Corinne, here's an excerpt from a sermon I preached at my home church on James 2 a few months ago, which neatly sums up the sort of Catholic soteriology in which I was raised:-
"We recently had a well-earned holiday in Croatia and on one of our day trips ventured into Montenegro, which is a very mountainous country, and whilst the coach was winding its way up a particularly scary section of hairpin bends our guide decided to cheer us all up by telling us a joke, which goes like this: a priest and a bus driver die and go to heaven and are met in the usual way by St Peter at the Pearly Gates, where the priest is shocked and horrified to hear that he is to be sent to Hell whereas the bus driver is to be admitted to Heaven, and he protests at this news. St Peter replies “Ah, my son, you see when you were praying in church everyone else there was sleeping, but when this bus driver was doing his job, all his passengers were praying!”
And that is really similar to the question raised by this passage from the Letter of James – which is more important, your faith or your actions? Scholars and theologians, often from different sides of the Reformation fence, have traditionally portrayed the issue like this: in the red corner, we have Paul, arguing consistently for justification by faith alone ; in the blue corner, here’s James, arguing salvation by works. But I do not believe that the message of this passage is at all at odds with Paul’s teaching on the subject; it does however contain a wake-up call for all who would desire to be true Jesus-followers.
Broadly speaking, there are two errors into which Christians can fall with regard to the salvation and associated issues such as grace. The first is the legalistic, works-based error in which I was brought up. I was raised and educated in a Catholic environment; at the age of ten I went to a Catholic independent school in Farnborough which was run by priests who were, shall I say, a bit odd. For instance, we had for Latin this guy called Father Bourne, who was outwardly quite normal but prone to sudden and irrational outbursts of temper. He was also the spitting image of the wrestler Big Daddy, so quite a scary bloke. One of the more frightening moments would be when his huge hands would plonk down on your desk, his face loom up in front of you and he would utter the words “Well, boy, conjugate the verb laborare .” Happy days….
Anyway, the theory of salvation that these guys taught was something like represented by this: you’re born in original sin, and then when you’re a few weeks old, you get baptised, which saves you. So you get a good start, but you can lose your salvation by doing bad things, particularly serious sins such as sexual sins, which can drop you under the 'salvation' bar. But help is at hand, because you can go to confession and get your sins forgiven by a priest, which takes you back up again. But you also need to go to communion or Mass at regularly (at least once a week) to ‘feed’ your salvation otherwise, even if you aren’t particularly bad, you begin to slip again. And so you go on, mostly above the bar, but always a bit worried that you’re not making the grade.
Now, no prizes for guessing that all of us think that model is wrong. The classic evangelical model is: you are born into sin and without Jesus you remain below the bar. But as soon as you acknowledge your sins, believe that He died to take the punishment for those sins, and ask Him to be Lord and Saviour of your life, which means repenting of your sins, trusting in Jesus to save you from them and agreeing to follow Him, you are saved. There are fluctuations as you can see, which I will explain in a minute, but the bottom line you don’t go below the bottom line of salvation.
However, many Christians live their lives, often unconsciously, as if they were still in legalism. They pay lip service to the idea that they are saved freely by grace but still live as if it has to be somehow earned. Like the Unforgiving Debtor in Matt 18, they think they have to keep on working at their salvation and make demands on themselves to do so. They become very legalistic, and their faith becomes too much a matter of what they do or do not do, and less a matter of who they are in Christ.That is the first error.
The second trap into which Christians fall is at the other end of the spectrum: to think that it doesn’t matter where you are above the 'salvation-line', that it doesn’t matter what you do, how often or not you pray, meet with other Christians, do God’s will etc, and this manner of licence is just as wrong as the legalism referred to earlier. Grace is free, but not cheap, and licentious behaviour cheapens grace. Tonight’s Scripture I believe addresses that problem on two levels: firstly, if you profess to love someone, you would expect to communicate with them and do things to please them on a regular basis and, secondly and more drastically, if you don’t, James is saying that he is actually doubting that you are saved, because a saved person would do those things . For instance, I got married to Sarah by saying a few words and signing a piece of paper – in the eyes of the law, we were married. But if I never spoke to her, spent any time with her or did things to please her, people would doubt that we were actually married - and certainly Sarah would! Similarly, if all you do is pray a prayer of repentance, but then never spend any time with God, never try to seek and do His Will, then I would doubt your sincerity in praying the prayer in the first place. It is important to aim as high above the bar as possible in developing and maintaining our relationship with the Lord, and this should flow naturally from the fact of our salvation.
So, James isn’t really in conflict with Paul; he is saying, in effect that, having been saved by grace through faith alone, that salvation should evidence itself in how we live our lives, both to demonstrate our salvation and also to develop our walk with God. Salvation is the beginning, not the end of the story, and we would do well to remember that; James provides such a reminder for us."
Now, compare the Catholic view of salvation with your own, and I believe you'll have a better idea of what I was driving at when I compared your soteriology to that of the Catholic Church.
Yours in Christ
Matt
