An Introduction to James, Pt. 2
James 1:1
Let's open our Bibles to the truth as recorded in the epistle of James. James chapter 1, we're just beginning a study in James and I really believe God is going to enrich our lives in ways beyond our wildest imaginations as we pursue the truth of this great epistle.
As we begin a look again at verse 1 and a little bit of an overview of the book which we did not complete last time, let me remind you that if anything is clear in Scripture, if anything is obvious from Scripture, it is that there is a true faith, there is a true relationship with God, there is a genuine salvation, there is a right way to come to know God, there is a right way to be redeemed. And if that is true, it is a corollary to that that Satan, the enemy of God, will do everything in his power to counterfeit that right way, that genuine path, that true salvation. One of the foremost if not THE foremost strategy of Satan in the world is to counterfeit salvation, is to produce a non-saving faith. Please know that. And if seems through the years that I have emphasized that much, then understand it is become it is so much emphasized on the pages of holy Scripture. Satan primarily disguises himself as if he were an angel of...what?...of light. And his objective is to create a non-saving system of religion. His effort is to generate a non-saving faith within the true religion. Understand the big picture.
Around the world all of the false religions spawned by the enemy are designed to give people a false sense of security in religion. And so he wants to produce non-saving religion, religion that damns people to eternal hell. And within the true religion he fights that by producing a non-saving faith, people who believe themselves to be redeemed who are not, who are living under the most frightening delusion imaginable. Satan's ploy is to attempt to make people think they are right with God when they are not. I do not believe that Satan wants people to hate God, to run from God, there are some people who do that. Satan wants people to come to the wrong god in the wrong way and feel secure when they shouldn't. He wants them to think they have solved the issue of religion. They have solved the issue of faith. Their destiny is secure when in fact it is not. And they will be among those who say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name and cast out demons and done many wonderful works? And then will He profess to them, `Depart from Me, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity.'"
Now if there is a true faith and if Satan attacks with a counterfeit faith, then God will deal with the knowledge of that attack by calling the church to self-examination. That is why in 2 Corinthians it tells us in chapter 13 and verse 5, "Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith." That is why 1 John was written. That is why a portion of 2 Peter was written. And that is also why James was written. These epistles have as a primary objective the purpose of causing self-examination, self-examination. James wants to present to us the character of living faith as opposed to dead faith, the character of saving faith as opposed to non-saving faith. But he's merely picking up a continual biblical theme. And that biblical theme is this...true saving faith is verified by righteous behavior. Right? True saving faith is verified by righteous behavior.
Follow with me a little bit and let's see how this appears again and again in the Word of God. Let's go back to the beginning of the New Testament to the third chapter of Matthew and you will notice in the third chapter of Matthew in the ministry of John the Baptist it tells us that all of the people in Jerusalem and Judea and the region around the Jordan were coming out to John as he was baptizing in the wilderness and crying for repentance in preparation for the Kingdom and the Messiah. And they were baptized, verse 6 says, by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said to them, "O generation of snakes, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" By the way, modern mesial logical technique would not like his approach. This is not a subtle approach to say to people, "You generation of snakes, who warned you to flee the wrath to come?" And then in calling them to a true salvation away from a false religion, he says this, "Bring forth therefore fruit that fits...what?...repentance." From John the Baptist on the New Testament says "true repentance is verified by righteous deeds."
Look with me at the fifteenth chapter of John's gospel and a familiar text to all of us, that wonderful section on the vine and the branches. And verse 8, "In this...says Jesus...is My Father glorified," and here comes the interpretive key to the whole section, "that you bear much fruit so shall you be My disciples." It doesn't take a Phi Beta Kappa to figure out that a disciple is known by his...what?...fruit. No fruit, no saving faith. And the branches that bore no fruit in the parable of the vine and the branches indicate non-saving faith, people who superficially attach themselves to the true faith but do not produce fruit indicating no true life of God. In fact, the classic example would be a Judas branch.
