Spirtuality is Individual

Welcome you guys. Welcome to midtown. Thanks for joining us today. Uh, back in the middle of the 20th century, there was a Jesuit priest. His name was Daniel Berrigan and his work and life captivated much of the U S at the time. He was radically committed to nonviolence. In a really divisive era, he co-chaired organizations alongside names like Martin Luther King jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr and Thomas Merton. He also consulted and played a role in the Oscar winning film, the mission. Anybody seen the mission? Yeah, I thought so. Just the film nerds go see the mission. It's a really, really good movie. Uh, and the film nerds like me really love it. But this guy, Daniel Berrigan, incredibly accomplished, but beyond his accomplishments, he was also known for being really unrestrained in his speech. He was really direct and really provocative. Which meant he was always a great interview because you'd always get a good quote out of Berrigan. So one day he was being interviewed about the nature of faith. And at one point the interviewer asked him, where does faith live? Is it more in the head or in the heart? And Berrigan paused briefly before answering. And then he replied with this. Faith is rarely where your head is at, nor is it where your heart is that faith is where your butt is at. And for the adults in the room, he may or may not have used a more provocative word than but, but he was a very provocative person. He was a very provocative person. But in that sentence, but you get the point. Either way, when Berrigan said that, he didn't just mean faith is where you choose to sit your butt on a Sunday morning, though we're glad you did. He meant that faith is where you sit in your deepest commitments. And how those commitments get your butt into the world. Which means that faith always shows itself in the way you answer certain questions. Questions like what commitments are you sitting in? Within what reality do you anchor yourself? And how do your decisions and your allegiances and your life choices communicate your answers to those questions? Faith is where your butt is at. Amen? Berrigan's words, I think, couldn't be more prophetic in our culture because we are a people who have slowly, over the last few centuries especially, turned faith into a very private matter. We've individualized it and then we've segmented it from our behavior in the world in a bunch of different ways. For example, we tend to talk about faith only as personal, not as a public thing. We tend to talk about faith only as a public thing. And so in our time, you can be religious. If you're into that sort of thing, by all means, you just have to keep it to yourself. And keep it to your little subculture. That may be true for you. It may give you meaning and purpose. And I'm so happy for you. That's so great for you. is. It is a condescending statement. But as soon as you try to bring that faith into the public world, it's dangerous. It's just between you and God or you and Krishna or you and your spirit animal or whatever else. But it's not the only way that we've privatized faith. We've also privatized it by making it into an intellectual exercise. This has been a Christian specialty for many years. Do you believe the right ideas in your head? Do you pray the prayer and say the right words in the right order? If so, great. You have faith. Faith is just about the ideas in our heads and the way we affirm those ideas to others. And how we live, where our butts are at, that's less important. And maybe the most prominent picture of privatizing faith is the idea that we have faith. We have faith in the world. We have faith in our culture today is the way we've turned it into a therapeutic tool. This is my generation's favorite. You know, I'm not religious. I'm just a spiritual person. Which really means I use the Headspace app when it's convenient for me. Or I read a couple of spiritual self-help books every year. Or I drink kombucha at the park while doing goat yoga. Like, that's how I'm spiritual.

And that therapeutic approach, it's all over the statements we say. We say things that sound really spiritually wise. They don't mean anything. The universe has a plan for me. That's so nice that the universe cares about you like that. Sending positive vibes. Manifest your desires. Those all make us feel good. But they don't really make a meaningful difference in our character or in the world. They make us spiritually into a, they're spiritually self-focused tools to make us feel good. And as long as we feel good, then great. And this, by the way, this sort of therapeutic approach to faith has leaked into our Christian subculture all over the place. We've made, in our Christian subculture, a lot of things that we don't know about. We've made a lot of Christian churches, oftentimes, the emotional experience, the positive feelings of church, the measure of faith. You guys, I've watched church staff meetings where teams of people have talked about the best way to maximize decibel levels in the church on Sundays so that people feel like something's happening in their chest. The guy who founded one of the most popular churches in Western history was quoted as saying that the purpose of every service was to, quote, leave people feeling better about themselves when they left than when they arrived. There's a billboard I saw a few years ago for one of the most popular churches here in Phoenix. Their slogan was this, win at life. Win at life, which sounds really nice. Sounds very therapeutic. Doesn't sound a lot like take up your cross and follow me, but it sounds nice. Just a few years back, there were two sociologists, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton were their names. They were curious about this because they were anecdotally noticing, like, it seems like faith has just become more and more private. What's going on here? And because they're scientists, they're like, we need data behind that. So they did the most comprehensive study of, of religion in America for young people that's ever been done. And what they found was striking. They found that most people, even those who call themselves Christians, actually have a belief system that looks nothing like Christianity. And they had a catch-all term to describe what they found to be true. They called it moralistic therapeutic deism, which is a whole bunch of fancy gobbledygook for most of us. But there were three main pillars that they saw that most people in America believe, if you dig down. These are the three pillars. One, you will be rewarded, for being a nice person. And what's interesting is that it was a really ambiguous nice. It wasn't really like this deep, robust understanding of goodness. It was more like, oh, I'm just a kind of a nice person in general. That's moralism. Second, the goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. That's therapeutic. And third pillar, there is a God who created the world, but that God isn't really meaningfully involved in our lives or the world now. And prayer is only really necessary when things are going bad. That's deism, the idea that God is very distant, moralistic, therapeutic deism. And notice something. All of those pillars are self-focused. Every single one of them is about me. I am the center of my little universe. That's what faith has become in our time. And here's the problem, you guys. That sort of faith is a con. It's a lie. Because it's dead. It doesn't change us. It doesn't change the world. Is it any wonder that in the time where we have the most privatized picture of faith ever, we are more divided and dissatisfied and suspicious and anxious and depressed than ever? Our private and individual faith has not resulted in a culture of free masterly humans who are changing the world. It's made us limp and brittle. We're subject to ways of emotion. And the deep cry that I feel from so many of you, the deep longing of our culture, is for something better than this. It's not for a better version or better than this, but it is a blessing to live the culture I live in. I'm not coat-twisted. version of the Headspace app. It's not for new emotional and spiritual strategies or more robust horoscope results or whatever. It's for a fully integrated faith where our heart and our head and our hands are aligned in love and justice and mercy. It's for a robust set of habits that are rooted in community that shape us in things like humility and compassion and justice. We are all longing for a life that matters, a faith that matters, a spirituality that makes a difference. We're longing for a living faith, not a limp faith. We're continuing in a teaching series here at Midtown on the book of James. We're calling this series The Great Con because each week we're looking at a different con, a different lie that our culture hands us about how to be human and who God is and what the world is like. And James responds to every one of these cons by saying, guys, no, you've missed it. That's not wisdom. That's not true. That's not what it means to be human. And this week, we're going to see that our longing, this deep longing that we have for an integrated life and a living life, is going to be a great con. And we're going to see that our living faith, that isn't new. It's been around for a long, long time. In our passage this morning, James is going to expose what dead faith, what this privatized, internal, and personal dead faith looks like. And then he's going to point away to what living faith looks like to show us that it really does have the power to transform us and the world. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me. We're going to be in the book of James. James is in the backs of your New Testaments. If you're flipping there, we're going to be starting in James chapter 2, verse 14, and reading through the book of James. And we're going to be reading through the book of James. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, that's okay. The words are up here on the screen behind me, so you can follow along there. James chapter 2, starting in verse 14. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill, but you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, well, you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without works, and I, by my works, will show you my faith. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown? You senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith is justified. You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith without works is dead. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Verse 17, so faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. Verse 20, faith apart from works is dead. Verse 26, faith without works is dead. Any idea what James could be getting at in this passage? It's really ambiguous and confusing, right? No, like any good teacher, James makes his purpose really obvious throughout this whole passage. Living faith, true faith, faith is a faith that works. It's a faith that gets its hands dirty. It's where your butt is at.

