What good is it, if someone claims that he has faith in Christ but does not produce the action that Christ commands? Can this “faith” save him? If a brother or sister is sick and suffering, and you say, “Let the will of God be done” or “Endure it for the glory of God,” without stretching forth your hand to heal the person by a miracle in the name of Jesus, what good is it? This faith-claim, if it has no faith-action, is dead. You will say, “Some people have faith in the doctrines of God, but some people run after the miracles of God.” Show me your faith in these doctrines that promise the miracles, and I will show you my faith by the miracles that these doctrines promise. You call yourself a defender of the faith. Good! But even Pharisees defend the faith — and then burn in hell.
Do you want to be shown, you stupid person, that claiming to have faith in the gospel but rejecting the actual promise of the gospel is useless? Was not Abraham justified when he believed in a gospel of healing and prosperity [1]? He had faith in God’s promise to heal him and his wife, to reverse old age and barrenness [2], and to make him the father of nations through Isaac, possessing lands and blessing generations [3], so that he acted to sacrifice Isaac on the alter, believing that God would raise him from the ashes [4]. For this, he was counted as righteous — he was called a friend of God. Just as the body apart from the spirit is dead, a so-called faith in the gospel that rejects its promise is dead.
Notes:
[1] Genesis 15:1-6, Romans 4:19-21. Religious hypocrites complain that Christians have adopted a “Greek” view of theology, such that they make a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the material, resulting in a retreat from participation in culture, such as in arts and politics. But these hypocrites perform violent surgery on the gospel itself, embracing some promises as spiritual and worthy, while crucifying other promises as material and inferior, using those they call “heretics” as scapegoats in order expunge these blessings that Christ purchased with his own blood.
[2] Hebrews 11:11-12.
[3] To establish the kingdom of God in “culture” is not a mandate to be accomplished by the effort of man, but a promise to be accomplished by the power of God. Those who boast most loudly about this “mandate” are often also those who fail most miserably at it, addressing symptoms but never changing hearts, because they wish to glorify their own wisdom and labor.
[4] Hebrews 11:17-19.