These notes are basically sermon follow-up from sermons I preached 10/6/19 and 10/13/19 — the sermons are available of our website.
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In the sermon on James 2:1-13, I mentioned identity politics. I recommend this document on race and privilege to help clarify the issue: https://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/critical-theory-and-the-unity-of-the-church/
In James 2:1ff, James is saying that judgment in a church court and ultimately in God’s court is not according to wealth or ethnicity, but according to character and works. God is an impartial judge; human courts in church and state should reflect this principle of justice.
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James 2:14-17 focuses on helping the poor as a manifestation of our faith. We can’t just send “thoughts and prayers.” Good wishes are not enough; we must do good works. A profession of faith that does not lead to works does no good; an expression of good intentions towards a person in need does no good either. It is not enough to say, “be warmed and filled” – we must actually warm and fill the cold and hungry.
But there is more to poverty relief than food and clothing. What James says must be plugged into the whole counsel of God (e.g., Prov. 12:10, 2 Thess. 3:10). In order to solve the problem of poverty, we need to know something about its causes. These fall into three basic categories:
- Oppression – Sometimes the poor are poor because of injustice. The system keeps people down. This is seen in communism, socialism, etc. as well as in tyrannical regimes that only serve the good of the dictator. Crony capitalism can also produce oppressive conditions since the government begins to pick the winners and losers instead of serving a referee who keeps the playing field level. It does not matter how gifted you are, how hard you work, how skilled you are as an entrepreneur, if you live in under an oppressive regime, you will never be allowed to climb out of poverty. The scales are tipped against you.
- Calamity – Sometimes unfortuitous circumstances create poverty. The real estate market might crash and you had nothing to do with the policies that created it. A tornado or hurricane might leave you homeless. You might get sick or disabled. Even with the foresight to get insurance, you could be left in a very difficult situation. Natural disasters, injuries, illnesses, etc. could create poverty that is not the direct fault of the poor person.
- Irresponsibility – Sometimes people are poor because they make bad choices. They are lazy, have an addiction problem, gamble, spend wildly, etc. Poverty is often tied to the sins and failures of the poor themselves. In a free and just society, the poor are generally much more to blame for their poverty. Sociologists have found that in America, people who follow the so-called “success sequence” (finish high school, no kids before marriage, stay married) are very rarely poor. This is not some kind of prosperity gospel; it’s simply common sense in a society where there is economic opportunity and the rule of law.
Sometimes poverty can be due to a variety of factors that overlap and interpenetrate. Suppose someone is not able to get a job because he lacks skills – in particular, he is illiterate. Whose fault is that? We do not generally blame third graders for being illiterate; that falls on the parents and teachers. But what about a thirty year old? Is he responsible to gain literacy skills even if he was not taught to read in his youth? Is his illiteracy at that point in life the fault of a system that failed him (an injustice), the bad break of having incompetent parents/teachers (circumstances), or his own responsibility (personal failure)? You could make a case for all three. But whatever the case, the illiterate thirty year old ultimately needs more than food and clothing. He needs someone to invest in him, to teach him skills, to train him to keep a job. If he is offered these blessings and rejects them, obviously that is on him and it ratchets up his personal responsibility. But if no one is ever available to help him in this way, it is not fair to pin 100% of his poverty on his shoulders. (Some states determine how much prison space they will need in the future based on illiteracy rates of male elementary school students. So solving illiteracy is a key to improving overall social conditions. The illiterate almost always turn to crime to get by.)
Thus, it is impossible to solve poverty by simply throwing money at the problem. The issue is not simply a lack of financial capital. It is a lack of social and spiritual capital. A lack of skills and competence. Helping the poor means not only writing checks to cover basic needs, it means getting involved as a kind of “life coach” who can help the poor build up skills and a network that will open doors that will ultimately lead to their thriving. Many of us from more privileged backgrounds take these things for granted, but the poor cannot climb out of poverty until and unless they gain these things.
This means that working at an literacy ministry might be more valuable than serving in a soup kitchen. It means the entrepreneur who creates jobs through his business endeavors might be the ultimate poverty fighter because what the poor need most to escape poverty is a job. All too often we take too narrow a view of what it means to help the poor. By all means, meet immediate needs – the naked bodies and empty bellies – but recognize the systemic issues that must be addressed to actually lift people out of poverty over the long haul.
