Articles
Perfect Faith
Faith is essential, yet not all faith is the same quality. The Bible talks about dead faith, worthless faith, shipwrecked faith, little faith, etc. In today’s text, James describes perfect faith. Surely that is the kind we all want to have!
"Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, 'And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,' and he was called the friend of God" (2:21-23).
Perfect faith begins by listening to God. Faith always comes that way (Romans 10:17). We may believe something God has not said, but when we do that is not faith; it is imagination or wishful thinking or self-will or stubbornness or something similar.
Perfect faith trusts what God says. Abraham believed God. That is remarkable because God said some remarkable things to Abraham. God promised that He would make Abraham great; that his family would become a great nation; even that he would become a blessing to the entire world. And God promised all that, even though Abraham was old and did not have any children. Abraham did not always understand how God would do what He said (Romans 4:19-20), but he took into account God’s infinite greatness and believed He would (v. 21). Perfect faith does that.
Perfect faith does what God says. It trusts God’s instructions just as surely as it trusts His promises. James illustrates that with perhaps the most difficult command God ever gave a man. Isaac was Abraham’s son through whom God’s promises were to be fulfilled. Yet at one point God commanded Abraham to take his beloved Isaac and go offer him up as a burnt offering! (Genesis 22:1ff). Was it logical? Was it reasonable? Did it not seem to be a contradiction to God’s promises? Regardless, it was what God said, and Abraham promptly obeyed. The fact that God stopped Abraham at the last second in no way lessens the point. Abraham obeyed God.
Do not be deceived. Every effort to dismiss God’s instruction—claiming that it is antiquated or it applied only in another culture or it makes little sense or it would be too difficult or for whatever reason it does not mean what it says—is unfaithfulness, not faith.
Perfect faith justifies. Abraham’s faith was credited unto righteousness: it meets the condition upon which God forgives, making man righteous (Romans 4:5-8). James wants us to clearly understand that the kind of faith that justifies is working, obedient faith. “You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (v. 24). Isn’t it interesting that the only time the Bible uses the expression faith alone it plainly says we are not justified that way? No, we need perfect faith.
