Much is made of Martin Luther's rejection of James' so called promotion of works over faith. Yet we saw last winter as we studied the book that James was not 1) talking about salvation or 2) even contrasting faith and works.
We've seen James' use of opposing ideas throughout the book. As we've recorded key words they are often found in opposing pairs. Belief/doubt. Listen/do. Rich/Poor. As we begin 2:14 my bible heading says "faith and deeds". Yet I don't think that's the opposing idea at all. Look back at verse 12, transitioning in to this section. "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom....." The contrast is between your speech and your action. Verse 14 says, "What good is it if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" Speech and action.
The illustration is priceless, and as is typical of James, impossible to misunderstand. If you see someone without clothes and daily food, and you say "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed" what good is that?
I was shocked to read when studying for this passage that this is an actual quote, and you can still hear it on the streets of Jerusalem, "religious" people to beggars. "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed." It's considered the proper blessing.
Not as proper nor appropriate as warm clothes and food would be, James would surely say.
Hence the illustrations from history that James employs. Abraham and Rahab both obviously had faith in God. Nothing else could explain the actions they took, the way they lived their lives.
I doubt if my own faith is that obvious. Hmm.... looking forward to tomorrow's study.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Thinking rightly about yourself and others
We get our ideas about who we are from lots of different people and events in our lives. But the kind of right thinking that gets us through the day comes from what God says about us. What God says about is us that he created us, he loves us, he values us and he has a job for us. It's vitally important to get our ideas about who we are directly from God and his word.
James is talking about looking into the word [1:22-25] in relation to living rightly. God expects us, as his valued children on a mission, to live rightly. James summarizes those expectations brilliantly in verse 27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Internally pure and fautless. Externally loving our needy neighbors. [More on that later.]
And James is very clear about how we keep track of ourselves. Its the same method we use every morning to make sure we remembered to brush our hair, get any leftover mascara from under our eyes or make sure our slip isn't hanging. [That's an anachronism, isn't it!] He tells us to look in the mirror, this mirror being the Word. And just as you look in the mirror every morning and discover that your hair, though it feels fine, is actually standing up at that left back cowlick, the idea of looking is to fix it. Comb your hair! The idea of looking in to the word, look intently, James says, is to do whatever you see that needs done. Do is the main idea of this passage. Six times James says Do. We have plenty of scripture that tells us to read and to memorize and to meditate but James says all of that kind of misses the point if you aren't doing what you see in the word.
I specifically chose the words "live rightly" instead of "live morally" because we have our own definitions of living morally and they are generally small, doable things. They are things James would call religion and he decimates the idea religion is enough in verse 26. If you consider yourself religious, he says, and e.g., don't control your mouth, you're deceived. He raises the bar from the morally possible, religious action, to the morally impossible, controlling your mouth. Your religion, your morality, is worthless. Worthless! Living rightly, which is immensely important to God, involves looking intently into that perfect law that gives freedom [Christ himself] and then living your life out of Him. Clean on the inside and truly righteous not only on the inside but also in your relation to others.
He comes back to that perfect law that gives freedom but he next gives an example of failing to live rightly in relationship to others; favoritism. Partiality, King James called it. We would call it discrimination in our day and it would sound political. Here we discover it is not political at all but a test of the way we think about people. Are you keeping the Royal Law, love your neighbor as yourself? Well, I am a good neighbor, you might say. I water the plants when they're gone. I take meals to the church body when they need it. I'm generous in my gifts.
But James pulls an idea out of the Mosaic law, an idea the Jewish Christians he is writing to would clearly understand. If you don't keep the whole law, you're not keeping it at all. You commit adultery but not murder; can you claim to be keeping the law? Of course not. By that same logic, if you love white, middle class, protestant Americans but not Hispanics or Arabs or Muslims can you claim to be keeping Jesus' Royal Law?
