James’s Big Ideas, Part 1: Introduction 

Imagine having as a best friend one of Jesus’ brothers—someone who lived with and looked up to him when he was a child, who at first didn’t believe on him (Jn 7.5), maybe thought he was a little crazy (Mt 12.46-49)—but one day, the resurrected Jesus came to him (1Co 15.7), and he was never the same. Now he’s a leader in the early church (Ac 15.13; Ga 2.9); he’s a man who walks with God and prays so much that his knees have calluses like a camel’s. And he’s your best friend. Would you listen to what he says? 

As it turns out, this half-brother of Jesus has written a letter, a brief one, but one that’s filled with big ideas, thoughts that have been percolating in his head since that conversation with his resurrected older brother, the conversation that made him realize that everything he thought he knew was fundamentally far too simple. This letter is the fruit of those hours in the Temple, on his callused knees, meditating on the Hebrew Scriptures and the teachings of the brother he thought he knew but obviously didn’t. 

In this letter James has an unusual style. He writes like a combination of Teddy Roosevelt and John the Baptist, or perhaps the prophet Amos or Ezekiel, along with the sort of intense disjointedness that we find in Proverbs. He’s confident, assured of the rightness of his words, and he says what he thinks, bluntly and with no attempt to soften their impact. 

He speaks his mind, and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. 

But at the same time, his love for his brother—his master (Jam 1.1), the Lord of glory (Jam 2.1)—is apparent in every word, even though he mentions him only twice in his letter. And his love for the readers of this letter, “my brethren” (Jam 2.1 and 7 other times in these 5 chapters), “my beloved brethren” (Jam 1.19) is evident as well. He writes directly, practically, down to earth and easy to understand; he shows no sign of Paul’s complex argumentation or John’s heavenly vision. He’s about doing—ethics—not just thinking or feeling. He says these hard things because his readers are worth the effort, the risk, the direct intervention. He is not willing to let them go. 

Because of his passionate bluntness, he doesn’t evidence the clear logical structure of Paul, say, in Romans or 1 Corinthians or Galatians, or of the author of Hebrews. As noted earlier, he reads more like Proverbs than like Paul. 

And so he says a lot of things. One commentator, Zane Hodges, sees a broad structure in the book laid out in James 1.19: “Let every man be swift to hear [Jam 1.21-2.26], slow to speak [Jam 3.1-18], slow to wrath [Jam 4.1-5.6]” (“The Epistle of James,” in the Grace NT Commentary, 1108ff). But most students of the epistle see it as much more free-flowing than structured. 

In this brief series I’d like to stop and think about three of the things James thinks are most important for you and me, his friends, to know. These three things are the core of what we need to know—and be—in order to have the very best life, the life that God has designed us for. 

The three things are easy to remember, since they all start with “w.” They are our wisdom, our words, and our works. 

To be continued. 

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash