Heads or tails? (Kopf oder Zahl?) Which is it? 

What about both? For whether the head’s side or the tail’s side of the coin lands face up when you flip the coin, you still have the whole coin in your hand. 

When it comes to Christianity, is our salvation by faith or by works? St. Paul tells us we are saved by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8), but St. James tells us faith without works is dead. In fact, James goes so far as to declare “that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” (James 2:4)

Are these two New Testament writers at odds with one another? It might seem so. Even Martin Luther was known to have called James an “epistle of straw,” because he felt James undermined the Reformation truth that justification is by faith alone. 

But James is simply saying that faith without works is no faith at all. Without works, you don’t have faith. When Paul says we are saved by faith alone, he, too, was speaking of a genuine “living” faith. He essentially says the same thing as James, when he writes (in 1 Corinthians 13) that without love, faith even to move mountains is worth nothing. Love is a summary of all good works under the law, and it is the evidence of true faith.

Faith is essential, for without it one cannot please God. But faith will obey and make itself evident in action, else it is not faith. Faith and works are not at odds with each other; they are two sides of the same coin.