16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
The book of James is somewhat a book that gets in your face when it comes to our actions. Martin Luther, who was a pivotal church reformist in the middle century said it was a rightly strawy epistle. Meaning it did not have much spiritual depth. However, Martin Luther a catholic monk was reforming the church out of a period of corruption, works oriented corruption, was sensitive to anything focusing on works.
Jesus and the gospel writers talked a lot about recognizing a tree by the fruit it bears. Becoming a disciple of Jesus involves transformation of the Spirit – not adding to – Gods Spirit lives inside us as we are His Temple now, and a renewed mind as
Romans 12: 1-2 states” Therefore, I urge you, brothers, and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
To put a context into all of this when we put our faith in Jesus we are immediately put into a state of Salvation, as God gives us forgiveness of all our sins by a gifting us the price Jesus paid on the cross with his own life. There is still a state that happens however thru time called Sanctification – this is a process whereby we become more and more like Jesus. Salvation we can’t help that out – hence it's all God imputing Christ righteousness onto us, however our sanctification we can help that process out and co-operate with God on this.
As we practice Christian disciplines of reading Gods word, prayer, and fellowship- our outward actions start complying with our inward renewed mind. We have a new nature now and we must daily put the old nature to death.
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