Faith in Action - Introduction to the Book of James (Session 1)

This episode is a verse-by-verse Bible study of the Book of James, exploring the historical context, meaning, and faithful application of the passage within the Christian faith.

Discover with us the rich tapestry of Christian wisdom woven into the book of James.  We're not talking about a distant, dusty relic; we're exploring a living message that speaks directly to the heart of everyday faith.  This isn't your average life application; it's a masterclass in applying spiritual truths to the nitty-gritty of a believer's daily existence. But don't be fooled by the simplicity of James's teachings. There's a profound depth here, echoing Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, that calls us to consider the strength and authenticity of our own faith in the face of adversity.

Wrap up your experience with us as we celebrate the Bible's incredible diversity, a testament to the multifaceted wisdom it holds. Every book, every author brings a unique flavor to the banquet of biblical study, and James is no exception. It's like uncovering a treasure chest where every piece, from gold to precious stones, offers insight into how to navigate the complexities of life while staying true to one's convictions. Join us as we continue to seek the truths hidden within the scriptures, inviting you into a conversation that's as enriching as it is enlightening.

Transcript

Introduction to the Book of James

Glenn 0:09

Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible . I trust that you're going to enjoy what we're doing . Today . We're going to start the wonderful New Testament book of James . If you have your copy of the Word of God , turn to the book of James . If you're not familiar with our ministry , my name is Glenn and this is Steve . We do a verse by verse Bible study through the Word of God . We go slowly and carefully , trying to cover all the concepts . Along the way , we take a few rabbit trails and explain some theological concepts and answer a few questions . Steve , today we're going to get to James . I'm really excited to get into the study because it's a very good and very practical book . It's a daily down to earth , down to our daily lives and how we live on a daily basis .

Steve 0:58

That's usually how James is couched , as being a practical book for our daily lives , which it is , but there's also a little bit of doctrinal things that are in here that we're going to get into , which might surprise some of our viewers and listeners .

Glenn 1:12

Today , before we get into chapter one , verse one , we thought we'd give a little bit of an overview , so we know a little bit about the author , james , and a little bit about how the book is structured and some of the things in here , because before we just dive in , it's always good to take a 10,000 foot view and be able to look down on it and see what's the road ahead , and we're going to do that today . An introduction to the book of James . Steve , in the New Testament we find more than one James , so how do we know which James it is that we're talking about here ?

Steve 1:44

Well , it's a little bit of a process of elimination but in the end run it comes out that it's James the half brother of Jesus . Of course , whenever we read Acts , we saw that James the apostle was killed fairly early . Based upon when this was written and who it was written to , we can pretty much come out with this James the half brother of Jesus . There's also other indications on in Acts when it talks about that council in Acts , chapter 15 , that this James is the one that was the leader of the Jerusalem church . Through scripture itself , through some of the historical outside references , such as Josephus and other historians , it comes down that we can be pretty well assured that this is James the half brother of Jesus .

Glenn 2:31

So just to make sure we know which James this is , there's at least three and some people see a fourth one , but there's three main ones that are mentioned in the New Testament . There's James the brother of John , both the sons of Zebedee that were called sons of thunder by our Lord Jesus . This James was an apostle . He was an early leader in the church . This James was martyred in Acts chapter 12 , in the first two verses of the chapter , so that James was killed by Herod in Acts chapter 12 . There's another James that's listed in the list of apostles . If you look in the gospels it lists the apostles and there's at least two James as mentioned there . There's the one we just mentioned , james the brother of John , but there's also one called James the less . That's mentioned in Mark 1540 . This James isn't really mentioned very much in the New Testament . It just mentions them in that list , in Mark 15 , and doesn't really explain much about his life , so we don't know much about him . Then there's James , as you said , the half brother of the Lord . We say half brother , of course , because Jesus was virgin born .

Glenn 3:42

This James would have been one of the other children of Mary and Joseph , and there's of course some long discussions between Protestants and Catholics over that , which not part of our discussion here , but nevertheless we know pretty well because in the gospels it uses the word brother and not the word cousin or other relative . We know that Mary had other children and this was just one of them . So we know there that this was the James that came to Jesus in Matthew 13 along with Mary . It says Mary and his James and his brothers . It lists several names there came to Jesus in Matthew 13 , probably trying to say hey , jesus , you've gone off your rocker here because you're claiming to be the Messiah . That was the point where Jesus had started to come out and explain who he was and make claims of being deity and the Messiah . In Matthew 13 , his mother and his brothers come to him .

Glenn 4:43

Jesus , let's pull aside and talk here . So that's probably the James that we're dealing with here . He is called James the just by people outside of the Bible , so he's mentioned in some historical aspects . So we know was a real person . Most scholars believe this James that wrote the book of James is the half brother of Jesus . The James that was killed in Acts , chapter 12 , was the brother of John . That's the author . A little bit about this man . We know a few things about him , steve , that kind of lead us to know a few things about his character and his demeanor and what he was like . So what do we know about James as a person ?

Steve 5:26

There was a historian that wrote about the early church . His name was Hegassippus the Nazarene . How'd you like to say that ? Three times real quick , or the Hegassippus come in for dinner , if you were his mom .

Glenn 5:39

If you want to make your children behave , threaten to change their name to Hegassippus .

Steve 5:44

He lived somewhere in between 110 and 180 AD and he wrote some of the early activity around the early church and the characteristics that he wrote of James . Here he says that he drank neither wine nor fermented liquors . He abstained from animal food , he said a razor never came to his head . He never anointed with oil . He never used the public bath , meaning like a mikva . He was in the habit of entering the temple alone and he was often found upon bended knees interceding for people , so often that they became calloused , even calloused to the point of a camel's knees . If anyone's seen camel's knees , they get down and up that way and their knees become very broad and calloused from doing that . These are some of the things that Hegassippus wrote about James .

Glenn 6:34

Hegassippus was quoted in Eusebius . That's how we know he was there .

Themes in the Book of James

Glenn 6:38

James is also mentioned in other ancient histories as well , specifically by Josephus and Tertullian . So we know he was a real figure . We know from other books in the New Testament that he was a real figure . We know some things about him again called old camel knees because of all the kneeling . But we know .

Glenn 6:59

For example , over in Galatians , paul talks about how he went up to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles , to verify his gospel , to meet with them and explain to him the gospel that Jesus had revealed directly to Paul . So he goes up to meet with the other apostles and says here's what Jesus taught me . Is it the same as what you were taught ? So they wanted to make sure their doctrines was clear with each other . In Galatians 1.19 , paul says he went up to Jerusalem and met with James the Lord's brother . So James the Lord's brother , mentioned in Galatians 1 , is the epistle of James that we're studying now . He also in Galatians 2 , again the entire book of Galatians , is Paul dealing with this doctrinal issue and he's saying to the people of Galatia look what I'm giving you .

Glenn 7:55

I had verified this teaching with the apostles , the other apostles , no less than and he lists them off Peter , james and John . That's the James here that he's talking about . So we know that James , the Lord's brother , was listed as a key leader in Jerusalem . The other thing in Galatians Paul talks about Peter acting a certain way until a delegation came from James , from Jerusalem . So James had enough of an authority to where he could verify Paul's doctrine . He could send out delegations to the other churches . He also shows up as one of the final determiners of the truth at the Council in Acts 15 . Remember that Steve James stood up at the end and said okay , here's what we're going to say . And he draws the conclusion so James , the brother of Jesus , was a leader in the early church and considered an apostle .