For further reading I suggest When Helping Hurts by Brian Fikkert paired with Call of the Jericho Road by Tim Keller or Good News for the Poor by Tim Chester. My Keller recommendation should be taken with a qualification — Keller has some leftwing, socialist tendencies, and the main thrust of what i am arguing for here is that poverty relief is best handled by other institutions (the church, the family, and other private relief agencies) than by the clumsy mechanisms of the bureaucratic state. But his book still has some useful insights.
What motivates care for the poor? Keller does a fine job developing a gospel-motivation for mercy ministry in the essay “The Gospel and the Poor”: http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/journal-issues/33.3/Themelios_33.3.pdf#page=10. In a lot of that article, he follows in the footsteps of Jonathan Edwards’ discourse “Christian Charity”: http://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/charity.htm. Edwards develops “the rules of the gospel,” showing that the pattern and logic of the gospel drive mercy ministry, and answers a wide variety of objections to caring for the poor. Here is a sample:
“In many cases, we may, by the rules of the gospel, be obliged to give to others, when we cannot do it without suffering ourselves . . . else how is that rule of bearing one another’s burdens fulfilled? If we never be obliged to relieve others’ burdens, but when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbor’s burdens, when we bear no burdens at all?”
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Some attempts to help the poor are well intended but backfire and only make things worse. State welfare often subsidizes immorality and foolishness. For example, I knew someone who used to manage a restaurant. He had employees who would tell him to not schedule them for too many hours because they would lose their welfare check if they made too much money. It is well known that welfare often subsidizes childbirth out of wedlock, e.g., a woman will lose her welfare if she marries her “baby daddy.” Welfare actually prevents family formation – which is a shame because the single most important factor in a child’s life to avoiding poverty is an in tact family structure. In other cases welfare keeps people from moving to places where there are jobs available, or pursuing skills that would make them more employable. Welfare all too often robs its recipients of their human dignity and the deep satisfaction that comes from work pursued with excellence. We were made to work; if welfare checks keep people from seeking gainful employment, it is dehumanizing.
The whole welfare system as it exists today is not only inefficient, it is immoral — and it subsidizes immorality. You get more of what you subsidize and less of what you penalize, as the old saying goes. There is simply no way to help people out of poverty if they are not willing to embrace God’s design for family and work. There is no economic system that bring people to prosperity when they are having a high percentage of children out of wedlock, when they refuse to marry or terminate marriages at high rates, and so on. No economic system or set of policies can fix the problem of poverty without moral and wise living, without a willingness to work, without meaningful and useful dominion-oriented skills. People who refuse to take responsibility for themselves will always be poor — and should be.
There are sadly some in the church today who think our social responsibilities can be largely fulfilled by voting for the political candidate who promises the most free stuff. Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it is hard for me to see how much of the “woke” and “social justice” crowd escape the conclusion that their position basically amounts to voting for Democrats. As I have shown elsewhere, most (though not quite all) government welfare programs actually make the poverty problem worse in the long run. They create a kind of permanent dependency on the government which is really just another form of slavery. But just as crucially, we cannot push our responsibility to help the poor off on others. We certainly cannot hand it over to the state, as if government bureaucrats could replace the church’s deacons and deaconesses.
We have a personal obligation to the poor. Yes, we do have politicians who promise lots of free stuff today – free healthcare, free college, free housing, and so on. But those promises are actually lies – and they are lies in multiple ways. Obviously, nothing is actually free. If you get it for free, someone somewhere is paying for it and it is worth asking if you have a right to the fruits of their labors in this way. But more than that, the promise of free stuff is actually enslaving. You have to choose between free stuff and free people. You cannot have both. You can have free stuff from the government at the cost of human freedom, or you can have human freedom and decide to pay your own way. It’s one or the other, at least in principle.
The truth is that faith loves freedom. I do not want my neighbor enslaved so that he has to pay for my free benefits. True faith plants a seed of freedom. The most foundational freedom that comes from faith is freedom from sin – both its eternal consequences and its present power. But free men – those who have been Spiritually freed by the power of the gospel – will ultimately and eventually crave other forms of freedom as well. They will want political and economic and cultural freedom. This is why the gospel ultimately eradicates the institution of slavery wherever it goes. The gospel freedom granted by Christ and the Spirit eventually spills over into civilizational forms of freedom. In other words, the faith of the gospel transforms the world. It sets the world free.
