negative answer: "Can that faith save him? Of course not!" Cf. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New
Jesus Explains His Gospel
resurrection), and pressing on them the need to believe. The film concluded that the sum total of saving faith is understanding and accepting the facts of the gospel.
I once spoke at a Bible conference where a well-known Bible teacher brought a message on salvation. He suggested that telling unsaved people they must surrender to Christ is the same as preaching works. He defined salvation as the unconditional gift of everlasting life given to people who believe the facts about Christ, whether they choose to obey Him or not. One of his main points was that salvation may or may not alter a person's behavior. Transformed conduct is certainly desirable, he said, but even if no change in lifestyle occurs, the one who has believed the facts of the gospel can rest in the certainty of heaven.
Multitudes approach Christ on those terms. Thinking He will not confront their sin, they respond eagerly — but with no sense of the severity of their guilt before God and with no desire to be freed from sin's bondage. They have been deceived by a corrupted gospel. They have been told that faith alone will save them, but they neither understand nor possess real faith. The "faith" they are relying on is only intellectual acquiescence to a set of facts. It will not save.
Eternal Life from Dead Faith?
Not all faith is redemptive. James 2:14 – 16 says faith without works is dead and cannot save.2 James describes spurious faith as pure hypocrisy (v. 16), mere cognitive assent (v. 19), devoid of any verifying works (vv. 17 – 18) — no different from the demons' belief (v. 19). Obviously there is more to saving faith than merely conceding a set of facts. Faith without works is useless (v. 20).
Yet some in contemporary evangelicalism refuse to allow for any kind of relationship between faith and works. With this limitation, they are forced to receive virtually any profession of faith as the real thing.3 At least one writer explicitly stated that dead faith can save.4 Amazingly, one popular interpretation of James 2 teaches that dead faith is actually proof of salvation.5
2. Th e question of James 2:14, introduced by the Greek participle me, grammatically presumes a negative answer: "Can that faith save him? Of course not!" Cf. A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman, 1933), 6:34.
3. "One gets the impression that [they see] no distinction." Johnny V. Miller, review of Th e Gospel Under Siege, Trinity Journal 4 (Spring 1983): 93 – 94.
4. A. Ray Stanford, Handbook of Personal Evangelism (Hollywood, Fla.: Florida Bible College, n.d.), 102 – 3. 5. Zane C. Hodges, Th e Gospel Under Siege (Dallas: Redención Viva, 1981), 19. Hodges postulates that in order for faith to be dead, it must have been alive at one time (p. 20). He theorizes that the salvation spoken of in James 2:14 means deliverance from the temporal consequences of sin, not eternal salvation (p. 23). Th us he concludes that James is talking to redeemed people beset by dead orthodoxy —