The Daily #164 [FREE]
To Read: James 4:13-17
James starts his letter saying he is writing “to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations.” James’ audience is distinctly Jewish. From here, he seems to be writing a letter about what it means to be a Jew in light of the Messiah, Jesus, in a foreign country. He repeatedly makes mention of the law in chapter 2 (and elsewhere). In chapter 2 verse 8, James mentions, If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing right.” This immediately calls to mind Jesus’ words in Mark 12. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds that we are to love the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second greatest commandment is like the first. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Interestingly enough, Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19:18 here. But the conversation between Jesus and the teacher of the law in Mark 12 doesn’t end here. After Jesus sums up the whole law in these two commands, the one who asked the question says, “…to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” We may never fully understand the significance of these words to a Jewish community. It’s not hard to imagine why they killed him!
James’s invocation of “love your neighbor as yourself” must have been a subtle reminder to his audience that to do so was more important than anything else. Especially when living in foreign nations. We might wonder if James was continuing the ancient Jewish vocation of being a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6). James seems to be caught up in how we live in the world throughout the entire letter. And what God would want a kingdom of priests who treat their neighbor poorly? How would that reflect on the God they claim to serve? Poorly, to say the least.
Indeed, chapter two closes out with James saying, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead (v. 26).” And so James set the stage for the point of the letter. What we do matters and is in fact representative of the spirit of God at work in us. This leads us to James’ discussion in chapter four which closes with, “So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is a sin.”
To Ponder:
How is not doing the right thing different from simply doing the wrong thing?
How do we get into the habit of doing the right things?
How does this relate to serving the people around us.