What Does "Not by Faith Alone" (James 2:24) Mean?

J. Neil Daniels 

The phrase “not by faith alone” in James 2:24 has always had a way of ruffling feathers. It cuts across the grain of the Reformation’s rallying cry—sola fide—and at first blush sounds like James is tearing down Paul’s whole edifice of justification by faith apart from works. But context matters, and the two apostles were not sparring in the same ring. Paul was fencing with legalists who thought circumcision and Sabbath-keeping could curry favor with God. James, on the other hand, was correcting the lazy presumption of those who thought that nodding in God’s direction, without lifting a finger in obedience, was somehow “faith.” Two different diseases, and therefore two different prescriptions.

Once you start looking closely, you see the key terms don’t quite overlap. Paul’s “faith” is always more than mental assent; it is trust, reliance, clinging to Christ as the only hope. For him, that kind of faith naturally bears fruit in obedience—it’s alive, pulsing with energy. James, however, is taking aim at a hollow, anemic version of belief: the kind of “faith” that says the right words but never opens its hands to feed the hungry. That is no saving faith at all, he insists. When he asks, “Can faith save him?” the real sense is “Can that kind of faith—empty and deedless—save anyone?” His answer is a flat no.

Both men, then, are circling the same truth from different angles. Paul declares that works of the law can’t purchase righteousness; James insists that genuine faith can’t exist without works flowing from it. The two aren’t contradicting but complementing each other. Ephesians 2:8–10 captures the balance perfectly: salvation is by grace through faith, not by works—yet we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works.” Faith is the root, works are the fruit, and you can’t have a living tree without both.

This helps explain why the early church received James into the canon without protest. If the letter had truly contradicted Paul, the communities who revered his epistles would hardly have copied and preserved James alongside them. The very fact that both stand together in the New Testament is a kind of built-in safeguard, a reminder that faith and obedience are not rivals but companions. Each writer, in his own style, reinforces the truth that God’s grace is never inert; it moves, it acts, it transforms.

So James 2:24 isn’t a wrecking ball aimed at justification by faith. It’s a rebuke to cheap grace, a wake-up call for those content with words but not deeds. And Paul would have shouted his “Amen.” In the end, they both point us to the same living reality: true faith clings to Christ and, inevitably, expresses itself in love. Or as Paul himself put it with remarkable simplicity, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal. 5:6).