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Is James 2:24 about being justified before God—or just in the sight of others? In this episode, I break down key Protestant objections and show why James’s teaching on faith and works points to a real, grace-enabled justification before God, not mere human vindication.
TRANSCRIPT:
James 2:24 is one of those verses that comes up all the time when Catholics and Protestants talk about faith and works. James famously writes,
You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
And Catholics often point to this and say, “Look—James explicitly says we’re justified by works, not by faith alone. So works must play some role in justification.”
But some Christians push back and say, “Hold on. You’re assuming James is talking about justification in the sight of God. He’s not. He’s talking about justification in the sight of men.”
In other words, the idea is that works don’t justify us before God—they just show other people that our faith is real.
So… have Catholics been wrong all this time? Do we need to retire James 2:24 as an apologetical proof text?
Short answer: no—and no.
And in today’s episode, I want to explain why.
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So James 2:24 is famous among Catholic apologists for a simple reason: it’s the only time in the Bible when the phrase ‘faith alone’ appears—and it’s preceded by the words “not by.” Because of that, it’s often presented as the ultimate ‘gotcha’ verse against the doctrine of faith alone.
But, as I mentioned earlier, some Christians respond by saying James isn’t even talking about justification in the sight of God. Instead, they argue he’s talking about being justified—or vindicated—in the sight of men. Our works, on this view, simply prove to others that our claim to faith is genuine.
The late American Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul put it this way in his book Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification:
[READ #1]
“Our works ‘justify’ our claim to faith in the eyes of human beholders. Such ‘justification’ or vindication is not necessary for God” (pg. 199-200).
And Sproul’s not alone here. John MacArthur makes this argument in his commentary on the epistle of James, on pages 137-139. Protestant apologist James White makes it in his book The God Who Justifies, pages 351-352, and Ron Rhodes does the same his book Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, pages 147-149.
More recently, Protestant Youtuber Ryan Hemelaar from Needgod.net made this argument in his 2025 debate with Catholic apologist William Albrecht. Ryan said the following:
[VIDEO]
Now before William says that the only 1:09 time the phrase faith alone appears in the Bible is in James chapter 2 where it 1:14 says you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And he 1:20 says well there you go case closed. Debate done, right? . . . Not so fast . . . James must 3:02 mean being justified before man by our works. As in, how do we show to other 3:07 people that we’re a Christian? That’s how our works show it. But it’s not how God knows if we’re saved. He knows if we 3:14 believe because he’s all knowing, but people around us are not all knowing.
Now, for today’s episode, I want to interact with Ryan’s comments specifically, because he lays out reasons for holding this view.
Here’s the first reason he gives:
[VIDEO]
….when James says, you 2:40 see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. He clearly cannot mean justification before God by 2:48 works. It would give a reason a person, it would give a person a reason to boast. Even if it was just 50% works, a 2:55 person would still have a reason to boast compared to a person who hasn’t done those works.
So Ryan’s first argument is basically this: If James were talking about justification before God, then works would give us grounds for boasting. But the Bible teaches that when it comes to justification before God, we have nothing to boast about. An example of this would be Paul’s teaching in Romans 4. Therefore, James can’t be talking about justification before God.
Ryan then offers a second reason. He says the context makes clear James is talking about justification before men. He points to James 2:18:
[VIDEO]
the context in James makes it clear 3:21 that that’s what he’s talking about. Take a look at verse 18. He says, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and 3:28 I will show you my faith by my works.” See that? Show you my faith, not show 3:33 God my faith.
Notice, Ryan says, James talks about showing other people his faith—not showing God his faith.
So what should we make of these arguments?
Well, before I respond, I want to be clear about something. My comments here aren’t meant to undercut how William Albrecht handled this in the debate. The line he took is a common and effective Catholic rebuttal, and I’ll mention it shortly. I just want to add some complementary thoughts that help fill out the picture.
So let’s start with Ryan’s first argument.
