Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without being aimed at anything in particular. With such a notion, the epistle of James (along with other wisdom literature) is more like the scattering of shot from a shotgun than the precise round of a sniper.
We might consider a few examples. When James refers to “trials of various kinds,” he might just as easily be aiming at cancer as he is at persecution. “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life”—obviously referring to the Church’s indefinite trudging along in history to the end of all things, when Jesus finally comes back to take us all to heaven. “[I]f 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?” Thus saith James, and Marx may as well have imitated the sentiment against the bourgeois.
And on and on it goes, with one inspired aphorism after another, to be applied at will for as long as the Church shall face “trials of various kinds” in every age and context. But is that really all there is to the epistle of James? Was James merely taking a shotgun approach, scattering his wisdom far and wide with the hope that something might catch? Or was he taking aim with all the precision of an expert sniper? While the “shotgun approach” to the wisdom of James (and other wisdom literature) may yield a thousand sacred sweets, if it misses the precise aim that James intends, it becomes a much less effective approach than we might assume. If we are, in fact, missing the precise aim of James, then we are in danger of misapplying his wisdom to our own time. Or in the very least, we are in danger of applying it less effectively.
As with many places in Scripture, context is key. If we consider the context that was faced by the Church when she received this epistle, I believe we will be in a good position to perceive the expert marksmanship of the wisdom of James. His wisdom was timely—precisely because it was aimed, first and foremost, at the issues of his own time.
While there are many places we might turn to in order to establish the context of his recipients, in the present article we will briefly consider three different Scriptural references: the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Lk. 16:1-8), the warnings of Christ about the coming Tribulation (Matt. 23-24), and the Diaspora of the Church (as recounted in Acts 8:1 and 11:9). While this scattering of passages itself might seem more like the spread of a shotgun, our goal is to demonstrate how these passages can be considered together to show the context of the Church as James knew it.
The Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8)
The first passage we will consider is the Parable of the Unjust Steward in Luke 16. In James Jordan’s article on the parable, it is suggested that the Master in the Parable is God, the Steward represents the religious leaders of Israel, and the debtors are the poor.1 In context, Jesus is telling the parable to His disciples, but the reaction of the Pharisees in verse 14 makes clear that they were well within earshot and understood it to be aimed at themselves. Jordan explains that the rich man (God) is notified of the unfaithfulness of his steward or household manager (the Pharisees). Because of this, the rich man (God) requires the account of the steward’s management, with a clear declaration that the steward (the Pharisees and religious leaders in Israel) can no longer be steward.
At this point, the parable shifts. The steward ceases to represent the Pharisees as they are, and instead begins to represent the Pharisees as they should be. The steward recognizes that once he loses his stewardship, he will lose not only his job, but also his home. Too weak to dig and too ashamed to beg, he realizes that he will become a homeless man. To avoid this, he devises a plan so that he will be received into the houses of his benefactors. Summoning his master’s benefactors, the steward reduces their debts, making friends by means of unrighteous mammon. Thus, the master commended the steward for his shrewdness. The steward, by his shrewdness, gained himself a home.
The Pharisees, representing the steward, were indeed unfaithful with the stewardship of their master’s house, as we shall soon discover from Matthew’s gospel. Because of this, God was about to bring a changing of the guard, and they were in danger of becoming homeless. They should have learned from the parable of the danger they faced, and used their own covenantal gifts to bless the very poor of God’s people whom they were oppressing. If they would only do this, they would be received into the eternal dwellings in the coming kingdom of God.
To be fair, a fellow Theopolitan, Matthew Arildsen, has pointed out that the particular amount of debts that were owed to the Master may actually suggest that the debtors were not strictly poor, and it may be that the Master represented the king of the oikoumene, a perspective we do not have time at present to fully unpack.2 Whatever the case may be, there can be little doubt that Jesus was warning His disciples not to be like the Pharisees, who should have used what gifts they had to make friends that would receive them into their houses. From the Parable of the Unjust Steward, we gather that the religious leaders in Israel had been unfaithful, and were set to lose their stewardship and their home as a result of their unfaithfulness. This forms one aspect of the context faced by the Church to whom James addressed his epistle.
But the question remains: why was there a need of friends who would receive the steward into their homes in the first place? Why would the Pharisees and scribes, or any other Old Covenant saint for that matter, need new homes? Weren’t they supposed to be keepers of the house, or the Temple? Does this mean that they were going to lose stewardship of the house of God? To get a clearer grasp of this, we must consider our second Scriptural reference from Matthew’s Gospel, especially chapters 23 and 24.
Jesus Warns of the coming tribulation of the Church (Matthew 23 & 24)
Matthew 23:1–12 opens with Jesus warning the crowds and His disciples about the ways of the scribes and Pharisees. They have been preaching, but not practicing. They—like the Unjust Steward in Luke 16:3—are too weak to move the burdens they place on others with so much as a finger. They are also too proud to beg—that is, to stoop down from the glories of their phylacteries, fringes, places of honor at feasts, greetings in the marketplace, and honorable titles. They are the covenantally rich, even the rich to whom James refers in his epistle, as Jeff Myers has pointed out.3 Over and against these covenantally rich, Jesus proclaims to those who hear that the greatest in the coming kingdom shall be servants. He warns that those who were exalting themselves as the end of the age drew near were about to be humbled, while those who humbled themselves were going to be exalted.
