It’s been nearly a week, during the feast of unleavened bread, and you know that your trial is tomorrow and you already know the outcome. Convinced of the Lord that you are doing His will, you have tried to witness to your guards about salvation and now, in the dark of the night, you fall asleep.

Suddenly a bright light shines through your closed eye lids and something slapped your side. You have entered a curious dream state better than even the vision you experienced a while ago at Joppa. Oh, but an angel of God has come to rescue you! In your dream, a voice commands you, “Get up quickly!” and your chains fall noisily from your wrists to the floor. Amazingly, the crack Roman guards are asleep and unresponsive to even the noise this angelic being is making. This must be a dream! Groggily you follow the angel’s orders to get dressed.

The vision continues as the angel leads you out of the cell, through the prison and into the street. Gate after gate and units of guards simply allow you through. Oh, what a wonderful dream!

But, wait, you feel the cool night air on your skin. The angel departed as quickly as it had come, leaving you standing in the street, completely awake.

“And when Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth His angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.” Acts 12:11

These events probably happened in AD 43 or 44 because Herod died shortly after them. Herod had James killed and arrested Peter as one part of an overall campaign to destroy the church. We don’t know why Herod wanted to do this, except to guess that he didn’t like the competition for authority that Jesus offered.  Dictators rarely like divided loyalty among the masses and they especially don’t like the undivided loyalty that Christians offer to Jesus.

The death of James served as a signal for a fundamental change in the attitude of this Herod compared to the attitude of his predecessor, under whose authority Jesus had been executed. When Jesus was killed, the political powers acted as they did because they were forced by the religious authorities. No one was pushing Herod by the time of our subject events. He was acting on his own initiative, for his own purposes. He was delighted that the people approved, but that was not his primary reason for acting.

The people did approve of Herod’s actions this time. Most of the time the masses were enthusiastic about Jesus while their leaders opposed Him. We see in the Gospels that the leaders had to act carefully not to stir up the people (Luke 22:2, 6). Many people don’t seem to have approved of Jesus’ crucifixion and after the resurrection and the birth of the church, the church (and the apostles) were highly regarded by the masses. The Sanhedrin took the masses into account when they persecuted the apostles in Acts 4. Now, however, there are no religious leaders present. It is the people, the masses, who seem to have changed their attitude toward the church. The Bible doesn’t explain this, but it may be that the Apostles were traveling abroad to such places as Samaria and were not as evident in Jerusalem as they had been. There may have been resentment brewing over the news of Gentiles coming to salvation. It may have occurred to the Judean Jews, as it had occurred to the pagans of Antioch, that Christianity was not a sect of Judaism.

This was no attempt to frighten the church into silence. Herod put James to the sword and the arrest of Peter clearly was intended to lead to a similar execution. Herod kept Peter under “maximum security” perhaps remembering the earlier escape by the apostles. Peter was guarded by 16 soldiers in six hours shifts, some of them in the cell with him. Escape by normal means was impossible! I would note that, similar to Elijah’s “soaked” sacrifice (1 Kings 18:32-35), the more intense the efforts to prevent whatever God has purposed, the more evidence of God’s presence and power.

“So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.” Acts 12:5

We do not know what the church prayed for, but we are told they prayed fervently, as befits a group of people who see themselves in grave danger. Peter’s life and safety were not all that concerned them. The church knew that if Herod was successful in carrying out his plans, the church could be eliminated, or at least greatly damaged. It was an impossible situation! There was little the church could do. They were restricted to prayer. In our day and time there would probably be phone call campaigns to Washington D.C. and protest marches in front of city hall. All kinds of human endeavors would be launched, and there’d likely be no time for prayer.  “All” the Jerusalem church could do was pray. Prayer would certainly “change things” on this particular night.

