“Spiritual Growth, Part 8” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy21vd6jSps
We are continuing in Part 8 of our Series reviewing and examining what God says on the subject of Spiritual Growth, and what several very insightful Bible Commentaries have to say as well. We have also seen that Spiritual Growth is intertwined with Growing in Grace and Knowledge, and recognizing the Authority of God in the world and in our lives, boldness and learning to be content in all things.
We have to bear in mind that we are the only Bible some people may ever read insofar as how we conduct our lives. And we can be sure, that the unsaved watch us very carefully to see if we are the real deal, and to see if we not only talk the talk but also walk the walk. And our faith is made manifest, not by lipservice, but by the light that our lives bring to the people who encounter us.
The cited verse in James 2 is limited James tells us in James 2:18, but the commentary I used expands this to verse 24, so I will quote all of the relevant verses: "Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? 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. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (James 2:18-24.
Alexander MacLaren shares with us his insights: “FAITH WITHOUT WORKS: JAMES thrice reiterates his point in this passage, and each repetition closes a branch of his argument. In verse 17 he draws the inference from his illustration of a worthy sympathy which does nothing; in verse 20 he deduces the same conclusion from the speech put into the mouth of an imaginary speaker; in verse 24 he draws it from the life of Abraham. We shall best get hold of the scope of these verse, by taking them three parts separately.
I. Now, most misconceptions of a writer’s meaning are due to imperfect definition of terms. James was no metaphysician, and he does not stop to put precisely what he means by’ faith.’ Clearly he meant by it the full evangelical meaning of trust when he used it in the earlier part of the letter.
As clearly he here means a mere intellectual belief of religious truth, a barren orthodoxy. If that undeniable explanation of his terminology is kept steadily in view, much of the difficulty which has been found in bringing his teaching into harmony with Paul’s melts away at once. There is a distinct difference of tone and point of view between the two, but they entirely agree in the worthlessness of such a ‘faith,’ if faith it can be called.
Probably Paul would not have called it so, but James accepts the ‘saying’ of the man whom he is confuting, and consents to call his purely intellectual-belief faith. And then he crushes it to atoms as hollow and worthless, in which process Paul would gladly have lent a hand.
We may observe that verse 14 begins with supposing the case of a mere lip ‘faith,’ while verse 17 widens its conclusion to include not only that, but any ‘faith,’ however real, which does not lead to works. The logic of the passage would, perhaps, hang better together if verse 14 had run ‘if a man have faith’;
but there is keen irony as well as truth in the suggestion that a faith which has no deeds often has abundant talk. The people who least live their creeds are not seldom the people who shout loudest about them. The paralysis which affects the arms does not, in these cases, interfere with the tongue.
James had seen plenty of that kind of faith, both among Pharisees and Jewish Christians, and he had a holy horror of loose tongues. That kind of faith is not extinct yet, and we need to urge James’s question quite as much as he did: ‘Can that faith save?’ Observe the emphasis on ‘ that’ which the Revised Version rightly gives.
The... illustration of the very tender sympathy which gushes inwards, and does nothing to clothe naked backs or fill empty stomachs, perhaps has a sting in it, Possibly the very orthodox Jewish Christians with whom James is contending were less willing to help poor brethren than were the Gentile Christians.
But, in any case, there is no denying the force of the parallel. Sympathy, like every other emotion, is meant to influence action. If it does not, what is the use of it? What is the good of getting up fire in the furnace, and making a mighty roaring of steam, if it all escapes at the waste-pipe, and drives no wheels?
And what is the good of a ‘faith’ which only rushes out at the escape-pipe of talk? It is ‘dead in itself.’ Romans 2:17-29 shows Paul’s way of putting the same truth. Emotion and beliefs which do not shape conduct are worthless Faith, if it have not works, is dead.
II. The same conclusion is arrived at by another road in verses 18-20: James introduces an imaginary speaker, who replies to the man who says that he has faith. This new interlocutor ‘says’ his say too. But he is not objecting, as has been sometimes thought, to James, but to the first speaker, and he is expressing James’s own thought, which the Apostle does not utter in his own person, perhaps because he would avoid the appearance of boasting of his own deeds.
To take this speaker as opposing James brings hopeless confusion, What does the new speaker say? He takes up the first one’s assertion of having ‘faith’; he will not say that he himself has it, but he challenges the other man to show his, if he can, by any other way than by exhibiting the fruits of faith, while he himself is prepared and content to be tested by the same test.
That is to say, talk does not prove the possession of faith; the only possible demonstration that one has it is deeds, which are its fruits. If a man has (true) faith, it will mould his conduct. If he has nothing to produce but his bare assertion, then he cannot show it at all; and if no evidence of its existence is forthcoming, it does not exist.