Have I taken the idea of loving your neighbor too far? Read the story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10. Jesus tells that story to answer that smoke screen of a question, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus is holding a mirror up to a "religious" man's face and forcing him to look at it. Are you living true religion, Jesus is asking this so called expert in the law, or are you just living by your own narrowly defined morality? And James is saying to his readers, if you aren't keeping this royal law universally, you aren't keeping it at all. Just like the illustration of murder and adultery. And in direct relation to James' illustration to the mirror, Jesus turns the question on it's head. The question is not who is your neighbor: the question is who are you.
Thank God for the last of these three laws mentioned in this short section of James: the law that gives freedom. 1:25 gives us a specific thing to look intently into in this mirror of God's word and that thing is the perfect law that gives freedom. That is the law we are to be judged by, James concludes in 1:12, the law that set us free both from judgment and from sin. We have received mercy. With that mercy we received the capacity for mercy.
Romans 8:1-4 bears meditation on this point. The whole of Romans 8 bears meditation on this point.
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the spirit......"
If we gaze intently into that perfect law of freedom for awhile, we will truly become new creatures.
James is talking about looking into the word [1:22-25] in relation to living rightly. God expects us, as his valued children on a mission, to live rightly. James summarizes those expectations brilliantly in verse 27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Internally pure and fautless. Externally loving our needy neighbors. [More on that later.]
And James is very clear about how we keep track of ourselves. Its the same method we use every morning to make sure we remembered to brush our hair, get any leftover mascara from under our eyes or make sure our slip isn't hanging. [That's an anachronism, isn't it!] He tells us to look in the mirror, this mirror being the Word. And just as you look in the mirror every morning and discover that your hair, though it feels fine, is actually standing up at that left back cowlick, the idea of looking is to fix it. Comb your hair! The idea of looking in to the word, look intently, James says, is to do whatever you see that needs done. Do is the main idea of this passage. Six times James says Do. We have plenty of scripture that tells us to read and to memorize and to meditate but James says all of that kind of misses the point if you aren't doing what you see in the word.
I specifically chose the words "live rightly" instead of "live morally" because we have our own definitions of living morally and they are generally small, doable things. They are things James would call religion and he decimates the idea religion is enough in verse 26. If you consider yourself religious, he says, and e.g., don't control your mouth, you're deceived. He raises the bar from the morally possible, religious action, to the morally impossible, controlling your mouth. Your religion, your morality, is worthless. Worthless! Living rightly, which is immensely important to God, involves looking intently into that perfect law that gives freedom [Christ himself] and then living your life out of Him. Clean on the inside and truly righteous not only on the inside but also in your relation to others.
He comes back to that perfect law that gives freedom but he next gives an example of failing to live rightly in relationship to others; favoritism. Partiality, King James called it. We would call it discrimination in our day and it would sound political. Here we discover it is not political at all but a test of the way we think about people. Are you keeping the Royal Law, love your neighbor as yourself? Well, I am a good neighbor, you might say. I water the plants when they're gone. I take meals to the church body when they need it. I'm generous in my gifts.
But James pulls an idea out of the Mosaic law, an idea the Jewish Christians he is writing to would clearly understand. If you don't keep the whole law, you're not keeping it at all. You commit adultery but not murder; can you claim to be keeping the law? Of course not. By that same logic, if you love white, middle class, protestant Americans but not Hispanics or Arabs or Muslims can you claim to be keeping Jesus' Royal Law?
Have I taken the idea of loving your neighbor too far? Read the story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10. Jesus tells that story to answer that smoke screen of a question, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus is holding a mirror up to a "religious" man's face and forcing him to look at it. Are you living true religion, Jesus is asking this so called expert in the law, or are you just living by your own narrowly defined morality? And James is saying to his readers, if you aren't keeping this royal law universally, you aren't keeping it at all. Just like the illustration of murder and adultery. And in direct relation to James' illustration to the mirror, Jesus turns the question on it's head. The question is not who is your neighbor: the question is who are you.
Thank God for the last of these three laws mentioned in this short section of James: the law that gives freedom. 1:25 gives us a specific thing to look intently into in this mirror of God's word and that thing is the perfect law that gives freedom. That is the law we are to be judged by, James concludes in 1:12, the law that set us free both from judgment and from sin. We have received mercy. With that mercy we received the capacity for mercy.
Romans 8:1-4 bears meditation on this point. The whole of Romans 8 bears meditation on this point.
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the spirit......"
If we gaze intently into that perfect law of freedom for awhile, we will truly become new creatures.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Thinking rightly about trials
Although we have labeled the entire book of James as intended to correct wrong thinking, we were able to make quite a list Tuesday of RIGHT thinking, especially about trials. When he begins the book telling us to consider it joy when we encounter trials, you know there will be considerable restructuring of the way we think involved.
First, James clearly tells us that the results of trusting God through trials are huge: patience, endurance, steadfastness, maturity, completeness. He even says at the end we will lack nothing. In a nutshell, we will be like Christ, the firstfruit of this new kind of person that we call a Christian. "Let endurance do its work," the NASB says. Cooperate with what God is trying to create in you. Anything you experience, "good times" or "bad times" can be used by God to make you more like Christ, and that is James main point in these opening verses.
But we found other right thinking is the section. We found that we should be single-minded, not double. Focused. This will be explained more fully later, but thinking rightly includes wanting whatever God wants for us. Double-minded would be thinking about what we want and what God wants and trying to get them both. Don't think you'll get what God wants that way, verse 7 says.
Another way to think rightly is to consider whatever circumstance we are in temporary, because they are, in fact, temporary. Scripture loves to use the illustration of flowers to picture the brevity of whatever is going on in our lives. They are the perfect illustration. The daffodils I've been waiting and waiting for have been so beautiful for a few days, and they are already nearly done. The tulips are beginning; if the thunderstorms don't get them (or the deer!) then the warmer temperatures will. "This too shall pass" turns out to be a spiritual reality we can count on.
We will have a lot more correction to our thinking as we make our way through the book of James, These are the main ideas we drew out of his introduction in 1:1-18. But these three big ideas can be life changing on their own. Let's keep them in mind.
First, James clearly tells us that the results of trusting God through trials are huge: patience, endurance, steadfastness, maturity, completeness. He even says at the end we will lack nothing. In a nutshell, we will be like Christ, the firstfruit of this new kind of person that we call a Christian. "Let endurance do its work," the NASB says. Cooperate with what God is trying to create in you. Anything you experience, "good times" or "bad times" can be used by God to make you more like Christ, and that is James main point in these opening verses.
But we found other right thinking is the section. We found that we should be single-minded, not double. Focused. This will be explained more fully later, but thinking rightly includes wanting whatever God wants for us. Double-minded would be thinking about what we want and what God wants and trying to get them both. Don't think you'll get what God wants that way, verse 7 says.
Another way to think rightly is to consider whatever circumstance we are in temporary, because they are, in fact, temporary. Scripture loves to use the illustration of flowers to picture the brevity of whatever is going on in our lives. They are the perfect illustration. The daffodils I've been waiting and waiting for have been so beautiful for a few days, and they are already nearly done. The tulips are beginning; if the thunderstorms don't get them (or the deer!) then the warmer temperatures will. "This too shall pass" turns out to be a spiritual reality we can count on.
We will have a lot more correction to our thinking as we make our way through the book of James, These are the main ideas we drew out of his introduction in 1:1-18. But these three big ideas can be life changing on their own. Let's keep them in mind.
Monday, April 10, 2017
How Can God be Glorified through This?
Although we are getting ready to study James, my mind has been in the Gospels lately. I want to spend a few minutes before we begin James thinking about the account of Jesus healing the blind man in John 9.
"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
This is often the first question we ask when we encounter things that are not right in the world or in our own lives. Whose fault is this? Who can I blame? Who should I be angry with? So the disciples asked, "Who sinned?"
Jesus' reply turns us around. He points our thoughts in a totally different direction. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
I'd like to begin James thinking this way. Sure it's about trials and nobody likes trials. Our purpose statement says,"James wrote this letter to his Jewish brothers for the purpose of correcting wrong thinking which would not support them through their trying circumstances. So lets begin thinking differently right from the beginning. Let's develop the habit of living life with this question paramount in our minds: no matter the circumstance, how can God be glorified through this. Not whose fault is it. Not why. Not how do I get out of it. How can God be glorified?
