Grace has set you free from one Law, but obligated you to another.
James 2:10-11 (NIV)
10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 24: The Sanctification of Sinners (Part 2)
Our good works,
proceeding from the good root of faith,
are good and acceptable to God,
since they are all sanctified by his grace.
Yet they do not count toward our justification—
for by faith in Christ we are justified,
even before we do good works.
Otherwise they could not be good,
any more than the fruit of a tree could be good
if the tree is not good in the first place.
So then, we do good works,
but nor for merit—
for what would we merit?
Rather, we are indebted to God for the good works we do,
and not he to us,
since it is he who “works in us both to will and do
according to his good pleasure”
thus keeping in mind what is written:
“When you have done all that is commanded you,
then you shall say, ‘We are unworthy servants;
we have done what it was our duty to do.’“
Yet we do not wish to deny
that God rewards good works—
but it is by his grace
that he crowns his gifts.
Moreover,
although we do good works
we do not base our salvation on them;
for we cannot do any work
that is not defiled by our flesh
and also worthy of punishment.
And even if we could point to one,
memory of a single sin is enough
for God to reject that work.
So we would always be in doubt,
tossed back and forth
without any certainty,
and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly
if they did not rest on the merit
of the suffering and death of our Savior.
Summary
James, the younger half brother of Jesus, points out the hopelessness we'd all face if it were not for his older brother. Even if there was one who could, somehow, succeed in keeping 99.99% of God's law, the .01% left undone would be enough to undo the rest of it.
James points out it doesn't really matter which part of God's law gets broken. Breaking the smallest aspect of it is tantamount to breaking all of it. James uses the examples of adultery and murder, which just so happen to be the two commandments Jesus uses in the Sermon on the Mount to illustrate that a person doesn't even need to 'do the deed' in order to commit the sin. Even thinking about doing something that violates God's law is enough to violate God's law.
As a recipient of God's grace, you've been set free from the impossibly oppressive law of Moses that you could not keep. But notice here that James, like Paul in Romans 6, puts you under a new law, which James here deems "law that gives freedom" (v12).
Theologian Douglas Moo explains it this way,
God’s gracious acceptance of us does not end our obligation to obey him; it sets it on a new footing. For the will of God now confronts us as a law of liberty — an obligation we discharge with joy because we stand both forgiven and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Dig Deeper
We're conditioned to round the edges off of expectations. Many of us had teachers that graded on a curve when a difficult test was given. You could get many questions wrong and still get an 'A' as long as you got a few more right than the rest. You don't need to nail all of your shots to win the game, you just need to make a few more than the other team. You don't need to run the fastest to survive a bear attack, you just need to run a bit faster than the slowest guy.
In chapter two, James is confronting people like us. We're not perfect by any means, but we're a whole lot better than most. So we have a tendency to expect God to grade on the curve, so to speak. We think that as long as we're getting most things right, God will look past the things we get wrong from time to time.
James sets us straight here with a reminder of how far we are from meeting God's perfect standard. Now matter how well a person might do in keeping God's law moving forward, as our Confession says, even the "memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject [our good] work."
And yet, James reminds you, as one who's been set free from sin by the blood of Christ, you're now obligated to keep "the law that gives freedom." So, as we confess together, we are to do good works, but we're not to base our salvation in them.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who expects nothing less than perfection;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Thank God for being given Christ's perfection, and pray for the wisdom, strength, and perseverance to keep the law that gives freedom.
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: 1 Corinthians 3
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