Sunday School | James

Introduction

Before I get into my notes, you give me your notes. What do you guys know about the book of James? I say James, you say what? Ecclesiastes. Of the New Testament. Okay. Helen says Ecclesiastes of the New Testament. Why? What is the gestalt of Ecclesiastes that James is picking up? Wisdom. So wisdom literature. Okay? So there is an old section of the Old Testament. It's five books long. It's known as the wisdom literature. It's the Psalms and Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. And what am I missing? Job. That comprises this section. And you're saying that James functions similar to the wisdom literature. I think that is true. It is true. We'll see a little bit of the particulars of that in a minute.

John? James is one of the chiefs. Yes. James is, and we'll talk about that because who James is is complicated. We'll talk about that. I actually have some notes on there for you. So James is wisdom literature essentially. It's written by one of Jesus' brothers. Catherine? Practical exhortation. Good. Very he kind of jumps right in. If you read James, as soon as he Paul will sometimes have these flowery beginnings, except in Galatians he just jumps right in. But in James, it's like boom. And he just goes and is very exhortational. It's if you read it through, you're gonna be like, is James in a little bit of a bad mood? You might wonder. Right? He's terse. He's very direct. There's not a lot of black I mean, not a lot of gray with him. He's just very very terse. But he explicitly affirms the value of mercy, compassion. So there's this thing that takes the edge off, but it is a very particular kind of letter.

Characteristics and Early Suspicion

That's great. A couple other things. James, things that strike you. Yes, Gina? Almost got kicked out. Almost got kicked out. This is true. So James, when the New Testament canon was being, you know, kinda consolidated, and that's a whole story of how that comes about, people had a little bit of suspicion about the book of James, and it didn't end there. In fact, I've got a quote in here from Martin Luther who called it a straw epistle. I don't know how Martin Luther and James get along in heaven, but Luther was Luther Luther was not terribly fond of this. We'll talk a little bit about that. So good. Okay. One or two more quick observations. Yeah. David? Faith without works is dead. Okay. Faith without works is dead. Now this is something that James is affirming that is in God's word, that is true, but that is why Luther didn't like it. And we're gonna have to talk the most controversial passage in James. Okay. Very good. One more you sitting on. Can we get going? The tongue. What is it? The tongue. Tongue. Major theme. Tongue. Which connects back to the wisdom literature stuff. Tongue so wisdom. Wisdom. Okay. Again, more wisdom literature. There's a lot of themes on this. So all kinds of good stuff. Alright. Hang on. Here you go. I don't think you guys got one of these. You might want one. Help yourself. There's like seven copies actually.

Who Wrote the Book of James?

Alright. So book of James. Let's talk about who wrote it. There when we in the Bible, there James is a very common name except just as a quick aside, it wasn't even James. His name was like Jacob. And I have no idea why. If you look at it in Greek, his name is Jacobus. And somehow we turned that into James. It should have been Jacob, but whatever. But the number of dudes that had that name, this Jacobus name, there's a whole bunch of guys, and it's hard to—you've been to a Wikipedia page, it's like a disambiguation page. The disambiguation of James is difficult.

So here's the candidates. Here's the possibilities. Well, you tell who are the James's that you know of? Okay. Son of Alpheus. Who is that? I don't know if it's his mother name. Okay. Good. So Anna is saying there's big James and there's little James. Are you getting this from The Chosen or from someplace else? Yeah. In The Chosen they talk about little James and big James. Okay. So we have James, son of Alpheus. That's important. We'll come to him. Who else? Sons of Thunder. Sons of Thunder. Okay. So who is he? I don't know. Some James, son of thunder. Okay. So you've got what is it? He's James. He's big James.

So what you have within—so there's like Jesus loves everybody, right? And then he's got this like circle of followers. And then he kind of winnows it down. Goes up on a mountain and he 12, the 12. Sometimes they're just called the 12, the 12 disciples. But within the 12, do you know there was another subset? Do you know this? There were like the three that were part of the 12 which were part of the 72 which were part of everybody else. Who were the three? Peter, Peter, James James and John. Okay. James is not that James. Okay. When we say Peter, James and John, the phrase Peter, James and John, most of the time Peter, James and John is talking about Simon Peter and James and John, and which two are brothers? James and John. James and John are the sons of Zebedee. They are called the sons of thunder, which is their nickname because they're just noisy and aggressive. Right? And so this James, James son of thunder, James son of Zebedee, James the brother of John, James of the three is all the same person and is not this guy.

