Lessons from James, Part 1

Thoughts From a Bible Reader

There is only one book written in the Bible written by a person who lived in the same household with Jesus for much of his life. That is the book of James, written by the half-brother of Jesus. And what did James have that Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, and so many others didn’t have? A youth spent listening to his older brother’s teachings. And I think that a lot of what we read in James reflects Jesus’ lessons, shared all through their lives together, for His younger brother. But James is a somewhat controversial book. Why? Because it concentrates on our thoughts and actions, rather than on our faith. Martin Luther, when he came to understand that we are saved by grace alone, called James an “epistle of straw” because James neglected to talk about grace, and a great many other Christians have thrown doubt at it as well, because they think that James is teaching the exact opposite of what Paul taught, that we are saved by grace. And yet Paul himself told the Ephesians, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them” (Eph. 2:8-10). Yes, we are saved by grace through our faith, and not by our works. But we ARE, Paul said, saved FOR good works. Grace, faith and good works, you see, go hand in hand. And James really fleshes out what those good works do and don’t look like. Here is a book that gives snapshots of what everyday Christianity should look like!

James starts off telling us to “consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials” (James 1:2). Why should we do such a thing? Because, he says, when trials test our faith, what we are left with is endurance. And what will endurance do for us? It will make us “perfect and complete, not deficient in anything” (1:4). In my last post, where I shared about those who want to hasten the Day of the Lord, we saw that Jesus told us that endurance will lead to our salvation (Matt. 24:13). What did Jesus mean by that? As I’ve said before, the Bible is pretty clear that, while Jesus will never abandon us, we can abandon Him. “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and occupy themselves with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings, influenced by the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared” (1 Tim. 4:1-2). But when we count it joy to suffer for Him we will learn to endure for Him. And when we learn to endure for Him, we will not want to abandon Him because we have invested our lives in His.

James then tells us that if we feel to be lacking in wisdom we should “ask God, who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). But, he says, we have to ask with complete faith in God, not doubting, because doubters are like waves on the ocean, tossed about by the wind. “For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a double-minded individual, unstable in all his ways” (1:7-8). But maybe you are looking at yourself right now and wondering if you actually have complete faith in God or not, doubting even yourself. What can you do? You can pray the prayer of the father in Mark 9:24, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

James then shifts gears (as he does quite a bit), telling us, “Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away” (James 1:9-10, NKJV). Jesus’ message to us so often emphasized that, in His kingdom, everything works opposite to what we were raised to expect. The poor in spirit? Heaven’s kingdom is theirs! The meek? They will inherit the earth! The first? They will be last! The last? They will be first! (Matt. 5:3-11, 19:30). James is telling us that if you are a believer who is poor or oppressed you should rejoice, knowing that the day is coming when God will raise you up, He will exalt you! And if you are rich or powerful? You should be humbled, knowing that your riches and power are only a very temporary thing that will soon escape your grasp.

And then, it’s “Happy is the one who endures testing, because when he has proven to be genuine, he will receive the crown of life that God promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). Testing proves that our faith is real, is genuine. When Jesus wrote His letters to the seven churches in Rev. 2-3, to each church He ended His letter speaking about the prizes that those who endured, who were victors, who conquered the testing of temptation and the world, would receive. Along with the crown of life that James mentions here, Jesus told us that those who conquer can eat from the tree of life, they will not suffer the second death, they will be given the hidden manna and a new name, they will be given authority to rule the nations, they will be given the morning star, they will be dressed in white clothing and have their name declared before the Father and His angels, they will be made a pillar in God’s temple forever, they will be adorned with the name of God, the name of the city of God, and Jesus’ new name, and they will have permission to sit with Jesus on His throne. So many promises of what we have to look forward to if we endure for Christ!

James continues by telling us that God will never tempt us to do wrong. No, our temptations come from our own desires, and “Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. Do not be led astray, my dear brothers and sisters” (James 1:15-16). It is never God who leads us astray; it’s our own desires that do that to us.

Shifting gears (again), we read that every single generous and perfect gift that we have received in our lives came from none other than God the Father, who never varies, never changes in the least little bit. “By his sovereign plan he gave us birth through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits of all he created” (James 1:18). The birth that James is referring to here is the second, spiritual birth that Jesus talked about with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21, when He said, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6). The message of truth, the gospel, gives us that spiritual birth.

