Real Faith

Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? (James 2:20-21)

Cranfield with his typically illuminating helpfulness:

Had there been no works, Abraham would not have been justified; but that would have been because the absence of works would have meant that he had no real faith.

--C. E. B. Cranfield, "The Message of James," SJT (1965), 340, cited in Ralph Martin, James (WBC; Waco: Word, 1988), 95