Faith Risks

If the king had discovered that these Jewish spies were in Rahab's home, she and her family would have been executed immediately. This was treason: Rahab's life was on the line. Like James, Hebrews points to Rahab as a hero of faith (Heb 11:31). But is she a hero of faith because of her rituals or religious activities? No, she is a hero of faith because she put her life and everything dear to her on the line for the Lord, trusting Him without hesitation, qualification, or reservation. She risked it all, going against everything in the culture around her. She risked it all so the people of God might take Jericho for the glory of God, and according to James she was considered righteous for what she did.

Are you willing to do that in your life? Are you willing to take risks in obedience to the Word of God because you revere the sovereign God who has saved you by His scandalous grace? Thousands of years after Abraham took his son to a mountain to sacrifice him, thousands of years after Rahab risked her life, are we today willing to risk it all? Will we go against the grain of the culture around us, even the Christian subculture that surrounds us? Are we willing to take some risks for the glory of God's name?

Excursus: Radical Action

During our study of this portion of the book of James, the Lord did a surprising work in the church I pastor. When we came to James 2, we were confronted with this reality that those who have received mercy extend mercy. And we knew from James 1 that we don't have the option just to hear this Word and not do something about it. I wrote 63about our church's response in the books Radical and Radical Together.

As we were studying James, we were going through our church budgeting process. To be honest, I hate budget season. As a pastor, I believe it's where our church comes face-to-face with how prone we are to give our resources to good things while ignoring great need. Christians in North America will give 2.5 percent of their income to their church this year (Empty Tomb, "Giving Research"). Out of that 2.5 percent, churches in North America will give 2 percent of their budgeted monies to needs overseas (Ronsvalle and Ronsvalle, State, 104). In other words, for every one hundred dollars a North American Christian makes, we will give five cents through the church to a world of urgent spiritual and physical need. This does not make sense.

Knowing this, one night our pastors took a hard look at the realities of the world, from the vast numbers of our brothers and sisters who are starving to the great multitudes of people who have never heard the gospel. Then we looked at our budget. And then we took action. We decided to change our spending drastically to align better with the will and ways of God.

This began with reallocating budget overages. Our staff had already been frugal, and we had saved more than $500,000 for the future. But James caused us to realize we had brothers and sisters around the world who already needed it. God began turning our eyes toward our brothers and sisters in India, a country that is home to 41 percent of the world's poor. Many children there do not even live to age five, so we looked for an avenue through which we could serve them. We learned that for about $25,000, we could provide food and water, medical care, and education to moms and their babies in a particular village for one year. We found 21 churches in impoverished villages across India, and we started thinking about which ones we might be able to serve. That's when we stepped back and realized, "If there are 21 churches in villages we can connect with, 64and in each one we can serve starving children and their families for about $25,000, that comes to a total of $525,000. Meanwhile God has given us over $500,000." So we decided to give it all away.

Then we began looking at our 2010 budget. We decided to ask the staff to go through the budget with a fine-tooth comb and cut every expenditure we possibly could so we could give more around the world. When I sat down with our leaders, I tried to soften the blow of what cuts might mean for individual ministries. But as I was sharing, one of our preschool leaders spoke up. "David," she said, "you don't have to go soft no us. We realize from God's Word this is something we need to do, and it is something we want to do. So let us get to work and start cutting our budgets!"

With that said, we split up into different teams to reevaluate our budgets. What happened next was amazing. Whereas the budgeting process usually involves leaders vying with one another to see who can raise their budget the most, this year our leaders were competing with one another to see who could cut their budget the most. We soon saw that making cuts was not just going to affect our budgets as leaders but the lives of our members. So we believed it was important to have the entire church vote on moving forward in this direction, and that's what we did. We put a proposal before our church family that said the following:

In love to God, in light of the needs around the world, and in obedience to Scripture (Prov 14:31; 21:13; 28:27; Matt 25:31-46; Jas 2:14-24; 1 John 3:16-18), the leadership of The Church at Brook Hills proposes that the church body affirm the following actions:

A couple of weeks later, the church voted overwhelmingly in favor of reallocating resources in this direction. We were able to free up an additional $1.5 million from our next church budget. With that money we began to focus more on spreading the gospel in Birmingham and around the world.

Locally we identified an area of our city with particular needs, and we committed time and money to partner with other churches, organizations, and schools to share and show the gospel in tangible ways there. Not wanting to give our money without going ourselves, we challenged every member in our faith family to pray about possibly leaving their comfortable neighborhoods and moving into this area of the city. Since that time several individuals, couples, and families have done exactly that.

Globally we focused on northern India, home to 600 million people but where fewer than 0.5 percent are evangelical Christians. Based on relationships we already had and new partnerships we were able to form, we committed time and money to meeting urgent needs there. During the year through local Indian churches, we were able to provide food, education, medical care, and most importantly the gospel to more than a thousand families in extremely impoverished and unreached areas. In addition, we were able to work with other Indian churches to build a hundred wells that would provide clean water for tens of thousands who previously didn't have it. On top of these things, we were able to train hundreds of national church leaders, mobilize church planters to engage hundreds of villages for the first time with the good news of Christ, and 66give millions access to the bible in their language for the first time.

