James: Works that Demonstrate your Faith

by on August 14, 2019
➡ Average Reading Time: 6 minutes

Read Me First | Read Me Second | Read Me Third

Session 1

James: Works that Demonstrate your FaithJames is a collection of proverbial sayings and stories in the form of aphorisms, a tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion. James uses about sixty imperatives in his book. An imperative in the Greek language offers the reader/listener a place to make a decision. There is a similarity between James and the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospels (James 1.2 cp. Matthew 5.10-12; James 1.5-7 cp. Matthew 5.48). Some of the sayings in James have a resemblance to the wisdom found in Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha.[ref]Winn Griffin. God’s EPIC Adventure. Harmon Press. 279[/ref]

 

Book: James
Author: James, the half-brother of Jesus Age Written
Age Written: A.D. 49
From: Jerusalem
To: Jesus Followers Everywhere
Problem: Wisdom about living as a new human being
Audience: Those who had not caught the vision of new humanity
Geography: Jerusalem

 

Here’s my outline

Hello: James 1.1

Attacks will come in life, welcome them: James 1.2

Treatment: James 1.12-27

Welcome attacks because they will force you to exercise in practice what you have learned in Christ: James 1.3-4

Treatment: James 2.1-26

Since you lack wisdom in working through attacks, ask God, he will grant the wisdom you need: James 1.5-8

Treatment: James 3.1-4.17

How the rich and the poor should live in harmony in the church: James 1.9-11

Treatment: James 5.1-12
The Full Circle: Attacks, Faith, and Wisdom: James 5:13-19

Characteristics And Background

Paul’s first missionary trip was in Galatia. Upon his return from Galatia to Antioch in Syria, he reported to the church all that had happened to him, on during, and after his tour. After he left, he heard about a group of local agitators who had never been happy with what Paul was teaching found support from a group of agitators who came to Galatia and disrupted what Paul had accomplished among the Galatians.

These agitators suggested that he had only shared half the gospel with the Galatians, i.e., that one could become a follower by just following Jesus. The agitators believed that a significant part had been left out, which was that the Galatian people had to convert to Judaism before they could become followers of Jesus. In short, they had to take on the legal ramifications of Judaism before they could be a Christian. Paul wrote the Book of Galatians to attack this perversion of the Gospel. Not long after, Paul went to Jerusalem (Acts 15) to discuss this matter with the church leaders there.

The head of the Jerusalem church was James. Paul met with James and the other leaders in Jerusalem. When the Jerusalem meeting was over, a letter was written to share their conclusions. This letter is recorded for us by Luke in Acts 15. It is probable that this letter was written by the author of James because the language and use of words are very similar.

Acceptance

The book of James had a difficult time becoming a part of the Canon of the Second Testament because of its intimacy with “works.” Even after it was received into the Canon, it still was looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion and reserve. In the sixteenth century, Luther would have had it banished because of the overplay of works in the Roman church. In the concluding paragraph of his Preface to the New Testament, he gives his verdict.

In sum: the gospels and the first epistle of St. John, St. Paul’s epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians and Ephesians, and St. Peter’s first epistle, are the books which show Christ to you. They teach everything you need to know for your salvation, even if you were never to see or hear any other teaching. In comparison with these the epistle of James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.[ref] Luther, Martin, and John Dillenberger. “Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude.” Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. New York: Anchor, 2004. 19. Print.[/ref]

Author: Who Wrote This Book?

There are five men named James recorded in the New Testament. James the son of Zebedee (Mark 1.19); James the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3.18); James the brother of Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary (Mark 6.3); James the Younger (Mark 15.40); and James, the father of the Apostle Jude (Luke 6.16).

Tradition confers that James, the brother of Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, is the author of this book. There are several reasons which favor this conclusion. The main reason was that his speech and the letter recorded in Acts are the same style. (One can read more on this subject in most commentary introductions to James.)

Audience: When And Why Was It Written?

The most likely date is AD 49 or 50 immediately after the Jerusalem Council. Josephus, a historian of the era, tells us that James was killed in AD 62.[ref]Wikipedia. James, brother of Jesus. [/ref]

According to a passage found in existing manuscripts of Josephus‘ Antiquities of the Jews, (xx.9) “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus but before Lucceius Albinus had assumed office. [ref]Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus, 20,9).[/ref]

One must understand that the literature in the Second Testament should be thought of as problem-solving literature. The books of the Second Testament were primarily written to solve problems, which arose in the Second Testament ecclesiae.

The problems with which James was faced were twofold:

The first problem was: salvation by faith or salvation by works? In Galatians, Paul answers the question: “How are we justified before God?” His answer and the answer of the Jerusalem Council was: “by faith.” James is answering another question, “How do I know that you are justified?” His answer: “by works.” The idea, which James wanted to warn the church against, was the real possibility that once one was justified by faith that a believer could become lazy and take a position that there were no works for him or her to do.

This may pose the question for the modern readers of Galatians and James: How then should the teachings of these two books be used today? The answer is simple. If you need to give instruction to a person concerning his or her new life in the ecclesia—teach Galatians. If, on the other hand, you have a person who feels that he/she should do none of God’s work in the ecclesia, then teach him, James.

