James

Doers of the Word

James is the most practical book in the New Testament. In 108 verses it gives around fifty commands. It reads a lot like Proverbs, and even more like the Sermon on the Mount, which it echoes again and again. James does not spend much time explaining doctrine. He assumes you know it, and wants to see whether it has reached your hands, your wallet, and your tongue. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (1:22).

Martin Luther once called James “an epistle of straw” compared to letters like Romans and Galatians, because he worried it taught salvation by works. But James and Paul are not at odds. Paul fights against people who think works can earn salvation. James fights against people who think a faith that produces no works can save. Paul says we are saved by faith alone. James says the faith that saves is never alone. Both are true, and the church needs both.

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Authorship & Setting

The author introduces himself simply as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). Most believe this is James the brother of the Lord (Galatians 1:19). During Jesus’ ministry, “neither did his brethren believe in him” (John 7:5). But the risen Christ appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:7), and he became the leading elder of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 15:13; 21:18). It says a lot that he calls himself not the Lord’s brother, but His servant.

He writes “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (1:1), Jewish believers living outside the land, many of them poor and oppressed by wealthy landowners. The letter may be one of the earliest books of the New Testament, written as early as the 40s AD, or later in the 50s. It certainly came before James’s death. The Jewish historian Josephus records that James was stoned in Jerusalem around AD 62 on the orders of the high priest. Church tradition remembered him as “James the Just,” a man of such constant prayer that his knees were said to be as hard as a camel’s.

James mentions Jesus by name only twice (1:1; 2:1), but his teaching is soaked in the words of Jesus: blessed are the poor, ask and it shall be given, let your yea be yea, do not judge, the rich will weep. He had heard his brother preach.

Key Figures

• James — the Lord’s brother, once an unbeliever, now a servant of Jesus Christ and a pillar of the Jerusalem church.
• The scattered believers — Jewish Christians facing trials, poverty, and favoritism in their own assemblies.
• The rich man and the poor man — two visitors to the assembly, one with a gold ring, the other in shabby clothes, and treated very differently (2:2–4).
• Abraham — whose faith was shown when he offered Isaac on the altar (2:21–23).
• Rahab — the harlot whose faith was shown when she received the spies and sent them out another way (2:25).
• Job — an example of endurance: “Ye have heard of the patience of Job” (5:11).
• Elijah — an ordinary man whose prayers held back and brought rain: “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are” (5:17).

Greek Word Study

πειρασμός · peirasmos

“Trial” or “temptation.” The same word can mean an outward test or an inward enticement, and James uses both senses in chapter 1. Trials come from God’s hand to prove and strengthen faith (1:2–3, 12). But temptation to sin never comes from God: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God” (1:13). It comes from our own desires.

δίψυχος · dipsychos

“Double minded,” literally two-souled. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (1:8). James may have coined the word. It describes a person divided between trusting God and trusting the world, tossed back and forth like a wave. “Purify your hearts, ye double minded” (4:8).

προσωποληψία · prosōpolēmpsia

“Respect of persons,” partiality, literally “receiving faces.” Judging people by their appearance, wealth, or status. “My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons” (2:1). God does not do it, so His people must not.

τέλειος · teleios

“Perfect,” complete, mature, having reached its goal. Patience must have its perfect work, “that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (1:4). Every perfect gift is from above (1:17). The law of liberty is perfect (1:25). The man who controls his tongue is a perfect man (3:2). James is after maturity, a faith that has grown all the way up.

Eight-Movement Outline

MOVEMENT ONE

Count It All Joy (1:1–18)

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (1:2–3). Trials are not pointless. They produce endurance, and endurance produces maturity. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not” (1:5). But ask in faith, not double minded. The poor should rejoice in being lifted up, and the rich in being humbled, because wealth fades like grass. “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation”(1:12). Temptation to sin comes from our own lusts, not from God. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (1:17).

MOVEMENT TWO

Doers of the Word (1:19–27)

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (1:19–20). Receive with meekness the engrafted word. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (1:22). Hearing without doing is like looking in a mirror and walking away without fixing anything. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (1:27).

MOVEMENT THREE

No Respect of Persons (2:1–13)

A man in fine clothes with a gold ring comes into your assembly, and you give him the best seat. A poor man in shabby clothes comes in, and you tell him to stand in the back or sit on the floor. James asks if that is not judging with evil thoughts. “Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom”(2:5)? Meanwhile, it is the rich who were dragging them to court. Fulfill the royal law: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (2:8). Showing partiality is sin. Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of liberty, “and mercy rejoiceth against judgment” (2:13).