My purpose in sharing these things is not to draw attention to the church I pastor. Anything we have done is merely evidence of God's grace among us. And we know that we have a long way to go. I share these things simply to encourage you to consider the possibilities of what might happen in your life and in your church when you put God's Word into practice. In light of James 2, let's continually put everything on the table before God in order that we might spend our lives and our resources intentionally and sacrificially for the glory of our King.

Summation of Justification

As we come to the close of James 2 and the discussion of what saving faith looks like, we need to consider what it means to be righteous before God.

Christ is the basis of our justification. How can you and I as sinners be declared right before God? We can't get rid of our sin, and we can't stand righteous before God on our own; there is nothing we can do. We need someone else who is righteous to be righteousness for us. And this is what the gospel is all about. Jesus lived a righteous life in our place, and then He died the death that we deserve. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, "[God] made [Christ] who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ]." Christ's work is the basis of our justification. So if someone asks you, "How do you know that you are right before God?" and the first words out of your mouth are "Because I have done _______," then you are missing the point of the gospel. You can only be right before God because Christ lived the life you could not live and died the death you deserved to die. This is the starting point.

Now the question becomes, How is Christ's work applied to your life? 67Is it automatic, so that when He died, everyone was saved automatically? Is it something you are born into? Or is there something you have to do? This question leads us to the second reality concerning how we become righteous before God.

Faith is the means of our justification. Faith is the antiwork. It is trust. It is surrender. It is the realization that you can do nothing but trust in what has been done for you. And through faith you are united to Jesus, being clothed and credited with His righteousness. However, such faith is not mere intellectual assent. Faith is not merely, "Yes, Jesus died on a cross." Demons believe that, and they don't have faith. Faith, according to Scripture, means turning from yourself and trusting in Jesus as your Savior from sin and as the Lord of your life. It's the moment when God opens your eyes to see His glory, to see your need, and to see His provision, and in faith you confess your need for Christ and you submit your life to Him. This is faith, and in the words of Paul in Romans 5:1, "Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Justification happens in an instant, but the faith by which we are justified changes everything about us, and this is the point of James's letter.

Works are the evidence of our justification because faith bears fruit. Does that mean our works are now the basis of our justification? Absolutely not. Our works (not works fueled by the flesh that don't honor God but works that are the fruit of faith and bring great glory to God) are the evidence that we have been justified. Abraham believed God, and consequently he was willing to sacrifice his son. Rahab believed God, and consequently she was willing to risk it all. In these two examples from James 2, Abraham and Rahab showed their faith by what they did.

These realities are only possible by the grace of God. God's grace not only draws us to faith while we are dead in our sins, but even after this our obedience is fueled by God's grace. Both our faith and our works are made possible by God. All is of grace. As an analogy, imagine giving money to one of your children for them to buy you a Christmas present. They give you the present, but did they really? Sure, in a sense it came from you, but it was also an expression of their love for you. The illustration is not perfect, but it does help us see that anything we bring to God as an offering that is pleasing to Him is an overflow of His grace. I think this is one of the reasons James chooses, of all people, Rahab as an example of faith. In this picture of a prostitute, he wants to make sure we're not 68talking about merit we bring to God—our own righteousness. No, we're talking about the grace of God alive in the risk-taking obedience of a woman. By grace we are saved through faith (Eph 2:8).

These realities are ultimately involved in the judgment before God. The judgment refers to the time when you stand before God in heaven. We're talking about final justification, the time when your eternal destiny will be declared openly and finally. What will be the basis by which you enter into heaven to dwell in the presence of God for all of eternity? Christ. The only way we can go to heaven is on the basis of Christ. And what is the means by which you will be declared right on that day for all of eternity? Faith. The faith that says, "Father, I have nothing in me to stand on. I trust wholly in the righteousness of Christ to stand for me. You opened my eyes to Your holiness and my sin, and You opened my eyes to Christ as my Savior and my Lord. By grace you did this, and faith is the means." In the background of your life on that final day, it will be evident whether such faith was indeed a reality in your life. What Paul said is true:

[God] will repay each one according to his works. (Rom 2:6)

For we must all appear before the tribunal of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or worthless. (2 Cor 5:10)

If there is no fruit of real faith on the last day, and the only thing you have to lean on is a card you signed or a prayer you prayed, or even religious rituals in which you participated, then it will be shown clearly that you never really had faith at all. And you will miss eternal life and be cast away to eternal death.

I do not desire to be a hellfire and damnation preacher, but even more so I do not want people to be deceived. It grieves my heart when people die in my own community, people with no fruit of faith in Christ, and yet our church-filled community concludes that surely they are with God in heaven. It's not true. Now, to be clear, none of us knows the inner secrets of a person's heart, nor are we the final judge. But God's Word is clear: any claim to faith with no resultant fruit is like a dead corpse. There's no life there. Instead, there's death in hell for all eternity.

Therefore, if you have not truly believed in Jesus Christ for salvation, I urge you to do so today. Look to Christ crucified as the only basis by which you can be declared righteous. By God's grace admit your need for Christ and trust in Him. Do not give mere intellectual assent or 69perform a religious exercise. Cast yourself in faith on Christ. For when you do that, the God of the universe will look down on your sinful heart and save you. He will clothe you in the righteousness of Christ and you will have peace with God. And through such faith, Christ will come into your life and change it from the inside out, for your good and for His glory. He will transform your life into one that demonstrates His grace and love and mercy to the world around you. This is the faith that saves, and this is a faith that works.

Reflect and Discuss