By Reese Currie, Compass Distributors
Perhaps you have been troubled, as I have, by James 2:19, "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!"
The verse is especially troubling if you have slipped up and committed a serious sin against God. You may sit and ask yourself, as I have asked myself in such troubling times, "Is my faith the right kind of faith, or is it the same kind of belief the demons have?" Such worries can make you doubt your salvation, and that is far more dangerous to you than any sort of sin against the Law. It is a sin of disbelieving God's promise, as expressed in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Further, it is not believing Him when He says through Paul, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38,39).
We will examine James 2:19 in detail, from a number of perspectives, and the readers may examine themselves to see if they truly believe the way a demon believes.
It is important to note very carefully what James 2:19 does not say, especially in light of contrary interpretations from the majority of Christian denominations. I would say the vast majority of Christian denominations espouse a "faith-works" salvation system that is utterly false. If we rely on ourselves in any way for our own salvation, we no longer have faith in Christ alone and as a result we are not saved.
The Bible does not say to believe in Jesus and do a bunch of good things so we can go to heaven. That would be tantamount to believing in Him and believing in ourselves and our own good works to save us. Isaiah put "good works" in their proper perspective long before Jesus visited Earth, "But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away" (Isaiah 64:6).
Paul similarly noted, "Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt" (Romans 4:4). It should be pointed out that Paul is speaking of those who are working for their salvation, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses who go door to door because they think they must to be saved. They're trying to set up a situation in which God owes them their salvation. This could never be.
To cancel out the various Scriptures that proclaim the doctrines of grace, faith-works types point to James 2:19 as showing that a person who lacks works will suffer the same fate as the demons by going to hell regardless of what they believe.
James 2:19 doesn't say that. Even taken out of its proper context, James 2:19 does not imply that a true believer will suffer the same fate as a demon. James 2 simply states that genuine faith always causes good works to manifest themselves in the life of the believer. It does not say the believer is perfect in every way. It gives an example of a situation in which a true believer simply would be unable to avoid acting to help.
Now that it should be clear that James 2:19 does not say a person with genuine faith will suffer the fate of the demons, an alarming question remains. Is my faith like that of the demons, or is it the effective faith that James commends?
I am convinced that James 2:19 draws no comparison between the way a Christian believes in God and the beliefs of a demon. No comparison between the faith of Christians and the beliefs of demons is logically possible. Something else is meant by this verse.
You must understand that there are fundamental differences between humans and demons that are insurmountable for making such a comparison.
First, humans have an option to believe in God, but demons do not have an option. Demons were all at one time angels, created beings who have all been in heaven with God! Therefore, for a human to believe in God, a human requires faith in Someone he has never seen. Even those who saw Jesus required faith to believe He was Who He said He was. A demon does not require any faith whatsoever to believe either of these things. They know it is true.
The second important difference is that humans who believe have faith that their sins have been forgiven by Jesus Christ. This is not even possible for a demon to believe, because forgiveness through Christ's sacrifice is not possible for demons. Jesus sacrificed Himself for our sins, not for those of demons.
James was referring to a kind of faithless, actionless belief that we have seen all through the ages. It is sort of an assent to the existence of God rather than accepting God's invitation to service. It is the kind of belief that holds up the name of Jesus as some kind of talisman that will protect us but not prompt us to further action. I have found that faith in Jesus Christ practically forces further action. You just cannot believe in Jesus without being prompted to care more about others, to try to spread the word. It is not all about self, it is all about God.
I watched Kenneth Copeland one day gleefully telling his followers, when they get to heaven and have a long list of sins laid out before them, to say "I claim the blood!" and all would be forgiven. That's one example of the kind of talismanic belief I think James was referring to.
Matthew 7:21-23 reads, "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’"
Even Islam confesses that Jesus Christ was a valid "prophet," but this is a rather passive assent that ignores all that Jesus actually told them, for example, that "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6b). Muslims don't believe that, and their own religion is invalidated by the fact they assent that Jesus was a "prophet." Jesus was much more than that; He was "God with us," in fact, but even many of today's supposedly Christian denominations buy the "mere prophet" lie.
Another example is the kind of faith that says, "Since I was baptized I am now an inheritor of God's kingdom. I am not a sinner and have no need to be born again; my sins were forgiven by my baptism." What these people believe in is church tradition, not in Jesus Christ. Jesus said "You must be born again" (John 3:7b). This rebirth only occurs through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
One final example is the kind of faith that says, "Sure, the Bible condemns all these actions as sin, but that's just a reflection of the society back then. It doesn't apply to today's world, and we can do those things if we want." This is the common justification for homosexuality and fornication amongst today’s churchgoers.
To be frank, neither of these things can cause our eternal damnation if we can repent of them by agreeing with God that these actions are sin and fighting them out of our lives with God's help. Today's popular technique is to deny that they are sin at all, and that will cause eternal damnation for adherents to that belief. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." (1 John 1:9-10). If we do not confess our sins, He will not forgive us our sins, nor cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and we will go to hell. How can we confess our sins if we pretend they are not sin? In so doing, we do not avail ourselves of the forgiveness God offers (and in fact call Him a liar).
True faith in Jesus Christ demands action. It causes conviction of sin that makes you turn away from sin in repentance, not that you'll never fall into sin, but that you will not be able to continue in sin once convicted. It prompts you to do good works and it calls you into service for God. It causes you to see things differently in all areas of your life. It is properly called being born again; although you are not perfected all at once, as some would claim, it is the birth and the beginning of a growth process in which you grow increasingly closer to God all your life.
That talismanic belief, that is, the idea that just because you pay lip service to Jesus Christ you will be saved or your works will be blessed, is disproven handily by a passage of Scripture, Acts 19:13-16. It reads, "Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, 'We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.' Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?' Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded."
If you have been afraid that you believe as a demon believes because sin remains in your life, you are fooling yourself, or more likely being fooled by evil forces. If you are troubled by sin, and you know that you are a sinner, you are actually in a blessed state because God is talking to you about your sin. Now, you need to respond to His call to repentance.
If you find that your faith is ineffective and devoid of works, and you are bothered by that, again you are in a blessed state, because God has pointed out this problem to you. You are not in a hopeless condition; you merely need to be more sensitive to God's leading and more attentive to what He is doing around you.
In both cases, what you need is not to beat up on yourself and believe your situation is hopeless. Because you are being told of your condition by God, your condition is actually very hopeful! Now you must be willing to listen to God as He speaks to you and respond to His call to action. Take heart in knowing that God only speaks to those who are His. John 8:47 says, "He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God." If you hear what God is telling you, this is good news indeed.
How a Demon Believes is Copyright © 1999 by Compass Distributors
All Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.) 1982.