MOVEMENT FOUR

Faith Without Works Is Dead (2:14–26)

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?” (2:14). If a brother is hungry and cold and you say, “Be warmed and filled,” and give him nothing, what good is that? “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (2:19). Abraham believed God, and his faith was made complete when he offered Isaac. Rahab believed, and showed it by hiding the spies. “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only” (2:24). James is not adding works to faith as a way of earning salvation. He is saying that real faith works. “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also”(2:26).

MOVEMENT FIVE

Taming the Tongue (3:1–12)

“My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (3:1). Teachers will be judged more strictly, because the tongue is hard to control. A bit turns a horse; a small rudder turns a great ship. “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire” (3:5–6). Every kind of animal has been tamed by man, “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (3:8). With it we bless God and curse men made in His image. “Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be” (3:10).

MOVEMENT SIX

Wisdom from Above (3:13–4:12)

Earthly wisdom is marked by bitter envy and selfish ambition, and it produces confusion and every evil work. “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (3:17). “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” (4:1). From desires at war inside us. “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (4:2). “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” (4:4). “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you”(4:6–8). “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (4:10).

MOVEMENT SEVEN

If the Lord Will (4:13–5:6)

Some say, today or tomorrow we will go to this city, stay a year, trade, and make money. “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (4:14–15). “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (4:17). Then James turns on the rich oppressors: their riches are rotting, their gold is rusting, and the rust will witness against them. “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth” (5:4). Their cries have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

MOVEMENT EIGHT

Patience, Prayer, and Restoration (5:7–20)

Be patient until the coming of the Lord, like a farmer waiting for the early and latter rain. “Stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (5:8). Don’t grumble against each other, “behold, the judge standeth before the door”(5:9). Remember Job: “the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (5:11). “Let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay” (5:12). “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord”(5:13–14). “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (5:16). Elijah prayed and it did not rain for three and a half years, then prayed again and it rained. And the last word: whoever brings a wanderer back “shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (5:20).

Christ Typology

The Lord of Glory. James calls his brother “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (2:1). In the Old Testament, the glory of God filled the tabernacle and the temple, and David sang, “Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory” (Psalm 24:10). The man who once doubted his older brother now gives Him the title of the God of Israel’s glory. Showing partiality to the rich in His presence insults the One whose glory outshines every gold ring.

Abraham and Isaac. James points to Abraham offering Isaac on the altar (2:21). On Mount Moriah, Abraham told his son, “God will provide himself a lamb” (Genesis 22:8), and God provided a ram in Isaac’s place. Abraham’s faith was shown in that offering, and the offering itself pictured the Father who would one day not spare His own Son, but give Him up for us all, on the same range of hills.

Rahab’s Scarlet Cord. James’s second example is Rahab, who hid the spies and sent them out safely. They told her to bind a “line of scarlet thread” in her window (Joshua 2:18), and everyone in the house marked by that scarlet cord was spared when Jericho fell. Like the blood on the doorposts at Passover, it pictured the blood of Christ that marks and protects those who belong to Him. A Canaanite harlot ended up in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:5).

The Early and Latter Rain. James compares waiting for the Lord’s return to a farmer waiting for “the early and latter rain” (5:7), the autumn rains for planting and the spring rains for harvest that God promised Israel (Deuteronomy 11:14). Hosea used the same picture for the coming of the Lord: “he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth” (Hosea 6:3). Christ’s first coming brought the early rain. His return will bring the harvest.

No Shadow of Turning. God is “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (1:17). The sun and moon cast changing shadows. God does not. Malachi heard Him say, “I am the LORD, I change not,” and Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” The Son who came down as the Light of the world is as unchanging as the Father who sent Him.

Personal Application

Let trials do their work. James does not say trials are pleasant. He says count them joy because of what they produce. If you are in a hard season, ask God what endurance He is building in you, and ask Him for wisdom. He gives it generously, and He does not scold you for asking.

Don’t just hear it. Do it. Many believers have heard hundreds of sermons and read the Bible for years. James asks a simple question: what changed? The test of a good sermon or a good Bible study is not how it made you feel, but what you did afterward.

Watch for favoritism. It is easy to give more attention and honor to the successful, the wealthy, and the influential, in church and everywhere else. James calls it sin. God has chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith. Treat every person who walks through the door as someone made in God’s image.

Teachers carry a heavier load. James warns that not many should be teachers, because they will be judged more strictly. Anyone who stands up to speak for God takes on a serious responsibility. And all of us should guard our tongues. A small spark can burn down a forest.

Say “if the Lord will,” and mean it. Your life is a vapor. Plan, work, and build, but hold your plans with open hands. And remember that God hears the cries of anyone who has been cheated. Wages kept back by fraud cry out to the Lord of hosts. He sees every injustice, and He will set it right.

TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY · MARANATHA

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