Recall, Ryan claims James can’t be talking about justification in God’s sight, because that would give us reason to boast before God.
But that argument only works if you assume a particular understanding of works and their relation to salvation—namely, that works are either a) entirely our own and not Gods, or b) partly ours and partly Gods.
And Ryan clearly thinks in those terms. Recall what he said in the previous clip:
[VIDEO]
He clearly cannot mean justification before God by 2:48 works. It would give a reason a person, it would give a person a reason to boast. Even if it was just 50% works, a 2:55 person would still have a reason to boast compared to a person who hasn’t done those works.
Similarly, he says a few moments later in the debate,
[VIDEO]
How could you be the church of the saved if you think your salvation relies at least partly on your 14:56 works?
Yet again, he says:
[VIDEO]
And so William tonight, even though he won’t necessarily admit this, he’s going to be 15:53 calling you not to trust or not to rest in Jesus, but to work to keep yourself 15:58 saved. But you can’t say it’s all Jesus saving you if you have to do works to be saved.
What’s missing in this discussion is a crucial category of works—one that Ryan doesn’t seem to consider at all.
In the Catholic—and especially Thomistic—tradition, good works that contribute to salvation are themselves gifts of grace. They are gratuitous, supernatural movements caused by God.
Yes, my good works proceed from my will—but only because God is at work in me, moving my will to intend the behavior and actually perform the action. They are 100% a supernatural effect of God’s causality. I say supernatural, because when our good works aren’t ordered to our salvation, our good works are merely natural movements that God causes.
So on this that view, there’s no room for boasting. None. If my good works are 100% God’s gratuitous movements within me, then I have nothing to brag about.
So Ryan’s first argument simply doesn’t land, because it relies on a view of works that Catholics don’t hold and don’t need to hold.
Okay, let’s move on to Ryan’s second argument—the appeal to James 2:18. R.C. Sproul appeals to this verse as well in his Faith Alone book. So Ryan is in decent company here.The first issue is that it ignores the salvific context of James’ teaching.
James sets up the whole discussion in verse 14:
“What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him?”
The salvation that James speaks of here isn’t a temporal salvation. He doesn’t mention being saved from physical enemies. He doesn’t speak of this salvation being confirmed in the sight of men. Rather, he’s speaking of the actual gift of salvation that God gives.
And we can see this in several ways.
First, James says that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” He doesn’t say “dead in the eyes of men.” He says faith itself is dead. In fact, he drives the point home by comparing it to a corpse in verse 26: “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.”
If James only meant justification before men, then a lack of works wouldn’t affect the faith itself—it would only affect how the faith is perceived. The faith would only be seen as dead. But that’s not what James says.
Moreover, it would make the parallel to a body without a soul unintelligible. In what sense can the absence of a soul have no negative effect on the body? None!
Here’s another way to see that James is talking about the gift of salvation that God gives. James uses the word “save” (in Greek, sōzō) elsewhere in his letter—and every single time he uses it to refer to the salvation of the soul. He does this in 1:21, 4:12, and 5:20. There’s no reason to think James suddenly changes meanings in 2:14.
Finally, notice the works James lists as necessary for having saving faith: feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Those are very same works Jesus says will merit eternal life in Matthew 25:35-36. Jesus says to the sheep, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . . for I was hungry and you gave me food . . . I was naked and you clothed me.”
It’s not unreasonable to think James had this teaching in mind when he spoke of the corporal works of mercy. That connection strongly suggests James has divine judgment in view, not human observation.
Okay, there’s yet another problem with this idea that James is speaking of justification merely in the sight of men: it doesn’t jibe with James’s use of Abraham’s offering of Isaac as the key example of justification by works.
Here’s what James writes in the same chapter, verses 21-23:
[READ #2]
“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God (2:21-23).
Folks, there was no one else around with Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah. No crowd. No audience. No one for Abraham to be justified in the sight of! And James nor the author of Genesis gives us any indication that Abraham was justified in the sight of Isaac.
