James, Paul, and Abraham: What Does it Mean to be Justified?

I recently spent several days engaged in a facebook debate with a Catholic, and in the process, I was challenged to re-think my view of the relationship between faith and works in James chapter two.  Catholic theologians claim that James 2 teaches the necessity of adding good works to our faith in order to obtain final salvation.  The typical response to this claim is to argue that James is only speaking of good works as an evidence of our salvation and not as the means of our salvation.  The greatest challenge to this argument is found in the use of the word “justified” in verses 21 and 24.  Here is my solution to this challenge:

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