And James also calls us “firstfruits” in this passage. Firstfruits are very important in the Bible. God told Israel that the first of their firstfruits were to be an offering to Him every single year (Lev. 23:9-14). They were, literally, the very first ripe heads of grains to be found in the fields. Firstfruits, though, were not the entire harvest. That came later. I shared in my post on Heaven, Part 2 how many churches teach that the church is, in effect, the entire harvest, that all who are not part of the church are destined to hell. And I also shared how this view is difficult to reconcile with a number of New Testament passages. Well, here’s another one. You cannot be the firstfruits, as James described us, and also be the entire harvest. There has to be more harvested later. Yes, I am certain that the church will be unique in heaven, receiving special blessings that no one else will receive. But I’m equally certain that we won’t be the only ones that God welcomes to heaven. (See my Heaven, Part 2 post for details on that.)

Next James tells us, “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Quick to listen and slow to speak. Boy, isn’t that just the opposite of what we usually do? And we need to be slow to get angry as well, because James tells us that our human anger won’t bring about God’s righteousness. And he continues, saying that we also need to “put away all filth and evil excess,” and instead humbly accepting the message which the Holy Spirit has planted inside of us, a message “which is able to save your souls” (1:21). But merely hearing that message without living it out as well will cause us to deceive ourselves. Doing that, he says, is like looking at ourselves in a mirror, walking away, and forgetting what we saw in that mirror. “But the one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes his attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but one who lives it out—he will be blessed in what he does” (1:25). Doing what the Holy Spirit shows us to do, tells us to do, living it out, will lead to blessings in our lives.

James then tells us that if we consider ourselves to be religious people, and yet we don’t control what we say, then we are lying to ourselves. Our “religion,” he says, is futile. What “religion” isn’t futile? “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their adversity and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27). I Googled “Christian religious practices,” and the AI synopsis listed worship services, sacraments and ordinances (communion and baptism), prayer, Bible study and scripture reading, and Sabbath keeping. Nothing at all about caring for widows and orphans. Nary a word about keeping ourselves unstained from the world. James talks about service and purity. AI cannot discern that the church today says anything about service or purity. Draw your own conclusions from that.

James then goes on to talk about how our prejudices, our pre-judgments, affect how we treat others. “My brothers and sisters, do not show prejudice if you possess faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ” (James 2:1). He asks us if we would give a good seat in our church to someone who comes in wearing nice clothes and a gold ring, but would make a poor person in dirty clothes either stand or sit on the floor. If we would do that, he says, we have “made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives” (2:4). He reminds us that God has chosen the poor (as the world judges them) to be rich in faith. They are heirs of God’s kingdom. And we dishonor these that God so honors by judging them by their lack of wealth as not being worthy of honor. And yet it is rich people, he says, who oppress the poor and take them to court, blaspheming the name of Jesus by doing so. The answer, James says, is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But showing prejudice is a sin, it is not loving our neighbors as we love ourselves, and is really no different in God’s eyes than if we were to commit adultery or murder. “Speak and act as those who will be judged by a law that gives freedom. For judgment is merciless for the one who has shown no mercy. But mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:12-13).

And then James moves on to the relationship of faith and works. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can this kind of faith save him?” (James 2:14). If a fellow believer needs clothes or food, and we say words of blessing on them but don’t share our clothes or food, “what good is it? So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead being by itself” (2:16-17). Some will argue with him, James says, that both faith and works aren’t necessary. And you might think that it’s enough to just believe in God, he says, but “Even the demons believe that – and tremble with fear” (2:19). Believing alone won’t save the demons, nor will it save us. And then he shares the example of Abraham, offering Isaac on the altar. “You see that his faith was working together with his works and his faith was perfected by works” (2:22). Abraham’s works perfected his faith. It’s that simple. And then, he says, we can also look at Rahab, who took in the Jewish spies in Jericho, another person whose faith resulted in her doing things that honored God. “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (2:26).

That’s a lot of different things to think about so far! We’ll stop here for now and pick back up next time.

Do you have questions or comments that you would like to share with me? Feel free to drop me an email (stevesuterfaithandfruit@gmail.com).

My posts come from my observations in reading the Bible literally dozens of times, always hoping to understand it a little bit better. If you want to go back and read more of what I’ve observed in my reading, click here.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved

NKJV Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.