This is the rebuttal line that Albrecht took in pressing Ryan. And he did a solid job with it.
But after conceding Albrecht’s point that no one else was around, Ryan offered this counter:
[VIDEO]
1:18:40 In gen Genesis 22 we do see Abraham’s faith demonstrated right there. Um in 1:18:45 terms of the people were able to see look because of his trust in God he went and did these sort of things. . . . Anyone who hear about this willingness of Abraham not so not just at that very 1:19:04 in was anybody there witnessing the sacrifice it whether anyone was there witnessing the 1:19:10 sacrifice that’s not important yes or no important is Yep. What is important, William, is that we now read about this. 1:19:17 Anyone Abraham’s family, anyone else hearing that,
Did you catch that? Ryan’s counter is that Abraham is justified in our sight—the sight of later readers.
Now, that may sound like a stretch, but Ryan could actually make that argument stronger by pointing to James 2:22a. After describing Abraham’s offering of Isaac, James begins his concluding sentence about Abraham’s faith with this: “You see [you the reader, see] that faith was active along with his works.” Perhaps Ryan’s counter isn’t that much of a stretch after all. James is saying Abraham’s offering of Isaac confirms for us that he had faith—not that his works justified him in the sight of God.
But here’s the problem: James doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say in 22b that Abraham’s faith was “completed” by his work of offering Isaac.
The Greek word James uses for “complete”—teleioō—means “to complete, bring to an end, finish, accomplish . . . to make perfect.” That’s straight from page 996 of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, commonly referred to as BDAG.
Now, consider this: how could Abraham’s faith be made complete if he were justified merely in the sight of men? If Abraham’s work only confirmed his faith for us, then Abraham’s work wouldn’t actually affect his faith at all—let alone complete it. But James explicitly says that Abraham’s work did affect his faith—his offering completed it.
Furthermore, James’s emphasis on Abraham’s faith being made perfect indicates that it’s the same faith that justified him when he first believed.
James speaks of Abraham being justified by his obedience in verse 21, and then indicates that his faith was completed by works in verse 22. And without breaking his train of thought, in verse 23, James quotes Genesis 15:6: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Protestants agree that Genesis 15:6 refers to Abraham being justified before God.
Here, James doesn’t contrast these two justifications—the justification by offering Isaac and the justification in Genesis 15:6. Rather, he connects them. This tells us that the justification James has in mind in verse 21 (Abraham’s justification by works) is the same justification spoken of in Genesis 15:6 (“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”). It’s a justification before God, not men.
We can summarize our reasoning this way:
P1: The justification that Abraham had in Genesis 15:6 was justification before God.
P2: In James 2:21-23, James identifies Abraham’s justification in Genesis 15:6 with the same justification he had by his work of offering Isaac.
C1: Therefore, the justification that Abraham had by offering Isaac is justification before God.
There’s one last piece of evidence that confirms Abraham’s justification is a justification in the sight of God: Abraham is called “the friend of God” because of his obedient action.
For James, Abraham’s offering of Isaac set off a chain reaction. His faith was “completed by his works,” the “Scripture was fulfilled” whereby Abraham was reckoned as righteous, and he was called “the friend of God.”
And we know that’s God’s judgment—not man’s, because after the angel intervenes and stops Abraham from killing Isaac, God says in Genesis 22:12, “For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” God valued what Abraham did, and thus Abraham stood justified in God’s sight. God reiterates his approval of Abraham in Isaiah 41:8, when he calls Abraham “my friend.”
So, in sum, if Abraham was justified before God by offering Isaac, and our justification by works is like Abraham’s justification, then it follows that our justification by works is a justification before God.
So where does that leave us?
Given the salvific context of James 2, and given the clear parallel between our justification and Abraham’s justification before God, the “justification before men” interpretation just doesn’t hold up.
And that means Catholics don’t have to stop using James 2:24. It still clearly teaches that works play a real role in our justification.
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