Motion is the test of life. A ‘faith’ which does nothing, which moves no limb, is a corpse. On the other hand, if grapes grow ruddy and sweet in their clusters, there must be a vine on which they grow, though its stem and root may be unseen. ‘What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.’
True faith will be fruitful. Is not this Paul’s doctrine too? Does not he speak of ‘faith that worketh by love?’ Is it not his principle, too, that faith is the source of conduct, the active principle of the Christian life, and that if there are no results of it in the life, there is none of it in the heart?
But the second speaker has a sharp dart of irony in his quiver (verse 13). ‘You plume yourself on your monotheistic creed, do you, and you think that that is enough to make you a child of God’s? Well, that is good, as far as it goes, but it does not go very far.
You have companions in it, for the demons believe it still more thoroughly than you do; and, what is more, it produces more effect on them than on you. You do nothing in consequence of your belief; they shudder, at any rate - a grim result, but one showing that their belief goes deeper than yours.
The arrow gains in point and keenness if we observe that James quotes the very words which are contained in the great profession of monotheism which was recited morning and evening by every Jew (Deuteronomy 6:4, etc.). James seems, in verse 20, to speak again in his own name, and to reassert his main thought as enforced by this second argument.
III. He has been arguing from the very nature of faith, and the relation between it and conduct: Now he turns to history and appeals to Abraham’s case. In these verses he goes over the same ground as Paul does in Romans 5., and there is a distinct verbal contradiction between verse 24 here and Romans 3:28; but it is only verbal.
Are the two apostles writing in ignorance of each other’s words, or does the one refer to the other, and, if so, which is the earlier? These are interesting questions, to deal with which satisfactorily would more than exhaust our space. No doubt the case of Abraham was a commonplace in rabbinical teaching, and both Paul and James had been accustomed to hear his history commented upon and tortured in all sorts of connections.
The mere reference to the patriarch is no proof of either writer having known of the other; but the manner of it raises a presumption in that direction, and if either is referring to the other, it is easier to understand Paul if he is alluding to James, than James as alluding to Paul.
Their apparent disagreement is only apparent. For what are the’ works’ to which James ascribes justifying power? Verse 22 distinctly answers the question. They are acts which spring from faith, and which in turn, as being its fruits, ‘perfect’ it, as a tree is perfect when it has manifested its maturity by bearing. Surely Paul’s doctrine is absolutely identical with this. He too held that, on the one hand, faith creates work, and on the other, works perfect faith.
The works which Paul declares are valueless, and which he calls ‘the works of the law,’ are not those which James asserts ‘justify.’ The faith which James brands as worthless is not that which Paul proclaims as the condition of justifying; the one is a mere assent to a creed, the other is a living trust in a living Person.
James points to the sacrifice of Isaac as ‘justifying’ Abraham, and has in mind the divine eulogium {or, commendation}: ‘Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.’ but he distinctly traces that transcendent act of an unquestioning devotion to the ‘faith’ which wrought with it, and was perfected by it.
He quotes the earlier divine declaration (Genesis 15:6) as ‘fulfilled’ at that later time, By which very expression is implied, not only that the root of the sacrifice was faith, but that the words were true in a yet higher sense and completer degree, when that sacrifice had ‘perfected’ the patriarch’s faith.
The ultimate conclusion in verse 24 has to be read in the light of these considerations, and then it appears plainly that there is no contradiction in fact between the two apostles. ‘The argument.., has no bearing on St. Paul’s doctrine, its purport being, in the words of John Bunyan, to insist that "at the day of doom men shall be judged according to their fruit." It will not be said then, Did you believe? but, Were you doers or talkers only?’ (Mayor, Epistle of St.. James, LXXXVIII).
No doubt, the two men look at the truth from a somewhat different standpoint. The one is intensely practical, the other goes deeper. The one fixes his eye on the fruits, the other digs down to the root. To the one the flow of the river is the more prominent; to the other, the fountain from which it rises, But they supplement, and do not contradict, each other.
A shrewd old Scotsman once criticised an elaborate ‘Harmony’ of the Gospels, by the remark that the author had ‘spent a heap of pains in making four men agree that had never cast [fallen] out.’ We may say the same of many laborious reconciliations of James, the urgent preacher of Christian righteousness, and Paul, the earnest proclaimer that ‘a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.’”
As we continue is our review and examination, we see that Spiritual Growth involves Commitment. This commitment was declared in both the Old and the New Testament. First, we read in 1 Kings 8:61: "Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day."
Matthew Henry writes regarding our hearts being perfect: "No human heart is of itself willing to obey the gospel call to repentance, faith, and newness of life, walking in all the commandments of the Lord, yet Solomon exhorts the people to be perfect.
This is the scriptural method, it is our duty to obey the command of the law and the call of the gospel, seeing we have broken the law. When our hearts are inclined thereto, feeling our sinfulness and weakness, we pray for Divine assistance; thus are we made able to serve God through Jesus Christ."
The Preacher's Homiletical adds, “The best and greatest wish which a king can form for his people, a father for his children, a pastor for his flock, is—May your heart be righteous—i.e., whole and undivided before the Lord our God. He who elects to side with Him must do so wholly and entirely: all “halting between two opinions” is an abomination to him: the lukewarm he will spue out of his mouth. Be thou on the Lord’s side, and he will be with thee (Lange).
The great end of prayer is to encourage a holier life; and it is a mighty agency in promoting that end. We must find happiness in our every-day life and in the performance of our ordinary duties, or we shall miss it altogether. The greatest happiness is the outgrowth of the highest moral perfection, and the spring of both is found in a spirit of profound devotion.”
In Genesis 17:1, we read, “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
Of this the Sermon Bible tells us, “There are two things here to be considered: (1)The revelation which God makes of Himself; and (2) the conduct He requires of Abram as the subject or as the recipient of that revelation.
I. The revelation: "I am the Almighty God." God is always sufficient. He is enough for every being and for every occasion, responsibility, and work. The Almightiness includes: (1) all knowledge, including foreknowledge; (2) all wisdom; (3) all authority; (4) all power. II. The requirement: "Walk before Me, and be thou perfect." These words require: (1) an onward and forward step;
(2) the habitual recognition of God.”
All that these words require is required on the basis of the revelation. Every position involves a corresponding responsibility; and knowledge is no exception. Get some truth that you have never had before; your possession enlarges your responsibility. This revelation to Abram showed that there could be no excuse for that which is contrary to uprightness in the service of God.
If the God whom we serve be Almighty, He knows, judges, protects, frustrates, fulfils. Coming short in the service of God through fear dishonours God; it casts doubt upon His power and resources, upon His goodness and love; and he who has recourse to crooked devices sins against his own soul.” S. Martin, Penny Pulpit, No. 878.
In Matthew 5, beginning in Verse 43, Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, also called upon us to be perfect. But He did so with the following introduction: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:
for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
Again, I call upon Matthew Henry's Commentary: "The Jewish teachers by "neighbour" understood only those who were of their own country, nation, and religion, whom they were pleased to look upon as their friends. The Lord Jesus teaches that we must do all the real kindness we can to all, especially to their souls.
We must pray for them. While many will render good for good, we must render good for evil; and this will speak a nobler principle than most men act by. Others salute their brethren, and embrace those of their own party, and way, and opinion, but we must not so confine our respect.
It is the duty of Christians to desire, and aim at, and press towards perfection in grace and holiness. And therein we must study to conform ourselves to the example of our heavenly Father. Surely more is to be expected from the followers of Christ than from others; surely more will be found in them than in others. Let us beg of God to enable us to prove ourselves his children."
At the point, Matthew Henry cross-references 1 Peter 1:15,16, which says, “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
Albert Barnes says of this, “1 Peter 1:15, THE FAMILY LIKENESS: That is the sum of religion—an all-comprehensive precept which includes a great deal more than the world’s morality, and which changes the coldness of that into something blessed, by referring all our purity to the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of heathenism to whom he spoke.
But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like God’s was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Be ye holy as He that hath called you is holy, and that in all manner of conversation.’ So, then, there are three things here—the pattern, the field, and the inspiration or motive of holiness.
I. The Pattern of Holiness: ‘As He that hath called you is holy.’ God’s holiness is the very attribute which seems to separate Him most from the creatures; for its deepest meaning is His majestic and Divine elevation above all that is creatural. But here, of course, the idea conveyed by the word is not that, if I may so say, metaphysical one, but the purely moral one.
The holiness of God which is capable of imitation by us is His separation from all impurity. There is a side of His holiness which separates Him from all the creatures, to which we can only look up, or bow with our faces in the dust;
but there is a side of His holiness which, wonderful as it is, and high above all our present attainment as it is, yet is not higher than the possibilities which His indwelling Spirit puts within our reach, nor beyond the bounds of the duty that presses upon us all. ‘As He which hath called you is holy.’ Absolute and utter purity is His holiness, and that is the pattern for us.
Religion is imitation. The truest form of worship is to copy. All through heathenism you find that principle working. ‘They that make them are like unto them.’ Why are heathen nations so besotted and sunken and obstinate in their foulnesses? Because their gods are their examples, and they, first of all, make the gods after the pattern of their own evil imaginations, and then the evil imaginations, deified, react upon the maker and make him tenfold more a child of hell than themselves.
Worship is imitation, and there is no religion which does not necessarily involve the copying of the example or the pattern of that Being before whom we bow. For religion is but love and reverence in the superlative degree, and the natural operation of love is to copy, and the natural operation of reverence is the same.
