One of the main problems here is that all too often “living” has been equated with “obedient.” Those who disagree with me will undoubtedly point to James again and say “well, living is equated with obedient there.” No one is saying that we are justified (even in a Pauline sense!) by a dead faith. But the living aspect of faith with regard to justification is not obedience but the fact that it truly grasps hold of Christ. The living aspect of faith with regard to sanctification is that it will really result in good works. The second aspect of the aliveness of faith is the necessary result of the first aspect of the aliveness of faith. They are inseparable, yet distinct. The first aspect of the aliveness of faith is the sole province of the realm of justification. The second aspect is solely within sanctification. These things must be kept distinct, or all sorts of problems will result.

via Genesis 15:6 in Paul and James « Green Baggins.

I think the Westminster Confession of Faith is correct about faith and justification in James 2 and that Pastor Lane Keister is wrong.

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. (Chapter

By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein; and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.

If Lane were simply pointing out that one can make a distinction between trusting Christ for sanctification and trusting him for justification, I’d readily grant the point.  But he seems to be saying that the faith that justifies is not obedient, but rather leads to obedience.

(Why should one even make such a strange distinction?  Why does it matter?  It matters because certain leaders in the Reformed ghetto, motivated by jealousy, are trying to find ways to marginalize other teachers.  They resent young seminary students reading and respecting people who are not them and have decided to invent definitions of orthodoxy that are not only unorthodox, but make no sense at all.  Lane, is trying to submit to these definitions and it has led him into a mistake.)

True faith is not dead faith.  It is a faith that obeys.  Since faith is <i>commanded</i> how could it be otherwise?  If one is commanded to believe, then believing cannot be temporally or even logically prior to all obedience.  Faith is obedience to the First Commandment from the heart.

Notice that even using these novel distinctions to purportedly defend Justification only by faith from error involves ignoring a much more clear and usable distinction given to us in the Westminster Confession:

Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.

Now, on one level, this is problematic because the Confession takes the breath-taking move of discounting the form of words that Paul uses in Romans 4.  I can’t defend that.  But I can defend the intention which was simply to deny that faith merits or causes us to be righteous before God.  We are “in Christ,” an external person and therefore an external righteousness, not “in faith.”

I think what the Confession says about the necessity of repentance can help us here.

Although repentance be not to be rested in, as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is the act of God’s free grace in Christ; yet it is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it.

The same is true of faith.  Faith is not to be rested in as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof.  Rather, by faith we are united to Christ and thus possess his righteousness.