James for the Twenty-First-Century Church

 In the final chapter of A Theology of James: Wisdom for God's People, Christopher Morgan draws out "four broader aspects of James's message that are particularly timely for today's church." He is speaking with particular reference to the "evangelical" church and, as you will see, to the Reformed wing of things at one particular point. And it seems to me that he was seeing things aright when he wrote in 2010. His word has not become less timely ten years hence. The chapter from which these applications come is titled "James for the Twenty-First-Century Church." Here are, in summary, those four aspects, with my brief comments added.

First, we need to align with how "James views truth holistically. His holistic approach can serve as a helpful corrective to our contemporary false dichotomies or polarizations. Many evangelicals today have a tendency to separate such things as love for God and love for others, faith and works, evangelism and social ministry, and theology and practice. In contrast, James sees that these things function together."

Next, from "James we also learn that Christianity brings a reversal of values. Reflective of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, James notes this reversal in a number of areas. . . . Churches and church leaders have a tendency to reflect the society around them, but James presses us to think and act differently. After all, we are a part of a new society, the community of Jesus."

Third, Morgan points out the right emphasis of the importance of covenant theology among the Reformed, but he likewise brings in a right word of correction: "I fear that we do not sufficiently stress the importance of covenant faithfulness. The covenant is a helpful paradigm for understanding biblical theology, but it also makes demands on us. James continually presses the importance of our faithfulness to God."

Lastly, he stresses James' view of the church. And, in my judgment, this is one of those areas where we need the greatest reform. Evangelicals have not done well with thinking through a healthy ecclesiology; instead, we've often adopted the world's models and methods for running the church. But what we need to do in repentance, according to Morgan, is take care to think about "what the church actually is" from the book of James. The church, according to James, is "an eschatological covenant community that exists in the already and the not yet and thus displays . . . the arrival of the kingdom through its relationships to God, among its members, and to society."

Now if there is one thing the evangelical church doesn't do very well—it is being distinct, you know, salt and light. She's lost her saltiness. At least here in America, she blends right in with her environs and tastes like everything else. James calls this "friendship with the world" and "enmity with God" (4:4). She's specialized in being so much like the world for decades now, and her impotence is on full display for those with eyes to see. But if she is going to recover the full-orbed gospel and bring kingdom norms to bear for the sake of potent witness to the kingdom of God, she is going to need to display how the city of God differs from the city of man. James, Morgan stresses, helps us a great deal here.

—Christopher Morgan, A Theology of James: Wisdom for God's People (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: R&R Publishing, 2010), 187-189.

The High Christology of James

In Jas. 1:1, James is a slave both of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the same breath, he tells us—on the face of it—that his bondservice to Jesus Christ is one and the same as his bondservice to God. And so without making any distinctions here (other than that two distinct persons are in view), James puts the Lord Jesus Christ on the same plane with the God of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

James, as a Palestinian Jew conversant with the Septuagint (he cites it routinely: see, e.g., Jas. 4:6 GNT and cf. the LXX and MT), knew of course that the designation κύριος was used throughout the Septuagint to translate the divine name, YHWH. And of course, as a leader of the early church, he also took part in confessing Jesus as Lord of all in the fullest sense. And so this is high Christology indeed, despite what many have said of James’ lack of Christology.

Was Christum Treibet

"Luther was right in applying the criterion was Christum treibet [whatever promotes Christ], but wrong in not recognizing that the Epistle of James also 'promotes Christ' by its practical application of the Sermon on the Mount."

—Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (New York: Oxford, 1997), 244, n 30.

Smear and Censure

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and John Calvin (1509–1564), two of the world's most prominent pastor-theologians, speak eloquently to the pervasiveness and ugliness of the commonest of sins—slander.

