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Jam_2:24. An inference universally valid from the adduced example of Abraham: “Ye see that by works a man is justified (declared righteous), and not by faith alone,”
ὁρᾶτε ] is not imperative (Erasmus, Grotius), but indicative; Griesbach, Schott, Schulthess incorrectly understand the sentence as a question, which it is as little as in Jam_2:22.
ἐξ ἔργων ] is emphatically placed first, because the chief stress is upon it.
δικαιοῦται ] has the same meaning as in Jam_2:21. James thus infers from the foregoing that the declaration of man’s righteousness proceeds ἐξ ἔργων , and, with special reference to his opponents, he adds: οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον .[156] The chief emphasis is on μόνον ; for as little as James in Jam_2:14 has not said that faith cannot save ( σῶσαι ), so little will he here say that a man is not justified ἐκ πίστεως (rather πίστις is to him the presupposition, without which the attainment of salvation cannot be conceived, as without it the ἔργα , ἐξ ὧν δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος are impossible); but that the faith, which justifies, must not be χωρὶς τῶν ἔργων . μόνον is therefore not to be united with οὐκ (Theile: appositionis lege explenda est oratio: non solum fide, sed etiam operibus … nempe cum fide conjungendis), but with πίστεως (Theophylact, Grotius, Knapp, Hottinger, Wiesinger, and others); comp. 1Co_12:31; 2Co_11:23; Gal_1:23; Php_1:26. The declaration of righteousness, which James intends, is not that by which the believer on account of his faith receives the forgiveness of his sins, but, as is evident from the connection of the whole section, that which occurs to the believer, who has proved his living faith by his works, at the judgment ( ἐν τῇ κρίσει , ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαι ), and by which he receives σωτηρία (Jam_2:14). When James, in reference to this, appeals to what happened to Abraham, there is nothing unsuitable, for why should not that which God has done in a definite instance be regarded as a type and testimony of what He shall do at the future judgment? Moreover, this is completely appropriate, since to Abraham, by the address to him after the offering of Isaac, the promise which was before made to his faith, was rendered unchangeably firm at the close of his theocratic life. The present δικαιοῦται is explained, because the thought was to be expressed as a universal sentence.[157]
[156] Philippi, according to his explanation of ἐδικαιώθη , ver. 21, must find here the thought expressed, that “faith alone without works cannot prove a man before men to be a believer, and justified by faith;” but this thought is in fact so self-evident, that James would not have thought it necessary to state it as a consequence from the history of Abraham. The idea opposed to ἐξ ἔργων should not be ἐκ πίστεως , but must be ἐκ λόγων (comp. λέγῃ , ver. 14); moreover, the simple δικαιοῦται ἄνερωπος cannot possibly denote: “a man is justified as a believer whom God, on account of his faith, has justified.”
[157] See remarks by the author in the April number of the Erlang. Zeitschrift für Protest. Frank, in his reply (in the same, p. 220), combating the reference of δικαιοῦται to the final judgment, says: “If there was in the life of Abraham a justification by works, which may be considered as the type and testimony of the final acquittal, so there occurs also in the life of Christians such acts of justification by works, that they may also be regarded as a testimony and type of their future justification before the judgment-seat of God.” To this it is to be replied, that such an act of justification is here treated of by which the accounting of his faith for righteousness already imparted to the believer comes to its termination, as was here the case with Abraham. But this act, as concerns Christian believers, occurs not in their earthly life, but only at the judgment. Philippi also incorrectly says that the reference to the judgment is not indicated, since it is sufficiently indicated by the whole context; see remarks on ver. 14.