In Acts, as we move through the New Testament, we find the same theme and I would just draw your attention to chapter 26. And here is the testimony of the Apostle Paul to King Agrippa and he understands this true saving faith as made manifest in works, "Whereupon," verse 19, "O King Agrippa, after hearing the call of God, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, but showed first unto them at Damascus and then at Jerusalem and throughout all the borders of Judea and then to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God...follow this...and do works that fit repentance." True repentance verified in works.
And then you come to the epistles of the New Testament, most notably Ephesians chapter 2 and a familiar verse you need not turn to, listen to it, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto...what?...good works which God sovereignly has ordained that we would walk in them."
You come to the pastoral epistles. Look with me to Titus chapter 2...Titus chapter 2 verse 11, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, and what does saving grace teach? It teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we shall live soberly, righteously, godly in this present age." If salvation produces anything it produces godliness, soberness, righteousness because verse 14 says, "Christ was given to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify unto Himself a people of His own zealous of good works."
John essentially says the same thing in his wonderful first epistle, chapter 5 verse 2, "By this we know we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments for this is the love of God that we keep His commandments...notice this...and His commandments are not burdensome." What does he mean by that? He means that true saving faith produces obedience which is not burdensome but which is joyous.
Now the sum of all those I've read to you, and they're just samples, is that true saving faith is verified by righteous deeds. Living faith in terms that James might use can be seen by living works.
Now listen, since this is the focal point of Satan's attack on the church to produce a non-saving faith, since this is the major conflict point of the spiritual battle between God and Satan, between a non-saving and a saving religion, a non-saving and a saving faith, there is little wonder then that it is such a theme in Scripture...little wonder. Satan wants to make people comfortable and secure with non-saving faith. He wants them to believe they're on their way to heaven when they're on their way to hell. And this is so essential. This is so crucial that the first New Testament book written chronologically, the epistle of James written in the mid forties of that first century, the first epistle, the first New Testament book written was written to deal with the issue of saving faith as over against non-saving faith. James then deals with the very heart of the matter and calls us to genuine salvation.
Look at the last two verses in James, chapter 5 verses 19 and 20 as we just continue to get a feel for this book. "Brethren," he says, verse 19 chapter 5, "if any of you do err from the truth," may I suggest to you that that would be tantamount to having a non-saving faith. One of you that is in the visible church, one of you who calls himself a brother, but you err from the truth and one comes along and converts him, epistrepho, to turn him right around to go the other direction, not modification, transformation, and one of you turns him right around to saving faith, then let him know that he who turns that sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death. The error is the word in the Greek for delusion and what delusion is it? The delusion of salvation. When you turn a sinner from the delusion of the wrong way of salvation, you save a soul. That word means an inner man, from death, spiritual death and you cover or hide a multitude of sins. That is simply a colloquial expression meaning you bring forgiveness. You secure for that person the true forgiveness they desire. That, by the way, is an Old Testament statement, it is a Jewish statement and that's why it appears in James which was written to a Jewish audience. You will find the same statement in Psalm 32:1 and Psalm 85:2.
The epistle then, listen, beloved, this is such an important thing, the epistle then is written to give to the church a manual of tests by which they can identify people in the congregation who are in error and have erred from the truth and turn them around to saving faith. That's its intent. I grieve when I pick up a commentary on James and it starts out by saying, "Now there's no basic theme in James, James is just giving us a whole lot of practical hints about life, somewhat randomly in order such as the Proverbs." That couldn't be more remote from the truth. James tells you at the very conclusion what he has in mind. Take this test and start to apply it in the church and if you apply it to someone in error, you will...and they respond, you will turn a sinner from the way that leads to death and you will bring him to forgiveness.
So the epistle is all about tests of living faith. And the test, beloved, very simple, the tests of living faith are all related to how a person lives, how they behave. It isn't a question of what you say you believe, it's a question of how you live.
Now before we look at the overview of the tests in James, let's go back to verse 1 again chapter 1, as there were some things I didn't get to cover. James, and remember, this is James our Lord's brother, that's what he is called in Galatians 1:19 and he is a pillar of the church, Galatians 2:9, leader of the Jerusalem Church, the key elder there, the leader of the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15, the very half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. And last time we looked at his life and character and theology and ministry and we ended up by seeing what a humble man he was. He simply says, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." I love that. He doesn't say, "James, the head of the Jerusalem church." He doesn't say, "Reverend Holy Doctor James." He doesn't say, "James the living, breathing brother of the Lord Himself." James, a servant. I like that. That's my kind of man. Doulos, a slave by birth. He would not exalt himself with reference to his human relationship to Jesus. He would not even say, "James, who saw with his own eyes the resurrected Christ who happened to be his own half-brother." He says nothing about any of that, just James. It fits. Fits.
Look at chapter 2 verse 1, "My brethren...he says...have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of glory with respect of...what?...persons." And how about...how about chapter 3? "My brethren, be not many teachers knowing that we shall receive the greater judgment, for in many things we all stumble." He really identifies, doesn't he? How about chapter 4 verse 6? "He giveth more grace wherefore He saith, God resist the proud and gives grace to the humble." James understands no respect of persons. James understands that he's a stumbling sinner like everybody else. And he even says in chapter 3 in the next verse, verse 3, that the person who doesn't offend with his tongue is a perfect man, and he wouldn't call himself that. He's not under any illusion that he can elevate himself above everybody else. He's a model leader. He's strong, as we saw last time. He's authoritative. He's selfless. He has the heart of a servant. He is humble. He makes no claim to title. He makes no claim to rank whatsoever.
By the way, he is not an apostle. An apostle was a sent one, he was never sent. By the way, he was present in Acts chapter 1 when they were seeking to replace Judas and they did not choose him, they chose a man named Matthias. He wasn't even in the running. He was not even considered. You read Acts 1:14 to 23 he's not even considered. He was never sent out with the gospel. He does not rank with the apostles. He was the shepherd of the church at Jerusalem. And he knew humility. In fact, if you understood the Greek text you would see the Greek order is very different. The Greek order reads like this, I love this, "James, of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ--a servant," so that the priority in the order of words is of God and the Lord Jesus Christ...me, I'm just a servant. That's a very humble order, expressive of his devoted submission to the one he grew up with but didn't believe in until he saw Him in His resurrection glory.
And would you please note this? This is so powerful. "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." He says, "I have two masters...God and the Lord Jesus Christ." By the way, do you remember Matthew 6:24? Jesus said this, "No man...are you ready for this?...can serve two masters." No man can serve two masters. James says I have two masters, of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is not possible humanly. Think about it. You couldn't have two masters without conflict, right? If a person was a servant at the same time of two masters, there would be conflict. But here it is possible. And James is giving us in a very deep and sensitive way a statement about the unity of the trinity, only in my service to God can I serve two masters--God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. James could not style himself as a slave of two intelligences in heaven unless those two intelligences were co-equal and co-eternal. They must if they had the same and equal right of property to James been in themselves one and the same and therefore does James cry out in the simplicity of his language the profound truth that God and Christ are one. He believed in only one God. James 2:19, "Thou believest there is one God, thou doest well." There was only one God yet He had two Lords, marvelous, rich. He understood John 10:30, he understood that Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." He understood what Philip couldn't quite handle, "If you've seen Me you've seen the Father." And he refers, I think it's so important, he refers to Jesus, and I love this, "the Lord Jesus Christ." He grew up with Him knowing Him as Jesus. Jesus a common name, Joshua, common name. He grew up never believing this was God in human flesh. He grew up with this other brother in the family, never believing Him to be supernatural, never believing Him to be the Messiah. But all of a sudden He isn't just my brother, Jesus, He is the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was His human name, Christ the indication of His Messiahship and Lord refers to His sovereign deity. And by the way, he refers to Jesus as Lord fourteen times in this epistle, fourteen times.
So we see James in his humility and in the sense of servitude that he bore to God and the Lord Jesus Christ. But we have to ask the question we didn't get to ask last week...To whom did James write? Whom did he write? Look at verse 1 again. He wrote to the twelve tribes. Now it's obvious who that is, the Jews, the twelve tribes is a common title for the Jews, one used in the New Testament on many occasions. They were referred to as Israel, as the people of God, the children of God, the nation of God and also they were referred to as the twelve tribes. In fact they are so called in Matthew 19:28, in Acts 26:7, even in Revelation chapter 7 verse 4 they are referred to as the twelve tribes because that was their original delineation. And, in fact, the prophets themselves, the prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to the time when scattered Israel and Judah would be brought back together in a union. They were looking for the time when all twelve would be reconstituted as one nation. You remember the kingdom had split after Solomon and the northern kingdom around 722, Israel the ten tribes had been taken away, never really to return. Some of those ten tribes all filtered back down into Judah so all twelve were still there, but they have always longed for the time when the whole nation is reconstituted, the prophets saw it coming, Isaiah 11:12 and 13. You'll find it in Jeremiah 3:18, Jeremiah 50 verse 4, you'll find Ezekiel 37 the great chapter on the reconstitution of the people of Israel. Under Hezekiah and under Josiah, many of the remnant, as I said, of that ten-tribe kingdom that was taken into captivity came to Jerusalem to worship, you can read that in 2 Chronicles 29, 2 Chronicles 30 chapter 34, many of those places.
And so, the Jews clung to a hope of a future solidarity. There would be a gathering together. And so in the mind of James and certainly in the mind of God the people of God were still constituted, the twelve tribes were still together, even though some people didn't know what tribe they were from, some did. They were still all represented. And so it was well to refer to the Jews as the twelve tribes. The ten that had been taken away were not lost, and I reject that teaching that indicates they were and some people say they wandered across Europe and then they ended up in England and now they're us, Anglo Saxons...not so. The ten tribes came back, filtered down and were reconstituted in the people of God and so can still be referred to as the twelve tribes. But which of the twelve tribes is he speaking to? Which of the Jews? Notice, the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad...literally, in the dispersion. That's what the Greek says. In the diaspora, dia means the idea of through and spora means the idea of scattering or sowing seed. So these are the Jews who through scattering were dispersed out everywhere. Diaspora gives us the word "dispersed."
Now the term "dispersion" refers to Jews outside the land of Palestine, all right? File that in your mind, that's a very common term. The nation of Israel for many centuries had been scattered and always referred to as the diaspora, using the Greek term, the scattered Jews. You can go all the way back to Deuteronomy 29 and verse...I think it's about verse 27, where God says to them that in the event of their unbelief and disobedience they're going to be scattered, and that really was the case. The first real major expulsion came, as I said, when the northern ten tribes known as the nation Israel, the Northern Kingdom was taken captive by Assyria, 2 Kings 17, 1 Chronicles 5. The ten tribes of the north hauled away never to return again as an entity, though, as I said, many of the people still filtered down to reconstitute the nation but in 722 the first expulsion, the first diaspora.
The second major dispersion came 586, that was known as the Babylonian Captivity, they were taken out of the land, dispersed through the Babylonian Empire. I would say that the third major expulsion came around 63, not long before the coming of Christ when Pompey conquered the Jews, he took many of them to Rome as slaves and many, many of those Jews populated Rome and developed into a society there until they were all banished about 19 A.D., they were all kicked out of Rome and then scattered further all over that part of the world.
Through the years not only was there the major expulsions I have just mentioned but there were many Jews who drifted out of the land. So there were many Jews in the diaspora, or the dispersion in general. In fact, at some point in time near the life of Christ there were as many, according to historians, as a million Jews in the city of Alexandria alone. In 50 B.C., fifty years before the time of Christ, they had built there a temple strictly for the use of Egyptian Jews so they could worship in their own way. Ten thousand of them were massacred in Damascus, again indicating they were spread everywhere. They were all through Asia Minor, they were all over the Mediterranean. Josephus said, and I quote, "There is no city, no tribe, whether Greek or Barbarian in which Jewish law and Jewish customs have not taken rest," end quote.
In about 140 B.C. the Cybelene oracles say that every land and every sea is filled with Jews. They were scattered everywhere. And when a great festival in Jerusalem such as Pentecost, or Passover, some great feast, they would come from eve