The Bible Recap - Day 326 (James 1-5) - Year 4

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap. If you're doing our New Testament plan, you finished your fifth book today and if you're doing the whole Bible, you finished your 44th book. This book has a lot going on, so we'll only have time to hit the major points. Let's get into it. This book was written by the half-brother of Jesus, which is incredible given that his brothers used to mock him. But this book shows what an incredible change of heart James went through, because it

opens with the author calling himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, from mocking him to serving him. But spoiler alert, this book isn't actually by James, huh? It seems the real name of this James and every other James in the Bible is Jacobus or Jacobus or Jacob in English, so that's what we'll call him. It turns out that there was a problem a few hundred years ago when they translated this book to English, so only English speakers encounter this issue. We'll link to more info on this in the show notes in case you're interested. This letter is written to the church outside of Israel, and that's important. It's written to

believers. If we take it out of that context, it sounds like this book is listing things we have to do in order to earn God's approval instead of them being things that serve as markers of knowing him. Over the centuries, this book has caused quite a stir because it seems to be advocating salvation by works, which is contrary to everything else in scripture. But if we remember the rules of Bible interpretation, the first of which is that scripture is the lens we use for interpreting scripture, and if we remember the author's original audience

and context, then all those things help us understand this book rightly. In chapter one, Jacob addresses trials the early church encounters, but he tells them steadfastness is developed in those trials. And steadfastness is part of being whole. Holiness or completion is the idea behind the word perfect that we see so much in this book. Only God can bring that kind of wholeness to our lives.

This talk about trials and steadfastness hits his readers where they live. Because outside Israel, they're enduring not only religious persecution, but also a famine. And Jacob, in Jerusalem, has first-hand experience of this. He's leading the church in Jerusalem as they endure the same things, but probably even more severely. Not long after this, he will die as a martyr. So he not only knows what he's talking about, but he also lives what he's talking about. He opens his letter with a call to ask God for wisdom. He says, this is a prayer we can always get a yes to, what a promise. God gives wisdom to anyone who asks.

I literally ask God for this every day and I'm never stopping. True wisdom is the knowledge of God, and it's one of the tools he uses to shape and restore our fractured lives into wholeness. It's how we persevere through trials, and it's how we resist temptation, and it's how we handle riches and blessings, and it's how we walk in humility and faith through it all. In this book, Jacob repeatedly talks about taming the tongue and how challenging that can be. He knows a bit about this himself since he once used his tongue to mock Jesus. He gets it, but he's had a change of heart and he knows that heart change shows up in the way we talk. We start to live out what we believe. That's what true wholeness is about. He knows it's easy to lie to ourselves about our motives. He says that in 122 and 126, but our actions reveal

what's in our hearts. And if our hearts really trust and believe Jesus, then we'll walk an obedience to his teachings. Listen, if you're feeling like a total failure right about now, take heart. This kind of thing is often a painfully slow process. None of us are where we want to be. But God adopted us in the midst of our sin. He knew what he was getting into, and he's not letting anyone or any sin snatch you out of his hand. Okay, moving on. One of the more perplexing verses in the book is in 224 when Jacob says,

you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Say what? Okay, here's what's happening. The word justified here means to prove or demonstrate. So this verse is essentially saying, a person's works demonstrate or prove what's happening in their heart. This is about what other people see, not what God sees, because as we've seen repeatedly, God sees the heart. Humans are the ones who have to have it demonstrated to them. This is especially important to the church at a time when they're living under oppression and experiencing lots of new conversions. And a problem that they're experiencing at this time is that lots of people are just claiming to believe but aren't showing any evidence of having a new heart. So Jacob sets out to address this directly.

Remember how people were skeptical of Saul's conversion initially because they thought he was trying to sneak his way into the church so he could persecute them all the more? They have good reason to need evidence of true conversion. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. The first century historian Josephus says that at some point, the early church even waited three years to affirm the faith of new converts. They needed to see that there was an actual heart transformation. When the Holy Spirit isn't falling in major in obvious ways, their only evidence that someone is a true believer is if they prove it by their actions, if their actions justify them

to others. They demonstrate a wholeness that doesn't exist apart from knowing God. Jacob keeps talking about wisdom in chapter 3, and he even gives us a picture of what it looks like in verse 17. It is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, full of good fruits, impartial, and sincere. Chapters 3 and 4 are connected with the idea of being a peacemaker, someone who enters into the chaos and brings the peace of Christ.

The world and the church are full of fights and division, and it takes a lot of wisdom to know how to end it. Chapter 4 tells us that we can bring peace to those situations by being content, humble, and by prioritizing the things of God in our lives. And along those lines, verse 17 roasts us all when it says, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. We are accountable for what we know. Chapter 5 gives us more examples of how to live out this wholeness in the wisdom of God, and it connects us again to prioritizing the things of God in our lives. If we do, we'll handle our wealth in a way that honors God, we'll handle our suffering

in a way that honors God, and we'll even handle our sins in a way that honors God. And that's where my God shot comes in today. No one leaves this book feeling like they're nailing it. It points out our blind spots and our weak spots And maybe even makes us think about other people's weak spots and then we realize we're being arrogant and suddenly we're back at square one But remember it's good for us to be at square one Not so we can feel like a failure But so we can take our eyes off ourselves and put them back on him because that's where grace and mercy abound

And that's how Jacob ends this book. The final paragraph says, Hey, you're a sinner. Don't try to hide it. Throw some light on it and ask for help. Tell other people where you struggle. They are struggling in sinners too. Together, you can ask God to help you because he will. You're not alone in this. He even points to Elijah, a human just like us, as an example of what's possible when sinners seek God. I love that this rich, dense, challenging book ends by reminding us that God loves to draw near to people who know their sinners. So come on, let's draw near. He's where the joy is.

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