James

The two sentences look like a head-on collision. James writes 'Ye see that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith.' (2:24). Paul writes 'a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law' (Romans 3:28) and 'a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ' (Galatians 2:16). Both men quote the same verse about Abraham, and they seem to draw opposite conclusions from it. The collision eases once three things are noticed. The two men are answering opposite errors, Paul a demand that Gentiles take on the law and James a claim that costs nothing. They use the word for works differently, since Paul's phrase is almost always 'the works of the law', meaning circumcision and the rest, while James means feeding a hungry brother. And they use the word justified in two of its ordinary senses, Paul of the verdict God gives and James of the demonstration that the verdict was true, which is why James speaks of a faith brought to completion (2:22) and points to Abraham's obedience on the mountain years after Genesis 15 had already reckoned him righteous. Paul says the same thing from the other side when he grants that Abraham justified by works would have something to boast of before men, 'For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not toward God.' (Romans 4:2).

Faith and Works→

Matthew names four of them, 'his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas' (Matthew 13:55), and mentions sisters in the next verse. Paul knows James by the same description, 'save James the Lord’s brother' (Galatians 1:19). Three readings of that relationship were in place by the end of the fourth century and each is named here with the man who framed it and the date.

The instruction is specific and it is addressed to the sick man rather than to the elders. 'Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord' (5:14). What follows is a promise: 'the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up' (5:15). Then a wider practice for the whole congregation, 'Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.' (5:16), with the reason given in the same verse, 'The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working.' (5:16). This site teaches the passage as it stands and as the church's continuing practice. The sick call, the elders come, the oil is used, the prayer is offered in the name of the Lord, and the Lord raises up. The example James gives makes the point about who may pray this way. Elijah was a prophet, and James introduces him as a man with the same nature as his readers, 'Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain' (5:17), which happened, 'there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word' (1 Kings 17:1), and then reversed when he prayed again, 'the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain' (1 Kings 18:45). What remains genuinely open is the oil.

Healing→

James puts the ruling first among his closing instructions: 'swear not, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath: but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay' (5:12). It is the teaching of Jesus in shorter form, 'Swear not at all' (Matthew 5:34) and 'But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay' (Matthew 5:37). The oaths named are the evasive kind that first-century teachers argued over, swearing by heaven or by the earth or by Jerusalem so as to sound binding without being bound. What is in view is a culture of graded honesty, where a man's word carried weight only when he had propped it up. Against a flat ban on all oaths stand God swearing by himself in Genesis 22:16 and Paul calling God as witness in his letters.

Oaths→

James says both things in the same chapter. He describes a man who never stumbles in speech as 'a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also' (3:2), and then closes the door: 'the tongue can no man tame; it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison' (3:8). Two verses later he issues the command anyway, 'out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.' (3:10). The tension is deliberate. James is writing in the wisdom tradition, where a hard saying is meant to stop the reader rather than to be balanced against the next line. The claim is that speech is beyond self-management, in the same way that the heart is, and that the fountain and the fig tree of 3:11-12 point the diagnosis back to the source. The answer he gives is the wisdom that comes down from above (3:17), asked for from the God who gives liberally to anyone who asks (1:5).

The Tongue→

James travelled slowly in the Latin-speaking church. The Muratorian list, usually dated about AD 170, names most of the New Testament and does not name James. Eusebius, writing about AD 325, places it among the books that were disputed while noting that it was read publicly in most churches (Ecclesiastical History 3.25). Jerome and Augustine both received it, and by the councils of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 the question was closed. The Greek East had used it earlier and more freely. Then in 1522 Martin Luther, in his Preface to the New Testament, ranked the books by how clearly they preached Christ and called James 'an epistle of straw' by comparison with John, Romans and 1 Peter. Two things are usually left out when the phrase is quoted. Luther was comparing rather than rejecting, and he preached from James and kept it in his Bible. And the phrase itself was dropped from the prefaces of his later editions.

Rahab and the Scarlet Cord→