Commenting on Jas. 1:26, Calvin says this:

When people shed their grosser sins, they are extremely vulnerable to contract this complaint. A man will steer clear of adultery, of stealing, of drunkenness, in fact he will be a shining light of outward religious observance—and yet will revel in destroying the character of others; under the pretext of zeal, naturally, but it is a lust for vilification. This explains his desire to distinguish the honest worshippers of God from the hypocrites, and the bloated pharisaical pride that feeds indulgently on a general diet of smear and censure (The Epistles of James and Jude, 274). 

Edwards, in a sermon on 1 Cor. 13:4 in his famous series Charity and Its Fruits, describes this all too common injury:

Some injure others in their good name, by reproaching them, or speaking evil of them behind their backs. Abundance is done in this way. No injury is so common as this. . . . Some injure others by making or spreading false reports of others, and so slandering them. And others, although what they say is not a direct falsehood, yet a great misrepresentation of things, represent things in their neighbors in the worst colors, and strain their faults, and set them forth beyond what they are, and speak of them in a very unfair manner. A great deal of injury is done among neighbors by uncharitably judging one another, putting injurious constructions on one another's words and actions (Ethical Writings, 187).

—John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke Volume III and The Epistles of James and Jude (vol. 3 in Calvin's New Testament Commentaries; transl. A. W. Morrison; eds. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrrance; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 274; Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 157–158.

O Father of Lights, Keep Us, Help Us, Save Us

The following is the corporate prayer we prayed at New Covenant Church this morning. It is shaped by Jas. 1:13–25.

The Prayers at NCC (1/11/15)

O Father of lights, Giver of every good gift, we know you are never tempted with evil. Never. We know this, Father. For you are unchangeably holy, unchangeably pure, unchangeably bright with ineffable light. In a word, you are good. Always good. And so we confess this Lord’s Day, your unqualified goodness.

But we, Father, we are not good, at least not good in and of ourselves. Not by nature. By nature, we are dark and evil. And, unlike you—the unchangeable God—we are fickle, erratic, unsteady, unstable, prone to wander. Lord we feel it! Prone to leave the God we love. We falter; we fail. We are often deceived by darkness. We are even, we confess, at times deceived into thinking that we are not prone to being deceived.

And so we confess our need for you to keep us from being deceived. Keep us, Father, from being duped by the Devil. Keep us from being deceived by the enemy within. Our pristine first parents, Adam and Eve—they were deceived. They believed satanic lies about you. They were deceived by devilish slander of your Word. They distrusted your infinitely trustworthy goodness. And they disbelieved your good Word.

So we ask you to keep us from trusting in our own wisdom. Keep us by your good Word from being deceived. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from [you,] the Father of lights.” And “with [you] there is no variation or shifting shadow.” Of your “own will [you] brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of [your] creation”—the new creation broken into this present world in the risen and exalted Lord Jesus.

And so in his risen life, participating in the new creation in Christ, we pray that we would be “swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; [knowing that] the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” We believe this, want to trust this. So help us to be ever ready to listen, especially to your Word. Slow to speak, that we might be ever ready to hear a word from you. And swift to hear, and slow to speak, that we might also be slow to anger.

And so, with your help, Father of lights, help us to "put away all moral filth and rampant wickedness" from our speech. All slander. All backbiting. All carping. All criticism. All fault-finding. Help us to put it all away, according to your Word: all harsh speech, all snide remarks, every lash of the tongue, every cutting, critical word. All, away! And help us, then, Father, to “receive with meekness the implanted Word [of God], which [alone] can save our souls.”

Save our souls, O God! Save us this morning by your Word! And make us “doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves.” Make us doers who act. May New Covenant Church become known as a church that does the Word! May we become, and be known as, the church that hears the Word of God and straightaway, without delay, does it! May we, being no hearers who forget but doers who act, may we thus “be blessed in our doing.”

Through our Lord Jesus we ask and pray, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. 

Don't Boast about Tomorrow, for Your Life Is a Mist

I'm not sure why I've never made the connection before, because it now seems rather obvious: Jas. 4:13-17 appears to be an unpacking of Prov. 27:1.

