Salvation and Grace

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“It Was Credited to Him as Righteousness”

Can both faith and works be credited to us as righteousness?

   Gary Hoge

In Romans 3:28, Paul wrote, “for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” The example he cited was Abraham, who “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6). Protestants conclude from this that only faith itself is credited to us as righteousness. Faith-filled works, they believe, cannot be credited to us as righteousness.

Therefore, they are understandably puzzled when they read the statement in James 2:24 that “a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone,” and there have been many creative ways to try to understand this verse. Martin Luther simply concluded that James wasn’t inspired Scripture and didn’t belong in the Bible in the first place. He wrote,

“But this James does nothing more than drive to the Law and to its works . . . in direct opposition to St. Paul and all the rest of the bible, it ascribes justification to works . . . This defect proves that the epistle is not of Apostolic provenance . . . In sum he [James] wished to guard against those who depended on faith without going to works, but he had neither the spirit nor the thought nor the eloquence equal to the task. He does violence to scripture and so contradicts Paul and all of scripture. He tries to accomplish by emphasizing law what the Apostles bring about by attracting men to love. I therefore refuse him a place among the writers of the true canon of my Bible.¹

Assuming we aren’t willing to rip James out of the Bible, how do we reconcile him with Paul? It’s not hard if we recognize the difference between “works of the law” (that Paul wrote about) and just plain “works” (that James wrote about). They aren’t the same thing. James was writing about good works motivated by faith, like feeding the poor and clothing the naked, but Paul was writing about “works of the law,” meaning the Law of Moses. He was writing about things like being circumcised, following Jewish dietary laws, etc.

Paul argued that following the requirements of the Jewish law apart from faith does not justify a man. James would have agreed with that, but he was arguing a different point. His point was that faith without good works is dead (James 2:26). He wrote,

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. (James 2:2;14-17).

Just like Paul, James used Abraham as his example. He wrote,

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. (James 2:21-24).

Paul would have agreed with that, because he wrote, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

So, Paul and James are discussing different aspects of the same thing. Together they are saying that merely observing the Law of Moses does not justify. Faith justifies, but faith alone, not accompanied by good works, is dead. Faith and good works go hand-in-hand. Faith without works is dead, and works without faith is dead. Understood in this way, there is no conflict between Paul and James, and Martin Luther didn’t need to remove James from his Bible. 

Ironically, removing James from the Bible didn’t eliminate the only biblical example of  works being credited as righteousness. Psalm 106:28-31 says,

They joined themselves also to Baal-peor, and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. Thus they provoked Him to anger with their deeds; and a plague broke out among them. Then Phinehas stood up and interposed; and so the plague was stayed. And it was reckoned to him for righteousness, to all generations forever.

Just as Abraham’s faith was “credited to him as righteousness,” so also Phinehas’s deeds were “reckoned to him for righteousness.” Although the English translation here is slightly different, the Hebrew grammatical structure in Psalm 106:31 is exactly the same as that in Genesis 15:6 (in the Septuagint, the Greek grammatical structure is also the same in both verses). So we see that in both Testaments justification is by faith perfected by works, and “not by faith alone” (James 2:24).

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¹Martin Luther, quoted in John Dillenberger, John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1971), 36.