Then you've got James, son of Alpheus or Alpheus, don't know how you emphasize it. And that guy is one of the 12 as well. So among the 12 there were two dudes named James except neither one of them was named James. They were both really named Jacob, but we just called them James. Okay. So there's two of those. And then there's this guy. And he's a third guy. He's a different guy. I listed for you in this text. Maybe you don't even care. But if you go through, you can you can—we can kinda figure out who is who and which one wrote which one, generally speaking, although it's a little bit complex.

This one, this guy that wrote this letter is not James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John. It is not James, the disciple. Although some people think it was, and maybe they're right, but generally speaking, we don't think it's James, son of Alphaeus. We think it's the third guy who is James, the brother of Jesus.

And if you look here in the text, I'll show you a couple of these key passages. Let's see. If you look at Matthew 13 under James, the Lord's brother, the third—like the bottom one, it says, isn't this the carpenter's son? They're talking about Jesus. Isn't his mother's name Mary and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? So Jesus has all these brothers. Isn't that—and this guy, James, is one of them. Right? The guy that wrote this letter is one of the brothers of Jesus.

The reason that we know that we believe it can't be James the son of Zebedee is because he's already dead. If you look at Acts 12 verse 2, up there under not the author James son of Zebedee, he had James the brother of John. Right? Son of Zebedee, son of Thunder, brother of John, put to death with a sword. That's in Acts 12:2. And then right after that, in Acts 12:17, there's somebody else named James, which is the author of this letter.

So it's complicated if you go through it. It may not really matter, but this James is the brother of Jesus, not the disciple, not the other disciple, but is someone who ends up being a very significant leader in the church. James, the brother of Jesus.

More than you care about? Is that sufficient? Oh, they have another brother. Who is the brother of Jesus and the brother of James and the author of scripture? Do you know who that is? His name is mentioned right here in Matthew 13. It says so here's your here's your menu. Isn't his mother's name Mary and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Jude. Judas. Right. So Jude. And for some reason, I can't imagine why, he didn't seem to go by Judas later in life. Right? It's like naming your son like Adolf. Like, what are you gonna do? Like, now it's just like, you gotta find a nickname. Right? So Jude, the author of the letter of Jude, is the brother of James, is the brother of Jesus. That's all in the family. And that's the guy that writes this letter. Okay. Good enough?

The Date and Audience

Second thing to know, it's early, early, early. This is the earliest letter in the New Testament. It's the earliest book in the New Testament. And that kind of shows because it is not very developed. That's not that's not a criticism of it. It's just very raw. Right? He just—it doesn't reflect three decades of the church having conversations about things. It's largely James recalling the things that he heard Jesus say and then just pushing them out there.

Who is his audience? Do you know who is James writing to? Christians walking. Okay. Who weren't walking the walk. Okay. That's a good answer. And what did I hear over here? Who is he writing to? He actually makes it explicit. 12 tribes. Tribes. What does that mean? Jewish. To the Jewish Christians.

Why would this letter be particularly addressed to Jewish Christians rather than Gentile Christians? Think of your church history. Is this letter early or late? What was the church like when it was early? It was Jewish. Right? It's written to a Jewish audience because the community is full of Jewish people. Of course it is. What else is it gonna be? Right?

First DFP, then I come over here to Bill. James. Wait. Wait. Hang on. First DFP. James. Also, the head of the church in Jerusalem, which was like Jewish stronghold. Absolutely. We're gonna see that by Acts 15. James and even if I probably have some of these yeah, like in Acts fifteen thirteen, when they finished, James spoke up, brothers, listen to me. That's all the stuff that's happening. We went to the next day, Paul and the rest went to see James and the elders were present. James is the leader of the church in Jerusalem. He's the leader of the Jewish home base. So that’s kind of. And he's Jewish. It's just natural, normal. He's writing to a Jewish audience early in the church.

Bill? Wasn't James also the one that had the head of the church in Jerusalem to welcome the Gentiles? Is that controversy came up? Yeah. So when it comes in, so there's this big thing that happens in Acts 15 with the council of Jerusalem where they are, as they jump into this thing, they begin to think like, there's Gentiles coming in. What do we do about that? And they have this big meeting like, I don't know. Do we let them in? Do we circumcise them? Do we make them follow the Jewish law? And so James is the leader of the church as that whole question is being worked out. That's the same guy that writes this letter. Okay? So far so good?

