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The letter of James, or at least that's his name in English.
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If you look in the Greek you will see that his name is Iakobos,
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which translates his Hebrew name Yáakov.
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And that's why most ancient and modern translations render his name as Jacob.
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That's how we're going to call him in this video.
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Now, there are many Jacobs in the New Testament.
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Two of them belonged to Jesus' inner circle of the 12 disciples,
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but this letter comes from the Jacob who was the half-brother of Jesus himself.
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Now, we learned this Jacob's story from the book of Acts and from Paul's letters.
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After Peter moved on from Jerusalem to go start new churches
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Jesus' half-brother Jacob rose to prominence as a leader in the Mother Church in Jerusalem.
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It was made up mostly of Messianic or Christian Jews.
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This was the first Christian community ever.
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And we know that it fell on hard times during the 20 years that Jacob was its leader.
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There was a famine that led to great poverty in the region
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and these Messianic Jews were being persecuted by Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.
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But through it all Jacob was known as a pillar of the Jerusalem church.
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He was also known as a peacemaker who led with wisdom and courage
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until he was tragically murdered.
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And in this book we have the legacy of Jacob's teaching and wisdom
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condensed into a short and very powerful work.
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The book begins like a letter. He greets all the Messianic Jews who were living outside the Land of Israel.
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But this does not read like one of Paul's letters where he addresses specific problems in one local church,
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rather this book is a summary of Jacob's sage wisdom
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for any and every community of Jesus' followers.
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And Jacob's goal isn't to teach new theological information,
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rather he wants to get in your business and challenge how you live.
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Jacob's wisdom has been heavily influenced by two sources:
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The first is Jesus' teaching about life in the kingdom of God.
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Especially the Sermon on the Mount which is constantly echoing and quoting in the book.
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The second key influence is the biblical wisdom book of Proverbs.
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Especially the poems and proverbs one through nine.
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Jacob literally grew up with Jesus and with the book of Proverbs
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and so now his own teaching sounds like them. It's stamped by their language and imagery.
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The book consists of short challenging wisdom speeches
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that are full of metaphors and easy to memorize one-liners.
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And in essence Jacob is calling the Messianic community to become truly wise
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by living according to Jesus' summary of the Torah:
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To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
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The body of the book is in chapters 2 through 5.
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Which consists of 12 short teachings that call God's people to wholehearted devotion to the way of Jesus.
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And altogether they don't develop one main idea in a linear way.
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Each teaching kind of stands alone and concludes with a catchy one-liner,
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but all of these teachings are connected through key repeated words and themes - it's really cool.
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At the opening of the books body there are two teachings:
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First about favoritism and love
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Jacob exposes how we tend to show favor to people who can benefit us
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and we neglect people who can't. Usually because they're needy.
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Jacob says this is the opposite of love as Jesus defined it.
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He goes on to show what genuine faith does and does not look like.
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So, if someone says that they have faith in God, but neglects people who are needy or poor,
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this person's faith is dead, he says.
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Their actions betray what they say they believe.
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And genuine faith always results in obedience to Jesus' teachings.
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Now scattered throughout the body of the book we find three different places
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where Jacob develops Jesus' own teaching about our words.
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So, with the same mouth we unleash pain upon people
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and then go offer praise to God - so messed up!
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And also we judge people and then go talk badly about them behind their backs!
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And we also all tend to distort the truth to our own advantage.
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How we talk about people opens up a window into our hearts and our core values.
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Our words tell the real truth about our character.
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Jacob also believes that God's kingdom community, as Jesus taught about it,
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Is the kind of place where the divisions created by wealth and social status are dismantled.
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So, he warns first about the arrogance that wealth can create in people
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who believe it will be around forever.
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He says: "No, your wealth will one day rot just like you."
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In contrast, God's people are to live with patience and hope
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for Jesus' return to set all things right
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and this should inspire a life of faith-filled prayer.
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Now, this part of the book, all of these teachings,
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they're so powerful and there's way more than we have time for in this video,
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but, seriously, read all of them and slowly.
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Now, placed in front of these 12 wise teachings is the introductory chapter.
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It's a flowing stream of wise teachings and one-liners.
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And they're designed to sum up the main ideas of the entire book.
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this chapter actually introduces you to
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all the key words and themes that you're going to meet in chapters 2 through 5.
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Jacob opens by saying that he knows from personal experience -
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Life is hard.
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He was martyred after all, not long after writing this letter.
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But he believes that life's trials and hardships are actually paradoxical gifts
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that can produce endurance and shape our character.
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God can do amazing work inside of us in the midst of suffering
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and help us become perfect and complete.
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Now, that word "perfect" it's really important for Jacob.
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He repeats it seven times in the book.
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In Biblical Hebrew and in Greek this word refers to wholeness.
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It means living a completely integrated life where your actions are always consistent
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with the values and beliefs that you've received from Jesus.
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Jacob knows that most of us actually live as fractured people with big inconsistencies in our character.
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we are all more compromised than we want to admit.
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However, God is on a mission to restore fractured people to make them whole.
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And it begins with wisdom - the ability to see my hardships through a new perspective.
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God will generously give this kind of wisdom to people who ask for it in faith,
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without doubting God's character.
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And when we realize our humble and frail place before God we are forced to choose between anxiety or trust.
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And true wisdom means choosing to believe that God is good despite my circumstances.
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So, if it's poverty that's forcing you into hard times in life
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Jacob says: "Try and view it as a gift that forces you to trust in God alone."
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And besides wealth is fleeting it's all going to pass away like wildflowers in the summer heat.
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And so when we do fall into hard times don't accuse God,
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rather let your circumstances teach you what Jesus taught about God's character,
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that the father is generous, that he's there to meet us in our pain and that he's trustworthy.
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It's this God who through Jesus has given us new birth to become new kinds of humans,
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who can face their suffering with total trust in the father just like Jesus did.
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And this new humanity is something we discover when we not only listen to God's Word but do what it says.
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Jacob calls God's Word here "The perfect Torah of freedom."
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He's referring here to the greatest command of the Torah that passed on to us through Jesus.
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That he freed us to love God and love our neighbor.
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And Jacob shows practically what that kind of love looks like.
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It means speaking to others in a kind and loving way, it means serving the poor
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and it means living with wholehearted devotion to God alone.
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Now you can see how this opening chapter contains all the key words and ideas
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explored more deeply in the twelve teachings of chapters 2 through 5.
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Jacob immersed himself in the wisdom of Jesus and of the proverbs.
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And he's giving us a great gift in this book of his own wisdom.
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This is a beautifully crafted punch in the gut for those who want to follow Jesus.
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And that is what the book of James or Jacob is all about.