Jesus healed the blind man... a man blind from birth. It was such an unbelievable miracle that some people said, "It's not him, he only looks like him." [vs. 9] And although it was a true miracle, it also became a parable.
"Jesus said, 'For judgement I have come into the world so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.'" Of course the Pharisees who were with him were very offended by that, but Jesus pursued the point. "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
Those of us who claim to see God need to always pursue seeing him fully and accurately and living out of that place of knowing him. What is he doing in the world? What is he doing in my life? James makes it very clear that those who know and claim to love God should first and foremost submit to his will. We can't have it both ways; pursuing our own course of action along with God's. How can he be glorified in this circumstance? We will never fully know unless we let Him do what He wants.
"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
This is often the first question we ask when we encounter things that are not right in the world or in our own lives. Whose fault is this? Who can I blame? Who should I be angry with? So the disciples asked, "Who sinned?"
Jesus' reply turns us around. He points our thoughts in a totally different direction. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
I'd like to begin James thinking this way. Sure it's about trials and nobody likes trials. Our purpose statement says,"James wrote this letter to his Jewish brothers for the purpose of correcting wrong thinking which would not support them through their trying circumstances. So lets begin thinking differently right from the beginning. Let's develop the habit of living life with this question paramount in our minds: no matter the circumstance, how can God be glorified through this. Not whose fault is it. Not why. Not how do I get out of it. How can God be glorified?
Jesus healed the blind man... a man blind from birth. It was such an unbelievable miracle that some people said, "It's not him, he only looks like him." [vs. 9] And although it was a true miracle, it also became a parable.
"Jesus said, 'For judgement I have come into the world so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.'" Of course the Pharisees who were with him were very offended by that, but Jesus pursued the point. "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
Those of us who claim to see God need to always pursue seeing him fully and accurately and living out of that place of knowing him. What is he doing in the world? What is he doing in my life? James makes it very clear that those who know and claim to love God should first and foremost submit to his will. We can't have it both ways; pursuing our own course of action along with God's. How can he be glorified in this circumstance? We will never fully know unless we let Him do what He wants.
Friday, April 7, 2017
James Redo
An apology to all for totally missing the month of March. But as you know, we're ready to fire up again for the book of James. Here is a condensed version of the Purpose Statement and paragraph titles we came up with as a group at the end of our winter study.
This week we will study James 1:1-12. As we have spent two weeks in that passage at church recently, we should all have lots of thoughts about it. So....
James:
wrote this letter to his Jewish brothers for the purpose of correcting wrong thinking which would not support them through their trying circumstances:
He did this by:
1:1-12 proposing a radical new attitude towards suffering.
1:13-2:13 expecting the believers to live rightly.
2:14-26 expecting their faith to produce action.
3: exposing the source of double-mindedness.
4:challenging them to replace self will with God's will.
5: challenging them to live generous, stable, open-hearted lives until Christ's return.
I hope that as we redo the book of James we will truly adopt a way of thinking that actually holds us up during whatever life throws at us. There are many, many "practical" applications from this little book, but the most practical of all is that we think about God and the ramifications of our relationship with him as He thinks of them.
This week we will study James 1:1-12. As we have spent two weeks in that passage at church recently, we should all have lots of thoughts about it. So....
James:
wrote this letter to his Jewish brothers for the purpose of correcting wrong thinking which would not support them through their trying circumstances:
He did this by:
1:1-12 proposing a radical new attitude towards suffering.
1:13-2:13 expecting the believers to live rightly.
2:14-26 expecting their faith to produce action.
3: exposing the source of double-mindedness.
4:challenging them to replace self will with God's will.
5: challenging them to live generous, stable, open-hearted lives until Christ's return.
I hope that as we redo the book of James we will truly adopt a way of thinking that actually holds us up during whatever life throws at us. There are many, many "practical" applications from this little book, but the most practical of all is that we think about God and the ramifications of our relationship with him as He thinks of them.
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