Gross Anatomy

And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. James 2:25-26

In my first year of medical school, I took gross anatomy – the study of that structure of the human body which can be observed with the naked eye. To do so, we were placed in groups of students with each group receiving their own cadaver, which we dissected. I’d not spent a lot of time around a dead body before, so it was a strange experience. Our cadaver was clearly human, but it didn’t move, breath, or have circulation. It was obviously dead and as such it wasn’t a person in the sense that it once was. The life had gone out of it and though we had the inanimate body lying before us, we clearly didn’t have a whole person on our table. The body was only a part of what had once made that shell a person.

This is the illustration that James used in today’s passage to explain the relationship between faith and works. The Apostle Paul rightly taught that we can’t earn our salvation by being good, but rather, we’re only saved by placing our faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). Though this is true, it must have inspired some Christians to decide that all they had to do was believe and then they could live however they wanted. To this, James countered that faith, if it isn’t accompanied by a change in behavior, isn’t real – it’s like a dead body. Using Rahab the prostitute as his example, James pointed out that she believed in God and based her life on that belief, acting in such a way that proved her faith was real.

I grew up believing in God, but because I knew I was saved only by faith, not by my actions, I did whatever I wanted. God will forgive me. James though, would say that my so-called faith was like a cadaver. It wasn’t whole. Belief in God’s existence was only a half-faith. For faith to be real, it must change my behavior. The proof of my faith is whether it has any impact on my life or not. If I simply believe God exists, claiming to be a Christian, but I live only for myself, then my faith is a corpse.

In my addiction, I believed in God but I followed myself – a faith without life. Now, in recovery, the challenge is not just to believe in God’s existence, but to live according to that belief. Daily, I must go to God, asking what it is that he desires of me. Then, I must do it. Only in living according to my faith, do I breathe life into it, proving that it is real.