Download discussion questions:  James 1:1-11

Our discussion last week barely got through the first four of the eight verses in the selected passage.  This week we picked up where we left off.

Three Themes

We started by looking at the first three paragraphs after the greeting in the letter.  The guidelines were:  What similar words or phrases are repeated?  What contrasting words or phrases do you see?  Based on those observations, we looked for titles for each of the paragraphs.  (If you were not with us, stop here and read the first chapter of James and write down the titles you would apply to those three paragraphs.)

Our discussion offered several suggestions:

We considered what value there might be in an exercise like this, giving titles to the paragraphs.  The inductive study method we are using often tends to focus on details, trying to see and understand as much as possible from the particular text we are looking at (in this example, eleven verses).  Considering paragraphs as a whole and how paragraphs relate to each other is an important step in seeing the broader context – of the chapter, the book, and the Bible as a whole.  To repeat the two-hundred year-old quotation from a German scholar on the back of every handout:

Read nothing into the Scriptures, but draw everything from them, and suffer nothing to remain hidden that is really in them.  J.A. Bengel (1687-1752)

Thinking about individual verses and sentences will help us grow in seeing the book as a whole.  Keeping in mind the book as a whole will help us understand individual verses and sentences.  We need to see both the forest (the whole letter) and the trees (particular verses).  The article, Structure in James?, offers some suggestions from several more recent scholars on how James might have been organizing his thinking (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) as he wrote his letter.  At least two of those suggestions focus on three themes repeated throughout the book:  Trials, Wisdom, and Wealth.  Over the next few weeks in our study, we can see if those themes are present, or if there might be other unrelated topics James addresses.

Trials

Last week we spent most of our time discussing trials and testing and how those two aspects are distinguished by the language James uses.  One person suggested that the group James was writing to,  the “Dispersion,” could be Christian believers who had scattered away from Jerusalem because of persecution.  The trials that those early followers of the risen Christ were experiencing probably were as confusing to them as present-day troubles are for us.  James wanted to provide encouragement, even in the irony in the face of trials to “count it all joy”.

Wisdom

Wisdom is needed to make the instruction to “count it all joy” more than an optimistic slogan.  It’s one thing to affirm that idea in a comfortable discussion group.  Actually believing in the midst of a life crisis is far different.  That belief, along with most things in the Christian life, requires supernatural intervention, a kind of wisdom only available from God (v. 5).  As we discussed last week, that wisdom only comes as we begin to value the “full effect” (v. 4) that God has in mind for us, Christlike character.  As long as our comfort and pleasant circumstances outweigh that spiritual formation, joy will be the furthest thing from our mind when trials arise.

James warns against doubt when seeking wisdom.  But which of us has not (does not) doubt?  So the question came up, is doubt a sin?  Or perhaps, is doubt itself one of the trials James has in mind in verse 2?  As one person pointed out, “pain is the birthplace of doubt.”  The pain of trials can cause us to doubt the goodness of God and the value of the “perfect and complete” plan He has for us (v. 4).  That distrust of His goodness would make it impossible to see past the pain into the joy He is leading us to.  One of the most important defenses against doubt are the believers in our life who know us and can help us remember God’s goodness when it (and He) seem distant or even nonexistent.

Wealth

Of the many sources of trials in the first century and today, the most common may be wealth – having it or lacking it.  Too often we think that if we only had the financial resources, we could eliminate this trial or that trial from our lives.  Perhaps part of the problem of doubt in God’s goodness is the belief that my wealth can enable me to deal with the trial without wisdom from God.

If it is accurate that the Dispersion of believers came from persecution, it is easy to imagine the wide disparity in wealth.  Some may have had to escape with the clothes on their back.  Others may have had resources they could take with them.  The trials could have included temptations to jealousy or envy between believers, so James describes what one of our members called the “status paradox.”  We discussed what James might have meant about the “brother in humble circumstances boasting in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation” (v. 9-10).  Once again, as in v. 2, James seems to use irony to cause his readers (like us) to think more deeply.

We began with the question of the meaning of “boasting” in exaltation or humiliation.  One person suggested having hope, and another related it to the beginning statement about joy.  The comment that seemed to resonate most (at least with me) was that boasting indicates the source of a person’s identity.  What I “boast” about defines who I am.  People can boast about their possessions or job or house when they believe those things will give them the most status in the eyes of those they want to impress.  James reverses any natural sources of identity.  The “lowly brother” should not see himself defined by poverty or assume a victim status as his identity.  Rather, his “exaltation” in being in Christ, in knowing the King of the universe, exceeds any other wealth.  Likewise, the rich person should never base his personhood on something as fragile as wealth that falls and perishes and fades away (v. 11).  The rich person’s relationship with Christ has humbled him.  He has recognized that even with his wealth, he is still completely dependent on God as the eternal source of his joy and satisfaction and identity.  James uses that “status paradox” to demonstrate that social position has no bearing, and the identity of the lowly and the rich comes only from a relationship with the Living God.