Class Outline:

Thursday April 8,2021

The great problem passage of Jam 2 - “Faith without works is dead.”

 

JAM 1:21

Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.

 

“Save your lives” fits nicely with James’ context. Just before this he was addressing the problem of sin.

 

JAM 1:14-15

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

 

How is sin, even in the believer, all of whom are possessors of eternal life, associated with death? Every believer is born of God in Whom is no sin.

 

The Lord said in Joh 8 that without faith in Him we would die in our sins. The believer, therefore, will not die in his sins, but sin is still associated with death as it has been from the fall. Its result is never life.

 

GEN 2:15-17

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."

 

“put him” (vs. 15) - derived from the word nuah (to rest). God rested and man was placed in a garden of rest.

 

Humankind was given the responsibility of care for and protect God’s garden.

 

“cultivate it” - to work, serve. Man was there not to be served but to serve God.

 

“cultivate it” - the Hebrew word means to work, to serve, and is used for the service of God. It was physical activity that was spiritual service to God.

 

“keep it” - to guard and also to obey. Man was to guard the garden, not from external enemies, but by obeying God.

 

The same word, “keep,” is used in GEN 3:24 where the cherubim were given to guard the entryway to the Garden. So man’s guarding or keeping of the Garden was an act of obedience.

 

 

He was also to obey God’s command. This is the first time the Hebrew word for command is found. It begins with what is permitted - eating freely from the all the trees until their hearts were content, followed by the provision - from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. Yet, if he sinned, he would bring death upon himself.

 

When God gives man his first command, man stands in a new relationship to God. Not in fear, but knowing that God is protecting him through command and warning.

 

The command does not deprive anything from man. It actually enlarges his potential. He can enjoy all the trees in the garden, and he can obey God’s command.

 

One might say that the best way to protect man would be to not put the forbidden fruit in the garden at all. But then man would not have choice, and without choice, true love in a relationship is not possible for the creature. And, like explaining something to a child that cannot possibly understand all reasons, we tell them, “It just is.”

 

The question the prohibition raised was: Will man, like Satan, reject God’s right to rule and declare himself independent of God?

 

1JO 3:6

the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.

 

Man was created holy, meaning a creature holiness in that he was set apart unto God and without sin. He was given the opportunity to choose contrary to his nature. He did, and he died spiritually, separated from God. And all his progeny would be sons of disobedience. God would respond by giving man a new nature, a holy, sinless nature, making man born again, born of God. God would accomplish this by becoming a Man and dying for the sins of the world in the place of man. And so, we can easily see that there can be no doubt that it is impossible for man, dead as he is, to obtain that nature. Salvation must be by faith, which is acceptance of the gospel truth. This is the only way that the scripture presents it. When a man does believe, in this age, he is born from above and possesses a divine nature within as well as the Holy Spirit within, and so is holy. He is born of God and cannot sin while his surroundings, his body and his world, are not divine, but earthly, meaning that when he succumbs to the flesh and the world, he will sin. And yet, he is told that through love and obedience to God, the divine nature within him, now the real him, can overcome the mortal body and make it his slave, and use its members as instruments of righteousness; and he can overcome the world, not by changing it, but by not being a slave to it, or a friend of it. He is also told that he will not do this consistently. No believer, no matter how mature, will ever be able to claim consistent, sinless perfection, 1JO 1:8-10.

 

Being created perfect and holy, man was given the opportunity to choose contrary to his nature by making an unholy choice.

 

God Himself does not have this ability. God cannot choose contrary to His nature. The scriptures teach us that the holiness of God is so absolute that He is unable to commit sin. But He created man with this capacity.

 

Man on his own must choose to love and obey God.

 

It is obvious that love cannot be forced, and while act of obedience, following a command can be forced, willful obedience, which is worship, cannot be forced. Willful and forced are antonyms. We must choose to believe the gospel as the Holy Spirit enlightens our minds to it, and when we do we become alive with eternal life. Then, only after salvation, can we take hold of that eternal life and abide in Christ.

 

God clearly communicates to us that He cannot sin, hates sin, and that sin is associated with and results in death.

 

Adam and Eve would die on the day they ate of it, but they did not die physically. Their death was spiritual which was separation from God. No longer being able to eat from the Tree of Life, they would eventually die physically. They would pass on spiritual death to all their progeny.

 

The Hebrew is emphatic: mot tamut, using the same root word twice, emphasizing their spiritual death. “dying you will die” or “you will surely die.”

 

Satan’s uses the same emphatic form when he promises Eve she will surely not die.

 

GEN 3:1-5

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'" 4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

 

The concept of death runs all throughout Genesis. Its very last sentence is of Joseph’s death. Throughout the Genesis narrative, the basic idea of death seems to be more of alienation or separation rather than cessation or annihilation.

 

Genesis 1-2 reveals to us that in our vast material universe, before whose laws we are crushed as a moth, there abides a living conscious Spirit, who wills and knows and fashions all things. He is holy and righteous. Instead of a cold, impersonal world of forces to which no appeal can be made, and in which matter is supreme, God gives us the home of a Father. If we were like, what the nihilists proclaim, but a small particle of a huge and unconscious universe who lasts its brief space of time and then yields up its substance to death, and that no power understands you and sympathizes with you and makes provision for your instincts, your aspirations, your capabilities; then as mankind, the highest intelligence of all, but only so as result of physical forces, nothing could be more melancholy than his position. Our dreams, our desires, our hopes ascend to heaven, only to be cut down by the keen edge of time, and wither away barren and disappointed. We should envy the lower creation who do not hope or dream, for they are happier than we who strive to live well, but still die meaningless deaths. We should be mocked for our foolishness. A cosmic accident that produced reason and intelligence and wonder at what could be, only to tell us that nothing could be but living and dying.

 

But thanks be to God, He has revealed Himself to us. And, more than that, He has delivered us from sin and the sinful world and made us holy, giving us a divine nature through the unbounded love of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

It is revealed to us that though all believers are alive to God and are born of God that they still sin.

 

Someone born of God should not sin, for born of God means from God and therefore like Him.

 

This unbending truth helps us understand a very difficult passage, which is used in the same way that Jam 2 is used by some to try and teach that salvation is only assured by works.

 

1JO 3:6-9

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.