I'm getting a giggle out of the front row every time, by the way, on that. That's why I keep coming back. But for as clear as that purpose is, it can also be a little confusing to those of us who know our Bibles. See, in verse 24, James gives a summary of his argument here. He says, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And that sounds familiar, but a little off if we know our Bibles. Remember in Romans chapter three, verse 28, Paul says this, for we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. That seems contradictory, doesn't it? And for the person who wants to criticize the Bible or the person who has questions about the Bible, they think, aha, this is it. I found it, the contradiction, right? In black and white, the Bible contradicts itself. Clearly this thing isn't trustworthy. Its own authors can't agree. And so there you have it, friends. The church is over. It's done. We found the one contradiction. After 2,000 years, we have found the end, the end of Christianity in this passage. We can all go home. None of this matters. Thank God for us. We are enlightened people, so much smarter than these primitive people who put this ancient text together, right? I don't think that's the right posture, friends. When we see something like this that appears contradictory to us, we should start to wonder what's really going on there. It might be that we're missing something. And I think in this case, it is. See, James and Paul actually aren't disagreeing. They're in full agreement. And you see this as you look at church history and the rest of the scriptures. So for instance, James and Paul, they knew each other in the ancient world. We know that they both affirmed the other's ministry. So James affirmed Paul's ministry to the non-Jewish Christians, the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles. And Paul affirmed James's ministry to the early Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. James was the pastor of the first church in Jerusalem. And not only that, they were actually both present at an early church council called the Council of Jerusalem. It was an early meeting about 15 years after Jesus resurrected. And that council was all about defining what the gospel is and what the gospel isn't, what the good news of Jesus really is and isn't. And at that council, it was determined that none of us are given access to eternal life or joy or peace by our own effort, by works. We are given access to that completely and purely by the acts and works of Jesus Christ and his life, death, and resurrection. That is the good news of Christianity, grace. It's different than every other world religion. In every other world religion, you have to meditate a certain way, you have to behave a certain way, you have to perform certain religious things, and then you earn full life and unity with one, or unity with God. That's how every other faith works, but not Christianity. It says that the only thing that you need to have is trust in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. That has been the message of Christianity from the beginning. That's what James and Paul both affirmed. And even beyond their relationship, the early church, when they put their first Bibles together, they mashed James and Romans right next to each other. So, what's more likely? That these first century Jewish believers, who were meticulous in keeping records for centuries, that they had an opportunity, that they had an obvious contradiction that they missed, or that we, reading someone else's mail from 2,000 years later, might be missing something? I think I'm going to go with the latter. See, what James is actually doing in this passage is actually looking at the same thing as Paul, a life of faith in Jesus, but he's looking at it from a different perspective. James and Paul are like two different eyes looking at the same thing. You know when you close an eye and you look at something, or you are wearing an eye patch because it's Halloween or whatever you're doing? You, I don't know, I don't know what you guys do. What you dress up for for Halloween is your business. But say, yeah, that's Tuesdays, that's Tuesdays. Pirate Tuesdays? Interesting, I want to hear more about that. Anyway, if you close your eye and look at something, right, you lose depth perception. You lose the ability to fully understand and see that thing well. But as soon as you open your second eye, you can see with more depth. And you can see because it's at a slightly different angle than your other eye. Two eyes are necessary to see things in 3D. That's what James is doing. He's looking at faith from a different angle. And you can see he's doing this in verse 24 when he uses the word justify. He's using that word to grab people's attention because he knows that that's a word that Paul used. And just like almost every word, that word can have different meanings and different contexts. That's how words work. Take the word bank. What comes to mind, shout it out, when you hear the word bank, immediately comes to mind? Cold cash monies, Tobin Keck says. That is true. If you get a big paycheck on a Friday, what do you say? I'm making bank, baby. I'm making bank. But not only that, a bank also means Bank of America, Wells Fargo, a financial institution.

Jordan, that's another sermon.

Bank, depending on where you live, can also remind you of rivers. That's not something here in Phoenix because I don't know if you've been outside. But banks of a river are also a way that we use the word bank. Bank means different things in different contexts. Same thing is true for the word justify. In essence, the word justify can mean to make something right. So say you have a debt, and you pay that debt back. You have been justified. You have been made right, made equal in the terms that you need to be made equal in. That's how Paul actually uses the word in Romans. He's speaking to people who are burdened by legalism. Who are burdened by the notion that they need to earn God's love in some way or another. Or that God only loves certain types of people in certain ways. Paul is speaking to them and saying, that is not true. God's love has come in the person of Christ and is freely available to anyone independent of what they've done or failed to do. That is grace. That is the gospel. That is the way that Paul uses the word justify. And James, by the way, has already agreed with that in this letter. In ways we often overlook. In fact, he's agreed with it in this chapter. Chapter 2, verse 5, he says this. Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom? Heirs. Notice that metaphor. He's saying that Christians become heirs. What's the difference between wages and heirs? Wages come to you because of what you've done. An inheritance, being an heir, means that you receive something independent of what you've done simply because you're in relationship with someone. Wages only ever come as a result of the work that you have put in. Wages are a reward for earning. But an inheritance, being an heir, means the money is already in the bank. Cold cash money. It's guaranteed. And it's guaranteed based on your relationship with someone. That's how inheritance works. James has already said, unequivocally, we don't earn salvation by our works. He said that we are heirs by virtue of our relationship with Jesus. We are Christians because we have entrusted ourselves to this Jesus and now everything that is true of Jesus becomes true of us. We are part of God's eternal family. Co-heirs with Christ. Paul says in Romans. Everything that is in Christ we receive. We receive belovedness. The Father looks upon us with joy and love, never with shame. We become unified with the Spirit of God that brings love and joy and peace and the rest. We receive the power to change into people that look and sound and act like Jesus. And we receive resurrection life. So when James is using the word justify here, he's not meaning it in the same way. See, justify can mean to make right. But it can also mean to show that something is right. There's a subtle difference there. It can mean to prove that something is right. For instance, if someone asks you to justify a statement you've made, are they asking you to make that thing true? No. They know that you cannot make anything true. It's either true or it's not, right? What they're asking you when they say justify that statement, they're asking you for evidence. Can you show it to be true? Can you prove it to be true? Can you with data tell me and show me that that's true? That's what James is saying works is. The idea of faith for James is that it's something that follows up with works. After that initial claim of what we believe, does it show itself to be true? Does it justify itself through our lives? What he's saying is that we are not saved by deeds, but we are saved for deeds.

Friends, the way you know your faith is alive and not dead is by looking at the way that it shows up in your day-to-day life.

There's a great story from the ministry of Jesus that I think illustrates this well. Early on in Jesus' ministry, we hear that Jesus is teaching in a small home. He's increasing in popularity. Everyone's pressing in on the home. They want healing. They want teaching. There's no way to get into the home to Jesus. All the windows, all the doors are blocked. Then, a couple friends come with their paralyzed friend. They know that he needs healing. They know that Jesus can bring that healing. They have great faith, but they can't get in. Being the shrewd people that they are, they said, hey, what if we got up on the roof, clawed our way through the thatched roof, and dropped our friend down? Remarkable ingenuity in their faith. And so they climb up, they drop their friend down, Jesus sees them, and then this is what the text says in Jesus' response. It says, When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, Son, your sins are forgiven. Jesus saw their faith. How? Because faith is not a tangible thing you can put under a microscope. How did he see it? Through their actions. You see faith through actions. Their devoted love to their friend in need. Faith is shown where our butts are. Is that true of you? If someone was putting you on trial for being a Christian, and they were examining all of your behaviors, your schedule, your bank account, would they look at you and say, man, the evidence is overwhelming. They have faith.

And I'm not just talking about being nice. Sometimes we think that's what Christianity is. Well, I'm nice to people. I know my barista's name and I tip pretty well. I'm a nice person. You guys, I know lots of non-Christians that are the nicest people. I'm not talking about being nice. I'm talking about actions that show that Jesus is at work in us. I'm talking loving our enemies and those we disagree with. I'm talking elevating the poor and the overlooked. I'm talking radical forgiveness. I'm talking shocking generosity to the point where it costs us comfort so that others can be comfortable. I'm talking loving the poor, the outcast, as much as you love yourself. That's the kind of action that makes faith visible. Jesus never put it more simply and convictingly than this. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Because that's how love works. Receiving love is not something we hoard for ourselves. When we've received true love, it leaks out, it springs out, it flings itself towards others in love.

There's a minister in Massachusetts. He's a Presbyterian. That doesn't really matter. I just have that in my notes. It's there. Yeah, footnote. Thomas Hawkins is his name, but he wrote about this dynamic in his book, The Potter and the Clay. He said this, The closer we draw to others, the closer we draw to God. The farther away we move from God, the farther we move from others. When we are willing to abandon ourselves and fling ourselves outward in compassion and in service, we find that we have made room not just for others in our lives, but for God in our hearts. The energy that we have massed in our own little center is spent on others, and it leaves an open space where God may enter.

So this passage, friends, is not contrasting faith and works. It's contrasting dead faith and living faith. According to James, there is a version of faith that is useless, dead, and damaging because it is personal and private. But there is a type of faith that is living, brings us life. And he wants us to be able to know how to tell the difference. This passage is about, identifying whether we have living faith or whether we have dead faith. And so I want to look at both of those real quick. I think he gives us three signs of dead faith and three signs of living faith that we want to be able to apply to ourselves and allow to speak to us today. So first, three signs of dead faith. Number one, sympathy without action.

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm, eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? A couple of subtle things to notice there. First, the condition of the person in need. The word naked there can describe someone who is literally without clothing, but it also can describe someone who has very little clothing, like underwear or insufficient clothing. That is how it is used in the Gospel of John as well. So somebody who is in rags and somebody who does not have access to daily food to sustain themselves. That is the person we are talking about here. And second, look at the believer, the second person here. They are so well intentioned. So well intentioned. They have sympathy. They are sending all the positive vibes. They even use religious language to show how much they care. They say go in peace, which was a common first century way of saying God's blessedness be with you.

Here is the truth, you guys. Good intentions do not fill hungry bellies.

Sympathetic feelings do not put clothes on someone's back and sending positive vibes is not advocacy for the oppressed. And all of our religious language and ideological posturing is empty if it is not accompanied by tangible acts of love. Sympathy without action is dead faith. A parable to illustrate this. Imagine up and down the West Coast there has been a series of cataclysmic earthquakes and there was one guy who got got by one of these massive pits that have opened up in the ground. So he falls in and now he is shouting out to people who might walk by, hey, help me get out of this pit. There is a variety of people who walk by him. The first person who walks by is an optimist. Upon seeing the man in the pit they say, you know, things could be worse. And then they keep walking, feeling great about how encouraging their positive vibes were. Second person is a pessimist. They see the man in there, big yikes, man. Things are only going to get worse from here. Look, the world, it's a bitter and terrible place. I felt it myself. Sorry you're feeling that, but man, it's just kind of how it is. And then he keeps on walking, thinking, you know what, at least I've told him the truth about reality.

Third person who walks by, a wealthy business man. Upon seeing the man in the pit they say, well, I mean, you've brought this upon yourself, haven't you? You got yourself into, I mean, you fell into the pit somehow. You weren't paying good enough attention. That means you need to get yourself out. But here's the thing, you can. Because in our country, as long as you work hard, you can do anything you set your mind to. And then he keeps walking to his 14 hour work day, thinking he'd done something really good and inspired someone. Fourth person who walks by is a Buddhist. They see the man in the pit and they say, your pit is only a state of mind.

You need to teach yourself. Overcome the material world. And then the Buddhist goes on to meditate for five hours with his other monks. A fifth person who walks by is a college professor. They see the man in the pit and they say, well, based on my study and research of this situation, this is how the pit formed. And in reality, you didn't have much of a chance to avoid the pit anyway. It's just such a shame this has happened to you. And then he goes to lecture on pits and their causes and how important it is to help people who are in pits at the university.

Sixth person is a political activist. know what? Elections are coming up soon. I'll be sure to put a sign in my front yard that advocates for the folks like you who are in the pit. I'll even change my profile picture on social media for the next month before we get a new puppy and I have something else on my mind. And then they keep walking, thinking they've done something really good to their job at a coffee shop or something.

And the seventh person who walks by is a religious philanthropist. They see him in the pit and they say, I'll pray for you. And then they drop a few dollars into the pit. And they keep walking to their religious service to sing songs and pray.

You guys, the best intentions, the deepest sympathy, the sweetest sounding religious language is even more offensive than outright ignorance. Because it's all a cover up for a failure to act. It's all a way to make us feel better about not helping. And if our faith is marked by those tendencies, James is clear, that's a dead faith. Not a living one.

How you doing? That's just sign number one of the dead faith. Sign number two of the dead faith. This one hits, y'all. Empty doctrine, even if it's correct. At this point in the passage, James imagines someone who might object to his case. They're saying, well, I mean, I have faith, you have works, you have faith, I have works. It's all part of our personalities. We're all kind of coming together. I don't need to have works to follow up. Faith is fine on its own. And James says that that mentality puts us exactly on par with one category of being. Demons.

Demons. He is not holding back. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe. And shudder. The statement there, God is one, it was likely a reference back to the Shema, which was and still is a central prayer of the Jewish people. It comes from Deuteronomy. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength. It's a prayer that's been memorized and recited for millennia. And it was something that people knew really well. And it was great doctrine.

And because God is one, he is unified. God is not someone you have to question his character. His character is consistent across all places at all times. That was the statement. And that's great, James says. It's just that that alone only puts you on par with demons. Because here's the truth. Demons have all gone to the best seminary in the universe. It's true. They've gotten a better theological education than any of us in this room because they've been in the heaven of heavens. They've seen God. They know God more than the best saint. There's nothing wrong with head information, friends. There's nothing wrong with knowledge or learning. I'm all about learning. But sometimes it can be a trap. We have to realize that head knowledge alone doesn't qualify us to be anything more than a demon. If it doesn't work us into the world in some way, it is useless. As Leonard Ravenhill put it, your doctrine can be straight as a gun barrel and your life just as empty.

A few years back, I was learning about this strange thing called Presbyterianism. I was really new to it, was not raised near to it. And I was traveling around seeing and meeting other Presbyterian ministers just trying to learn about this weird new thing. The Presbys, that's what I call them. I'm one of them now, so that's what I call myself, I guess. The Presbys. And one thing about the Presbys that I've learned, every Presby that I've ever met loves the same thing, a pipe organ.

They love their pipe organs. And I also love to learn that there's a difficulty that comes with pipe organs. They get old. And they're really expensive to fix. And one time I was in a church and I was talking with a pastor and I saw their pipe organ. It was beautiful. This pipe organ right across the wall of their sanctuary. I was like, man, that's a beautiful pipe organ. And the pastor leaned over to me and said, hey, it actually doesn't work. It's not connected to anything. It's not connected to keys. We just like it because it looks nice.

Friends, sometimes the best theology in the world is just empty pipes.

We like the aesthetic. We like the vibes. But in the end, it's empty. Because it doesn't have works. That's why James says what he does at the end of this passage. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. Faith without works is like a pipe organ that can't play music. It's useless.

You guys, I'm going to let you in on a secret. It's a really, really important secret that you need to keep. There's only one reason we do anything church related. There's only one reason we study the scriptures and learn and sing and play guitar and affirm our beliefs. It's to give ourselves more to Jesus and become more like him. That's it. It's actually not complicated. It is to transform, to be transformed into Christlikeness. There is no point in doing anything else we do. Reading the Bible, going to small groups. There's no point in any of it if it's not shaping us in the image of Jesus. I see Leslie Mitten putting it this way in his commentary on James. He said, It is a good thing to possess an accurate theology, but it is unsatisfactory unless that theology also possesses us.

Second sign of dead faith. Empty doctrine, even if it's correct. Third sign of dead faith here. Shuddering. It's a really interesting word. James goes further about the demons. He said the dead faith of the demons causes them to shudder. Here's what he's saying. It's not just that the demons have the right theological education. It's actually that the demons respect God. They fear God. They are terrified of God. They shudder. And their entire existence is rooted in that fear of what God can do to them. We see this in Mark 5. Jesus encounters a man who's been possessed by demons. The demon comes out and says that his name is Legion, which is a word that's used to describe a unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers. So we're talking maybe 5,000 demons in this dude. And when Jesus is still far off, these demons force this man to run at Jesus. He falls on his knees and he says this, I want with me Jesus, Son of the Most High God. In God's name, don't torture me. That's what the demons know about Jesus. That's the power that they know he has. Do you see what's happening? They have the right doctrine. They know that Jesus is the Son of God. The demons in Mark are the first people to rightly proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God. They know before anyone else does. But what does that lead them to? Shuddering. Utter fear. They are terrified of punishment. And friends, sometimes we have to be aware we might do the same sorts of things. It is totally possible to become someone who knows God is great and powerful and become scared of punishment. And we can, like the demons, go through our lives shuddering. And we can alter our behavior. We can become super moral people. We can become super religious people. And all of our religion is really just eternal life insurance for us. We think, well, there's probably a God, and that God is probably powerful, and so I should probably hedge my bets just in case. I should get my life together. I need to prove my righteousness before God. I need to make sure that I prove that I am worth keeping around forever.

That's not living faith. That is dead faith. That is the faith of the demons. Because it's rooted in selfishness. Self-preservation. It's not rooted in love.

Now to be clear, there's nothing wrong with having pangs in our conscience about our behavior. There's nothing wrong with wanting to change our behavior and knowing that something needs to change.

That definition in and of itself does not mean we have living faith. It might actually mean we become legalists. It might actually mean that we become people who have misunderstood the Gospel. That God already loves us and already welcomes us back. We've misunderstood love. So those are three signs of dead faith, friends. But James doesn't leave us with dead faith. He also shows us three signs of living faith. We're going to go through these quickly. First, living faith is alive towards others. James wants us to see that living faith shows up in how we respond to the poor or the hurting or people different than us or our enemies. When we are in their midst, how do we show up? Do we radiate charity and graciousness and respect and hospitality and concern for their well-being? Are we primarily concerned about their well-being or our own? This is a big thing right now. We are in the middle of an election year. Did you guys know that? Yeah. Just a small thing. Middle of an election year, yeah. But this is actually a great time for us to evaluate whether we have living faith or not. It's a great time for us to look at our ballots and say, am I primarily concerned with voting for my own economic well-being and safety or am I primarily concerned about the economic well-being and safety of my neighbor? Especially my neighbor who's marginalized. Especially my neighbor who's oppressed. Living faith never asks, how can I help myself? Living faith asks, how can I help them?

Keeping that in mind, we have to be careful because I know that in myself, I can often feel shame and fear when I realize I haven't done this as well as I could. And I can start to think that I just need to rush around my life and start doing more and more stuff for God to approve of me. Stop. That's not the gospel. I need to be careful because that's rooted in fear. That's all shuddering. Living faith is not about self-justification. It's not about proving that I am good enough. It's about self-giving love. That's the opposite of fear, friends. Love. Which means living faith always comes from an organic connection to love. Not fear. And that's where the gospel comes in. We find that sort of love present in us when we realize we are the poor ourselves. We are people who are just as much in need of God's healing and God's forgiveness and God's life as anyone else. And we are people who have encountered the good news that Christ came to heal us. And not just us, but the whole world. That Christ came to mend us. That Christ came to forgive us. That God so loved the world, say it with me, that he gave his only son so that anyone who believes in him would not perish and have eternal life. God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, to shame the world. God sent his son into the world so the world might be saved. So they might know God's love. That kind of love is the thing we need to get a hold of us, friends. And when that grabs our hearts, we start to live out of true love for others. Not for our own sakes, but for their sakes. Because we recognize in them our own poor condition. And we see that Christ made himself poor so that they might be rich. So living faith, it's alive towards others. Second thing about living faith, it takes risks. We see this in James' usage of Rahab's example here. Some of you may know the story of Rahab. Back in Joshua, she was a prostitute, an outsider by every measure. She was not part of the nation of Israel. But she was someone whose heart had been captured by God. And so when she had the chance to protect Israelites who came in to spy and seek out the land, she said, yep, I will save them from certain death and certain persecution. She hides them, she lies about them being hidden to the authorities, and then she lets them free. She risked everything. She put her life on the line for the sake of others. She said that their well-being is more important than mine. Friends, living faith says my comfort, my security, my convenience, my safety, my wealth, my career, my pleasure, those things are no longer the things that animate me. Those things are no longer the things that make me decide to do what I do. As Paul put it, those things are crucified to me. And it's not that we don't care about them at all, it's just that they no longer control us. They no longer are the reason we make choices. Because the reason we make choices is Christ's love at work in us and at work in the world. We know that that is the ultimate and final say for everything.

That's what Rahab shows us. And what's fascinating is Rahab becomes an ancestor of King David who becomes an ancestor of Jesus. We don't get Jesus without Rahab. This risk that she takes has profound implications for everyone in this room. So what's the Rahab risk that you might need to take? What's the thing in your life right now? Is it releasing control of more of your money? Maybe. Is it letting go of some material comfort so that others can be comfortable? Is it reorganizing your time during the week so that you can truly love those who are in need? Where is living faith calling you to risk? And finally, friends, the third sign of living faith here. It's a faith that's alive towards God. That's the example of Abraham. James says that Abraham in his giving of his son, his giving of this thing, taking a huge risk, he says that he's called the friend of God. That's the bottom line. Living faith obeys God simply out of relationship with God. A dead faith might obey God for what we get out of it or what we avoid. But true faith longs for God because of who God is. Not because of what we get out of it. Not because of what we avoid. True living faith longs for the beauty, the loveliness, the goodness of God and longs to be near to that wherever it might take us. That's what friendship is. That's what it means to be a friend of God. Just longing to be with God regardless of the situation. Tim Keller gives a great example of this. He talks about when he was parenting his boys as teenagers and they were going out to hang with friends. He'd ask them questions. He's like, where are you going? And they'd say, out. He'd say, okay, but where are you going? They're like, I don't know. He'd reply, okay, don't you have goals in your life? Don't you have any reason that you're going out? And he's like, Dad, I'm going to be with my friends. It doesn't matter what we're doing. It doesn't matter. I'm going to be with my friends. If you have a friend, they're someone you admire and you just want to be with them. And if you're bringing friends along to do what you want to do and that's the only reason that you're getting together with people, that's not real friendship. Friendship says, I'm going to show up. Whatever they're in, I'm in.

That is what Abraham has for God. That is what living faith looks like. It wants to be friends with God. Living faith has encountered the beauty and the goodness and the wonder of God in Christ and says, I need to be near that. Because that is the thing that really matters. And when that happens, it will make all of us more and more compelled by living a certain way. Living faith says when it hears Christ say the words, what you do for the least of these you do for me, living faith says, I'm in. I'm in. Living faith hears Christ say he came to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and living faith says, I'm in. Living faith hears Jesus say that God is near to those who are poor in spirit, to those who mourn, to those who are meek, and living faith says, I'm in. Living faith is going to do whatever it can to be near to God, to be friends with God. That's what Abraham did. He laid down everything to be near to God. And that's why every week we come to this table at Midtown. This is the place where we can gaze upon the beauty of the Lord again, what Christ has done for each and every one of us. We find here that we have a friend in God. So let God's friendship melt your heart again, friends. Let it bury the dead and private and individualistic and shame-filled faith. And let it spark true living faith. Let it remind you of the ultimate truth. That faith is where our butts are at. Let's pray, friends.