Introduction: Meet James - The James Code

Allow me to introduce you to James, the writer of the New Testament letter that bears his name.

I want to begin by telling you who he is not. The James I want you to meet is not the more well-known James of the Gospels—one of the Sons of Thunder, the brother of John the Beloved, and the fisherman son of Zebedee. That more well-known James often found himself in the inner circle, one of three men with whom Jesus often chose to be during His most significant and unforgettable moments, there on the Mount of Transfiguration and in Gethsemane’s dark garden that fateful night. Shortly after the ascension of the resurrected Jesus, this James of the Gospels met a martyr’s death by the sword of King Herod. He was the first apostle to die for his faith.

The James I want you to meet was not in our Lord’s inner circle, but probably no one knew Jesus in a more up-close- and-personal way than this James did. The James whose words we will explore during the next few weeks was, in fact, Jesus’ own half-brother, the natural-born son of Mary and Joseph. Literally, our James was Jesus’ little brother. They undoubtedly spent years sharing the same room, playing together on the dusty streets of Nazareth, and working side by side in their father’s carpentry shop.

During Jesus’ earthly life, James apparently could not bring himself to believe that his Brother was the long-awaited Messiah. James didn’t become a believer until after the resurrection. According to Paul, after Jesus rose from the grave, “he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:7 NIV). Somewhere, privately and personally, before the risen Lord revealed Himself to any others, He met with James—and His little brother’s life was never the same. After his encounter with his older Brother, with the victorious-over-death God-man, James grew in faith, became the undisputed leader of the Jerusalem Church, and convened the Jerusalem Council to determine whether Gentiles needed to follow the law of Moses and Jewish traditions in order to become followers of Jesus (Acts 15). The apostle Paul referred to James as a pillar of the church (Galatians 2:9). And tradition tells us that James was so devoted to prayer that he was given the nickname “Camel Knees” because of the calluses resulting from the hours he spent on his knees.

Today we are two thousand years removed from James’s writing, yet his letter remains as relevant to us as the Internet’s morning news. Why? Because in these 108 verses is a sort of code—a James Code—that outlines how we can put our faith into action in the normal traffic patterns of everyday life. If you’re like me, your challenge is not knowing what Christ calls us to do, but actually doing it; the challenge is practicing with our lives what we know in our minds and proclaim with our lips. In every paragraph James reminds us that when we are walking in the Holy Spirit, we will not be wearing out the seats of our pants but the soles of our shoes. James challenged us to put shoe leather to what we say we believe. In his own words, we who name Jesus our Savior and Lord are to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). The importance of being doers was powerfully illustrated for me on the other side of the world.