This escape was not Peter’s plan or his doing. Peter was sound asleep when the angel appeared and hardly awake until after the entire incident was over. The angel had to tell Peter how to put on his own clothes. Peter was not sitting up, awake, with shadowed eyes, agonizing about the events of the next day. He was sound asleep! He was not trying to pick the lock on his chains or dig a tunnel. He did not scold the angel for coming so late nor did he propose an escape plan. Peter’s deliverance, like the salvation of every saint, was the work of God, and not of man. Peter participated, but he did not plan nor produce the escape.

Peter was outside the gate, some distance from the prison, standing in the street, before he realized this was reality and not a vision. Can you not see him mumbling to himself all through the experience, “Wow, this vision is even better than the one about the animals coming down from heaven!”? He realized that his escape was God’s deliverance. Man proposes, but God disposes. It was God’s time for James to die, but it was not yet time for Peter to die.

“And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gate, a servant-girl named Rhoda came to answer. And when she recognized Peter’s voice, because of her joy she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing in front of the gate. And they said to her, “You are out of your mind!” But she kept insisting that it was so. And they kept saying, “It is his angel.” But Peter continued knocking; and when they had opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison. And he said, “Report these things to James and the brethren.” And he departed and went to another place.” Acts 12:6-17

The only door which failed to open that night was the door of Mary’s house. In her joy, Rhoda, the servant-girl who answered the door, forgot to open it and then there was the disbelief of those who had gathered to pray. They were willing to believe that Peter’s ghost was haunting them (perhaps it was another resurrection) but they could not believe that God had rescued Peter. Peter reported to these saints that which neither the guards nor Herod ever knew. He wanted them to know that he was safe, thanks to God’s intervention, and that he was going to drop “out of sight” for a time. Until Herod’s plan was somehow terminated, Peter would keep his identity and his address a secret, even, apparently, from his fellow-saints. This may well have been for their own protection, since Herod would not be above torturing any of them to learn his whereabouts.

I noticed that there were no leaders present, or at least acknowledged, at Mary’s house. If John also called Mark is John Mark, then Mary was Barnabas’ sister or sister-in-law, but Barnabas was apparently in Antioch by this time. James was dead. John was not mentioned. James, the half-brother of Jesus who was emerging as a key leader in the Jerusalem church, was not present but was to be notified of Peter’s deliverance. The other “brothers” who were to be told may have also been leaders in the church. I believe the church’s leaders were not present because it would have made it easy for Herod to kill off the church’s leaders at one time and in one place. The church leaders, at this point in time, had gone underground.

“Now when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter. And when Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there. Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus the king’s chamberlain, they were asking for peace because their country was fed by the king’s country.  And on an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. And the people kept crying out, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died.” Acts 12:17-23

The prayers of the saints gathered at the home of Mary were answered much more fully than they imagined. Not only was Peter spared execution by Herod, but the opposition of Herod was ended by his own death. God removed Herod. This too was an answer to the prayers of the saints beyond what they asked or thought.

What an understatement we see here in verse 18! “There was no small disturbance among the soldiers.” It was sheer panic! These men recognized not only that Peter was missing, but that Herod was furious. They knew that they were now the endangered species. There was no one to deliver them from the wrath of Herod. They did not have the foggiest idea what had actually happened. Peter could not be found, and no explanation could be found either. Imagine finding the handcuffs fixed to the hands of the soldiers, and yet Peter’s hands somehow extracted, with the cuffs locked. Imagine finding no evidence of a tunnel, and no clue of any typical escape effort. There was only one human explanation: the guards had to have let Peter go, and all of the guards on duty had to play a part in this. These men experienced the death to which Peter was sentenced, in which they were to play a part. I wonder how many soldiers would be eager to guard a Christian after this.

Although some time seems to have passed between Peter’s escape and Herod’s death, Luke made it very clear that Herod’s death was directly related to the death of James, the deliverance of Peter, the prayers of the saints, and the end of the persecution which kept the apostles in hiding.

“But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied.” Acts 12:24

This is surely not a new statement. All through the Book of Acts we have seen periodic reference to the growth of the church. It is never more fittingly applied than here. It contrasts the results of God’s work against the resistance of men like Herod and the Jews. Herod had commenced an attack on the church at Jerusalem, focusing on the execution of the leaders of the church. God purposed for James to die for the sake of the gospel and to save Peter for the sake of the gospel. He also purposed to remove Herod and some of the prison guards, bringing his opposition to a halt. We see the beginning contrasted with the end. If all is well that ends well, then all is well here. James may have died, but the church was not dead. It was alive and growing still, even when the masses and their king opposed it.

“And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, taking along with them John, who was also called Mark.” Acts 12:25

Yes, it would seem that Barnabas and Saul were on their way to, in, or headed back from Jerusalem when this incident took place. The death of James and the deliverance of Peter were set in the midst of the offering of the saints of Antioch to the saints in Judea. Context is everything!

We are at a clear point of transition in the Book of Acts and the history of the church. Peter didn’t die, but he did become absent, signally a strong emphasis on Paul’s ministry. Similarly, we see the rise of the Gentiles over the Jews within the church. Paul explained the reason for this in Romans 9-11. From this time forward, many Gentiles will be saved, but few Jews. The Jews had hardened their hearts to Jesus and now the leadership was actively seeking to destroy Christianity. The persecution we see in Acts 12 was the final opposition movement in Jerusalem and Judea, before the destruction of that city by the Roman armies in 70 AD. It was not a religious movement, but a secular movement of Herod and the Jewish people. Almost every segment of Jewish society had now come to reject Jesus and His church. This near-total rejection was the basis for God to turn His back upon this people and this place for many years to come. The day of salvation for Israel had passed. No wonder Jesus wept over this city and its fate.

We see God’s sovereignty once more and, finally, Peter recognized it as well. In verse 9 he explained the lessons that had so graphically been taught to him, “God is able to deliver His saints from even men and to deliver evil men to divine judgment.” Acts 12:9

If we were to consistently live our daily lives on this principle, our lives would be radically transformed. We need not fear men, only God. Those who fear God as a loving Father need not fear His divine wrath, for we are assured that evil men will be judged by God in the end. God will deliver His saints from evil men, and He will deliver evil men to eternal judgment.

What is the nature of the deliverance with which God will deliver you? Will God deliver you from the snares of evil men into the blessings of His kingdom, or deliver you to judgment? The difference in these two destinies is determined by your response to the person of Jesus Christ. If you receive Him as God’s Savior, as the One Who died for your sins, and Who gives to you His righteousness, you will be delivered to the blessings of heaven. If you reject Him, you have the fate of Herod awaiting you. God grant that you make the decision to trust in Jesus and to be delivered from divine wrath.

One final word. In this sense of deliverance, James too was delivered from evil men. James was delivered from evil men by his death as he passed from their presence to the glory and presence of God. Peter was delivered from Herod by Herod’s death and delivered to a further time of earthly service.  Both men were delivered, just in different ways. God always delivers His own!

Probably the most frequent challenge to the gospel throughout the centuries has to do with Who Jesus Christ is and was. Heretical teachers down through the ages have advanced their own concepts of Jesus’ identity and nature, with varying degrees of success. The central figure of Christianity is really a Biblical mystery. Many portions of Scripture completely affirm His deity, showing that at no time did He lose His divine nature. Yet with equal strength the Bible teaches that Christ became fully human. This leaves room for heresy to creep in. One might wonder why God did not simply state it clearly, but we must always remember that we come to Jesus in faith. If we were 100 percent certain of everything about Him, it would not be faith.

Jesus was called God in the Bible. The prologue to the Gospel of John reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God” (John 1:1 NET Bible). John makes it clear that this Word is Jesus Christ: “Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.” (John 1:14). Jesus Christ is therefore called "God" in John 1:1.  The same is true of Hebrews 1:8: "but of the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom'" (Heb. 1:8). Paul addressed Christ as "God" when he wrote, “… as we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; also see 2 Peter 1:1). The Gospel of John recorded Thomas’ response to the resurrected Christ: “Thomas replied to him, 'My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28).

Jesus Christ is called "the Son of God" in numerous passages (Luke 3:22; Matt. 16:15-17; John 10:36). He is also called "Lord" in many passages (1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11).

Jesus Christ not only accepted worship due only to God but also demanded it (Matt. 4:10; John 5:23). Christ claimed to be the supreme object of faith, demanding of men the same kind of faith that they placed in God (John 17:1-3). He said, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30).

The scriptural case for Jesus Christ as God is further supported by Christ’s divine attributes and words. He is eternal (John 17:5; Heb. 1:11-12), omnipresent (Matt. 28:20), and omnipotent (Heb. 1:3). The Scriptures show Him to be the Creator of all things (John 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb. 1:2), the One who holds all things in the universe together (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). He alone as God offers forgiveness of sins (Luke 5:20-24), and all men will face Him in judgment (John 5:24-28). Christ’s full deity has clear Biblical support.

If the Bible stopped there, I submit there’d be few if any heresies revolving around Christ’s nature. The Bible is clear in asserting that Jesus is God. Enough said. However, the Bible builds an equally clear case for Christ’s full humanity through the Incarnation. Several passages indicate that Christ had a human birth (Matt. 1:18-25; Luke 2:4-21; John 1:14; 1 Tim. 3:15; 1 John 4:1-3). He also experienced human development (Luke 2:52). He had all the human elements: a body (John 2:21), a soul (John 12:27), and a spirit (Luke 23:46). Christ possessed all of the human limitations except sin. He got tired, hungry, thirsty, sorrowful, and He died.

The Bible gives clear testimony to the humanity as well as the complete deity of Jesus Christ. Paul summarized this: “For in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).

The mystery comes because humanity is not the same as deity. If Jesus were 50 percent God and 50 percent man (as some have taught), there would be no problem, since one-half plus one-half equals one. But the Bible does not allow this because it testifies that Jesus is a total man and fully God. Such a statement is far easier to make than to explain because there is no way we can truly comprehend one plus one equals one. That defies our math. It is like trying to put one quart of water and one quart of oil into a one-quart container.

Human reasoning denies that one can be fully human and fully divine, but the Bible tells us that Jesus was and is. And this is where faith comes in. By faith, we can choose to accept what the Bible teaches and not argue with God. When we do that, He provides us with an assurance that the Bible is correct, even if our human reasoning struggles with the concept. But that is not how human beings like to handle intellectual mysteries.

Historically, most people confronted by this mystery have chosen to either reject the biblical testimony concerning the God-man or they have juggled or ignored certain passages in an attempt to make this compatible with human comprehension. This has led to two inevitable extremes.

One extreme rejects the deity of Jesus Christ, thus reducing Him to the level of being merely a man. Oh, they try to be kind in their reductionism. They say that Jesus was a “great teacher” or a “true prophet.” Statements like these shouldn’t fool anyone, since almost all false systems want to give lip-service to Jesus and put Him on their bandwagon in spite of their rejection of His deity.

This extreme undermines all Christianity. It would mean that the Bible is not true and salvation is still not available, since the death of a mere man (no matter how noble) cannot provide the infinite purchase price required to redeem other men from their sins. If this extreme be truth, we’re all in deep trouble, since nobody can hope to please a holy God with his own efforts.

This first extreme viewpoint concerning the God-man would imply that it is an utter waste of time to study the Scriptures and become a Christian. If Christ is not God, the Bible is wrong, there is no salvation, and each person must become his own authority for “truth”.

The opposite extreme is equally devastating. The deity of Christ is affirmed, but His humanity is minimized or rejected. Interestingly, the results of this extreme are essentially the same as those of the first extreme. The Bible would not be the Word of God, and salvation would not be available for men.

Since the Bible makes it clear that Jesus Christ was completely human, a rejection of His humanity is tantamount to a rejection of the Bible. Salvation would not be available because the substitutionary atonement requires that Jesus Christ must die as a man to bear judgment for the sins of all men. As Scripture says, “ … there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time” (1 Tim. 2:5-6). The Messiah could not have become the mediator between God and man apart from becoming the God-man by taking on human flesh. Many other important biblical doctrines would be destroyed with the notion that Christ never became a man, but the two that have been discussed here are the most critical.

Church history affords a number of illustrations of how people have tried either to reject or rationalize this God-man mystery. The two erroneous extremes have appeared in many forms throughout the centuries and will continue to arise as long as people refuse to bow to the authority of God’s revelation of Himself in the Scriptures.

The Gnostics were among the first who perverted the Biblical doctrine of the God-man. Because of their dualistic conviction that matter is evil, they refused to believe in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Docetism, a related heresy, was a doctrine that taught Christ only seemed to have a real body. They believed that Christ tricked the evil god of the Old Testament at the Crucifixion because His body was not real. This sounds sort of familiar (see Islam’s dealing with Christ).

The Apostle John fought against the developing Gnosticism of his day and urged his readers to “test the spirits,” for “every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:1-3; see 2 John 7). John vehemently opposed this denial of the full humanity of Jesus, calling it “the spirit of the antichrist.”

Arius of Alexandria was a the center of another controversy related to the issue of the God-man in the early fourth century. Arius said that Christ was different from God and was of another substance. The conflict that arose from this led to the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325.

Opposition to the deity of Christ was soon followed by a return to the other extreme. Apollinaris held a docetic view of Christ, saying that Christ was not truly human. Apollinaris placed his reason above Scripture and refused to accept that both the human and the divine nature were in Christ.

Nestorius, another church leader who stumbled over this mystery, postulated two persons, saying that Jesus as a man was energized by the logos of God. This was effectively a denial of the complete deity of Jesus Christ.

Eutyches, in the fifth century, arrived at the unusual viewpoint that Christ was neither truly human nor divine, but was a “third other”.

The Monophysite group, who stressed the divine nature in Christ and minimized His human nature to such an extent that His humanity was divested of all but a few human characteristics, represented another swing back of the docetic (not completely human) view of Christ.

Though representatives of both extremes regarding the God-man continued to persist, the major christological controversies beginning with the seventh century centered more on the work than on the person of Jesus Christ. The next major group to deny the deity of Christ in favor of His humanity were the Socinians in the 16^th. Since that time it is most common simply to reject the Biblical testimony concerning the deity of Christ. This has been supported by 18^th- and 19^th-century philosophy, the evolutionary hypothesis, and higher criticism. The docetic extreme of minimizing the true humanity of Christ was more common in the days of the early church and is not often found today.

Outside of the main lines of church history, many more examples of the two extremes (a denial of Christ’s deity or of His humanity) can be found by looking into the beliefs of cults and Eastern religion concerning the person of Jesus Christ. Several of these religions regard Christ as simply another prophet sent by God to help enlighten the people of His day. Along with this goes the claim that other prophets with an even greater message have succeeded Jesus, and people of today should first listen to them (for instance, Muhammad and Baha’u’lah). Other groups think of Jesus as “divine” in the same pantheistic sense in which all men are divine, thus rejecting Christ’s exclusive claims.

Another popular approach, which has been supported by various esoteric and occult teachings, is the separation of Jesus from Christ. This is an old idea that goes back to second- and third-century Monarchianism. Some, like Paul of Samosata, taught that “the Christ” (the divine power) descended upon the man Jesus at His baptism and left Him just prior to His crucifixion. This has been extended by some today into the idea that all of us can have this divine power or “Christ consciousness” within us.

All these erroneous teachings concerning the God-man place faith in human reason above God’s revelation. It is imperative for each true believer in Christ to accept by faith all the scriptural data. We must not rationalize or disregard those elements that tax our comprehension, or we will be guilty of subjectively choosing those parts of the Bible we like and eliminating the rest. This is not how Christians are supposed to deal with the Bible and this will inevitably bring us into conflict with those who rank human reason above God’s revealed word.