Themes and Key Concepts

Alright. So as he does it, James has a couple of things that I think are very interesting to him that might be interesting to us as we go through it. First of all, one of his favorite terms, I just listed this because it's not obvious in English. But one of his favorite terms is the idea of perfection or completeness or the desired end. You might know the word telos, like a teleological argument. It's about the end for which something is made. And Paul uses this or sorry. James uses this word—this I don't speak Greek—so telios. Don't I know. Harrison, how do you say that? Telios. Telios. Is that right? Okay. So telios. It gets translated—look at all the ways it gets translated. Finish, mature, perfect, keep, perfect, finally. That's all the same Greek root. And what James is trying to say is, hey, man, let's finish the game. Let's do what we're supposed to do. Let's accomplish our purpose. Let's be what he made us to be. It just permeates the letter. James is very interested in getting things right.

If you speak Myers Briggs, James, is he a J or a P? J. He's a J. He's like, just do what you said you would do. Like, why are we having this conversation? Right? He's a J. He wants to get the thing done. Right? So when you read through James and you get a sense of he's like, he's not so interested in the process. He's like a destination guy. Like, just do it. That's James.

But that really troubled some people because the end of our faith, hear this, the end of our faith, the goal to which this whole thing is driving is that we're obedient people. Jesus did not save us so that we could continue to live riotous lives. He saved us and called us to a holy life. And so James kind of leapfrogs over the process. Be like, hey, hey, tighten up. Like, just get it right. Do what we're supposed to do. Jesus didn't go through all this so that we could live reckless lives, like, do better. And guys like Martin Luther are like, woah, out, time, time out. What? Right?

And so the controversy in James is contained in his statements about faith. So take a look at this. This is Luther. This is so interesting. Luther says, in a word, John's gospel and his first epistle and Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and also Peter's first epistle, are the books that show you Christ, and they teach you all that is necessary and salutary for you to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine. Therefore, listen to this, James' epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to those others, for it has, and here's the tight language, nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.

Luther's Perspective and the Controversy

Strong. Right? Okay. Now, in fact, it's not quite as strong as it appears to us, although it's pretty strong. Luther is—you need one, bro? You need a whole pile. Does he still need a copy? There's a bunch of things you might want to see. If so, we can just come up and grab one if you'd like one.

Luther believed that it should be in the canon. He just had a very clear two-tier sense. There's like the top shelf books and the bottom shelf books. And yeah, it's on the shelf, but it's not a top shelf book. You can agree or disagree with Luther on that. I would disagree with Luther on that. But I really appreciate the fight that he is in. You've got to think about Luther's historical moment where he is just fighting for the notion that we're saved by faith and not by works.

Okay? What he was troubled by is this central passage here, and I just excerpted it, but it's really much of chapter two where James says, what good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? In the same way, by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead. Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by what I do. And thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

Faith and Works

Okay. So all you good Reformed people, how do you—let's give Luther the benefit of the doubt here. And let's understand how do we make sense of what James says, holy scripture, James chapter two, all these passages and others that just didn't fit in here, comparing that to basically what Paul is gonna say in Romans, that we are saved by faith alone. Which is it? Are we justified by faith? Are we justified by faith plus works? Give that a minute.

Okay? In fact, I can give you guys this is a big enough thing. Want you guys to take two minutes at your tables and just try to hash it out. How have you heard this? How have you processed this? And then we'll kind of hear some thoughts. We'll try to if we have time, we'll try to give that a few minutes. Okay? What is the deal? Are we saved by faith alone? Are we justified by faith plus works? How does it work? All right. Is that enough time to get your juices flowing? Come on in.

So here's what I want you to think about, or here's what I'd love to hear. First of all Bill Blazer. If James and Paul were in a cage match, who would win? And number two, is there even a cage match happening? Okay. Are they disagreeing? Is there do we need to—I mean, is there a tension to resolve or is there some complexity to understand here? How do you guys take this? Okay. First Zach. You gotta get to the essence.

