At this point James tries to bring his argument to a close. He repeats the thoughts of his theme stated in verse 17, that faith apart from works is dead, but adds an analogy to make it plain. In many languages it will be helpful to begin a new paragraph here to show that this verse is a summary of James’ argument in the whole chapter (so Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version).

For as …: the particle For can be taken to mean that with this concluding analogy James wants to explain the Rahab example. However, it may also be taken as a conclusion of the whole argument. Good News Translation has apparently adopted this understanding by rendering the particle as “So then,” and in addition has made the verse as a separate paragraph (so also Phillips, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente).

James compares faith without works to a body without breath. It is interesting to observe that, in the structure of this sentence, faith is parallel to the body, and works to the spirit. This is perhaps not what we would have expected; however, there does not seem to be any need to press the exact details of the comparison. James is not interested in this; rather he is concerned to show that one thing cannot exist without the other.

When he says the body apart from the spirit is dead, it is possible that James is referring to the concept behind Gen 2.7, where a person is believed to consist of body and breath (spirit). (In both Hebrew and Greek the word for “spirit” can mean breath as well as spirit.) There is an organic relationship between the two; the separation of the two can only result in death. Here spirit is probably best taken as the life-giving breath; for example, “The body is dead without breath” (Translator’s New Testament), or “As the body is dead when there is no breath left in it” (New English Bible, Revised English Bible; similarly Barclay and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), and “Anyone who doesn’t breathe is dead” (Contemporary English Version). Apart from may be taken as “separated from” or “without.” Just as a body without breath is a corpse, so also faith apart from works is dead. This final sentence may be alternatively rendered as “So if a person doesn’t do good deeds, that person’s faith is useless” or “So if a person says, ‘I believe in God,’ but doesn’t do kind deeds, he doesn’t really believe at all.”

Quoted with permission from Loh, I-Jin and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Letter from James. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .