You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
-- James 2:24 (NRSV)

D?oh! No wonder Martin Luther is said to have declared of this book, ?James is a right strawy epistle.?

The calling of James to see ?faith? and ?works? as essentially inseparable is a crucial one for modern day believers, however. At some point in history, we have divorced these two separate yet inextricably connected concepts, perhaps not in our theology but at the least in our practice. Yet while faith is not, strictly speaking, works, faith is nothing without works. Faith itself is a work of the mind, yet it is not a true working of the mind unless it instructs the working of the body. The idea that you can have the sort of faith the Bible calls us to in the living God and yet not live as though you do is completely foreign to the biblical peoples.
Speaking of the fundamental synonymous function of ?worldview? and ?praxis? in Jewish life in his book The New Testament and the People of God, N.T. Wright explains:

[A]s a matter of phenomenological analysis, it is simply the case that underlying worldviews are more fundamental than even the most ingrained habits of life. Underneath the basic Jewish praxis there lies the belief that Israel is the people of the creator god. If this were not so, the halakah would lose its point, or at least radically change its character. If one said to an articulate first-century Jew ?Why do you keep Torah??, the ultimate answer would be ?Because I am a part of Israel, the chosen people of the creating and redeeming god.? For the question and answer to run the other way would be irreducibly odd: ?Why do you believe in the creating and redeeming god?? ?Because I keep Torah.? The fact of the creating and redeeming god is the greater whole, which gives meaning and purpose to the individual expression . . .
(p. 246)

And yet for too many of we evangelicals today, our Christian ?faith? is just part of our thought life. It may or may not inform what we do. It is a ?tool? perhaps for ?successful living,? but just one of a few tools we can live to achieve ?victory? in life. It is certainly preached as such in too many churches.
But for the first-century Jew and the Christian community he gave birth to, there is no distinction between who you are and what you do. What you do is who you are; who you are is what you do.

We can see this breakdown in how we look at Jesus? Sermon on the Mount. Many Christians today have adopted the typical view of the non-Christian of the Sermon. That is, that the Sermon on the Mount is a great series of ethical platitudes which may help us live at peace with our neighbor or maybe even achieve a higher state of being (whatever that means). But to reduce the Sermon to just a set of instructions, godly instructions or not, is actually to divorce them from the kingdom context in which they are given. The purpose of the Sermon is not so much to inspire change in behavior as it is to spark change in heart. I know I harp on this a lot, but a little more won?t hurt ? the call of Jesus to others into the kingdom life is about character, not behavior. The former will naturally flow into the latter, to be sure.

So the Sermon on the Mount is a great descriptive of what life in the kingdom of God looks like, what the life of those inside the kingdom looks like. They are not necessarily behavioral goals to which we ought to aspire, although there is certainly nothing really wrong with trying to live out the Sermon?s ?commandments.? Rather, they are character traits with which we are to exemplify for the cause of the kingdom and for the glory of God. We cannot do what the Sermon says to do until we can be what the Sermon says to be.

Being what the Sermon says to be is the real test of one?s assimilation into the life of Christ. Not that being Christlike doesn?t take a conscious effort, but the less ?conscious? that effort is, the more Christlike we become. Dallas Willard talks about believing in the work that Jesus has done for us and is doing in us and automatically acting as if it were so.
A lot of this ?automatic action? comes from previous meditation on Scripture, communication with God, and exercising the spiritual disciplines, all conscious efforts of their own and each beginning with plenty of conscious (and self-conscious) efforts. But the goal is to move our conscious efforts away from self-consciousness and into God-consciousness. As an illustration, let?s re-phrase the question/answer in the Wright extract:

Question to Evangelical: Why do you follow Jesus?
Typical Evangelical Answer: Because I want to get to heaven (or have a good life, or because He died for me or some other sense of gratitude).

The typical answer is not an incorrect one, as far as it goes. There?s nothing really wrong with that answer, except that it does not really get to the heart of the matter. There?s nothing wrong with this attitude of gratitude, but it does not really capture the fundamental ?specialness? of the God-life.
Here is perhaps a better reply:

Question to Evangelical: Why do you follow Jesus?
Evangelical Answer: To glorify God, and because I am a part of God?s people.

The foci in the latter example are a) God, and b) the community. Again, there?s nothing wrong with concern for our own personal kingdom life, particularly as it concerns a life of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us personally. But kingdom life requires kingdom concern. Community life requires community concern. The Christian life is to be lived outward focused, bringing glory to God and sharing in the burden and calling of God?s community.

This is not to say that any of this is easy. Or, contrary to a misinterpretation of Willard, that it takes no non-automatic effort. We all struggle with acting Christ-like, with doing the right thing. We are all in the process of sanctification, and we all are in different places in that process.
What it does mean, however, is that a good gauge of our spiritual maturity is just how automatic being Christ-like comes. How hard is it? It will always be impossible this side of heaven, but how reluctant are we to do the right thing or how easy/hard does doing the right thing come? Are your attempts to be Christ-like becoming less conscious? Are you trusting your ?doing? to transform your ?being?? Or is your ?doing? flowing (super)naturally from your ?being??

See, the worldview of the first-century Jew was not just a perspective, a way of looking at the world. His worldview was who he was. He didn?t just believe philosophically in the Creator God, the LORD and Lord of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac, and so therefore think God would redeem his nation and people and interrupt history as He had done so often before and set things to right. He believed in that God with all his being ? with his heart, soul, mind, and strength ? and so therefore expected with certainty and lived automatically like God would redeem his people and interrupt history and set things to right.

Is the modern evangelical worldview like this? Is it merely a philosophy and then perhaps a practical ethos? Or is it really and truly our way of life?