Another assault on the gospel message of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone is “believe and do good works.” The idea promoted is that one must both believe and do good works in order to be saved. If the good works are not present, then, you were either never saved or really believed, or you lost your salvation, or you never got saved because you lack the good works required.

Some would argue that we are saved by faith alone, but if faith is alone (if there are no works), then you are not saved, your faith was only an intellectual faith, not a heart faith. In this view faith is usually redefined to include turning from sin and surrendering one’s life to Christ. Assurance then, in the final analysis, is based on one’s works or record rather than on the work of Christ and the sure promises of the Word like 1 John 5:11-13 and John 5:24.

The argument is that genuine faith always results in good works. Because of new life imparted to believers via spiritual regeneration, in response to the presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer’s life, those who have genuinely believed the gospel message will, as a general rule, produce some fruit, sometime, somehow.

As John 15 and many other passages of Scripture teach, the general maxim that believers will bear fruit does not mean that all believers will be fruitful or that a believer will always be fruitful (see Titus 3:14; 2Peter. 1:8). Both of these passages indicate that a true believer might be unfruitful; otherwise these exhortations would be meaningless. The same principle applies to the Lord’s admonition for us to abide in Him that we might be fruitful.

A person’s fruit will not necessarily be outwardly evident. A person’s fruit may be private or erratic. Just because we do not see someone’s fruit does not mean that some fruit has not been produced. We may see a man’s fruit, but we cannot see his heart. We don’t know what motivated his works. The works may have been motivated by selfish desires to impress or be accepted rather than by the Spirit.

Many unbelievers (those who profess no faith in Christ) will demonstrate all kinds of good works like helping the poor, ministering to the sick, caring for their family, self-control, and working for the benefit of the community in other ways. Does this prove they know God? No! Does it save them? No! While works may give evidence of new life and fellowship with the Lord, it is still never a proof because there are too many variables that we just cannot see.

According to Scripture, real fruit in the life of the believer is the result of pruning and abiding, the work of God as the Vinedresser, and the response of the believer through fellowship and faith. When our Lord said, “without Me you can nothing,” He was not saying believer’s could produce no works, but that there could be no real fruit--works that were the result of new life and the power of the Spirit, without God.

If a man claims to be a Christian by the things he does and says: he goes to church, prays, and says he knows the Lord, but refuses to help someone in need when it is within his power, what does this indicate about the man? It could indicate the person is not saved--but not necessarily. Remember, many who do not know Christ help the poor. Refusal can also indicate the person is out of fellowship and not walking by an active faith in the indwelling Holy Spirit (1 John 3:16-17; Gal. 5:22-23; Jam. 2:15-17).

What’s the point? Works do not necessarily prove a man’s salvation. Then what are some of the values of a person’s good works? Works are not designed to be the fundamental means of assurance of salvation. Assurance is based on something more absolute--the work of Christ and the Word. Good works glorify God especially when our motives are right and He is the source of those works because we are abiding in Christ (1 Cor. 4:5; 6:20; 2 Cor. 9:13; 1 Pet. 2:12; 4:16). Good works witness to others of God’s love and of the truth of the claims of Christ. They can give evidence of the authenticity and power of the gospel (2 Cor. 6:3-6; 1 Thess. 2:1-12; John 13:34-35). Good works minister God’s love to men (1 John 3:17). Good works promote peace and order in society (Rom. 13:1-4; 1 Pet. 2:14).

We should not compromise the gospel of grace by adding anything to what man must do other than believe the message of God’s saving love in Christ. We should be challenged as believers to grow in Christ, to submit to His lordship, and allow Him to change our lives as we walk in fellowship with the Savior. Let’s also remember that one of the evidences of salvation is the discipline of the Lord (Heb. 12:5f).

