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without any reserve whatsoever, even though His demand was overwhelming from a
human standpoint.
In verse 21 the A.V. translation `when he had offered' is better rendered in the R.V.
"in that he offered" (noting the aorist participle of the verb), and the imperfect tense of
the word `wrought in', shows that this co-operation was continually going on.
The climax to all this is that God gave him the supreme honour of calling him His
friend. What a privilege! Just imagine an insignificant `human being' being called the
close friend of almighty God! No wonder God said in Gen. 18: 17 "Shall I hide from
Abraham that thing which I do?" Close friends have no secrets! This reminds us of the
words of the Lord Jesus:
". . . . . I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have
made known to you" (John 15: 15).
In Isa. 41: 8 God again calls Abraham His friend and in II Chron. 20: 7, he is
declared to be God's friend for ever.
As God looks at us by day and notes our response to Him in obedience and the
exercise of faith, can He say the same of us and call his (us) His close friends?
We have seen that James in dealing with justification by faith underlines that its final
practical working out was one to great faith and spiritual maturity. He now brings this to
bear upon his readers. In taking the example of Abraham, he was not looking at the
initial steps of faith that Paul stressed in the epistle to the Romans, and thus there is no
contradiction between these two writers as has been imagined by Luther and others. Real
faith is never static, but is a practical response to the revelation and claims of God which
results in obedience. In other words it expresses itself in action. Paul does not hesitate to
speak of `the obedience of faith' (Rom. 1: 5; 16: 26) and if professed Christian faith
does not result in outward action and response, then one doubts whether the inward
reality is really there.
James now goes, as it were, to the bottom of the social ladder and cites the example of
Rahab the prostitute. She certainly professed faith, for she said "the Lord your God is
God in heaven above, and in earth beneath" (Josh. 2: 11), but this was not merely barren
faith, but faith that immediately expressed itself in effective action. She received the
messengers in a friendly way and sent them out, so enabling them to escape. This
practical faith of hers is mentions in Heb. 11::
"By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had
received the spies with peace" (Heb. 11: 31).
The R.V. is better here, "in that she received . . . . . and sent them".
James has therefore made it perfectly clear that the mere profession of faith is in itself
a dead thing. If it is not productive of active obedience, it is not really faith at all and can
only be compared to a corpse: