James

No. 420 James 5:7-11
James is writing to people who are suffering and waiting, and his counsel is to be patient, but he does not leave patience as a vague virtue. He gives it an image. Look at the farmer, he says, who waits for...
No. 683 James 3:1-12
James writes practical wisdom, and few chapters are as unsparing as this one on the tongue. He opens with a warning to would-be teachers, who traffic in words and will be judged the more strictly for it, and...
No. 918 James 2:1-7
James gets very practical about favoritism. Imagine, he says, a rich man in fine clothes and a gold ring walks into your assembly, and a poor man in filthy clothes comes in too. If you fawn over the rich man,...
No. 1251 James 2:8-13
James calls the command to love your neighbor as yourself the royal law, and warns that showing partiality breaks it and makes you a lawbreaker. He presses the seriousness of the law: whoever keeps the whole...
No. 1334 James 2:19-26
James presses his argument that faith without works is dead. You believe that God is one, he says; good, but the demons believe that too, and shudder. Do you want proof, foolish man, that faith without works...
No. 1347 James 3:13-18
James asks a pointed question: who is wise and understanding among you? And he answers it in a way we might not expect, not by pointing to cleverness or knowledge but to conduct: let him show it by his good...
No. 2000 James 4:11-17
James turns to those confident about their plans: come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into this city, spend a year there, trade, and make a profit. And he checks their confidence with a...
No. 2072 James 5:12-20
James closes his letter with counsel about prayer for every season: let the suffering pray, the cheerful sing, the sick call for the elders to pray over them. And he makes a striking claim about prayer's...
No. 2189 James 2:14-18
James presses a searching question about the nature of real faith. What good is it, he asks, if someone claims to have faith but has no works? Can such faith save him? He gives a vivid example: if a brother or...
No. 2247 James 1:19-27
James, having urged his readers to be doers of the word and not hearers only, gives a striking definition of what real religion looks like. If anyone thinks he is religious but does not bridle his tongue, he...
No. 2704 James 1:1-8
James writes to believers scattered across the empire and opens with a word that cuts against instinct: count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Not because the trials are pleasant, but because the...
No. 2732 James 4:1-10
James asks a blunt question and gives a blunter answer. Where do the fights and quarrels among you come from? From the desires at war inside you. You want and cannot get, so you fight; you do not have because...
No. 2774 James 1:9-18
James sets the poor believer and the rich one side by side and turns the usual ranking upside down. The lowly brother should glory in his high standing before God; the rich one in his humbling, because he will...
No. 3183 James 5:1-6
James thunders against the unjust rich. Weep and howl, he says, for the miseries coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, your fine clothes are moth-eaten, your gold and silver corroded, and their corrosion...