The Essence of James and Paul

Gotta get to the essence? The essence. Okay. How so? We've only got these certain selected passages from James. What's the context? Okay. Good. Of James. What's actually going on in the context that may give more? Okay. Great. And that's—we always want anybody every hand you like a bunch of like Bible verses ripped from their context, you should be—you should call them on it. So thank you for that, Zach. Okay? And I think there are there is a couple of really, really important phrases in James two that I'm not gonna share with you quite yet, but that I think speak to this. So yes, there's something going on. There's an argument that James is making, and it might not be the same argument that Paul is making in Romans three, for instance. Okay? Virgil? Faith in Jesus, it should be demonstrated in your life. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what James is saying, but he's saying it in a way. Yes. So I think you guys probably heard Virgil, but just in case not, for the tape, James is observing that Paul says things exactly like this over and over again. You have him saying that shall we continue to sin so the grace may increase? By no means. James is very interested that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. A proper comparison of Paul and James is going to be a comparison and not a contrast if we really understand what they're saying. It's a great answer. Yeah, John? In Ephesians chapter two, right after Paul has said we're saved by grace through faith, that nine stones is a gift from God, not by words, by the grace of the most, That's right. Ephesians two. Right? Ephesians two ten, that that that last kind of haymaker is, for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. That's very consistent with what James is saying here in James two.

Practical Implications and Final Thoughts

Good. Couple more. Eric? Even Jesus goes over it with Peter, and when he's asking him, do you love me? And he's telling him, do you say, tin tin to my sheep? Yeah. Like he's instructing him to two worms. Yes. Right? Show his love. Okay. So James is not out here on some island saying that how we live matters. It's permeates the New Testament. Yeah. You wanna jump on too? Indy? Well, I was just gonna say, you know, when God and his sovereignty helped to breathe all of his life in these altars, right? Like, he knew this Holy Bible to be read by people for thousands of years. And thinking about so much of the New Testament is about faith, about faith. I can see where Luther would have had that struggle in his time. But in our time when we need a book, it says that you can't just say that you're a Christian. Yeah. And, you know, not live that out. Right? Because we live in a day and age where, like, lots of people profess to be Christians, but you're not seeing evidence in your life, and you're not willing to make the sacrifices that come. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's great. And so and we could even we could frame it. You know, Jesus comes from the Father full of grace and truth. And it we are never allowed to be merely gracious but not truthful. Merely truthful but not gracious. It's both. But at different moments, if you're out of balance, if one ingredient is missing, then that might need to be added more. And James is clearly seeking to bring a little more of the truth to the party. Although he does say mercy triumphs over judgment, he'd have compassion and mercy. He's not void of those things. But he's very interested, as I said, in this imperfection, maturity, completing it. So a bunch of these things. Okay. I'm going to move on, Kathryn, on this because I've got a bunch of other stuff. I'll give you a couple of quotes from history that might help you kind of glue all this together.

John Calvin said, It is faith alone that saves. Do you know the rest of the quote? But the faith that saves is never alone. That's pretty pithy. It is faith alone that saves, but the faith that saves is never alone. William Tyndale, the guy that I love, who is the reason he got an English Bible, he—I don't have his memorized. But he said something like this. He said, it is faith alone that justifies us before God, but it is our works that justifies us before the world.

Final Reflection and Invitation

Okay? So here's here's look at what James says here. Listen, this is what what Tyndale is drawing from. In James two, if you look at verse 19, verse 18, James says, I'll start at the top of the verse. Someone will say, I have faith, you have deeds. And James says, show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds. And down to verse 22 he says, you see that his faith and his actions were working together. In verse 24, you see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. That what James is—that James is not talking about our standing before God. He knows that we are saved by faith alone. We are justified by God by faith alone. But we are justified by the world by what we do. And that's so—the rest of the New Testament really talks about much. James is mostly talking about the—you see, you see, show me, the visible outward external manifestation of. He's not contradicting; he's not trying to contradict Romans three. For one thing, Romans three hasn't been written yet. People act as if James is getting chippy with Paul. No, he's not. Paul isn't even a Christian when this is written. Give it a little time. It's going to play out. How I think we would understand it. I think that the history of Luther is interesting, but I don't think we need to—there are no straw epistles. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Closing and Reflection

Groovy? Okay. Now open it up for this giant pile of words. Here's what's going on here. This is—let's see. James has at least two major sources for this letter. The first and maybe the most obvious is the Sermon on the Mount.

