August 6, 2025

James 2:20-26 (HCSB)
20 Foolish man! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? 21 Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was perfected. 23 So the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by a different route? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

Barry Cobb
There’s a lot to unpack here: Abraham and Rahab’s justification by works, the concept of the crediting of righteousness to those who lived before Jesus came in human form, etc. But the heart of this chapter to me is in Verse 22. We’ve all had a craft or hobby that we may have picked up somewhere in life. Did you immediately master it? Of course not! You have to work at those types of things to get better at them. Verse 22 tells us that our faith is perfected when it’s active with our works. Our faith is much bigger than any other life calling that we’ll have; shouldn’t we work to perfect it?  Using our God given spiritual gifts for His will is His goal and purpose for our lives. While our faith in Him saves us, we’ll never live up to our spiritual potential unless we marry our works with it.