. Study the Old Testament, and you’ll find some grisly examples! But when God asked Abraham to offer up Isaac, this was a supreme test. Isaac was a miracle child, conceived and born when his parents were already to collect Social Security. There was never going to be another Isaac, and now God was asking Abraham to give up the one thing he treasured most. How could God be so cruel and unfair? By the time that the Jewish spies showed up at Rahab’s place in Jericho, she might have already been out of the prostitution business and dyeing material instead. (That might explain where she got the scarlet cord to hang from her window to mark her house.) But Rahab had some kind of standing in the community and now she was risking everything for the sake of these strangers. This woman must have been crazy!
Ah, but God had better plans! The Bible tells us that God knows the end from the beginning and that God has plans for us that are far better than anything we can plan for ourselves. (Jeremiah 29:11) God was testing Abraham and Rahab to see if they would act in faith or in their own self interest, and both of them passed the test. For Abraham, there was a ram in the thicket to serve as the sacrifice. For Rahab, her actions saved her entire family. In addition, if you look at the geneologies, you realize that Rahab appears in the line that eventually led to Jesus Christ. In the “Faith Chapter,” Hebrews 11, Rahab and Abraham are both mentioned as being among the faithful.
In translating these passages, Eugene Peterson mentions the “seamless unity of believing and doing” and tells us that that is what counts with God. “It’s that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named “God’s friend.” Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?” (James 2:24 The Message)
Today it has become popular to closely scruitinize and criticize others for their slightest political comments. But God has a different set of standards, and in the end, it’s God to whom we must answer. The question for us is this: Does our faith mesh with our actions? God is looking for friends all the time, but are we behaving as God’s friends or as something else and something less? Brothers and sisters, if we are going to be fruit inspectors, we need to start with ourselves!
PRAYER: Father God, please let us work the works you want us to! Let our faith and our deeds mesh in such a way that you are not ashamed to call us your friends. Help us to serve you faithfully all the days of our lives. And help us to remember that we must inspect our own fruit before turning our attention to someone else’s. Help us so to live that you can call us your friends. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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