James: faith that works

About the book

The letter opens, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1). The church has traditionally held that this James was not the brother of John, killed early (Acts 12:2), but the one Paul calls "James, the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19). The Catholic Church understands ‘brother’ here as a close relative, the Orthodox churches of the East usually as a son of Joseph by an earlier marriage, and many Protestants as a son of Joseph and Mary. Jesus' brothers did not at first believe in him (John 7:5), but James met the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 15:7), came to lead the church in Jerusalem, and spoke the decisive word at the council there (Acts 15:13). A man so well known that he needed no further introduction, a strongly Jewish letter, and echoes of the Sermon on the Mount: these are the grounds of the traditional view.

The Jewish historian Josephus records that James was stoned about 62, so on the traditional view the letter is earlier. Many place it in the 40s, before Paul's letters, and the map under the Jesus tab sets it first in the era of the church (c. AD 30–90), straight after Acts. It is addressed "to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion" (James 1:1), most likely Jewish believers scattered abroad.

Some scholars think it was written later in James's name: its Greek seems too polished for a Galilean, chapter 2 seems to answer a debate that arose once Paul's teaching had spread, and it was slow to be read widely in the church. Early in the fourth century Eusebius listed it among the books disputed, though received by many Eusebius, Church History 3.25. Many other scholars, among them evangelicals, who stress the authority of Scripture and the telling of the gospel, hold the traditional view, noting that Greek was widely spoken in Galilee and that a writer could have help with his wording.

How it unfolds

James is wisdom writing, like Proverbs: short teachings that follow one another.

Key passages

What James presses hardest is a faith that lives out the word it hears:

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.

James 1:22

A faith that wishes a cold, hungry brother well and does nothing is no use: "So too, faith by itself, if it does not result in action, is dead" (James 2:17). James asks whether Abraham was not "justified by what he did" (James 2:21) when he offered Isaac, while Paul says "a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law" (Romans 3:28). Yet they answer different questions: Paul, how a sinner is accepted by God; James, what true faith is like. The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches holds the two together:

Faith … is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

Westminster Confession, ch. 11.2

On how the traditions teach justification, see Faith and justification, in the doctrine course. The reformer Martin Luther, finding too little of Christ in it, did not count it an apostle's work, and once called it ‘an epistle of straw’ beside Romans and John; yet he praised it as a good book that drives home God's law, and the Lutheran churches that follow him receive it as Scripture.

James warns that the tongue is a fire: "Consider how small a spark sets a great forest ablaze" (James 3:5). He commends "the wisdom from above" (James 3:17), which is pure and peace-loving, warns the rich who hold back their workers' wages (James 5:4), and calls the suffering and the sick to pray:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.

James 5:16

The book and Christ

James names Jesus only twice, yet Jesus' teaching sounds all through it. As the Lord likened the one who hears his words and does them to a wise man building on rock (Matthew 7:24), James calls for faith that acts; his word against oaths (James 5:12) echoes the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:37). He speaks of faith "in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ" (James 2:1) and bids us wait, "because the Lord's coming is near" (James 5:8). The deeds James asks for are not an attempt to be good without Christ; they are the signs that faith in Christ is alive.

Reading it

Its five chapters can be read at one sitting; begin with James 1. Read it beside the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7, and read 2:14-26 with Romans 4 to see how the two apostles stand together. On a second reading, choose one command and live with it for a week. Then go on to 1 Peter.

Practice