Steve 8:53

At that Council in Acts 15 , he is the one , after they have their discussion , that steps forward and says all right , you can go to the Gentiles , and here's what you're going to tell them they don't need to be circumcised , don't eat meat that has been strangled , that still has the blood in it , and for them to remember the poor . At that point they actually sanctioned Paul's ministry for him to go and preach to the Gentiles , which brings out another point . James was stayed at Jerusalem . He was the head of the Jerusalem Church at this time and that he writes this epistle . He's there at Jerusalem the whole time , even up until his death .

Glenn 9:31

And you just mentioned the time that he wrote it , so let's talk about that for a minute . We don't know the exact year , but we know it was early . The reason I want to bring that up is it's not just an academic exercise . It helps us in knowing the context that James was written in and helps us learn about what's in the book and what's not in the book . Most of the Bible scholars put a very early date on the book of James and there's some clues in the text and in the other parts of the New Testament that will make us fairly confident of an early date . Am I right ?

Steve 10:04

Steve , yeah , one of the things is that it's agreed that it's written pretty much before this council , that we keep referencing back in Acts 15 . So it's plausible that this date that it was written was somewhere around 34 or 35 AD , which puts it really really early , because Jesus was crucified around 32 AD . So this is something that's really early , right after the resurrection of Jesus .

Glenn 10:30

The references I looked up , the scholars had it as late as 46 to 49 AD , but that's still way early in the sense that it was written between two and maybe 13 years after Jesus died and rose again , which tells us a few things that's very applicable to how we take the book and how we interpret the book . One he was writing from Jerusalem to Jewish peoples that had been scattered around the countryside . There had been enough early persecutions of the church to scatter the Jewish Christians around out of the city of Jerusalem . Remember , over in Acts chapter two , all the initial Christians were in Jerusalem . Well , it very quickly spread because the day of Pentecost was when Acts two was , when the church started . People were in town for the festival of Pentecost . They immediately went back to their own towns and so the gospel spread within days , was all around the countryside and the apostles were very active in sending out leaders . But for several years the church was entirely Jewish . Later , when Gentiles get saved , remember Acts chapter 10 , I believe it is Steve where Cornelius Paul goes to the Gentile and even the Gentiles receive the gospel . So years had gone by , paul had been saved , paul had gone on missionary journeys . Then Cornelius is saved , the Gentiles get saved . So in between there the church was entirely Jewish . All of the Christians were ethnic Jews .

Glenn 12:14

The context of the book of James is written to entirely ethnic Jews and we know that from several things in the book . It's a very Jewish book mentions nothing of the controversies that came in later with the Gentiles . Paul we mentioned Galatians Paul was dealing with these issues in Galatia because of the questions that had risen because of Gentile believers when the church was entirely Jewish . They never even questioned do we have to keep the Mosaic law ? Of course we do . Well , later , once the Gentiles started coming in , now there's these questions over do we have to keep the law or not , or what does it mean ? And some of these controversies around circumcision and baptism and some of these things arose years later . James was written prior to any of those questions , so the issues with them are not here . We need to remember that he's writing to a Jewish audience prior to all of these salvation controversies . Am I right here , steve ?

Steve 13:15

Absolutely . We know for sure that in the first part , in verse one , he says he's writing to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad . That tells you right there that that's who he is addressing is the 12 tribes of Israel , the Jewish people , which I also might want to mention . You often hear this though the lost 10 tribes of Israel that they say come about whenever they were taken off into captivity . Well , this is in the first century , a few years after Jesus's death , burial and resurrection , he's mentioned into the 12 tribes . They knew who their ethnic tribal people were , that they kept up with . So this lost 10 tribes thing is just a myth .

Glenn 13:59

As the story goes . The first part of it's true is a Syria came in and took the northern 10 tribes away into captivity back in the Old Testament , and there's no record of them coming back . So that's why people think , well , they got lost . Well , there's , for example , anna in the New Testament when Mary and Joseph went into the temple . In the Gospels there's an Anna of the tribe of Asher . Lo and behold , at least some of them knew . And here in James 1-1 , he's writing to the 12 tribes that have been dispersed . What I want to do now , steve , is , before we just jump into the verse by verse , study . Let's do a bit of an overview of what we're going to see . In this book .

Glenn 14:38

There's several themes that get repeated , and if we know the themes in advance , I think it'll help us as we get into the study . One of the things is how Christians should respond to suffering . Talks about that quite a bit . The early church had suffered and we have suffering today . Another one that's a big theme in the book of James is fair treatment of people . He spends most of a chapter talking about how to make sure people get treated fairly when they get paid and things like that , and he talks a lot to rich people to make sure that they're fair . He really has a heart for the poor people that have been taken advantage of by the wealthy and the powerful . He also has a lot of themes here about application of faith in the world , how we apply the faith , how we live out the faith on a daily basis . He talks , for example , there's verses that say be doers of the word and not hearers . Only Be swift to hear and slow to speak . He talks about a pure and undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows . He talks about don't give preference to rich people , but to honor all people . Treat your neighbor as yourself . Show my faith by my works . He talks a lot about how to implement your faith in the world on a daily basis , how to go about living the Christian life on a daily basis . That's one of the big themes in the book of

Book of James Themes and Structure

Glenn 16:07

James .

Glenn 16:07

James includes at least 30 examples of things in the world around us good , practical , everyday common sense kind of things that can drive home his point . He'd be a good teacher , steve , because he uses these examples . For example , as the sun withers the grass , so the rich will fade away . He talks about if a person is a hearer and not a doer . They're like a man looking in a mirror and then when you go away from the mirror you forget . He talks about bits in horses mouths . The little small bit that goes in a horses mouth can move this giant horse . Or the rudder of a ship is a small rudder can move this big ship . It's sort of like the tongue he says Just like a ship's rudder moves the whole ship , our tongue can move our whole body . He talks about out of the spring . You're either gonna have fresh water or salt water , but not both . It's just like out of the heart . You're not gonna have good things and evil things coming out of the same heart . Fig trees and grape vines . He uses all these illustrations from the world around us . So it's a good , practical common sense that even people like me and you , steve , can understand .

Glenn 17:19

He also talks a good bit about the nature of God . There's actually what we would call theology . Proper deals with the nature of God . A lot of things in here about God's nature . God doesn't tempt people to sin .

Glenn 17:34

In chapter one , god gives good gifts and perfect gifts or complete gifts . He does not change , he has no shadow of turning . God brings forth . Save people by His will . It says People receive the word of God that God implants in us . Jesus is the Lord of glory .

Glenn 17:54

So there's all these things in here about the nature of God that we get out of this book . God's wisdom is pure . He exalts the umbil . There's a lot here about the goodness of God . There's also , lastly , there's some great things in here about themes , about Jewish things . He quotes or alludes to , makes a topical reference to at least 21 Old Testament books . He mentions things like the 12 tribes we talked about , that , abraham , our father , that's how we know he's Jewish . He talks about Rahab and Job and Elijah without even mentioning who they are . He just assumes the audience knows who these people are . For one last one , there's many Bible teachers that have drawn a great parallel between the book of James and the Sermon on the Mount , which is Matthews , chapter five , six and seven . You can almost go down point by point in the Sermon on the Mount and the book of James . So I think from that standpoint , steve , it's just very phenomenal .

Steve 18:55

It is when you're giving those descriptions of the words there . Those are word pictures . They're words that give a picture very quickly that somebody can understand . They can understand the rudder of a ship , for instance , and how that can change in the bridle of a horse . So people like that have a very good way of being able to relay practical messages because they can connect with the people that they're writing to .

Steve 19:22

Another thing is that it's something that James , when you mentioned the Matthew , it also notes that his brothers and sisters didn't believe who he was at some point . Now we see James . Here he is . We've talked about him becoming a believer and him becoming the head of the Jerusalem church there . Here he is writing this letter out to the other Jewish people that are in the diaspora that has been dispersed outside of Israel proper . It tells me that there's something that's there . What could it have been , for instance , that would have made him a believer , and such a strong believer that he becomes a leader in the church there in Jerusalem ? And he's writing this letter out to these people , you know .

Steve 20:13

It says that when he was killed , josephus and other historians again note he was killed roughly around 62 AD and that they had taken him up to the walls of Jerusalem and the high priest at the time had told him so that if you recant your faith , we'll let you live , if not , you'll be stoned to death .

Steve 20:32

James went up there , as it's recorded in history , and as people gathered around , he started preaching the gospel and the high priest got so upset with him that he pushed him off the wall and the people down below stoned him to death . Those are people that go to death like this , along with the other apostles and how . We know that they were killed , some of them horrible , horrible deaths . Most of them were you don't go to death for something like that that you don't believe in . So to me , it's also a story of James's journey from growing up with Jesus as a child because he's one of his brothers and not believing who he is , and coming to this firm conviction of who he is , even to the point of the type of death that he is . He's willing to be stoned to death because of his belief that Jesus actually is the Messiah .

Glenn 21:22

Christianity was illegal in Rome for 250 years . Many of the early believers were killed for their faith . It should give us a question with us If I were threatened with death , would I hold true to the faith ? We would have to say yes , because the Holy Spirit will empower us at the time . It seems that every generation there's Christians that are killed for their faith . All of us should focus on how strong is our faith and would I hold to the faith if I was threatened with death ? Back to the early date .

Glenn 21:51

The early date also gives us a reason why there's some things that are not in here . For example , it has nothing in James about the complex superstructure or offices of the church . It doesn't talk about bishops or anything like that . So none of the church structure about appointing elders . Any of this is not really in here . Like you'd see in Paul it doesn't say anything about Jesus as incarnation is death or resurrection . It doesn't talk anything about the future age to come .

Glenn 22:23

It's very focused on how we live today . That's natural because it comes from a very Jewish perspective . What were the Jews focused on ever , all over since Moses ? They were focused on keeping the law , doing these things , and so from that it's a natural flow . James's focus is on what he says in Jeopard 2 , show me your faith , and that's one of the key phrases in the whole book is . Some say I have faith without work . Show me . He'd be like what we would say Steve the man from Missouri , show me . That's one of the themes here . We have to realize that while we get into some issues because once we get into chapter 2 , there's some things there . For example , he quotes Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteous and talks about justification . Some people think that there's a contradiction between James and Paul over in Romans and Paul in Galatians , but there's really not . Once we understand that James is really talking about show me things and comes at it from an entirely Jewish perspective .

Steve 23:27

And as we go through this book we want to keep that in mind , that he is coming from a Jewish perspective , writing to a Jewish audience . That doesn't mean that us , as Gentile believers , can't glean things out of this , but we're going to come across some things here that we need to make sure that we keep in context . You know you mentioned with him the Jewish people were following the law , and here they are . Now they are our believer in the Messiah . Part of that belief was that the Messiah was going to set up the kingdom . Of course that was taught , that the kingdom is going to come later , when he comes again .

Steve 24:05

But these people are being bombarded by Jewish non-believers , and so Paul takes a different approach because he's dealing with both Gentile believers and Jewish believers . Here James is focusing just strictly on Jewish believers . They're coming out of a structure of the law . Here's what you do by keeping the law in order to show your faithfulness to God . James is now giving them some structural things to live by , because the law has been fulfilled in its practicality parts by Jesus . Here James is saying here's some practical ways of living , that he's helping to give them some structure back into their life , of things to live by , rather than them having to live by the law , because their faith and belief in Jesus Christ means that they don't have to have the burden of the law anymore .

