Can you give me some examples of a living faith, and a dead faith?

[JohnB445]

What does it look like when someone has a living faith, and what does it look like if someone has a dead faith?

 

[Maria Billingsley]

What does it look like when someone has a living faith, and what does it look like if someone has a dead faith?

Scenario 1: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them nothing.
Dead faith
Scenario 2: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them something.
Living faith

Remember, a living faith is centered around Love not judgement.

Blessings

 

[Mark Quayle]

"The demons also believe, and tremble!" Dead faith
Mere intellectual assent. and even trust in the facts, such as knowing the floor will be under your feet when you get out of bed in the morning, is dead faith. For example, to be good because it is in keeping with Salvation, does not produce Salvation.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Living faith
Requires more than understanding and emotional commitment, so much more that we are not able to produce it on our own —it is a gift of God.

 

[RDKirk]

James meant by "dead faith" to indicate a useless feeling, an intellectual accent at best, but not actually faith at all.

 

[Grafted In]

"The demons also believe, and tremble!" Dead faith
Mere intellectual assent. and even trust in the facts, such as knowing the floor will be under your feet when you get out of bed in the morning, is dead faith. For example, to be good because it is in keeping with Salvation, does not produce Salvation.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Living faith
Requires more than understanding and emotional commitment, so much more that we are not able to produce it on our own —it is a gift of God.

We couldn't even believe unto salvation on our own.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

What does it look like when someone has a living faith, and what does it look like if someone has a dead faith?

Example 1 from the text of James' letter. (Chapter 2)

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Example 2 from the text of James' letter.

21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?

Example 3 from the text of James' letter.

25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?

 

[ozso]

Scenario 1: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them nothing.
Dead faith
Scenario 2: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them something.
Living faith

Remember, a living faith is centered around Love not judgement.

Blessings

Scenario 1, you can't always tell if someone is homeless or is just someone sucking extra cash out of people. Thus you're enabling grift. There's a difference between judging someone and using judgement.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Scenario 1: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them nothing.
Dead faith
Scenario 2: A Christian walks by a homeless person asking for a handout and gives them something.
Living faith

Remember, a living faith is centered around Love not judgement.

Blessings

You'd best not walk the streets of Portland or Seattle. You'd become one of them in an hour, penniless and wanting, having given everything away you had.

 

[ozso]

In my opinion living faith is keeping God in your thoughts. Desiring God's will in your life. Doing what God wants especially when it goes against your grain. Clinging to God as your spiritual lifeline. Being humble and repentant towards God. Loving God and His ways. Desiring to be obedient to Him. Resisting that which offends Him. Depending on Him rather than yourself. Trusting in Him.

Dead faith is when you put God aside and only desire to satisfy your own selfish desires. When God is only like a good luck charm to you, and you only reach out to Him as if He was a genie or Santa Claus to grant your wishes. When you continually quench the Holy Spirit. When you're a Christian in name only. When you're continuously lukewarm. Complacent. Apathetic.

 

[ozso]

You'd best not walk the streets of Portland or Seattle. You'd become one of them in an hour, penniless and wanting, having given everything away you had.

Unfortunately there are many asking for cash who don't need to beg to survive. I live in the Seattle area and there's a lot of young able bodied men in nice clothes asking for cash. Others are obviously trying to get drug money. Sometimes someone hanging out by a convivence store will ask me if I could get them something to eat. I tell them to go in and get whatever they want and then I pay for it. If someone is obviously destitute and really in need of cash and begging is their only recourse, I'll give them money. I also donate to food banks and shelters.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Scenario 1, you can't always tell if someone is homeless or is just someone sucking extra cash out of people. Thus you're enabling grift. There's a difference between judging someone and using judgement.

God judges the heart first.
Blessings

 

[Maria Billingsley]

You'd best not walk the streets of Portland or Seattle. You'd become one of them in an hour, penniless and wanting, having given everything away you had.

God judges the heart.
Blessings

 

[ozso]

God judges the heart first.
Blessings

Do you mean the heart of the one being asked, or the heart of the one doing the asking?

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Do you mean the heart of the one being asked, or the heart of the one doing the asking?

The one charged with the decision to give or not to give.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Do you mean the heart of the one being asked, or the heart of the one doing the asking?

both

 

[Soyeong]

What does it look like when someone has a living faith, and what does it look like if someone has a dead faith?

God being trustworthy means that He is a giver of trustworthy instructions, so the way to trust in God with a living faith is by being a doer of His instructions. However, someone can say that they trust in God, but act in a way that does not express trust in God's instructions, so they have a dead faith, which is no faith at all.

 

[ViaCrucis]

What does it look like when someone has a living faith, and what does it look like if someone has a dead faith?

Living faith: Trusting in Jesus.

Dead faith: Trusting in anything that isn't Jesus.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[RDKirk]

Living faith: Trusting in Jesus.

Dead faith: Trusting in anything that isn't Jesus.

-CryptoLutheran

Which includes trusting in "faith," which apparently some in James' purview were doing.

 

[Grafted In]

Just occurred to me (please forgive me if it's been covered) Since this seems to grate on some from time to time, (me), might James be speaking with regard to their testimony before men more so than perhaps their position in Christ?

 

[RDKirk]

Just occurred to me (please forgive me if it's been covered) Since this seems to grate on some from time to time, (me), might James be speaking with regard to their testimony before men more so than perhaps their position in Christ?

Indeed. They have conflated the two.