Faith, Works, and Justification

Eight items. The vein where a teacher is most likely to be caught, because the objection is a good one and the text really does say what the objector says it says.

Why these are different

The assurance questions were about where to look. The baptism questions were about direction. These are about a genuine tension in the Bible, and a teacher who pretends otherwise loses the room.

James says a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. Paul says a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Both sentences are in the Bible. A teacher whose answer amounts to well, James doesn’t really mean that has not taught anyone anything except that the church is nervous.

The move that works on all eight: concede the words, then ask the question. Not what does justified mean in the abstract — but what question is this author answering?

1. “Verse 24 says ‘justified by works and not by faith alone.’ How is that not a contradiction?”

James, Session Five

Do not soften the verse or reach for a translation that blunts it. It says what it says, and the class can read.

Do say: You’ve read it right, and it does say that. Now notice what each man is arguing against. Paul is answering someone who thinks he can be right with God by keeping rules — and his answer is faith apart from works. James is answering someone who says he has faith while his life shows nothing at all — and his answer is that such a faith is dead, because it was never faith. Paul is talking about how a man is justified. James is talking about what kind of faith justifies. They aren’t answering the same question, and neither is correcting the other.

Confessional ground: AC IV — we are justified freely on account of Christ through faith. AC VI — this faith is bound to yield good fruits, and it is necessary to do the good works commanded by God, but not in order to merit justification. Both articles, together, are the answer.

2. “My Roman Catholic friend says James 2 disproves justification by faith alone. What do I say?”

James, Session One

Do not turn this into a case against Rome. The person asking has a friend, not an opponent, and a teacher who supplies ammunition has changed what was asked.

Do say: Give him item 1 — the two questions — and then tell him the honest thing: this is the one place the argument is genuinely hard, and Lutherans have never pretended otherwise. Then notice what you actually agree on. Nobody in the conversation thinks a dead faith saves anyone.

3. “Is James saying that Roman Catholics are right about justification?”

James, Session Five

Do say, and name the difference rather than gesturing at it: No. Rome teaches that we are justified partly by faith and partly by works of our own, and that this justification can be increased or lost depending on our performance. James teaches that saving faith always produces works. He does not teach that works contribute to our justification before God. Those are different claims, and the second is not evidence for the first.

Keep the tone flat. This question is often asked by someone hoping the teacher will get exercised.

4. “If Abraham was justified by faith here, doesn’t James say by works? Which is it?”

Genesis, Session Thirteen

Do say: Both cite Abraham, and they cite different moments. Paul goes to Genesis 15 — Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, before anything was done. James goes to Genesis 22, decades later, when the faith that had been credited showed what it was. The order in Abraham’s life is the order in the doctrine: credited first, demonstrated after.

Note: this is the strongest single answer in the vein, because the chronology does the work and the class can check it.

5. “How is Abram justified by faith alone if he’s also called to obey and build altars?”

Genesis, Session Seven

Do say: He is called to both, and the altars are not payment. Look at when God made the promise — before Abram had done anything at all. Everything afterward is a response to a promise already given, not a contribution toward getting one. That order never reverses anywhere in Scripture.

6. “So do I have to have works to be saved?”

James, Session Five

The bluntest form, and the most pastorally dangerous, because either careless answer wounds.

Do not say yes, which relocates his standing onto his performance. Do not say a flat no and stop, which leaves him thinking the Christian life is optional and contradicts James in the process.

Do say: You don’t do works to be saved. You do them because you are. Faith that has really received something will show it, the way a living thing grows — not to prove itself, and not to earn anything. If you’re asking because you’ve looked at your own life and are worried about what you found, that’s a different conversation and I’d like to have it with you and Pastor rather than in the last four minutes of class.

Route this one if it is asked in earnest. It rarely is not.

7. “What does ’the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ mean? Doesn’t justification make us holy?”

Hebrews, Session Thirteen

Do say: It does — and that is the holiness the verse means. You are declared holy in Christ, completely, now. Alongside that, God is making you what he has already declared you to be, and that work is real and slow and unfinished. The verse is not setting a bar you have to clear before he will look at you. It is describing the people he has already claimed.

8. “What’s the difference between the Servant forgiving us and justifying us?”

Isaiah, Session Twenty-Three

A definitional question, and a good one.

Do say: Forgiveness cancels the debt. Justification hands you a standing. One clears the record; the other says you are righteous — not neutral, not merely unpunished, but counted as having Christ’s own righteousness. The first is enormous. The second is why a Christian can face God rather than merely escape him.