TRUE OR FALSE Week 47

It's always interesting to see how others view you. An example of how Christianity is seen is from a well-known Jewish scholar Dr. Lawerence Shiffman. He has several things to say against Jesus and Christianity but they all seem to depend on one point.

He says Christian writers living 50 years after the death of Christ made up the gospels to appear to agree with OT prophecies.

Now if this is true, the epistles written before the gospels would not have any similiarity to them.. Since the historians say James was martyred in AD 62, his letter must have been written before then. Shiffman states that the gospels were written after that, to appear to make the life of Christ a fulfillment of OT prophecy. If this is true, James' epistle would have no relationship to Matthew's gospel.

So what do we find in James?

We know that when Jesus came, He came preaching the kingdom of God, not salvation or last things. Most of us recognize that the Sermon on the Mount is the Lord's great explanation of the kingdom which He brought and taught. But this kingdom is not just precepts but actions in the real world. Christianity according to Jesus is not just something you believe, but something you do.
Jesus uses some word pictures to say that. He says, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid...Let your light so shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven, Matt. 5.14-16. That is an obvious call to make the kingdom of God apparent and visible to anyone and everyone in society.

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When we go to James 1.22, James says the famous line, But prove yourselves doers of the word, 1.22. He has learned from Jesus that the kingdom must be seen, it must be in front of an unbelieving society. It is the be presence of God before the world. Peter Marshall, chaplain of the Senate in the 1940s, once said his task as preacher was to enable people to see Jesus. This means to make Christianity something you do, not just something you believe.


In the literature of the ancient classical world, when a poet uses an extended metaphor he means to put something deep into the soul. this extended metaphor is saying the same thing more than once, using different images. When Jesus wants to speak against anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount, He uses 9 consecutive verses to do so, Matt. 6.25-34. So when James does the same thing in James 1.22-27 we should sit up and hear. He begins with hearing and then doing the Word. He goes on to a man looking at himself in a mirror; then he goes on from looking in a mirror to looking at the perfect law of Jesus and abiding in it. Then he goes on to controlling the tongue; and finally he mentions taking care of the widows and orphans as pure religion. James has gone from hearing to looking to abiding to controlling the tongue to aiding the widows and orphans.

You see what James has done? He has taken us from the inner quality of believing the Word to the outward gesture of taking care of others. He has taken Matthew 5.14 as a principle to be applied in his own day and time.

But that is only one instance, without a real close phrase or word linking James with Matthew. So let's look on.

In Matthew 5 Jesus will then mention five famous points of the Law: adultery, divorce, vows, and revenge (an eye for an eye), and loving your neighbor. Jesus will address each of these as indicating the sin in the heart which must be brought out to be forgiven. The role of the Law is to bring these inner things out into the open.

Does James have anything similar to this? Let's look at Matthew 5 and James 2.
In Matthew 5.25, 26 Jesus says if a man has a dispute with an opponent Jesus says, Make friends quickly with your opponent...in order that your opponent may not deliver you to the judge and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. This is what happened to people who did not have money for a legal defense.

James says in chapter 2 to show no favoritism to the rich because if you do, you have become a, judge with evil motives, James 2.4. Then James says, God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? And then James says what Jesus had said in Matthew 5, Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court, James 2.6.


Now let's look at Matt. 5.17-19 and James 2.10, 11.
In Matt. 5.17 Jesus says, Whoever annuls the least of these commandments and teaches others shall be the least in the kingdom of heaven...unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven... Matthew 5.20.


James 2.10 says, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. James knows this brings up the question, How could someone be guilty of transgressing the whole law, yet have righteousness which surpasses the scribes and Pharisees? James says, by obeying the law of liberty, James 2.12. What is that law? Paul says in Romans 8.2 that it is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus which has set us free from the law of sin and death. James then says in 2.25 that we abide by the law of liberty by being a doer of the word, not just hearer.

Our conclusion is that the gospels were not written later than James to fabricate a certain kind of Jesus, but that James knew what his brother Jesus taught, he knew what the gospel of God was, he understood the kingdom of God.