Sola Fide

No doubt many are aware that Luther's addition of the word "alone" in his translation of Rom. 3:28 caused quite a row. And to this day, it is frowned upon by Roman Catholics. A literal rendering of the verse reads thus: "For we reckon that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law" (translation mine). The word for "alone" is not there in the original. Yet Luther saw that the sense of the verse, the meaning intended, warranted it. 

But not all see this (I almost said, "not all have faith," 2 Thess. 3:2). Some still object to Luther's temerity to add a word where there isn't one to be found in the corresponding Greek. Moreover, increasing the temerity, it isn’t to be found anywhere in Pauline usage: Paul never explicitly says "justified by faith alone," or the like. To the shock of some Protestants, James alone does, only he adds the negative "not" to "justified by faith alone" (Jas. 2:24). But that's another post for another time.

So it'll be of interest to some that others preceded Luther in this "temerity": namely, Thomas Aquinas, Origen, Theodoret, Hilary, Basil, Ambrosiaster, Chyrsostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Bernard, and Theophylact (Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans, 360-361). These "fathers" used the "alone" language in their discussions of justification, and they weren't all expounding Jas. 2:24. It should be duly noted that Fitzmeyer, after listing these names in his commentary on Romans, appears to doubt the propriety of using "alone," stating that "it is a theological extension of Paul's teaching that presses beyond what he states" (362). He also asks "whether Luther meant by 'only' what his predecessors meant" (362). Nevertheless, such usage antedating Luther brings intrigue, even if only to point out that Luther was not the first to introduce it.

In any case, each has to reckon with whether or not Luther's translation and this Reformation sola bona fide comport with apostolic teaching. As for me and my house, the judgment of Moo undoubtedly stays the gospel course: “A serious erosion of the full significance of Paul’s gospel occurs if we soften this antithesis; no works, whatever their nature or their motivation, can play any part in making a sinner right with God” (Douglas Moo, Romans, 251).

What Is Worldliness?

David Wells on worldliness:

Worldliness is not simply an innocent cultural escapade, still less a matter merely of inconsequential breaches in behavior or the breaking of trivial rules of the church or the expected practices of piety. Worldliness is a religious matter. The world, as the New Testament authors speak of it, is an alternative to God. It offers itself as an alternative center of allegiance. It provides counterfeit meaning. It is the means used by Satan in his warfare with God. To be part of that "world" is to be part of the Satanic hostility to God. That is why worldliness is so often idolatrous and why the biblical sanctions against it are so stringent. "Do you not know," asks James, "that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4).  

Today, evangelicalism reverberates with worldliness. In first impressions, this worldliness does not appear ugly at all. Quite the opposite. It maintains a warm and friendly countenance, parading itself as successful entrepreneurship, organizational wizardry, and a package of slick public relations insights that are essential to the facilitation of evangelical business.

—David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 54. 

(Written almost twenty years ago, Well's analysis still holds profound relevance and insight for our worldly world. And I do not think that this indictment of evangelicalism has been adequately heeded. Worldliness so pervades the "evangelical" church that it is hardly ever identified as worldliness anymore.)

What is Necessary for a Good Prayer

Martin Luther was a man who knew how to pray. And so it is good to listen to his counsel on this matter. It is especially good for those of us who, with undoubtedly virtually every last modern American, scarcely know what it means to be devoted to prayer.

What follows is from the introduction to a sermon Luther preached in 1519 called "On Rogationtide Prayer and Procession":

Two things are necessary so that a prayer is good and so that it is heard. First, we must have a promise or a pledge from God. We must reflect on this promise and remind God of it, and in that way be emboldened to pray with confidence. . . . No one obtains anything from God by his own virtue or the worthiness of his prayer, but solely by reason of the boundless mercy of God. . . . Second, it is necessary that we never doubt the promise of the truthful and faithful God. . . .

Sounds like 1 John 5:14-15. Now meditate on Mk. 11:24; Lk. 11:9-13; Jas. 1:5-8. And pray.