Glenn 25:01

He talks a lot about Jesus' teachings in the sense that we mentioned earlier that the Jesus Sermon on the Mount is mentioned . The ideas are here . The book of James mentions the teachings of Jesus , or the ideas that Jesus taught . I guess it's probably a better way of phrasing it . James mentions the ideas that Jesus taught in the Gospels probably more than any of the other epistles . So let's talk from that standpoint for a minute about the literary structure in the book of James . We mentioned that he uses a lot of practical applications ships , rudders and springs of water and mirrors and grapevines and fig trees and these kind of things .

Glenn 25:41

He uses short sentences . He uses a lot of quick commands . There's not a lot of large , long , complex things . There's no mistaking . It's really clear what he's saying . From that standpoint , it's one of the favorites of a lot of people , simply because it's easy to understand . You get into some of these other books , like Romans . They're quite complex , as we were going through the first two chapters of Colossians , they're very complex . James is the other end of the spectrum when it comes to what he's saying . If there's any doubt about what James says , it's not in James , because he's very direct , very no-nonsense , right to the point . Short sentences , a lot of commands . There's over 50 different commands in this little short book Do this , don't do that . Half of the verbs in the book are commands to do , on what to do and what not to do . The other thing is , if we look at chapter one , we'll see a literary device that he uses very effectively .

Glenn 26:39

He uses a repeating of words and he ties together ideas and concepts by repeating words . For our audience , one of the tips that I would strongly suggest whenever you read any book is to look for repeated words and repeated concepts , because oftentimes they would use that as an outline . People would memorize these books because that everybody didn't have their own copy . You would go down and you'd memorize it and be able to quote it to each other during the week . In chapter one , for example , the end of verse three , in the beginning of verse four , he ties together the word endurance . He says testing of your faith produces an endurance and let endurance have its perfect result . He uses the word perfect and complete twice . He uses the word lacking twice . He uses the word give twice , ask twice , doubting twice . All that in about three or four verses . It's just a string of repeating words and concepts . He does it very effectively because it's the inspired word of God . If I were to try it , it'd be very awkward , but these concepts tie together . By repeating these words , repeating these concepts , this pattern connects together these simple ideas in a very complex way .

Glenn 28:03

Lastly , just to wrap it up , the way we should approach James is to realize that James is written to saved people . He is written to Jewish people that believe in Jesus Christ , that have put their faith in Christ , that are outside of Jerusalem . He's a leader of the church writing to encourage them on how to live on a daily basis . That's the book of James and along the way he gives us some great advice on just practical things to do . So from that standpoint , it's going to be a great study .

Glenn 28:37

We trust that you're going to be back with us next time . Just a bit of a tip with our study , if this is the first one that you've done with us , look at our website , reasoningthroughthebiblecom . We've got a resources page there where you can see lesson plans for what we do and those are downloaded for free so that in your Bible study group , your church group , you can use this for teacher training and watch our , listen to our lessons and follow along and even teach them with your group . We also would just love to hear from you If you have us some advice on , or at least feedback . We don't always hear from our audience , so it's always good to hear from you . So if you could send us a note at info I-N-F-O , at reasoningthroughthebiblecom , and just let us know how you're doing .

Steve 29:26

Another thing on our website is we have the books that we've done broken out on a separate page called Book Studies . We also have our topical ones as well as our doctrinal ones . You can go to those pages and you can go directly to the books . You can listen to all of those books right there . It's an embedded link back to the podcast . You can listen to all of those sessions from a single book at your leisure , whenever you want to , and then on our video channel we have them listed by playlists . So the same thing , you can go directly to a book , listen to all those sessions , just for those books , based on the playlist as well .

Enjoying and Diverse Bible Study

Steve 30:08

Glenn , this is why I like to study the Bible is because we have this great diversity of different writers , different thoughts that just really give enjoyment out of actually going in and studying the Bible .

Glenn 30:21

Every book we get to . If you scratch around a little bit , you come up with gold , silver and precious stones With that . We trust that you'll be back here with us next time as we reason through the Bible .

Steve 30:31

Thank you so much for watching and listening . May God bless you .