James 2:14-26 is one of the key passages used to support the need of adding works to faith in Christ. The thinking is something like this: We are saved by faith alone, but real faith is never alone, or the faith that saves is never alone,” and James 2:14-26 is used to support this position. Does James 2:14-26 support this position?

Those who see a support for salvation by works or salvation plus works included in James 2 assert that either James is contradicting the Apostle Paul and teaching salvation by works or he is teaching that real or genuine faith will produce works and fruitlessness is a sure sign that a person is unsaved. “That faith” in 2:14, the kind of faith that is without works and fruitless, cannot save from hell.

Yes, this is a difficult passage, but much of its difficulty stems from our own preconditioned thinking, theological bias, the nature of English translations, and our understanding of certain words like “save,” “salvation,” “soul,” and translations like “that faith” in vs. 14.

There is no question that faith without works is in some way defective, but that does not mean that the person is unsaved or that their faith in Christ is not real. Scripture teaches that faith begins as a grain of mustard seed and must grow. If it is not fed and nourished by the Word and fellowship with the Lord, it becomes stagnant, the soul becomes hard, and the life becomes unfruitful. Over and over again the Scripture posts warning signs for believers against the dangers of unfruitfulness (Titus 3:8, 14; 2Peter 1:8). The wasteland of barren living was therefore a real and present danger which the New Testament writers faced with candor. In no way did they share the modern illusion that a believer could not enter that wasteland, or live there.

James was not writing to refute or contradict the doctrine emphasized so strongly in Paul’s epistles because he wrote very early, before the epistles of Paul emphasizing justification by faith without works. James was written in 45 A.D. and Galatians and Romans in 49-58. That James and Paul were in harmony and believed in salvation by faith apart from works is clear from Acts 15:1f and Galatians 1:18-21; 2:9.

Unquestionably, James was written to believers, to those whom James considered saved. He was not questioning their salvation. He identified them as brethren in every chapter for a total of 15 times in this epistle (1:2, 16, 19; 2:1, 5, 14; 3:1, etc.). He referred to his readers as “begotten of God” (1:18), a reference to regeneration or the new birth as a gift from God (1:17). As a warning against partiality he referred to their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (2:1). He also wrote about “the fair name by which you have been called,” a reference to the name Christian because of their faith in Christ and association with the Christian community (Acts 11:26; 1 Pet. 4:16). He taught and challenged them in ways that could only have application or meaning to genuine believers.

While James knew his readers were born again, he also knew how they desperately needed to take in the Word and respond to its truth. The facts of the epistle show that though they were religious and orthodox in their faith, they were carnal, worldly, and legalistic. Legalism always nullifies the power of Christ in believers’ lives. It means they are trusting in their own ability and good works to be accepted with God and to feel significant.

As is clear in the epistles of Paul, this does not mean they were unsaved or only professing Christians. However, it does mean they were unfruitful because they were laboring under the weakness of their own ability. Begotten of God (1:18), brethren (1:2, 16, 19, 2:1), they had faith in Christ (2:1), but they were religionists as evidenced by James’ warning in 1:26 that  they were hearing the Word without applying it (1:22-26), meeting  together as an assembly of believers (2:2), priding themselves on having the Law (2:10-11), and, at least some, wanting to be teachers in the assembly and were priding themselves on their mature wisdom (3:1-2). While they had real faith in Christ for salvation (2:1), they were not experiencing the liberty and deliverance that should accompany salvation. Their faith in Him for daily living was dead and inoperative just as with the Christians in Galatia. Like the Galatians, they had fallen from a grace/faith way of life under the power of the Spirit (Gal. 5:1-5).

