New Testament
James
James is plain, practical and bracing, a letter about faith that actually shows up in how we speak, work, treat the poor and bear trials. He will not let belief stay a private idea. He wants it to change the way you live on Monday.
James 1
Let Perseverance Finish Its Work
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:6Faith Is Not Hoping God Can
“But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.”
James 1:12Blessed Is The One Who Perseveres Under Trial
“Blessed is a person who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord promised to those who love him.”
More about James
James does not waste time on a long introduction. By tradition the letter comes from James, the brother of Jesus and a leader in the Jerusalem church, and it reads like the work of someone who has watched faith go wrong in practical ways and means to set it right. It is short, plain and bracing, closer to the wisdom of Proverbs or to Jesus' own Sermon on the Mount than to Paul's long arguments. The big concern is simple and searching: does your faith actually show up in how you live? James cannot abide a belief that stays in the head and never reaches the hands, and he says so without much cushioning.
He covers a lot of ground for such a small letter, and most of it lands close to home. He writes about the tongue and the damage careless words do, about money and the way churches fawn over the rich and slight the poor, about anger, favouritism, quarrels and the gap between what we say and what we do. None of it is abstract. You finish a paragraph and find you have been described. Yet for all his bluntness, James is not unkind. He wants something good for his readers, a faith with integrity, a life that hangs together, the same person on Monday as on Sunday.
Some of his most quoted lines come right at the start, where he tackles suffering head on. Consider it pure joy, he writes in 1:2 to 4, whenever you face trials, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that you are mature and complete. He is not telling people to enjoy pain; he is saying that God is doing something in it. He follows it with a promise about asking God for wisdom, but in 1:6 he adds that we should ask in faith, not doubting, and in 1:12 he calls blessed the one who perseveres under trial. Endurance is a steady theme.
If you have grown weary of faith that is all talk, or if you are in the middle of a trial and cannot see what good could come of it, James is bracing in the best way. He treats you as someone capable of growing, and he is honest that growth often comes through hard things rather than around them. Take him a little at a time, because he is direct and he means it. But take him seriously, because few books will do more to close the gap between the faith you profess and the life you actually live, and that closing is its own kind of freedom.
Questions about James
- Who wrote the letter of James?
- By long tradition it is James, the brother of Jesus, who became a leading figure in the early church in Jerusalem. He is not one of the twelve apostles named James, but the Lord's own brother, who did not believe during Jesus' ministry and then became a pillar of the church afterwards. The letter's plain, practical wisdom and its many echoes of Jesus' teaching fit that background well. He writes to scattered Jewish believers, and his tone is that of a respected leader who has seen real problems up close and cares enough to be direct about them.
- Does James contradict Paul on faith and works?
- It can look that way at first, but on a closer read they are answering different questions. Paul insists we are saved by faith and not by earning it through works of the law. James insists that real, saving faith will show itself in action, so a faith that never changes how you live was never the living thing it claimed to be. Paul is guarding against trying to earn God's acceptance; James is guarding against an empty profession that costs nothing. They are two sides of one coin: grace saves us, and grace that has truly taken hold begins to show.
- What does James say about going through trials?
- He says something surprising. In James 1:2 to 4 he tells believers to consider it joy when they face trials, not because the trials are pleasant, but because God uses the testing of faith to produce perseverance, and perseverance to make us mature and complete. He is not asking anyone to pretend pain does not hurt. He is saying there is purpose in it. He goes on to promise that God gives wisdom generously to those who ask, and in 1:12 calls blessed the person who endures, holding out a real hope to those in the middle of something hard.
Topics in James
The themes these verses speak to. Follow one to find related verses from right across the Bible.