James 1:19-27

What is saving faith? In January I preached three funerals. Every time I do, I feel the eagerness that so many have that everyone goes to heaven when they die. With my mother, so many of my relatives commented about how all of these other relatives, who passed away years ago, are all together now, playing golf or sitting around laughing or whatever it is they used to do together. The problem is, I know many of those people who passed years earlier and there is no biblical reason to believe they are in heaven. That is a terribly hard concept for people to understand. As much as we might like to believe that no matter who you are and how you live your life, when you die, you will go to heaven and everything will be better, it doesn’t fit what the Bible teaches. Jesus says some hard things. For example,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven..." (Matthew 7:21)

So many of my friends and relatives, who came to my mother’s funeral suggested that she was now with all of these other friends and relatives who previously died. But I knew them. Their “faith” did not change anything about the way they lived. They lived the way they wanted to live, not the way God instructed them to live. I think there are many who fall in this category today and it frightens me. For that reason, James is an important book.