If one were to ask Paul: How are we justified before God? He would answer: By faith! If one were to ask James: How are we justified before, man? He might answer: By works!

The second problem which James addressed was: Why do Jesus followers suffer? Suffering is one of the lenses through which one should read James. This concern offers us a second way to use the book. If you have suffering in your own life or others are suffering, and you do not understand it, a study of James will give you some practical answers. In reading from this perspective, you may find God’s view about this bothersome area of life.

The book was written to either Jewish Jesus followers living outside of Palestine or to Jesus followers in general regardless of where they lived. In light of the latter, one must note that there was already a belief in Paul, which understood the ecclesia as the New Israel (see Gal. 6.15–16). Although not mentioned, it is likely that this was discussed during the time the leaders of the ecclesia met in Jerusalem to discuss the problem of circumcision.

First Testament Background

In the First Testament, Israel made a covenant with God. It was based on his love and protection. It provided them with stipulations by which they governed their lives. When they kept these stipulations, i.e., what we often call the Ten Commandments, the promise of blessings was fulfilled. However, when they broke the covenant stipulations, the promise of curses was fulfilled (Deut. 28).

There were some First Testament books (Job and Habbakuk), which appear to suggest that the righteous suffered because they were God’s children as also being a reality. This was the beginning of a mindset, which took a firm grip on the nation of Israel during the Second Temple timeframe of 516 BC to AD 70. The periods past this timeframe called the Intertestamental Period, which was believed to be the period of time between Malachi and John the Baptist, was approximately 400 years.

The suffering because they were God’s children mindset, believed that there was a war going on between God and Satan, and the battlefield was the people of God. When you open the pages of the Second Testament and read the Gospels, it appears the war is full-blown. The kingdom of God is at war with the kingdom of Satan. This shift may have led to a belief in which the suffering of an individual believer could have been understood.

For Further Investigation

The following articles and books would be useful for a more thorough study of James.

Articles: from Holman Bible Dictionary. Online @ studylight.org. 1991. Trent C. Butler, Editor.

Books

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Read Me First

 

Throughout these sessions, I have used the word ecclesia (singular) for the usual word church and ecclesiae (plural) to indicate a church in a particular geographic place, i.e., the ecclesiae at Corinth, meaning the whole of the many smaller ecclesia that met in homes in Corinth. This is to distinguish between the Institutional Church model (IC) and ecclesia that meet in cities and towns around the world. The ecclesiae written about by the authors of the Second Testament were not the same as what the “church” has become over the years of its existence. Usually, but not always, folks think of a church as a place where they go to a building and set in rows of pews and listen to music and sometimes sing and listen to sermons by a pastor or senior pastor. The ecclesiae of the Second Testament time did not invoke this model.

 

I have discovered over the years that if you want to try and change minds about something special, you have to venture out and reword it in order to grasp a foothold for a new refreshed understanding of the idea presented by the word. Such is the case between "church" and "ecclesia."

 

Happy Reading!

Read Me Second

 

Referenced verses in the text of this study are not used to prove some point of view. They are merely markers where the subject matter is referenced by other books and authors. To gain a larger view of each quote, a serious student of the Holy Writ would take the time to view the reference and see what the background is. The background provides tracks on which the meaning of a text rides. So knowing the context of a referenced passage would help the reader to gain a more thorough understanding of an author than just the words quoted and marked by a verse number that was not a part of the original author's text, which as you might remember was performed on the text in a random fashion many years later.

 

Happy Reading!

Read Me Third

 

The verses that are referenced in these sessions are not meant to prove a point. They are simply pointers to where the idea being written about may have a correlation. In order to see if they accomplish the thesis presented by the original author, a student should read, at a minimum, the chapter in which the verse is found as well as trying to ascertain what the original author may have meant to say to the original audience.

 

Of course, this is a lot of work but it is beneficial work. If one does not understand what the author meant when it was written and the audience could not have understood by what was written, then the words on the page can mean anything that a present reader may assign as a meaning, thus distorting what God was inspiring for the original writer to write to the original audience to hear.

A great and recent book by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird entitled The New Testament in Its World would be a wonderful addition to your reading helps.

 

Happy Reading!

Jesus Followers

 

There are many synonyms to use for the word believer, which is the most common word for a person who has "converted" to follow Jesus. I have chosen "Jesus follower(s) or follower(s) of Jesus instead of the word believer in these presentations to allow the reader an opportunity to move away from the idea of believer which conjures up the possible thought of "ascent" to a set of doctrines that have been assembled by different groups over the centuries and show up in this day and age as a set of statements posted on web sites and other written material. These sets of beliefs are suggested by many as the ones that one should ascent to so that upon death the one who assents can go to heaven, i.e., just believe and you are good to go. Jesus followers/followers of Jesus suggest an action that one should take. Remember, Jesus told his disciples to follow him. Yes, belief is important, but one must move beyond belief to action.

 

(See "Discipleship" Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. 182-188.)