September 11th, 2021

Last week’s writing started us in the Epistle of James, a writing to those who were scattered in the ‘dispersion’. This week’s reading is from the first part of chapter 3[:1-12]. Last week we looked at two significant commands in the first chapter, one was positive; and one, negative. (Do this; do not do that.) And what they commanded was comforting to those who were (and may still be) dispersed.

Commands are important for the Jews. Another thing that is important, that closely connects to commands, is the word ‘law’, and one of the more important meanings of this word is the first five books of the Old Testament. These books, as a whole, are also called the Torah (a Hebrew word), and this word has the meaning of instruction or teaching. The word Pentateuch may also be used to describe these books. This is a Greek word that means five books (or containers).

It is interesting how this word ‘law’ shows itself in this epistle. There are exactly ten uses of the word ‘law’. There are six occurrences in the first two chapters, and the first and last of these six occurrences both connect to the word ‘freedom’. And the last four occurrences happen in one verse near the end of the work.

What follows is a listing of these ten occurrences, along with a bit of the context (since sometimes another occurrence of the same word is close by), in a somewhat-literal translation [and the word ‘law’ will be in bold, and that will make it easier to find that word and to note the words around it; and there will also be some other ‘helps’ within the brackets]:

1:21-25 Wherefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of evil in meekness, receive the implanted word, the one being able to save your souls. And become doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves…. But the one having looked into law, a complete one, that of freedom, and remaining; this one, not becoming a hearer of forgetfulness, but on the contrary, a doer of work, this one will be blessed in his doing.

2:8       If indeed law you complete [or ‘finish’, ‘bring to an end’] a royal, according to the writing: “You will love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well.

2:9       But if you receive faces [show partiality], you work sin, being reproved by the law as transgressors.

2:10     For he was keeps all the law, but stumbles in one, has become guilty of all.
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2:11     For the one saying, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ But if do not commit adultery, but you murder, you have become a transgressor of law.

2:12     Thus you speak and thus you do as through a law of freedom, being about to be judged.

4:11     Do not speak against one another, brothers, the one speaking against a brother or judging him speaks against law and judges law; but if you judge law, you are not a doer of law, but on the contrary, a judge.

Since the word law is connected to freedom at its first mention and last—if the instances in James 4:11 are not included—it might be good to investigate that connection more carefully. (A look into the connection between the law and the word ‘complete’ will be next week.) It seems that, with the perspective of Acts 15, the law is strongly connected to the idea of freedom.

Before James gets up to speak in Acts 15, Peter speaks out against laws, and he describes them as a ‘yoke’ (verse 10), something that a farmer would use to hold some of his animals in such a way that they would do some difficult work for him. And then Peter says something that sounds like something St. Paul would have said (somewhat literally):

‘But on the contrary, through the grace of the Lord Jesus, we believe to be saved, in the same way as those also [Acts 15:10].’

His use of grace is obviously significant, and its connection to the ‘Lord Jesus’ helps to make that point. And what that means certainly becomes clearer in other parts of the New Testament.