Martin Luther was famously dismissive of the Epistle of James, describing it as a 'letter of straw' because of its supposed advocacy of justification by 'works' as opposed to faith.
But according to pastor and Bible teacher RT Kendall, he undervalued James because he misunderstood him – and the apostle's teaching is not just in line with that of Paul in Romans, but is a restatement of Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaking at the Luther 500 conference at London's Kensington Temple, held to mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of Luther's 95 Theses, Kendall – now 82 years old and minister of Westminster Chapel for 25 years – spoke on 'Faith and Works: How Luther misunderstood James'.
He said that in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther had recovered a key teaching of the Church that had been obscured for 1500 years. 'When we get obsessed with a particular teaching, it gives us blind spots,' he said. In Luther's case this extended to James, particularly because of James 2:14: 'What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?' Luther accepted James' place in the canon of the New Testament, but just a year before he died declined to teach from it any longer.
Traditional accounts of the meaning of the passage about faith and deeds (2: 14-26) reconcile it with justification by faith by saying it refers to good deeds as the fruit of salvation, and that these provide an assurance of forgiveness.
Kendall described preaching through the book of James at Westminster Chapel and reaching verse 14 without knowing what it meant, before achieving 'the most wonderful breakthrough in my 25 years in London – even probably, and I am 82 years old, the greatest insight of my lifetime'.
He said the verse had to be read in the context of the earlier part of the chapter, in which James condemns the church for discriminating against the 'poor man' of verse 6 because it wanted to attract higher-class converts. The 'Can such faith save him?' of verse 14 refers to this poor man; it illustrates the need for faith to be expressed in practical action for the poor and needy if it's to have any effect.
'How many of us look after the poor? This is where evangelicals fail more than anybody,' he said. 'Luther needed to realise that the reference to the poor man in verse 6 was the main focus.'
Realising that faith had to be expressed in action for the poor, he said, was transformative. And James was not about 'works' proving anything about our salvation, either to ourselves or to God: instead, he was teaching that good works demonstrate we care about our witness to the world.
RT Kendall is the author of a two-volume commentary on James.