So what I did is I went through the Sermon on the Mount and I just pulled every line out of the Sermon on the Mount that James alludes to. Everything that's in here. If you go through, if you read the Sermon on the Mount or if you just read this, I mean, this is almost the entirety of it for being honest. But if you just read the book of James and then you read the Sermon on the Mount, you'll be like, oh my gosh, Jesus is totally ripping off Jesus. He is. That's what he's doing. That's okay.

But you will also find you could have a very similar experience if you read the book of Proverbs and then read the book of James. And if you don't want to take the whole time to read it all, just read this. I did the same thing. I went through Proverbs and I pulled out every line in Proverbs that James alludes to, and there was way too much. So I went back and I cut a bunch so they'd fit on the page. Okay? So there's even more than what is here. But if you read through all of these Proverbs and then read James, you're gonna be like, man, that dude was like in the book of Proverbs. And he really was.

So James, you could understand this letter therefore as this weaving in of the things that Jesus talked about on the Sermon on the Mount, the things that mostly Solomon but some others talked about in the book of Proverbs. Shake and stir, put it in the letter—that's the book of James. That's what you get. Okay? So that might be an interesting exercise for you this week. Go through and read one and then just do the Sermon on the Mount and then read James. Just do the Proverbs and then read James. And you'll see, man, this is like all over the place. He's pulling these things in. Okay? Yes. So is he so is James basically challenging the Bible in a way? No. Challenging it? No. I'd say he's affirming it and he's quoting it. So he's never saying, look what these guys said and that's not true, this is. He's rather drawing this and saying, look at what Jesus said, now get on it. Look at what the proverbs say, we should do this. So he's he's never quoting it in a way to contradict it. He's always quoting it in a way he's not even so sometimes Jesus will do like, you have heard it said, but I say to you. And there is some sense that he's not challenging the text, but he's challenging our understanding of the text. James doesn't even do that. He just simply says, this is what Jesus said, so let's go. It's not really he's not he's not challenging or contradicting it. Is that cool? Okay. Good. Other questions? Any of that? Okay. Then here is where we'll spend our last few minutes because this is weird. If you—you can read a bunch of commentaries on the book of James and you can try it all by yourself. Sit down with a piece of paper and try to figure out, okay, what is the flow of argument here? What is—know, how do I—how do I find Romans in James? How do I find, like, a progression of thought in James? How does it go? This thought leads to this thought leads to this thought, and you'll probably just go insane because it's just not there. It just isn't. James has a stream of consciousness to it. James has, depending on how you cut it, about a dozen little mini speeches, about a dozen little mini sermons. And frankly, they're just jammed in there. I've read a bunch of people attempting to come up with a coherent, organizing principle, and I think they're all making it up. I just don't think it's there. Now, maybe it's there and I just can't see it. Maybe you can see it and I can't. But I have not found an obvious sense of like, oh, here's the flow. But what you will find, and I think this—I think this is genuinely present. I would not have seen it, but I think it's actually true, is that James chapter one is the table of contents for the book of James.

So—and what I'm attempting to show you here, if you go to the very back page and you wanna kinda like unpack this and look at this, what you have there in the center is just straight up James chapter one. Just honest, I didn't do anything to it. It's just James chapter one. But then I put in on the sides here, these are all the little mini speeches that he gives. So what do I have? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Okay. A dozen little mini speeches. Those boxes represent the entirety of chapters two through five. Every one of those chunks is like this is what he did. But I didn't put them in order like a normal person would put them. It's chapter five, then two, then five, then five, then two. It's just weird. And it's because I put them in the order that they appear in the first chapter.

