Epistle of James

“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

— James 2:17 (ESV)

Overview

The Epistle of James is a general, or “catholic,” epistle: unlike Paul’s letters, it was not addressed to one local congregation but to a wider circle of Jewish Christian readers.¹ James wrote from Jerusalem to “the twelve tribes in the dispersion” (James 1:1), that is, Jewish believers scattered outside Palestine among the Gentiles.² Rather than building a sustained doctrinal argument, the letter mostly issues short, practical exhortations; Barrows notes that its one genuinely argumentative section is 2:14-26, where James contends that “faith without works is dead.”³

Featured Media

Does James Contradict Paul? (MP3), by John Piper on James 2:14-26 and Romans 3:27-4:5
Faith that Works: The Message of James (MP3), by Mark Dever

Author and Date

James 1:1 identifies the author only as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Most interpreters identify him with James, brother of Jesus, the man Paul names alongside Peter and John as one of the Jerusalem church’s “pillars” (Gal. 2:9) and who delivered the ruling of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:13-21).² Whether this James should also be identified with the apostle James the son of Alphaeus is a separate and long-disputed question, but either way his prominence in the Jerusalem church gives the letter apostolic weight.²

Commentators disagree on when the letter was written. Many place it early, in the mid-to-late 40s AD, before the circumcision controversy addressed at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15.⁴ Others, including Barrows, argue for a later date, not long before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, on the ground that the letter’s rebuke of a “barren speculative faith” fits a generation that had already begun to abuse Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith, and that its description of abounding wickedness and faction matches Christ’s own prediction of the years before Jerusalem’s fall (Matt. 24:10-13).⁵

Historical and Literary Context

James wrote to Jewish believers living outside Palestine, addressing them as a body he could not personally oversee the way he oversaw the Jewish Christians in and around Jerusalem.² The letter contains no reference to Gentile believers or to the Jew-Gentile controversies that occupy Paul’s letters, consistent with an audience of Jewish Christians only.²

Barrows calls the letter “eminently practical,” organized around short, direct exhortations rather than sustained argument.³ The sins James rebukes, an empty faith that does not touch conduct, love of wealth pursued with self-confidence, worldly pleasure, partiality to the rich alongside contempt of the poor, and defrauding the poor of their wages, were the besetting sins of his own Jewish Christian generation.³

Structure

The epistle moves through a series of short units rather than one continuous argument:

Trials and the pursuit of wisdom (1:1-18)
Hearing and doing the word (1:19-27)
Faith and works (2:1-26)
The tongue (3:1-12)
Wisdom from above versus earthly wisdom (3:13-18)
Worldliness, humility, and judging others (4:1-17)
Warning to the rich, and patience under trial (5:1-11)
Oaths, prayer, and restoring the wanderer (5:12-20)

Major Themes

Genuine faith produces works. James’s central claim is that a faith which produces no works is dead (James 2:14-26). Van Mastricht treats this as a description of how living faith actually behaves rather than a rival doctrine of justification: faith left unexercised “is dead… and is being buried as it were,” and Scripture commands it “to be rekindled by the exercise of good works.”⁶ Barrows reads James and Paul as answering different questions rather than contradicting one another: “Paul argues against dead works; James against dead faith. Here we have no contradiction, but only two different views of truth that are in entire harmony with each other, and both of which are essential to true godliness.”⁷

Wisdom from above versus earthly wisdom. James contrasts a wisdom that is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” with the wisdom that comes down “from above” and shows itself in purity, peaceableness, and gentleness (James 3:13-17). Van Mastricht places this among the kinds of false wisdom Scripture rejects, over against “the wisdom from above (James 3:15), and the mind of the Spirit,” which is a gift James elsewhere tells believers to ask God for directly (James 1:5).⁸

Controlling the tongue. The same central section of the letter turns from wisdom to speech: an untamed tongue, James warns, can “set on fire the entire course of life” even though it is a small member (James 3:5-8), and true religion requires bridling it (James 1:26).

Patient endurance under trial. James opens by telling his readers to “count it all joy” when they meet trials, because the testing of faith produces steadfastness and, in those who endure, spiritual maturity (James 1:2-4). Barrett connects this to James’s confidence in God’s own unchanging goodness: because the “Father of lights” has “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17), believers can trust that the trials he ordains are aimed at conforming them to Christ rather than at their harm.⁹ The same theme returns at the letter’s close in a call to be “patient… until the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7-11).

Worldliness and humility. James warns against friendship with the world (James 4:4), pride (James 4:6-10), and presumptuous planning that leaves God out of account (James 4:13-16), and rebukes the rich for hoarding wealth gained by defrauding laborers (James 5:1-6). The corrective throughout is humility: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

Canonicity

James’s place in the canon was genuinely debated in the early church. Origen cited the letter as being “current under the name of James” while noting that some did not accept its apostolic authority, and Eusebius classed it among the books that were “disputed, but known nevertheless to many,” even though he elsewhere cited it himself as Scripture.¹⁰ The letter’s reception was uneven partly because it was addressed only to Jewish Christians and partly, Barrows notes, because of its apparent tension with Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.¹⁰ Testimony from the Old Syriac (Peshitta) version, representing the judgment of the Eastern churches where the letter first circulated, weighed in its favor, and its canonical standing was increasingly acknowledged through the fourth century until its reception became universal in both East and West by the fifth.¹⁰

Martin Luther’s later hesitation over James is a well-documented chapter in this history. In his earlier years Luther called James an “epistle of straw,”¹¹ and in his preface to the letter argued that “what does preach Christ is apostolic, even if Judas, Annas, Pilate, or Herod does it,” treating a book’s agreement with the gospel as the decisive test of its place in the canon.¹² Kruger notes that Luther’s criticism of James eased later in his career, and cautions against reading it as evidence Luther held a low view of the letter’s inspiration: the question for Luther was not whether the canonical books were inspired, which he affirmed, but which books belonged in the canon at all.¹¹

Related Doctrines

External Links

James and Justification by Faith, by James S. Gidley, on whether James 2:24 requires modifying the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone.

References

Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 487. ↩
Barrows, 487-489. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Barrows, 490. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 25, “James 5:13-15: If Sick, Call the Elders of the Church,” 255. ↩
Barrows, 488-489. ↩
Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 1, “Saving Faith,” 74. ↩
Barrows, 490-491: “Paul argues against dead works; James against dead faith. Here we have no contradiction, but only two different views of truth that are in entire harmony with each other, and both of which are essential to true godliness.” ↩
Mastricht, chap. 13, “The Intellect, Knowledge, and Wisdom of God,” 315. ↩
Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 6, “Does God Change? Immutability.” ↩
Barrows, 489-490. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 2, “Tracing the Origins,” n. 16. ↩ ↩²
Kruger, chap. 3, “My Sheep Hear My Voice,” quoting Martin Luther’s preface to the Epistle of James. ↩