Posts from February 2023

Peter’s brief letters are clearly intended to encourage and strengthen Christians who were facing the prospect of persecution for their faith in Jesus. A Jew from Capernaum in Galilee, Peter had been a fisherman before becoming one of Jesus’ first disciples, and was among His closest companions during the period of His earthly ministry. He was first directed to Jesus by his brother Andrew, and was the first of the apostles to openly confess his conviction that Jesus is the…

The simple lesson to be learned from James 4:11-12 is that Christians must not give in to the temptation of “measuring” others against ourselves. None of us sets the standard against which anyone else is to be evaluated. The “evil speaking” of vs. 11 represents the idea of incriminating someone else, of deliberately (and wrongly) damaging their reputation. James makes it plain that the “evil speaker” is putting himself in the place of God by doing so (vs. 12). Paul…

In James 3:1-12 the Holy Spirit inspired a warning (vs. 1) that actually introduces a lesson on the profound power of what we say! The commandment to “let not many of you become teachers,” along with the warning that those who do teach will be held liable for a “larger degree” of responsibility in judgement is NOT meant to discourage any Christian from sharing the gospel OR from ever becoming a “teacher” (one who shares knowledge of the gospel with…

Although there were two men among the apostles who bore the name James, it is generally accepted that the inspired penman of the new testament book of James was one of our Lord’s four half -brothers (cf. Mark 6:3). The apostles who shared this name are James the son of Zebedee (and brother to John, Matthew 4:21), who was killed by the order of king Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1 – Herod died in 44 A.D.), and James the son…