Welcome to Day 2119 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

James – Wisdom is Faith in Action 1 – Who is James – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 09/05/2021

James: Wisdom is Faith in Action – Who is James?

As mentioned last week, we are beginning a new series today on the Proverbs of the New Testament, better known as the book of James. This letter is chockfull of practical wisdom on how to live the life of a radical disciple. Today I want to provide a background of who James is, and why he is so uniquely fit to author the first book written in the New Testament. Since most of the lesson today sets the stage for our study through James, which may take many weeks to complete, we will only cover one verse today, James 1:1. Thus, this lesson will be somewhat academic in nature before we explore the depths of the wisdom found in James. James 1:1 (NIV) James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings. James 1:1 (NLT) This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am writing to the “twelve tribes”—Jewish believers scattered abroad. We live in a world where politics rules the day. In this world, a person’s public reputation too often drowns out the private reality. Who you know usually trumps what you know. Name-dropping often gets you farther than talent or skill. These cynical sayings not only apply to the political realm, where quid pro quo is the status quo. Unfortunately, the “good ol’ boy” system also tends to corrupt most areas of business, academia, entertainment—and, yes, even the church. This is why the opening words of the book of James are so refreshing. Like a cool spring breeze blowing through a musty room, the unassuming nature of these first few words drives out arrogance, ego, and presumption. Written by a man who could have dropped the Name Above All Names, this simple, straightforward greeting sets the tone for a letter that assaults our natural human tendencies toward sin and selfishness with a radical message of authenticity and humility. That begs the question, which is today’s message titled “Who is James?” From the very first phrase, the name “James,” this short letter presents us with a problem: Which “James” wrote this letter? Unfortunately, his humble self-identification as “a bond-servant (or slave) of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1) doesn’t get us far. So, unless we were among those first recipients of the letter, we are left to some old-fashioned sleuthing to determine which James penned these words. If you run through the New Testament, you’ll come across four men with this name. It’s relatively easy to rule out a couple of these. First, James, the father of Judas (not Iscariot), never appears in the New Testament except in Luke 6:16. James, the son of Alphaeus, is probably the same as “James the Less.” Although he is one of the Twelve, he disappears from the biblical account after the upper room experience on Pentecost (Acts 1:13). So these two can be safely dismissed as unlikely candidates for authorship. This leaves James, the son of Zebedee and brother of the apostle John, or James, the half-brother of Jesus. Though the first James, a “Son of Thunder,” played a significant leadership role in the infant church as one of Christ’s inner three (Peter, James, and John), he was the first of the Twelve to suffer martyrdom under Herod Agrippa I. That occurred around AD 44 in persecution that resulted in further...