We do what we are

Let's just humbly admit it: the Bible can be confusing. Some of the chapters and some of the verses  (even some of the books) can be difficult to understand for anyone on whatever reading level. Take the book of James for example. This letter, written by the half-brother of Jesus, is one of the more difficult books of the Bible to not only read and understand, but even more so to preach. In fact, Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, had incredibly ill feelings toward the content of the letter, even to the point that he didn't consider it to be Scripture! In his Preface of the New Testament, Luther said of James, "St. James' epistle is really an epistle of straw…for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it."

I can understand Luther's frustration, and I'm sure I share that with many people. When reading a verse like James 2:17 ("Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead"), one can scratch their head thinking, "I thought we were saved by grace alone, not works. You know, so no one can boast..."

So what's up with verses like this in James where it seems to be insinuating that we must have works in order to be saved? I think what James is trying to say is that our initial faith is not based on works, but our works are based on our faith.

What James is really challenging his readers with is the thought that if you are really and truly saved, your actions will show it. If your identity is truly in Christ, your outward self will reflect and mimic that inward identity. Of course, none of us are perfect when it comes to emulating the person of Jesus, but the point is that our "works" will continually look more and more like him.

One of the major misunderstandings with these verses comes from the world we live in. The whole notion of "you are what you do" has completely confused us. We are led to believe that to be defined as something or someone, we have to go out and do it, then we will be something the world can define. That's what the world says, but that's not what holy Scripture teaches. 

Collectively, the Bible teaches that our outward actions paint a picture of our inward nature. Simply put, our actions do not lead to our identity, but rather our identity leads to our actions. As James writes in the very next verse (18), "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works."

Here's one way of saying it: "We are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone."

Our outward actions, therefore, reflect our inner faith, and are a manifestation of the inward state of the heart. So instead of saying, "we are what we do," which is a works based identity, we would do much better to say:

We do what we are.