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Bible Study: Choices and Character in James, Part 1

Knight & Rose Show — Wintery Knight and Desert Rose
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Bible Study: Choices and Character in James, Part 1

June 21, 2025
Knight & Rose Show
Knight & Rose ShowWintery Knight and Desert Rose

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose explore chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of James. They discuss the book's author, James, the brother of Jesus, and his martyrdom. They examine themes such as endurance through trials, self-control, and faith vs. works. They also critique the prosperity gospel, warn against judging by appearances, and emphasize caring for orphans and widows, offering practical insights for living an authentic Christian life.

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Show notes and transcript: https://winteryknight.com/2025/06/21/knight-and-rose-show-65-choices-and-character-in-james-part-1

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Transcript

Welcome to the Knight & Rose Show, where we discuss practical ways of living out an authentic Christian worldview. I'm Wintery Knight. And I'm Desert Rose.
Welcome, Rose. So today,
I wanted to do an episode where we study the Book of James, which is in the New Testament. And if our audience remembers, we actually did one of these Bible study episodes before on my favorite book of the Bible, which is Philippians.
And that was episode number 18.
So we're going to do something in a similar format for this one, where we kind of look at the background of the book and explain all the conditions under which it was written. And then we're going to go through it verse by verse.
So it'll be pretty good for everybody, even if
you're doing some sort of chore. You'll hear the scripture, and then you'll hear the parts that were practical for us. So that's what's ahead, and we hope you enjoy it.
Excellent. Yeah, I had so much fun with the Philippians episode, so I was excited when you suggested doing a study on James. So why don't we start with talking about the author.
The author
of the letter of James is James the brother of Jesus. Okay, so that's not James the original 12 disciples. It's not a Zebedee or something.
Right, exactly. This is James the brother of Jesus. And if you recall, James was a skeptic during the life of Jesus.
He was not a follower of Jesus during Jesus' lifetime.
He was actually transformed through the resurrection appearances, which is indicated from the very early creed that we've talked about many times on this show, 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 through 7. And so he went from skeptic to passionate follower of Jesus and even leader of the church at Jerusalem, which was a very, very big deal. And James was actually martyred for his faith in A.D. 62 in Jerusalem.
He had 30 years to recant his message from the death of Jesus. He just had 30 years to decide this wasn't for him, but he kept it up for 30 years. I think that's significant.
Yeah, absolutely. And also I should say that this report about his martyrdom in A.D. 62 is not just in church history writings. It's also echoed by sources outside of Christianity, namely by Josephus and his antiquities of the Jews in he confirms James' martyrdom.
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. And actually, something I didn't know until recently was that James was killed by being thrown from the temple pinnacle and clubbed to death.
And this was for refusing to deny Christ. So you brought up that he had been a follower of Christ for about 30 years or so under very difficult conditions, had time to recant. Well, even here, if you think about it, what the leaders wanted was for the followers of Jesus to recant.
And so,
as he was being presumably tied up and led up to the top of the temple in the immediate face of impending death, he could have recanted during that time, too. It's not like he was just caught off guard and, you know, shot in the head from behind or something like that. But he did not recant.
And there there is reason why there is such a strong certainty and overwhelming confidence,
even among non-Christians, that James was a follower of Jesus and that he was martyred for his faith. So the audience here in this letter is Jewish Christians dispersed outside of Judea due to early persecution. The letter says that right up front near the beginning.
And it was written about AD 45 to 50. So it's among the earliest New Testament books. We're talking about within 15 years or so of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
Some of the themes in this book are things like that authentic faith produces good works, talks about controlled speech, controlling your own speech. Yes. That's such a good point.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
I love that.
It talks about wisdom and perseverance. So excellent, excellent book.
I'm really excited
about this one. Yes. And I want to make a point about this.
Since we've been interviewing Jay
Warner Wallace, and he talks about this chain of custody in his Cold Case Christianity, I started taking an interest in what the chain of custody is for a particular book. So there's several streams of preserving the documents from the author through history. And the book of James is in the Jerusalem or Judea chain.
So this is a very prestigious chain that is
right where the events happened. And it leads to authors you might have heard of like Origin and Eusebius. It's a chain that has enormous manuscript evidence.
So the reason we're talking about all
this is so that our listeners will go, Oh, I have to choose, you know, which books of the Bible to present to my coworkers, you know, to my non-Christian family members. And James is a powerhouse. Like you have enemy attestation, you have early attestation, you have extra biblical attestation, you know, you have great manuscript evidence, great chain of custody.
This is the book that is, you know, it's one of them that is very reliable. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're going to do is we're going to read several verses from this book and then comment on them.
We're not going to read every single verse. It's not because
we're trying to skip the hard verses or something like that. It's for the sake of time.
We're just
going to read the verses that we want to specifically comment on in a reasonable amount of time. So I'm going to start with chapter one, verses two through four, and then I'm going to skip down to verse 12. And I have a couple comments on that.
So starting in verse two, it says,
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So very countercultural, right? Count it all joy when you suffer. And verse 12 says, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
All right. So, you know, a lot of people today in Western culture, and this is
actually spreading throughout Africa and the global South throughout South America is the prosperity gospel. I really despise the prosperity gospel because it is a false gospel.
It is not
the true gospel. It promises people things that God did not promise. And so then when people are disappointed, they think, Oh, I can't trust God.
Well, it's not God who you can't trust.
It's the people who taught you the prosperity gospel. So just a quick point here, when people are quoting passages, you know, a verse here, a verse there to support some sort of idea that God's going to make you rich and healthy and free of any sort of pain or suffering.
If you have enough faith, those verses are almost always taken out of context for one. So we must read the verses in context. Also, it's more often than not, it's usually it's almost always, I would say, Old Testament passages that are quoted here.
So not only do we have to
take the context into consideration, but oftentimes we have to look and see, is he talking to the nation of Israel? Is he talking about flourishing a nation versus individuals? That is often the case. And certainly in a theocracy where everyone is on the same page with following the law of God, there was definitely more promise of thriving in this world. And, you know, we know that the more, the more an entire community, a nation walks with God, follows God closely, everyone's going to be generally better off.
That does not mean that we will never get cancer,
that we will always get the job we want, that we will always be wealthy financially in this world. And I'd say the New Testament reflects our time in our culture better than probably the Old Testament time and culture of the writing. So oftentimes what we have is spiritual rewards now, but also suffering now, and eternal joys forever on the new earth in the heavens and on the new earth.
Yeah, I would say you probably, if you're an authentic Christian, there's probably going
to be relationships you have where your reputation is a bit ruined. So I'm thinking about like one of my co-workers who has a, he just sent his daughter off to study biology at a university. And I said, hey, let me get you the comprehensive guide to science and faith because you're a Christian, you know, she's raised in a Christian home, I don't know what she is.
And he said, no,
I don't think I want to do that, you know. And another thing I said to him was, you know, what do you think about the fact that young people, look at this news article, I sent him a news article. I said, what do you think about this strong move to the left on policy of young women, you know, thinking of his daughter? And he said, oh, that's just the way things are now, they're different from how I grew up.
So the point of me saying this is not to pick on my co-worker,
it's more to say, my reputation is ruined with it. I'm not cool. I'm not going to be invited to play in his co-op game group.
You know, I'm not coming to his house for dinner, because I got an agenda
and my agenda ruins my reputation with him. And I think we should be, you know, like that you should be saying, my advocacy for bosses' priorities causes people to think I'm weird. And that's okay, because that's what James says is supposed to happen.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And as with happened to James and several others, it can be a lot worse than losing your reputation with non-Christians, right? Right, right. All right.
So my passage is from chapter one as well, but it's verses 13 to 18.
So let me just quickly read that. Let no one say when he is tempted, quote, I am being tempted by God, unquote, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
Every good gift and every
perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. So my comment about this is that our desires can be very dangerous.
They should be viewed with suspicion. We need to
make sure that our desires are aligned with God's character and his purposes in the world. What we don't want to do is have this kind of cosmic butler view of God, where it's our desires that are really leading, and God is really more like our servant, okay? And actually, I am seeing this a lot.
I kind of am aware of some of the trends that are going around
with young people. There's like a strain of people that are using or trying to say that with their thoughts, they can manifest outcomes because the universe will give them the goodies that they want if they just journal it. Or speak it.
And it's a very kind of new age
view that there's a long history of this if you look this up. But basically, the idea is that you can coerce the universe into giving you what you desire in a variety of ways. So people might have heard of the book The Secret and the Law of Attraction.
I could say a lot about this,
but what I want to say is that this is antithetical. Just read the Bible and see what you should be doing, and you will be more interested in desiring what God wants rather than thinking that God is going to give you what you want. Yeah, well, I was going to tell people just follow your heart.
What? No. You kind of ruined that. So I guess we're just going on.
Okay.
Yeah, you know, a lot of times people will ask me people who want righteousness and really want to please God will sit with and who tend to be kind of self condemning will say, you know, I'm just so angry at myself. I'm so frustrated.
I'd feel so hopeless because I, you know, sometimes
I have a desire and it's just it's not good. And, you know, young men will say, I notice a pretty woman. What am I supposed to do? Am I just condemned right then and there? Or, you know, I have this desire for something I probably shouldn't desire.
And they just seem really
frustrated with themselves. And I think about how we're human beings. I don't think we can prevent noticing someone who is attractive or noticing something that is beautiful or desirable or whatever.
But we see here in these in this passage, especially versus 14 and 15,
that there's kind of this process, right? We can notice something we could even desire it. But when we invite an inappropriate desire into our mind and we choose to entertain those inappropriate desires and dwell on them and enjoy them and have fun entertaining those thoughts and ask, you know, invite those thoughts back the next night or day or whatever. And that's when we start to see these desires give birth to sin.
So it's kind of like sin is the next stage
after a simple desire, right? That has a process of entertaining and then conceiving, giving birth to sin. And then sin can either kind of be nipped in the blood early on, or we can continue indulging in it. And then it grows and grows.
And when it's fully grown,
brings forth death in our lives, kind of a spiritual type death and sometimes even physical death, I suppose, depending on the sin. I think it's if you start to take action. I might have a crush on a whole bunch of writers from Daily Signal and the Federalist and all the Heritage policy analysts.
And then, you know, imagine in my head, oh, I'm going to write to them. I'm going to
write love letters to them and they're going to, you know, be so excited. But if I don't do anything about it, you know, then it's not a big deal because most of them are married.
So you just
want to keep right out of that. But that's, you know, that's the point is if you have an attraction or a temptation, you think about it, but just don't don't do anything about it, you know, do you find something else to do? You're adorable with the whole like, yeah, I have a desire to write a letter to a woman. That might have not been what I was thinking about, but I love it.
I love it. Right. Yes.
That's so sweet. Really sweet. So a couple other verses here.
I want to contrast this verse,
what it says about God, these verses with what Islam says about God, because I think a lot of people are listeners know that I studied Islam quite a bit, do a lot of ministry to Muslims and such. And in Islam, according to Islam, God actually Allah purposely leads people astray. I don't know if a lot of people know that, but the Quran is quite clear that Allah leads people astray on purpose, intentionally deceiving them.
He does tempt them and then he does condemn them
for what he has done by leading them astray and tempting them and causing them to sin. And so that is a huge difference between Christianity and Islam. I'll let you decide what you think is better.
And then also in Islam, God changes here. We read that with God,
the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. That's what James says.
Whereas according to Islam, God changes his morals, personality, his word, the
so he was an impersonal and non-relational entity of some sort before he created the universe somehow. And then ever since then, he does have a relationship with his people. They can't know him.
People can't know him, but he is, but it's like a master slave relationship as the Quran
describes it. The creatures that was created, we are all his slaves and he is the master. We can't know him just like slaves.
A lot of times I suppose don't, you know,
wouldn't know their master, wouldn't know them personally. But he also, Allah created mercy for himself. He created this characteristic of mercy for him at a point in time and gave some of the mercy to creatures and kept most of it for himself.
So his character changed. And then
of course we read a lot about abrogation of the Quran and Muslims will all tell you about that, that God has changed, Allah has changed his word over time within the lifetime of Muhammad. So, you know, if God's character and his word can change, then he cannot ground what is objective or universally true or universally objectively good.
He can't ground even the laws of nature.
So, I mean, what is good today or true today, according to Allah, could be bad or untrue tomorrow. So I think that's a significant point.
Big differences. Yeah, definitely.
Okay, so my next one is from chapter one still, but it's verses 19 to 21, and then I'm going to skip to 26 as well.
You can just go 19 to 26 if you're following along, but I'm going to,
I'm going to skip some in the middle. Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of a man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
And then verse 26, if anyone thinks he is
religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Wow, strong words. Yeah, the message I got out of this is about bridling your tongue.
Yeah. So I think the first part of that is if you're in a conversation with somebody, this is something I'm working on. Yeah, you should try to really try to listen in order to understand what they're saying, and don't interrupt them.
Even if you think you know what
they're about to say, don't interrupt them to finish their sentences. These are both things that I'm terrible at. I've been around a lot, done a lot of these conversations, you know, probably make your argument better than you can.
Don't believe what you believe,
so can make your argument better than you can. You kind of want to jump to the end. It's like, please stop talking.
I'll help you here. But it's very rude. Please don't do what I do.
Do something better than that. But back to the passage, be careful about being so busy that you get angry with people when they want to have like a long conversation or they make little mistakes. I think business can lead people to be snippy and stress.
So try not to do that.
I'm serious. You know what my life is like.
You know, I just don't take a lot of things on.
And then once in a while, we get a reader that's like, I want to get mentored. I want a book, you know, bought for me, you know, or something like that.
And it's like, I have lots of spare
time for people. Plenty of time for co-op gaming and, you know, going for walks and exercise. It really helps you to stay calm with people.
Yeah, I'm not so good at that one. That would
help. I tend to, I want to fit as much awesomeness as I possibly can into every single day.
So
I'm like, oh, I can do, I can fit in one more thing, five more things, 10 more things. It's boss work. It's kingdom work.
It's awesome. How can I say no? I'm like, you're kingdom work.
I just don't know my whole life of the night all the time.
But we're different in that way.
Exactly. But then you're calmer and more relaxed and more patient than I am because I'm like, the next thing's soon.
So hurry up. I know it's short notice, but I'm going to need
four hours of your time right now. It's like, yeah, that's great.
I'll have two hours left
over for Starcraft after that. So yeah. And the other thing is we have a rule, like this is my rule, but we have this rule between us, which is we don't criticize the other person for accidents.
You know, we only criticize for like a moral mistake. Like if you do something morally wrong, which, you know, you never do, but, but if you did, then I would, I would criticize you. But, uh, if, you know, you drop something, you know, on, on my foot or something like that, I would go, yeah, that's, you didn't mean to do that.
So just keep that in mind. Like it's
actually pretty important. People let stuff like that get on their nerves, you know, in relationships.
The person isn't breaking any moral rule. You have to let that kind of stuff
go. Now you might want to engineer a process where they get better at that, you know, like if they burned something, you know, baking you, you know, a chicken or something to eat, you know, if they burn it like five times in a row, you might say, okay, we need to settle down and we need to have it.
This is okay. You didn't do anything wrong, but let's have a process
where we work on this together. So it doesn't happen again.
And maybe it happens again,
but it'll happen less or less at a timer. Well, that's it. You go out and buy a timer for the other person.
You say, Hey, I bought you a timer. So engineer the solution so that you
don't get angry. Right.
Right. Excellent. Yeah.
And I think, I think, you know,
as far as bridle the tongue too, I mean, uh, James uses some pretty, um, powerful imagery and language about how destructive and unbridled tongue can be. When we just say everything we want, the second we think it, we don't evaluate it, you know, out of anger or frustration or feelings of disrespect or whatever. So I guess I would also just add to that.
We need to not be cruel
to other people. Certainly, as you mentioned, you know, when they make, when they make mistakes, even, even when they, they totally mess up morally, I would say there's no need for cruelty at all. We everything we speak needs to be out of a desire for the very best for others.
Yeah. You want to get the result you want. Yeah.
You want the result you want. So,
uh, I have a quick little funny kind of thing is kind of funny story, but, uh, yesterday I was, uh, training with four other friends from my martial arts school. We are all testing for our black belt next week, actually.
I'm so excited. And one of the people
who I train with is a 10 or 11 years old, and he has some trouble focusing sometimes. And so yesterday, you know, we, I was calling out the instructions, the commands and everything, and then we would all do them.
But at one point he was just kind of wandering around,
looking up at the ceiling and, and starting to tell stories and stuff. We were in a very limited amount of time. And I said, I said, dude, you need to focus.
We need to focus here. We've, you know, we're on a schedule here. And he goes, it's just really hard to focus without, uh, our lead instructor.
He said his name, you know,
here, you know, doing what he does, he just, he motivates me. And I happen to know that our lead instructor motivates by, uh, yelling at people. So I started yelling at the kid.
I'm like, do you really want your black belt?
I don't think you really want your black belt. Well, then why don't you act like it? Why don't you show me? And I just, I'm yelling at him and, uh, and he's just kind of like, so all of a sudden he got all motivated and he's like, yes, let's go, let's go. And so then I call out the command and he's like hitting it hard and going strong.
And all of a sudden, you know, just looking great. And he leans over to me, he goes, thank you. I really appreciate it.
It was so funny. So yeah, anyway, I was doing,
you know, I was yelling at him, but, uh, he told me that's how he's motivated. That's what helps him.
I have other friends who are like, look, I yell at myself all day long.
I don't want you yelling at me. Um, I need to know that I'm not the scum of the earth at every moment in time.
And I'm happy to be that as well. But yeah, whole point being
no need to be cruel to others as on social media. Obviously that's so common today.
We want to use evidence, not personal attacks. In fact, you look stupid when you just use personal attacks. Exactly.
Uh, when I, when someone calls me names, you know, I start,
my first thought is yeah, that's what you have to resort to because you don't have any evidence because, so let's go on to the next, uh, section here. Verse 27 says that religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, to keep oneself unstained from the world. And as we were reading, as you and I, uh, wintery were reading this together in preparation, you know, I, I thought, um, I said to you, wow.
Yeah. Our, our government sure does incentivize all the wrong things.
Yeah.
Why, why orphans and widows? Why does James like orphans and widows?
Yeah. So with a lot of things in life, people make really selfish, terrible, destructive decisions. And there are consequences for those decisions, but with orphans and widows here, and I would say particularly in that culture, but there's a lot that carries over to any other culture as well, orphans and widows are not in their orphan hood or widow hood as a result of their own bad decisions or selfish, uh, actions, right? Children lose their parents because the parents die.
Widows become widows because their spouse dies. And so people are
left without guidance, without parents, you know, without the support of family, without their husband or their wife cheering them on, uh, going through life with them, you know, helping working together to pay the bills or whatever the case may be, uh, to raise children. So these are people who are in difficult situations alone and perhaps lonely because of decisions that because of things that happened that were not their own decisions.
And so,
uh, I think, you know, that's a big part of, of course, um, you know, orphans and widows were probably were often in a much worse financial situation in the time of the writing of James. There are, uh, situations today in which, um, widows have, uh, more than a widow would have had in that time. But nonetheless, these are people left without the support that they were counting on and desired and chose because of circumstances beyond their control.
So, uh, it just reminded me though that our government incentivizes all the wrong things. Really, you know, if, if you're lazy enough to have no income, well, the government will just take the income from those who are working and give it to you. If you're jealous and greedy because someone else has more than you have, and you don't want to work to get what you want, the government will just, you know, take care of that for you.
If you're a single, uh, woman
who wants to go sleep around with a bunch of different guys and ends up with a bunch of different babies from different baby daddies, right? The government's going to take care of you for that. And they, they're not sending their, their money. The government's not sending your money, your tax dollars to orphans and widows as such.
And so I have, you know,
I've done a lot of work with refugees and several of them have told me that their highest priority is to choose jobs that pay little enough that they won't, uh, have their government payments taken away. In other words, they are committed to making sure that your tax dollars go to them. So they're not going to take a job that is too high earning because they want the government to continue to pay for all their expenses.
Wow. Um, this is not every refugee,
but several have told me this and they have said, yeah, everybody in the refugee community knows this. This is the first common wisdom that you're shared, that you're told when you arrive here, don't make too much money, let the government pay for you, which is just disheartening beyond belief.
But another example I thought of was, um, uh, with Obamacare, you know, when you're filling out Obamacare application and, uh, you tell them that you're a single, you tell the application form or whatever computer that you're a single woman, then after you tell them that you're a single woman, they'll, they ask, um, okay, well, how many children do you have? Because if you have children with no dad around, no father around, we'll give you a huge discount. If you have, they also asked, do you have any felonies? If you're a felon, we'll give you a huge discount. They also ask, um, are you native American? Because if you're native American, we'll give you a huge discount.
So people who, who are not sleeping around having babies with a bunch of different men, committing crimes and becoming felons or born with a certain ethnicity, pay full price while people who are making those bad decisions are subsidized heavily by everybody else. Just, it's just drives me nuts. No.
And a good expression to remember when it comes to these kinds of problems is
whatever you subsidize, you get more of and whatever you tax, you get less of. So what we're really saying, this is, this is important. There's a problem right now that we're facing today in our society about the declining marriage rate.
And that's because I was just reading a couple articles by Suzanne Venker, who is really
good. And she makes this case that, uh, when women advance in their educations and careers, they find it harder to find a man because they want a man who makes more than them. And so the higher up you go, the fewer men there are.
And so in this particular case,
what's happened is because we are taxing, you know, income at this large amount to give this generous, you know, social safety net to all of these people who I think are making often reckless decisions. What happens is those men that they would like to marry and, and, and feel comfortable with those men as a provider, they're getting rarer and rarer because they're just, they just, even if you're making six figures, you're losing 30% in taxes. Where's it going? It's going to the people that you were just talking about.
So then, you know, it's important for young people who want to get married someday and who are hoping to have, you know, maybe a young women, I should say, they should understand that being generous with your voting, you know, voting for a virtue signaling voting to feel better about yourself right now, voting to spend other people's money, voting to spend other people's money and pretending, yeah, you're generous. It does have an impact on the man that you are hoping to marry. He may only have an escape route for one, you know, in terms of his saving for retirement.
He may just say, I have enough for me to retire, but I don't have enough
for you and all these kids. Why? Because I've already given at the office to all these other causes. Yeah.
And, and just to kind of reiterate something that anyone who's listened to the show
for any length of time already knows is that you and I love voluntary generosity as the Bible commands. We both love giving. It's the, but we love the natural law principle of subsidiarity, right? The best person equipped to meet a need is the most local or smallest level.
So, you know, the family first, the local church, maybe second, the local government,
maybe third. And then, you know, eventually you get up to things that only maybe the federal government can do, but you don't take the federal government and say, let's make sure that everybody who makes under a certain amount of money gets, gets access to everybody else's money with no accountability whatsoever. That cannot be done well.
It is not effective. It is not helpful.
And it gives us more of the decisions, like you said, that we don't really want.
Yeah. All right. Let me move on to my next one, which is in chapter two.
And it's verses one
through nine. So let me try to read this quickly. So we keep things moving.
My brothers, show no
partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in. And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet.
Have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brothers has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him. But you have dishonored the poor man are not the rich, the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court. Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, which is you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.
But if you show
partiality, you're committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. So this is, for me, critical. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan.
I'm like Fazrana. Both of
us love Shakespeare. I didn't have the best wisdom growing up.
I didn't grow up in the church. And I
didn't have both my parents work. And so Shakespeare is like everything.
And one of the
biggest themes that appears in a lot of Shakespeare is the theme of appearance versus reality. Right? Yeah, just everywhere you go, people are saying this person has a good appearance, I should trust them. And then kapow, that person betrays them, you know? So it's really good.
Like one example is Macbeth with the King Duncan trusting Macbeth and Macbeth
having a good appearance, but actually plotting to murder the king and take over. So I think that this is really important. And today what we're seeing is an epidemic of what that Bible passage has talked about.
You know, men are rating women out of 10. I can't stand it.
You know, it makes me sick.
Please stop doing that. And women are saying, you know,
they're flipping through these dating apps and going, oh, if he's tall, you know, that makes me feel safe. So this is really important to me.
So just stop judging people
by their appearance. Think about what you want them to do. You know, like if you're a Christian, think about whether this person is good at being a Christian, good at loving other people, good at serving God, and evaluate them for their ability to do those kinds of tasks, just like you would evaluate a job applicant in an interview.
You don't go into an interview
and go, oh, I have a good first impression of you. You're hired. You know, that is the stupidest thing in the world.
Instead, say to them, you're coming in for a coding job.
You know, your clothes aren't that nice and your hair is a bit messy, but can you write code? That's what we need you to do. Yup.
Yeah. And I want to add a couple of things about this passage too. So the standard
for interactions for Christians and for everybody here as taught in the Bible is show no partiality.
When you're dealing with someone who looks different than you, who acts different, someone who maybe you're poor and they're rich or maybe they're black and you're white. Maybe they're a man and you're a woman or whatever. The standard is show no partiality.
So this is incompatible
with the spirit of the age of anti-racism, right? The Ibram X. Kendi garbage, which says that the way to deal with people today is to be racist against whites, to push down against and silence males and Christians. And God forbid that you're a white male Christian, you know, then you're really supposed to be silenced and suppressed and oppressed and not given jobs and that sort of thing. And this is supposedly, you know, anti-racism is actually obviously racism with the black, white issue, the skin color issue.
Definitely. And so the Bible
teaches a far, far superior ethic, which is to show no partiality to. So it doesn't, doesn't matter who's white and who's black, who's rich and who's poor, who's male, who's female, whatever else.
You, you do not favor people based on their superficial,
unchanging out of their control characteristics. Yeah. And so the character that matters, yes, the character that matters and whether they want to cooperate for you with you for the gospel.
That's, that's the measure of a man and a measure of a woman.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
And I also think it's, it's important here that James distinguishes
what is bad about the rich when he, when he condemns the rich in this example here, it's, it's not the mere fact that they are rich. It is not the case that the Bible prefers that or God prefers rich people over poor people or that he prefers as I more often hear from Christians that he prefers poor people. James explains what's going on here when he gives these examples of what makes the rich bad is not having lots of money in and of itself, but it's using their power to oppress other people.
So if you're, you know, if you, if
you've made a lot of money and you're using it for God's glory and you're being wise with it, and you're just, you know, that you recognize that you are a steward of a lot of extra resources and therefore have a lot of extra responsibility and probably more accountability to God for what you did with it. That's great. There's nothing wrong with being wealthy financially wealthy.
If you're using it to oppress people, silence people harm people, then yeah, that's who the Bible is talking about. That's certainly who James is talking about when he warns of wealth. And we've talked about in our socialism issues, episodes rather, about some of more of what was going on in some of those other passages.
Go back and listen to those. Those were really good. And we did make, you did make that point in that episode.
Let me just give you a quick example. So
the secretary of energy right now is a guy named Chris Wright. He has a million degrees in engineering from places like MIT.
And he's probably wealthy because his background is private
sector energy development. So should I fear him because he has more money than me or should I think what his thing is, is like, Hey, WK, I'm going to bring in some nuclear power and you're going to pay less for electricity. I'm like, Oh, I'm so scared.
I'm not scared. Okay.
The guy I'm scared about is like the Canadian Liberal Party prime minister right now, who's saying we're going to net zero or we're going completely off of coal and gas.
You know, you're going to drive a, a, um, a horse drawn cart and like it. This is the guy who wants to coerce me. He's the one who's going to drag me into court.
You know, he's the one who is going to oppress me. So money isn't the issue. It's whether the rich person is going to try to make my life better or whether they're going to try to use the law and power to constrain me and, you know, take away the money I want to give to people or, you know, things like that.
That's the concern.
Yep, exactly. So let's go on to the next few verses in chapter two, verses 10 through 13.
They say for whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not commit murder. If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
So speak and so act as those who
are to be judged under the law of Liberty for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment. So again, just the important point here, any violation of the law makes us guilty and in need of grace, in need of a savior. So, I mean, in some respect, we are all the prodigal son.
We are all that one lost sheep that
Jesus comes after when he leaves the other ninety nine. We or we were at one point before Jesus found us and before we became Christians. So there's just no room here for pride.
If we say that we have been perfect, that we have never violated the law, we are liars. And and so just a caution for those who maybe have always kind of followed the rules, always impressed people and done what other people think is so good compared to God's righteousness, God's holiness. We are all sinners in desperate need of a savior.
Definitely. All right. So mine is my next one is chapter two versus fourteen to twenty six.
Let me try to move through this quickly. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body. What good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead.
But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one.
You do well,
even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works and the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone and in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way.
For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works
is dead. Yeah, so this is a big one, very contentious between different factions. On the surface, on the surface.
On the surface, that's right.
So yeah, I really recommend R.C. Sproul on that, but maybe we can kind of summarize it. Let me make my point first.
So my point about this is that whenever you're talking about actions,
this is why we care so much about politics, why we care, why I tell everybody take your education seriously, you know, do your reading and think about what you're going to study in school, think about what kind of job you're going to get and have control of your spending, your desires and how you spend money. The reason why is because when the standard is put your faith into practice with actions, then you have to be, I think, strong. Like if I sent out a soldier on the battlefield and I just he has a uniform, but he has no weapon, no ammo, no ammunition.
You know, he has no radio to call in air support. He has no map.
You know, I can I can I can completely disarm this guy and then say now get out there and fight.
I'm giving you words. Right. I'm telling you.
So he doesn't have the resources he needs
to take action. And suppose he comes across another soldier who's run out of bullets. If he has extra bullets, he can say here have a magazine, a couple of extra magazines, or I have a radio, you know, I'm going to I have things that are going to help you so we can be partners and get something done.
So I always tell Christians don't be led by your
feelings and don't follow your heart. You're responsible for acting. And so that means you have to be responsible to build not just your your money with your education and career, but your knowledge through reading and also your wisdom, you know, understand why a certain thing like gambling is wrong, you know, understand why you don't judge women based on just their appearance, you know, and start trying to pursue them because you like their appearance.
You should you should read about studies and kind of govern yourself that way.
And if you live wisely like that, then you build up a supply of books and wisdom and money and then and then when you see somebody who is in need, you can say to them, I'm going to perform this action to supply you to support you, you know, and that's a way that's the way that boss gets a benefit because the team is stronger and that makes the kingdom of God, you know, stronger. I love it.
Very practical as always. I love that. I'm going to take the theological issue.
Yeah. Oh, great. Great.
So the heading in most Bibles here, which is not part of the scripture, but was a later added heading is is faith without works is dead. But that is a that a quote. Is that in there? Those exact words? It does say faith apart from works as dead in verse number 26.
There. Yep. There it is.
Okay. Yeah. So throughout the scriptures, we read that we are saved by
faith.
We are justified by faith justified. In other words, declared righteous and just
before God and by God. And that is by faith through faith, by grace, by God's grace alone, not by our works.
And then we come here and we see James saying, you know, that works are so
important. And we see he talks about Abraham's works and Rahab's works and even says, you know, Rahab the prostitute justified by works. Right.
Exactly. So what is going on here? Is this a
contradiction within the scriptures? Absolutely not. So I'll explain.
We are justified by faith before God, just as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. We first read that in Genesis 15 verse six, that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. So he was made righteous by God's declaration because he believed God.
He trusted God. Okay. So a friend of mine posted on us on social media
a few weeks ago, this quote, she said, being saved by grace means you didn't do anything to deserve it, not that you don't do anything in response.
Oh, that's it. Exactly. So I really like that.
So
when we've been justified by faith before God, there is an expected response. So obviously, certainly, don't you think, you know, if I was drowning in a river that's carrying me along and threatening my life and somebody comes along and rescues me and saves me and takes me to the side of the water. And I know that that he has just saved my life.
I'm going to have a
certain response, right? I'm going to have gratitude. I'm going to say thank you over and over. I'm going to offer to buy him lunch or a new car or I don't know, what do you want? You just saved my life.
Maybe he has like a favorite sports team and suddenly you become
a fan and tell everyone his team is great because that's what he likes, you know? So you're like, well, what you like is what I like, you know, and I'm going to cheer for your team, you know? Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's, yes, there's going to be some sort of response that is appropriate if our, if we're, our mind is functioning with some degree of normalcy and health and wellness.
Right. So same thing here. We trust God because we realize he's trustworthy.
He didn't even spare his own son, but gave him up for all of us. So Romans eight 32 says, you know, since he didn't spare his own son, how will he not also along with his son, graciously give us all things of course? Yeah. He didn't spare the very best, most precious, most amazing thing he had.
So why would we think he's going to withhold any other good thing from us? He is
trustworthy. He is reliable. And so when he commands us to trust him and he tells us what's good, then we put our trust in him.
We can trust him with that. He's the one who saved us. He's the one who
took care of our biggest problem.
You know, I've talked about this before where I, you know,
there have been times when I thought something was my biggest problem in the whole world, a death of a loved one, a, the flooding of my house, a terrible cough or health issue with no idea of what was wrong or how to do anything about it or, you know, and I'm thinking my problems are huge. And then the Holy Spirit reminds me, no, that's not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is your sin.
And I've, I've taken care of that for you. I've paid the penalty
on the cross for you. Obviously that's going to result in a certain response from me.
Okay. And
so God has given us a heart that desires righteousness. And if justification has occurred by faith, there will be a response.
So James gives a couple of examples of what this looks like.
He gives an example from the life of Abraham, who he's just told us was justified by faith alone. And then he gives us another example to teach the result of the response of faith of that justification.
Rather. He says Abraham was even willing to sacrifice his own son. Okay.
So
Abraham trusted in God. He was willing to sacrifice his son because he's already been justified. God has already given him everything.
He's already taking care of Abraham's biggest
problem, which is his sin. And so this event demonstrating Abraham's justification to people occurs at least 25 years later after his justification before God by faith alone. About 25 years later, he's trusting God with his own, with his only son and putting Isaac into God's hands and saying, I will obey you.
I will do whatever you want,
even if it means losing my own son. And so as R.C. Sproul talks about, you know, our justification by faith is before God. We are made righteous before God.
But when
after that occurs, our works is kind of our justification before others. It shows others and shows God, but primarily shows others what God already knows that we are truly God's. We are truly justified because, you know, this response is the appropriate response of someone who has been forgiven.
Obviously, this doesn't mean that God will heal every affliction,
that he will heal every addiction, that we will never struggle again, that we will never sin again, that will never fall short again. Obviously, that's not the case. Sanctification is a lifelong process, but there will be fruit that is evident to others.
Yeah, definitely. And I think when you're in a context of a relationship with God, like the more stuff you do together, or the more you kind of put yourself second, put the other person first, it builds a history, you know, between the two of you. And so you don't want to shy away from these actions.
It's one thing to have warm
thoughts about somebody. But when you actually say, hey, I know you, you know, like I said, go to a, go to a football game with God. You don't really like his team, but you're like, you standing up cheer, you wave a big flag, you study up before the games, let you understand what's happening.
This is all part of the friendship. This is all part of the relationship.
So we don't want to, we don't want to miss out on this.
And then if you believe in
rewards in the afterlife, you know, as I do, definitely these good works don't save you, but they have an effect on what kind of afterlife you're going to have. So I think definitely make every effort to add actions onto your beliefs. Store up treasures in heaven.
Yeah, store up treasures in heaven. All right. So we're definitely going to need a part two because we got chapter three, four, five left.
So listeners tune in next time. But for today,
we need to stop. So listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider helping us out by sharing this podcast with your friends, writing us a five star review on Apple or Spotify, subscribing and commenting on YouTube and hit the like button wherever you listen to the podcast.
We appreciate you taking the time to listen and we'll see you again in the next one.

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