What does it mean that the body without the spirit is dead (James 2:26)?

The sum of the matter we have been considering is this — that, "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." We may talk of our faith in Christ, or of our faith in this, that and the other detail of Christian truth; but unless our faith expresses itself in appropriate works it is DEAD! That is a sledge-hammer hit! Let us allow it to exert its full effect in our consciences.

V.26 declares what death is: the body without the spirit is dead, left helpless, useless, repelling, not extinct, but devoid of the power that once animated it: it is left alone. Such is the case of the so-called faith that has no works to accompany it.

In ver. 17 it was said that faith, if it have not works, is "dead by itself"; in ver. 20 faith without works is "barren"; here at the end of the discussion faith without works is pronounced absolutely "dead," and so it surely is. Where the manifestation of living reality is sought, what can be more offensive than a dead body? Emphatically it is so under the gospel, where the Lord Himself declares that He who believes has life eternal. To lack holy vitality is fatal. It is not to have the Son of God, Who is the sole spring of all that glorifies God. For what else is the believer left here below but to walk and serve and suffer and worship, while waiting for the Lord? For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them.

The effect of this blinding was that "they could not believe." Their minds were so befogged that faith had become a moral impossibility. No matter how brightly the light shone before them, they had no eyes to perceive it. There were, however, some — and these among the chief rulers — who were not completely blinded in this way. Their minds were open to evidence and the signs displayed wrought intellectual conviction in them. Now intellectual conviction, though an essential ingredient of living faith, is non-living, if by itself alone. It does not fructify in works but it is "as the body without spirit" (James 2:26). Living faith conducts the soul to God through Christ. This was unknown by these rulers for had they experienced it they would not have loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. The same test applies today. He who really believes in his heart that God has raised Christ from the dead, will not fail to confess Him with the mouth as Lord. If men do not confess, they do not really believe.

"Spirit and soul and body," which I have taken as the key to the discovery of man's nature, gives us, I believe, very clearly the order of relationship. The soul is here the connecting link between the spirit and the body. The spirit is the higher part. Hence, although it be true that "the body without the spirit is dead" (James 2:26), yet the spirit is never looked at as the life of the body. The word for "life," as we have seen, is psuche or nephesh, in its secondary or derived meaning.

That the resurrection is that of persons nobody in his senses would deny, but death is that of persons also; and yet it is only the body that is really dead, as we read in James 2:26, “The body without the spirit is dead.”

While spirit, soul, and body continue in the harmonious relations to each which constitute the man; he is in LIFE, as that word is ordinarily used. When the triunity breaks up—when the soul and spirit leave the body—the condition is reached which is called DEATH. Neither of the three component parts becomes extinct, but their disruption breaks up the man—the man dies. The body returns to dust; the spirit to God who gave it. The former we know by sight; the latter comes to us as a revelation from God (Eccl. 12:7). Death is separation: never extinction. Even Annihilationists are compelled to admit that something survives, in which the identity of the man is preserved till resurrection and judgment (John 5:28 -29; Rev. 20:12). This “something,” Scripture informs us, is the disembodied spirit, which, liberated from its tenements continues to exist. The question remains—Where?

It is true that men have differentiated between the material body and the animating principle indwelling the body. To see the breath leave the body, a moment before alive and conscious, and behold! it becomes lifeless, all knowledge departed, all functions suspended, corruption immediately setting in, is patent to all. Even where the gospel has never penetrated this difference has ever been recognized, and more than that it is deeply engraved on men’s minds that this animating principle, call it spirit or soul, survives the death of the body, as witness the North American Indians’ belief that the dead brave has departed to the happy hunting grounds of his forefathers.

While Paul speaks of justification before God, which indeed is through faith without works, James speaks of justification before men: "Though a man say he hath faith... shew me thy faith." (James 2:14, 18). My fellow-men can only see my faith in my works. The works James is talking about are works of faith and not necessarily those commonly considered to be good works. Abraham offered up his own son and Rahab hid the spies in her home. Ordinarily, neither action would be regarded as a good work. On the contrary, one would be considered murder and the other treason. But these works revealed their faith in God, giving testimony to their love of God (Abraham) and their love of the people of God (Rahab).

Inasmuch as both were inspired, there can be no ground for it. The appearance is due solely to the ignorance of unbelief. The one is occupied with the root, with what is "before God" (Rom. 4:2); the other, with the fruit, and therefore "show me" before men. Both agree that, where faith is divinely given and souls are begotten by the word of truth, good works are the fruit and the outward witness of faith. There is nothing in fact to reconcile, because there is no real variance. The one insists that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law; the other, that he who claims to have faith is bound to show it by his works. In the one, the question is how a sinner can be justified by grace; in the other, what God looks for from him who professes faith.