Everything he talks about in the book has its root and origin in chapter one. Okay? So if you look here, you'll see it just says, we want you to be mature and complete, not lacking anything. He's talking about salvation. That's the goal of our salvation that this whole thing would come to pass. Or you see when he's talking about wisdom, that corresponds to his section on wisdom. Or you see when he's talking about humble circumstances and wealthy circumstances, he's going to unpack that in his whole passage on favoritism. Don't treat the rich different than you treat the poor. Of course, he does a whole section on wealth, corresponding to the rich man. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. He double clicks on that and has a whole section on patient endurance. He draws from all kinds of Old Testament stories and what God does. He has a section here in chapter one about temptation, which he unpacks in chapter four. He talks about God's kind gifts that he flows that he gives to us, which links to his section on prayers. We come to the Lord and ask him for good gifts, especially when we're in desperate situations. Chapter one, he talks about anger, which corresponds to his section about how we fight, go after each other, quarrel with one another. He talks about here in chapter one, don't merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Do what it says. Do it. What you do matters. And that one's not that hard to see. What does that correspond to? That's the whole faith without deeds is dead. Everything he's doing, the controversy of chapter two is all teed up there in chapter one. And then finally, he ends chapter one about talking about his tongue, and then there's actually three different sections where he deals with our speech. Right? In chapter three, he's going to talk about it. In chapter four, he's going to talk about it. In chapter five, he's going to talk about it. Which I do think suggests that in particular, James is very interested in how we use our mouth. How do we use our tongue? He gives a lot of ink to that whole thing. But if you do this—so you might read through James in a few different ways.

Okay? You might read through it. First, going to read the Sermon on the Mount, and then I'm going to go look for that in the letter. You'll find it a lot. You could go read all of Proverbs or at least the passages that I excised for you, and then read and be like, man, he's really drawing from—or you could do this. You could read chapter one and then go hunt for all of these ideas in the book. You can do it with this as a guide or you can just do it all by yourself and use it as an answer key, whatever you want. But you but I promise you, you will find that you could draw lines out of chapter one to chapter two, three, four, and five. It just permeates the book. Okay? It's all over the place. If there—which is to say, if there's an organizing principle, I may have missed a lot of it. Because it just seems a little scattery to me. That might be because I have a high need for organization. Right? Like, my mind likes things all lined up. And maybe maybe those of you that are—I am a high J. Right? I like things all tight. Maybe those of you that are more intuitive and dance-y can find something that I'm just incapable of seeing. If so, praise the name. But what I do think is there is chapter one just permeates the book. So you go through and look at that. Okay? If you do those three things, James through the chapter one, James through the Sermon on the Mount, James through Proverbs, I think that'll at very least help you to kind of follow what he's saying. And then, here's the trick, then you're all done and you're so smart because you understand the book of James. At which point James says, no, dummy. I didn't want you to be smarter about stuff. It's not a trivia game. Do what it says. Right? You might quote something about the tongue, but do you control your tongue? You might memorize some phrase about favoritism, but do you actually show favoritism? So at the end of the day, when you're all done getting smart, just ask the question, am I? Is it mattering? Am I moving toward maturity, completion, perfection? Because that's what the letter was really all about.

Questions and Final Remarks

Groovy? Okay. Questions about James? I kind of I've talked too fast, so I got five minutes. I never have five minutes. So, Fetzer. It's not a question, but just a not Yeah. If there's any consolation in the first chapter, how it pops out all these things. He does start with the thing that he ends with though, which is nice. Yeah. Meaning being mature? Is that what you mean? Salvation. Yeah. Salvation. Oh, yeah. For sure. Like he ends the book with that. Yes. The book with that. Ends the book with that. So Yeah. That's true. That that he begins it's kinda like he's he's a good Covey guy. Right? He's beginning with the end in mind. And then when the whole thing is done, does have this see, you could read James and just see he's just so chippy, and he's still like, hey, hey, stop it. Like, tighten up. Right? And that does pervade. But he's gonna talk about mercy. He's gonna talk about compassion. And the very end of the book is whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover a multitude of sins. That's his desired end. The goal is that we would flourish in his grace, be mature, be complete. So, yeah, he brings it all around. It's a great great observation. Okay. James, what else we got? Questions? Harrison. Is what you're saying that like the whole Luther controversy about faith and works and, you know, like that stuff that people haven't stopped arguing about. Is that all hanging on what, like, the fact that James means justify as in to show righteous? Like, the way we normally use the word justify? Like, oh, I'm justified by blah blah blah. Means, oh, I'm shown to be correct. But the special Christian Paul used these made to be correct. Is that the whole, like, crux there? Harrison, I think that is the crux of it. I think that what James is saying is all those words that are visual, show me, you see, look at it. He is absolutely doing what, again, what Tyndale said is the you justify before the world by what you do. Duh. Like, obviously, that's just the case. That is the controversy. And I think that's I think when that falls into place, you're like, oh, that's what he's saying. And then we move on our merry way. He is not using the word justify the way Paul uses justify throughout Romans. His completely different sense of the term. He is not in a fight with Paul. Absolutely. That's the issue there. Now, having said that, then you could then be like, yeah, but, man, it would have been helpful if James said something, anything about the crucifixion of Jesus, which he doesn't do. When you go, you know, you go through James, you never there's no language in the book of James that says Christ died for our sins, taking upon himself the wrath of God for our—you know, like things that Peter says, the things that Paul Paul says a thousand times that Peter says, that Hebrews says, that other New Testament authors focus on, it's just literally absent in the book of James. And that probably contributes to certainly Luther's and perhaps others' sense of like, what are you saying here? Because you're not drawing to the fore the reality of all that we have in Christ. You are saying that he's merciful. You are saying that he saves us, but there's there's just no cross in the book. And so and we tend to reasonably so, we tend to take an awful lot of reassurance from the fact that Christ died for us, took on my culpability, offers me his life. And James it's not James' purpose to discuss that, but I think we feel the absence of it. Make sense? Okay. Cool.

Alright. Is this gonna be the only time in human history that this class ends early? We good? James? James? Okay. Drag us out. Somewhere that James didn't believe his brother was Christ until after the death. So up until crucifixion, he wasn't in the end. Okay. So as near as we understand, if you read the synoptic Gospels, James early on, in fact, relatively late in the game, didn't believe that Jesus remember, they didn't Jesus' family didn't think that he was the Messiah. Right? And so there's this whole scene where, like, the brothers all come and they're like they're basically accusing Jesus of being out of his mind. It appears that at that time, James neither James nor Jude were followers of Christ, which is a funny thing. On the one hand, you would think, man, you grew up in the house with him. Did you ever notice that he was a little different? Right? Right? But on the other hand, what would it take to convince you that your brother is God? You know? Like, would that be difficult? I think so they had such an unusual outrageous vantage point on him. And we have precious little data about when the penny drops for them. But James and Jude both, I mean, they become leaders in the church, contributors to scripture. James in particular has an enormously significant role. But we don't have an insight. When did—when did he go from James the grumpy brother to James the follower of Christ? We don't know. But certainly, he didn't begin that way for sure, which is strange.

Dan? Could be, since you were saying that James' target was talking to Christian Jews, that these guys, ladies, were so wrapped up Jewish law and knowing the law and not really practicing what the law was teaching, that he's sort of wrapping it up and saying, faith is not another law for you to focus on. Take your faith and get to work. Yeah. Well, I mean, absolutely the case. They are to—they, live James wants them to live in faith. He wants them to live it out. He's—he understands prop a proper understanding of the law is not that we would disregard it. Right? We’ve done this when we did like we talked about the 10 commandments in here. The purpose of the law is to show us, and I think James would absolutely affirm this. It shows us how much we are bound to Christ for his fulfilling it and enduring its curse in our stead and for our good, which would stir up in us thankfulness, gratitude, appreciation for all that he's done, which we would seek to express by obedience to that same law. Right? That is the proper—that you look at the law, you're like, I can't do that. You realize Jesus did do that. Your heart is flooded with appreciation that he did it for you in your place, and he suffered his curse for you in your place, filled with love and admiration and affection and gratitude. You say, what can I do to say thank you? Answer? Obey. And that's really ultimately what James is saying here at the end of the day is we demonstrate our appreciation, our love for Christ as we yield our lives to him. Same thing Paul says, same thing Peter says. It is a consistent message, but he is quite admittedly not unpacking the engine of how that works. That's what Paul is gonna do. That's what others are gonna do. That's not what he's trying to do. But his message fits into that same overall purpose. That is the role of the law in the life of a believer. Oh, funny bone. Okay. Good enough.

Final Reflection and Close

Okay. One more? One more on the way back? Hang on. One more on the way back. Can't yes? I wanted to defend Martin Luther a little bit by setting the context of the timing here. For sure. We see Martin Luther say that. He says that because the Roman Catholic church is so errant away from faith—Absolutely. And into salvation by works. And so Martin Luther is trying to do a massive force correction back to the point of gospel. Absolutely, completely fair, and that he has a very good reason to be particularly strong that we're saved by Faith alone. His cultural moment is very significant. For sure. For sure.

Okay. That's all for James. Read it through those lenses. Enjoy. We'll see you next week.