The kind of freedom should not be misunderstood; there is a reason why James speaks of the law of liberty. This is not freedom for our flesh to do whatever it wants. That kind of carnal freedom is really just slavery to sin. No, it is the deep and lasting and soul-satisfying freedom that comes from living the way we were designed to live. It’s the freedom a train has to keep running on its tracks – but in this case, it is the freedom of humans to run on the tracks of God’s law. It is the freedom of a fish to keep swimming in the water. See Galatians 5 on true Christian liberty. This is freedom to live for others; we are to use our freedom for the good of others, to serve and bless others. This is where true joy is found.
In other words, it is freedom to be self-governing under God’s law. Some people think that if we cast off God’s law we will find true freedom. But that is not the case. In fact, I would argue that Chesterton was right: “If men will not be governed by the ten commandments, they will be governed by the 10,000 commandments.” Casting off God’s law does not mean we get an antinomian paradise where we can do anything we want. No, it means we get the tyranny of the idols. Instead of having no laws we have more laws, oppressive laws, constantly changing laws – because when men will not be governed by God’s wise law, they end up substituting their own law which is cruel. The world is far more judgmental and legalistic than the church; you are much more likely to find grace, mercy, and forgiveness in the church than the world. Just look at how people are treated today who violate the laws of political correctness. There is no mercy shown to those who blaspheme whatever idol happens to be in fashion at the moment.
All this is to say that faith should always be working towards Christendom – a Christian civilization, an expression of the kingdom of God. We have to keep working to see the leaven of gospel principles worked into the dough of our society. This is what it means to have a working faith – it is a world transforming faith. And this is not just a selfish mission, just finding a way for our tribe to win the culture war. We should care about the justice of the laws our neighbors live under as well. And that means seeking to make those laws conform to God’s royal law, the perfect law of liberty, as much as possible.
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The real key to James 2:13-26 as a whole is Matthew 25:31-46. Here are some crucial connections that show the parallels:
- Both passages teach a final judgment (resulting in justification or condemnation) according to works; they are both forensic and eschatological settings
- Both passages stress the importance of helping the poor as a sign of true faith and as a condition of eternal life
- Both passages stress the role of mercy and grace in the final judgement (in James 2:13, we find God judges the merciful with mercy at the last day; in Matthew 25 the inheritance/salvation of the sheep is called an inheritance as opposed to a wage)
Keller has noted the similarities between these two texts as well (emphasis mine):
“Edwards also deals with a cluster of texts that seems to make our care of and concern for the poor the basis for God’s judgment on the Day of the Lord. Matt 25:34–46 famously teaches that people will be accepted or condemned by God on the last day depending on how they treated the hungry, the homeless and immigrant, the sick, and the imprisoned. How can this be? Does this contradict Paul’s teaching that we are saved by faith in Christ, not our works?
Edwards notices that in the Old Testament giving to the poor is an essential mark of godliness. The famous verse Micah 6:8 requires that a man “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Edwards concludes (rightly, according to Bruce Waltke) that this requires the godly man to be involved with the poor. Waltke says that both “do justice” and “love mercy” mean to be kind to the oppressed and marginalized and active in helping people who are financially and socially in a weaker condition. But this emphasis is not only in the Old Testament. Care for the poor is “a thing so essential, that the contrary cannot consist with a sincere love to God” (1 John 3:17–19). From this (and 2 Cor 8:8, which speaks of generosity to the poor as a proof of a grace-changed, loving heart), Edwards concludes that doing justice and mercy is not a meritorious reason that God will accept us. Rather, doing justice and mercy for the poor is an inevitable sign that someone has justifying faith and grace in the heart.
Another version of the teaching of Matt 25:34–46 is found in the book of James. Protestants who have wrestled with the teaching of Jas 2 have concluded, “We are saved by faith alone–but not by faith that remains alone; faith without works is dead, not true justifying faith.” Absolutely right. But notice that, in the context, all the “works” James says are the marks of saving faith are caring for widows and orphans (1:27), showing the poor respect and treating them equally (2:2–6), and caring for the material needs of food and clothing (2:15–16). James says, point blank, that those who say that they have justifying faith but close their hearts to the poor are mistaken or liars (2:15–18). James concludes, “judgment will be without mercy for those who have shown no mercy!” (2:13). The “mercy” James speaks of here is strong concern and help for the poor. Here again we have the teaching: you will not find mercy from God on judgment day if you have not shown mercy to the poor during your lifetime. This is not because caring for the poor saves you, but because it is the inevitable outcome of saving, justifying faith.
The principle: a sensitive social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of service to the needy is the inevitable outcome of true faith. By deeds of service, God can judge true love of himself from lip-service (cf. Isa 1:10–17). Matt 25, in which Jesus identifies himself with the poor (“as you did it to the least of them, you did it to me”) can be compared to Prov 14:31 and 19:17, in which we are told that to be gracious to the poor is to lend to God himself and to trample on the poor is to trample on God himself. This means that God on judgment day can tell what a person’s heart attitude is to him by what the person’s heart attitude is to the poor. If there is a hardness, indifference, or superiority, it betrays the self-righteousness of a heart that has not truly embraced the truth that he or she is a lost sinner saved only by free yet costly grace.
Edwards’s appeal and argument is very powerful. He begins his study asking, “Where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?” He concludes his survey of the biblical material with Proverbs 21:3: “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he shall cry himself and not be heard.” Edwards adds, “God hath threatened uncharitable persons, that if ever they come to be in calamity and distress they shall be left helpless.” Edwards brings home the Bible’s demand that gospel-shaped Christians must be remarkable for their involvement with and concern for the poor. We should literally be “famous” for it. That is the implication of texts such as Matt 5:13–16 and 1 Pet 2:11–12.”
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We should not get too hung up on reconciling James and Paul. Bringing together James and Paul on justification is really no different than bringing together Paul and Jesus. For my own efforts at situating James within the framework of a broader NT theology of grace, see my essay “Future Justification” in the book edited by Andrew Sandlin, A Faith That Is Never Alone.
Paul says that doers of the law will be justified; hearing is not enough (see Rom. 2). This is right in line with Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (e.g., Mt. 7:13ff) and James 1-2. In each of these cases final/eschatological justification is in view. They all harmonize perfectly and easily.
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Is helping the poor a matter of mercy or justice? Are we giving the poor an undeserved gift or do the poor have some right to claim a portion of our goods for themselves?
This is a tricky question, but the key is remembering that there are various kinds of justice in Scriptures. God’s justice can no more be reduced to one thing than other divine attributes, e.g., love, holiness wisdom, etc. This is reflected in the various types of justice in God’s covenant and creation, including punitive justice, restorative justice, distributive justice, etc. Justice can mean God gives a sinner what he deserves – death and hell. But justice can also refer to God being faithful to his promise and forgiving our sins in Christ. And so on.
Tim Keller and others have popularized the idea that mercy ministry is actually a form of justice. And this is true after a fashion, but not in the way it is sometimes thought. The poor do not have an absolute claim to any of our goods. If they did, they could not steal from us because you can’t steal what is already yous – but we know that they can steal (e.g., Prov. 30:9). Property rights are protected by the same divine law that commands caring for the poor.
But in another sense mercy ministry is a matter of “doing justice” because it fulfills God’s covenant requirements and restores the world to the way he wants it to be.
Recall from my sermon on James 2:1-13 that the poor man in James 2:6 is likely an allusion to Jesus. Again this echoes Matthew 25 – what we do for the “least of these” we do to and for Jesus himself. That makes the demand of 2:13ff to show mercy and care for the poor all the more urgent.
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Archbishop Charles J. Chaput on the church in our culture:
“We’re here to rock the boat. That’s what it means to be leaven. The Epistle of James says that faith without works is a dead faith. John Paul II says the same thing with a slightly different twist: Faith which does not become culture is dead faith. By “culture” he means the entire environment of our lives. Our culture reflects who we are and what we value. If we really believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, it should be obvious in our families, our work, our laws, our music, art, architecture — everything….
Faith should impregnate everything we do. It should bear fruit every day in beauty and new life. And that’s why God doesn’t need “nice” Christians, Christians who are personally opposed to sin, but too polite to do anything about it publicly. Mother Teresa was a good and holy woman . . . but she wasn’t necessarily “nice.” Real discipleship should be loving and generous, just and merciful, honest and wise – but also tough and zealous . . . and determined to turn the world toward Christ.
If God wants us to be His cooperators in transforming the world, it’s because the world needs conversion. The world is good because God created it. But the world is also sinful, because we’ve freely made it that way by our sinful choices and actions…. We need to be actively involved in the world, for the sake of the world. We need to love the world as it needs to be loved – affirming its accomplishments, and redeeming its mistakes.”
This is a point I made, albeit very briefly, in the sermon: To say faith produces works is essentially saying faith produces culture. A culture of mercy towards the poor is one dimension of this, but it is only an illustration; there are many, many other ways faith creates a new way of life. James 2 makes it clear faith cannot be privatized; it is never a matter of “mere hearing” or “mere profession.” It must give rise to a new way of life, ultimately, a new civilization we can call “the kingdom of God.”
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