So that the old Mosaic law, ‘Be ye holy as I am holy,’ went to the very heart of religion. And the New Testament form of it, as Paul puts it in a very bold word, ‘Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children,’ sets its seal on the same thought that we are religious in the proportion in which we are consciously copying and aspiring after God.
But then, says somebody or other, ‘it is not possible.’ Well, if it were not possible, try it all the same. For in this world it is aim and not attainment that makes the noble life; and it is better to shoot at the stars, even though your arrow never reaches them, than to fire it along the low levels of ordinary life. I do not see that however the unattainableness of the model may be demonstrated, that has anything to do with the duty of imitation.
Because, though absolute conformity running throughout the whole of a life is not possible here on earth, we know that in each individual instance in which we came short of conformity the fault was ours, and it might have been otherwise. Instead of bewildering ourselves with questions about ‘unattainable’ or ‘attainable,’ suppose we asked, at each failure, ‘Why did I not copy God then; was it because I could not, or because I would not?’
The answer would come plain enough to knock all that sophisticated nonsense out of our heads, and to make us feel that the law which puts an unattainable ideal before the Christian as his duty is an intensely practical one, and may be reduced to practice at each step in his career. Imitation of the Father, and to be perfect, ‘as our Father in heaven is perfect,’ is the elementary and the ultimate commandment of all Christian morality. ‘Be ye holy as He that hath called you is holy.’
Then let me remind you that the unattainableness is by no means so demonstrable as some people seem to think. A very tiny circle may have the same centre as one that reaches beyond the suburbs of the universe, and holds all stars and systems within its great round. And the tiniest circle will have the same geometrical laws applied to it as the greatest.
The difference between finite and infinite has nothing to do with the possibility of our becoming like God, if we believe that ‘in the image of God created He him’; and that men who have been not only made by original creation in the Divine image, but have been born again by the incorruptible seed of the Word into a kindred life with His, and derived from Him, can surely grow like what they have got, and unfold into actually possessed and achieved resemblance to their Father the kindred life that is poured into their veins.
So every way it is better indefinitely to approximate to that great likeness, though with many flaws and failures, than to say it cannot be reached, and so I will content myself down here, in my sins and my meannesses. No! dear brethren, ‘we are saved by hope,’ and one prime condition of growth in nobleness is to believe it possible that, by His blessing we may be like Him here on earth in the measure of our perception of His beauty and reception of His grace.
II. Again, notice the field of this Godlike holiness, ‘In all manner of conversation.’ Of course I do not need to remind you that
the word ‘conversation’ does not mean talk, but conduct; that it applies to the whole of the outward life. Peter says that every part of the Christian man’s activity is to be the field on which his possession of the holiness derived from and like God’s is to be exhibited.
It is to be seen in all common life. Here is no cloistered and ascetic holiness which tabooes large provinces of every man’s experience, and says ‘we must not go in there, for fear of losing our purity,’ but rather wherever Christ has trod before we can go. That is a safe guide, and whatever God has appointed there we can go and that we can do.
If we keep the little things rigidly under the dominion of this principle, no doubt the big things will fall under it too, when they emerge. And if we do not—as the old Jewish book says:—’He that despiseth little things shall fall by little and little.’
Whosoever has not a Christianity that sanctifies the trifles has a Christianity that will not sanctify the crises of his life. So, dear brother, this motto is to be written over every portal through which you and I go; and whatsoever we can put our hands to, in it we may magnify and manifest the holiness of God.
III. Now, lastly, note the motive or inspiration of holiness.
The language of my text might read like ‘the Holy One who hath called you.’ Peter would stir his hearers to the emulation of the
Divine holiness by that thought of the bond that unites Him and them. ‘He hath called you.’ In which word, I suppose, he includes the whole sum of the Divine operations which have resulted in the placing of each of his auditors within the circle of the Christian community as the subjects of Christ’s grace, and not only the one definite act to which the theologians attach the name of ‘calling.’
His love, the voice of His beseechings, the admonitions of His Spirit, the message of His Son, the Incarnate Word, and invitation of God—all these things are included in His call. And all of them are the reasons why, bound by thankfulness, overcome by his forbearance, responding to His entreaties, and glued to Him by the strength of the hand that holds us, and the tenacity of His love, we should strive to ‘walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called.’
And not only so, but in the thought of the Divine calling there lies a fountain of inspiration when we remember the purpose of the calling. As Paul puts it in one of his letters: ‘God has not called us to uncleanness but to holiness.’ That to which He summons, or invites (for you may use either word), is holiness like His own. That is the crown of all His purposes for men, the great goal and blessed home to which He would lead us all.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, "Spiritual Growth, Part 8"
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on March 8th, 2023.
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