James’ readers were external religionists seeking to live the Christian life by their own ability, which had neutralized the power of God. They had some religious works in the form of certain religious activities, but they lacked a vital faith fellowship with the Lord in and through the activity of the engrafted Word (1:19-25), the ministry of the indwelling Spirit (4:5), and drawing near to God in honest confession and humble brokenness before God (1:21; 4:7-10).  As religious externalists, they were dominated by man’s wisdom and strategies for handling life rather than by God’s wisdom through the Word which they needed to apply personally (1:2-27). They were controlled by that which is earthly, worldly, natural, demonic (1:13-16; 3:13-18; 4:1-4).  As a result, while religious, they lacked in real Christ-like other-oriented works. They were under God’s discipline and perhaps on the verge of discipline unto death (1:21; 2:14; and 5:14-15, 19-20).  James’ readers were frustrated by trials (1:2-4). The rich trusted their riches (1:10-11; 5:1f). The poor complained of their lack (1:9). They ignored those in need (1:27; 2:15-17) and were guilty of sinful attitudes which showed themselves in sins of the tongue--fighting, quarreling, and criticizing (3:2-4:2, 11f). They were guilty of favoritism (2:1f) and of putting their business ahead of the Lord (4:13-17).

When James used the word “faith” in James 2:14f, he was not talking about a real versus a false or spurious faith, one which only claims to be real, but really is not. These were brethren (vs. 14), true believers with real faith in Christ for salvation. He was addressing their daily walk, pointing out evidence that their faith was dead, inoperative, and unproductive. Faith, in order to be productive, must have a valid object and be energized by fellowship with the Lord; it must grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ (2Peter 3:18). Their faith had a valid object for salvation from sin’s penalty, but not for the Christian life and victory against the power of sin.

In James 1:21, James wrote about the Word’s ability “to save your souls.” (also 2:14 and 5:20). We need to be careful not to misinterpret this. Many people have only one religious meaning for this modern English translation -- “to be saved from hell” -- but this is not what James meant nor what his readers would have understood. By context, this meant “to save your life” from God’s divine discipline and the self-made misery of walking out of fellowship. Five times James used the word sozo, “to save,” which means “to save or deliver from peril, injury, suffering, or physical death (Matt. 8:25; 14:30; 27:40, 42; Mk. 13:20; Jam. 4:12; 5:20); to heal, restore to health or strength (Matt. 9:22; Mk. 5:24; James 5:15); to save or deliver in a spiritual sense from the penalty, power, and presence of sin (1 Cor. 1:21; James 1:21; 2:14; 1Tim. 1:15). The word sozo is used of the past, present, and future aspects of salvation and some passages could refer to all three aspects of salvation.

We simply cannot limit this word to mean salvation from hell. James was clearly saying their faith, in the condition it was in, could not save or deliver anyone from the things that were dominating their lives. He was not speaking about salvation from hell. Why should he, as this does not fit the context? He warned his readers about the bondage and futility of legalism and dead orthodoxy, and the consequences of sin-- the loss of rewards and divine discipline even to the point of death (1:15, 21; 4:12; 5:1-4, 7-8, 9, 14-16, 20).

James understood how easily Christians, though we know the great truth that God accepted us on the basis of faith alone, could fall into the error of downplaying good works altogether. He understood how readily doctrinal correctness could take precedence over practical, everyday obedience. In short, he knew the danger of dead orthodoxy, which is one of Satan’s methods of assault to get us to lock our shield of faith into our theological armory so that we never employ it on the field of combat and everyday life.

In his little epistle, Jude called upon the Church to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3). For us today, the faith refers to the body of revealed truth that has been handed down in the Scripture. It concerns the great fundamental truths of Scripture concerning subjects such as God, Jesus Christ, man, salvation, the Bible, and things to come including the personal return of the Lord.

This body of truth is called the faith because it must be received by faith, and because “the faith” contains the gospel which is a message of grace offering man a salvation that is free, without price, one that is to be received by faith rather than by human works.

But from as early as Acts 15, the church has had to contend against assaults on the gospel wherein people have tried to add some form of human works to faith alone whereby we could gain salvation like works of the Law, or circumcision, or its counterpart for today, water baptism. Truly, the gospel of God’s grace in Christ is under siege and we need to be able to contend for the faith.