TriuneUnity:
What about James? “What shall it profit if a man if he has faith, but has not works? Shall faith be able to save him? . . . You believe that there is one God. You do well. But the devils also believe and tremble. But will you know, vain man, that faith without works is dead. . . . By works a man is justified and not by faith only. Even as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (Jas. 2:14, 19, 20, 26).
Thanks!
I will quote a famed Lutheran expositor to answer this question. He just answers it better than I
"Turn from a merely verbal faith, for a faith that exhausts itself in words is as useless as a charity that exhausts itself in gracious phrases (v. 14–16); turn from a faith that is in reality no faith at all, but dead (v. 17) and unable to save. (v. 14)
Turn: Cease trying to excuse yourselves with a pious sophistry which makes an impossible cleavage between faith and works by distributing them as several gifts, faith to one man, works to another (v. 18); this reduces faith to a merely intellectual grasp of truths about God—demons have that kind of faith, and they know that it cannot save them; they shudder at the judgment that is to come upon them. (v.19)
Turn from this delusion about your barren faith, a faith as impotent and inactive as a corpse (vv. 20, 26). Turn to that faith which is a living faith and must needs evince itself in works (v. 18), a faith which justifies because it is a faith that commits a man wholly to his God and is therefore a working faith, such a faith as Abraham’s was: he was ready to give to God the best gift God had given him, his son. Abraham’s faith was active in his works and found its fullest expression in works (v. 21–22). In the fact that believing Abraham showed in deed that he held God dearer than God’s dearest gift there was seen the full meaning of the words, *Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness *(v. 23). Abraham, the believing friend of God, was friend in word and deed, and so one can even say that man is justified by works and not by faith alone, for faith is never alone, as even the example of Rahab shows: Hers was a simple and unfinished faith, and yet this believing woman, with her stained and ruined past, acted out her faith in works, and she too was thus justified by works as one whose faith made her the doer of the will of God. (v. 25)
Turn to the faith which is the creation of the God who is God of the living and not of the dead, a faith that is a body animated by a living soul, not a corpse." (Roehrs, Walter R.; and Franzmann, Martin H., Concordia Self-Study Commentary, (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House) 1988, c1979.)