Then in verses 13–36, through the proclamation of six woes, Jesus makes clear that the Pharisees and scribes, by and large, were not going to repent. If the unjust stewards would repent of their wickedness and use their gifts to bless the poor among God’s people, they would not be left homeless in the changing of the guard soon to come. But Jesus says they were going to do no such thing. In fact, their hardness of heart was only going to worsen, as each of the woes makes clear. Of particular note for our consideration is the sixth woe in verses 29–35, where Jesus says that the Pharisees were no different than their fathers who murdered the prophets, and they were going to do so again. Only this time, the prophets were going to be sent by Jesus. It’s important to note that when Jesus mentions the “prophets and wise men and scribes,” He is talking about the earliest members of the Church, those He would send after His death and resurrection and ascension. These “prophets and wise men and scribes” of the early Church—many of whom formed the target audience of the epistle of James—were going to face increasing opposition by the old guard in Israel.
What exactly would the covenantally rich do to these early members of the Church? Jesus says, “some of [them] you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth,” from A to Z, Abel to Zechariah. Jesus says that all of this would come upon the generation that stood before Him, listening to His words. The Church to whom James wrote would face “trials of various kinds”—in particular: death, crucifixion, flogging in synagogues, and persecution from town to town.
Then in verses 37–39, Jesus mourns over the city of Jerusalem, whose hardness of heart throughout the ages was about to reach its climax. And note what Jesus says the end result will be: “Your house is left to you desolate.” Ultimately, Jesus is the Master warning the Unjust Steward that his gig is up. The steward could no longer remain steward over God’s house. This is why the Pharisees and scribes needed to repent of their oppression and make friends who would receive them into their homes, into the eternal dwellings of the Church. Jesus says that once the righteous blood has been filled up, the unrepentant scribes and Pharisees will be left with a desolate house. They will be covenantally homeless when their Temple is destroyed. This bookends one of two key points in history: the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ on the one end, and the desolation of the Old House or Temple on the other.
In Matthew 24, Jesus goes on to warn His disciples and the firstfruits Church about the tribulation that would come between those two points of history. He warns of the increase of tribulation for the Church, leading up to the time in which not one stone in the seemingly glorious Temple would be left upon another, along with instructions for those in Judea to flee to the mountains when they see the signs of His coming. In the meantime, Jesus warns His Church to stay awake and be ready as a faithful and wise servant. Those who obey are going to be set over all the Master’s possessions.
This firstfruits Church is the Church to whom James wrote. They were the new stewards to whom the Master was about to entrust the stewardship of His house. They were the prophets and wise men and scribes who were to learn from the shrewd steward in Luke 16: use God’s gifts to bless the poor among His people, or find yourself covenantally homeless.
The Diaspora of the Church (Acts [6:8 to] 8:1; 11:19)
As Jeff Myers confirms, the epistle of James was indeed written specifically to this firstfruits Church, the Church as she was found between the death and resurrection of Christ and the desolation of the Temple.4 Even as James opens his epistle, the epistle of James was written “To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion.” This reference provides another contextual clue, making clear that James is aiming his wisdom with much greater precision than a shotgun. This is not some metaphorical “Dispersion of the Church” in every age. It is the historical Dispersion of the Church, part of the ever increasing trails in the Tribulation of which Jesus warned. The events leading up to the Dispersion of the Church are clearly recorded between Acts 6:8 and 8:1. After the martyrdom of Stephen, we are told that “there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” We’re told further in Acts 11:19 that these brothers spoke “the word to no one except Jews,” which may very well explain why James would address them as the “twelve tribes in the Dispersion.” James was writing to a largely Jewish Church, facing serious tribulation, even the Great Tribulation to which Jesus referred in Matthew 24.
James the Sniper
As we mentioned earlier, there are certainly more places to which we could turn to flesh out the context of James, but hopefully these provide ample food for thought and further consideration. The Church to whom James wrote was about to receive stewardship of God’s house. They were to learn from the Parable of the Unjust Steward what becomes of those who oppress God’s people. They were to beware showing partiality to the covenantally rich, while placing the poor at their feet. Their “trials of various kinds” were part of the great tribulation that Jesus foretold, even persecution at the hands of the old stewards—the religious leaders in Israel, the covenantally rich. The one who remained steadfast under such trials would indeed be blessed to receive the crown of life—not just the reward of eternal life at the end of all things, but reception into the eternal dwellings of the coming kingdom, just like the shrewd steward from the Parable.
And on and on it goes, with one expertly aimed shot of wisdom after another. So much for a timeless collection of wise sayings! When we consider the context of the early Church to whom James addressed his epistle, we begin to realize that he was a sniper of expert marksmanship. If we will only take the time to consider his writing as aimed at the issues of this firstfruits Church, we will find ourselves blown away at the coherence and wisdom of his epistle, and we will be better equipped to face the trials of our own day.
Chris Johnson is a graduate of the Theopolis Fellows Program and a deacon at Christ Church of Searcy, AR.
NOTES
- James B. Jordan, “The Unjust Steward Revisited,” Theopolis, Sept. 2 1990, https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-unjust-steward-revisited/ ↩︎
- Cited from a Theopolis Fellows Pesherette discussion that has not been made available to the public as of the time of writing. ↩︎
- Jeff Myers, “Ancient Wisdom for Christian Dissidents,” Theopolis, Aug. 25, 2022, https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/ancient-wisdom-for-christian-dissidents/. ↩︎
- Jeff Myers, “Ancient Wisdom for Christian Dissidents,” Theopolis, https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/ancient-wisdom-for-christian-dissidents/. ↩︎