Sabbath: James, the Lord’s Brother
Read for This Week’s Study: John 7:2-5; 1 Cor. 15:5-7; James 1:3, James 2:5; 1 Pet. 2:9-10; Matt. 7:24-27.
Memory Text:
(John 15:14, NKJV).You are My friends if you do whatever I command you
We, today, are a long way from the early days of the Christian church, both time wise and culturally. Thus, we have little idea of what it was like to belong to the fledgling Christian movement at a time when many congregations met in homes, and most believers were Jews persecuted by their fellow Israelites. The letter of James gives us one of the earliest glimpses of Jewish Christianity before it disappeared in the fog of Jewish-Christian controversies and before the marginalization of the Jews by the predominantly Gentile church of the second century and beyond.
Unlike many of the epistles, it does not seem that some crisis or urgent need in a local church impelled James to write this epistle. Rather, it is written to the broader Christian community scattered abroad
(James 1:1).
Before we dive into his letter, however, this week we want to try to learn what we can about the author himself. Some of the questions we’ll address are: who was James? What was his background? What had been his relationship to Jesus? And what position did he hold in the church?
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, October 4.
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I thank God once again because He has faithfully guided us and seen us to another quater the last one in this year.
I like the fact that we are going to learn a book that will give us insight into the Christian walk. That James is a brother of Jesus and He appeared to him after resurrection in a special way gives us a promise of special pearls that we never understood from this epistle.
I believe that the Bible is God's inspired book and every part of it has special information designed to live perfectly as God desires until Christ's second advent.
It will be great to learn about one of Jesus disciples, one of the twelve. We will learn that James took a little different approach in his writings than Paul did. Much of James letters reiterated and amplified what Christ said in the Four Gospels. Do we know much about James other then he was the brother of Christ, the son of Joseph, who was the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus? We shall find out this week. He must have been involved in the early church. He took the gospel commission of Christ to heart, as we know Nicodemus did also after Christ assention. I am so glad that the book of James is a book in the Bible which was inspired by God. James indeed has a message for us as we shall see.
John, without making a big deal out of the matter, maybe we need to get a little fact about one small detail of James straightened out. He was not one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. As the lesson will no doubt make clear, during Jesus’ ministry James along with the rest of his brothers opposed Jesus, not to the point of persecution but they certainly didn’t openly support Him. “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’" (Mk 3:21 NIV). “For even His brothers did not believe in Him” (Jn 7:5 NKJV). James being the oldest and having gained the family inheritance after Joseph’s death would have been the one in charge of family business and to him Jesus apparently was an embarrassment to the family. Furthermore it seems that he and his brothers weren’t in the upper room right after the crucifixion, the first mention of them being with the disciples was after the ascension (Acts 1:13-14) which was 40 days later. We also have the list of the original twelve (Mk 3:14-19) and James the lord’s brother was not one of them.
One other little fact, after the ascension when the disciples were in the upper room they wanted to choose a replacement for Judas so Peter, bold as he usually was, addressed the assembly of disciples and said, "’Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.’ And they proposed two: Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias” (Act 1:21-23 NKJV). They chose Matthias by lot. So James was never one of the twelve and apparently was a late comer that gained faith some time after the crucifixion probably because it is very difficult to discount the testimony of over 500 people and seeing his resurrected brother in person.
It has come at the right time.
Thank to Tyler who has explicitly made us understand who James was.
hi Tyler.I have a problem when you suggest that James was the eldest brother to Jesus.I thought by the time Mary conceived Jesus she was still pure and had never known a man including Joseph.unless you're suggesting that Joseph was polygamous.
Hi, I am new here. In response to your posting there are those who think Joseph was married previously and his wife had died. The brothers of Jesus were of that 1st marriage.
As I've understood it, Mary was not Joseph's first wife. He was actually somewhat older than she, also. Evidently he already had other children before becoming betrothed to Mary the mother of Jesus. She herself had not been married before, and was a virgin. So these brothers would not be full brothers, but actually only blood relatives of Joseph their father [and of course this makes them no blood relation of Jesus' anyway, since Joseph was only his earthly stepfather but not his biological father].
This is such a timely lesson. As siblings we so often misunderstand each other. This can cause such strife in families. It seems as if Jesus and his brother made it to a place of mutual understanding, love and acceptance. There's a lesson here for us as a church family too. God bless
Thank-you Tyler for the correction. You are right.