Body And Spirit: An Analogy Of James

At work this evening I was listening to an iTunesU lecture by Dr. Robert Strimple discussing the nature of man consisting of both the body (soma) and spirit (pneuma). He briefly discussed their analogical use in James 2.26. "For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead". I found this interesting, but for reasons Dr. Strimple was not intending to address.

This verse is interesting to me predominantly because it is related to a recent blog of mine that I wrote for a friend's blog on the relationship between faith and works. I do not believe many people view works/obedience with the seriousness that James is getting at here. We understand very well that our bodies without our spirit are corpses, but we often are very quick to compartmentalize our obedience as a good thing, maybe even a necessary byproduct, but not something that really matters, like faith. A human is defined by our body and our spirit, but I think Protestants are sometimes guilty of making faith definitive for the believer, while works become some type of super added bonus.

This is a great mistake, I believe. If we are to be known by our faith, we must also be known by our love, which is a nice way of saying our works. Isn't this the teaching of our Lord when he said: "'By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'" (John 13.35) only to say a bit later "'If you love me, you will keep my commandments'" (John 14.15)? Faith and works have the relationship of our body and our spirit. They both define us, and they can't be separated, but neither can they be confused. I think it's about time we took James analogy as seriously as he did.