Before he was saved, Paul was a Pharisee (Php 3:5), and like any Pharisee he would’ve prayed the prayer seen on the left (source: Encyclopedia Talmudit, Vol.4, Jerusalem 1956, p.371). Religious pride feeds itself by drawing lines between us and them. It says, “Thank you God that I am not like other men” (Lk 18:11). But grace tears down dividing walls (Eph 2:14).

Paul was so radically changed after he encountered Grace on the road to Damascus, that religious distinctions no longer mattered. It was his revelation of Jesus, who loves all the children of the world, that prompted Paul to write the words you see on the right (Gal 3:28). Whether you are circumcised or uncircumcised, short or tall, left or right, rich or poor – the only thing that matters is that you are in Christ, who is your life (Gal 5:6, Col 3:4).

“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.” (1 Co 9:19-20)

No one thinks that Paul was confused about grace. I’ve never heard anyone say that Paul mixed grace with law. So how is it that when Paul acts Jewish we think, “he’s being strategic in his witness,” but when James does it we think “he’s preaching mixture”? When Paul writes a whole chapter urging believers not to eat food sacrificed to idols (1 Cor 8) we think he’s being wise and considerate, but when James writes a single verse saying the same thing (Acts 15:29) we think he’s preaching law. Go figure!

Most people think James was confused about grace for no other reason than that’s what we’ve always been told. But as I explained in Part 1 of this study, we really don’t know much about James. Even so, the balance of evidence suggests that he and Paul were very much on the same grace page (see Part 2). In Part 3 we looked at the decisive role James played in the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. In what was one of the most significant church discussions in history, James clearly identified himself as being firmly in the grace camp. But what are we to make of his words in Acts 21?

The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.” (Acts 21:18-24)

What is going on here? One moment James et al. are praising God for what He had done through Paul’s ministry, but the next they are wringing their hands over a rumor that Paul is telling foreign Jews to abandon the law. James wants to send a message to the Jews that Paul, like any good Jew, is living in obedience to the law. Surely this is evidence that James did not fully understand the gospel of God’s grace?

Three choices

Once again we are faced with three choices. Either James was preaching law, grace, or mixture. If you think James was preaching law as a means for salvation, how do you account for the fact that he praised God for Paul’s report? The Gentiles were being accepted by God through grace alone. They weren’t getting the law preached to them because James had earlier decided this wasn’t the right thing to do. It is unthinkable that James could trust in the law yet rejoice over grace. They are mutually exclusive options.

So then he must’ve been preaching mixture – a little law plus a little grace. But how then do we account for Paul’s behavior? Paul had dedicated his life to testifying to the gospel of God’s grace (Acts 20:24). Paul was highly sensitive to mixture. When Peter got a little confused about grace, Paul opposed him to his face (Gal 2:11). Paul would let nothing muddle the message of grace. So why didn’t he confront James in this passage? Because James was not preaching mixture.

So what was James doing? What was his motive for suggesting the purification rite and why did Paul go along with it?

Houston, we have a problem

To understand James we need to understand the people he was trying to reach. James identifies them in the passage above:

“You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.” (Acts 21:20)

We are so performance-minded in the modern church that we think James is bragging about the numbers of people getting saved, but there’s more to it than that. Look at how the Message Bible translates this verse:

“Just look at what’s been happening here – thousands upon thousands of God-fearing Jews have become believers in Jesus! But there’s also a problem because they are more zealous than ever in observing the laws of Moses.” (Acts 21:20 MSG)

James is describing Jewish believers who still lived under law. Perhaps because of their cultural heritage they had not yet received the revelation of God’s all sufficient grace. They had some understanding of the work of Christ, but they were still trusting in their observance of the law. This was a big problem in the Jerusalem church where some of the believers still identified themselves as Pharisees (Acts 15:5). Some of the legalistic believers had even gone out to other nations – against James’s wishes – spreading their message of religious works (Acts 15:24).

All things to all men

How do you tell an orthodox Jew about the good news of God’s grace? I’m not entirely sure, but according to James and Paul, one thing you don’t do is flaunt your freedom by trampling on laws they still value. Do this and you will offend them closing any door you may have had for the gospel.

To reach the lost you have to identify a common ground. You have to speak their language. As Rick Warren says, to catch a fish you have to think like a fish. Both James and Paul wanted to win Jews for Christ and if that meant shaving your head, no problem. It was James’ idea, but Paul had done something similar before (see Acts 18:18). Paul said he was free but fully prepared to make himself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. This is not hypocrisy. This is the apostolic heart of Jesus identifying with the lost in order to reconcile them to God.

So we begin to see that James was preaching neither law nor mixture. His heart was the same was the same as Paul’s. Both were prepared to identify with the legalistic Jews in order to win them to Christ. In the final part of this series on James – the Misunderstood Apostle, we will pull all the pieces together.
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Related posts:
- Romans 2:13: Justified by the law?
- Grace and law in the Chronicles of Narnia
- Rightly dividing the word: Whose medicine are you taking?

But think, for a moment, about all those who have expressed negative opinions about James. Did any of those people have an encounter with the risen Lord like James did? Were any of them personal friends with Paul, the apostle of grace? Did any of them hear the gospel of grace preached straight from Paul’s mouth? Were any of them martyred for their faith and, if so, did they forgive their killers with their dying breath as James reportedly did?

There is much we don’t know about James. In Part 1 of this study I examined the popular view that James didn’t get grace, at least not initially. But in Part 2, I gave six good reasons why he probably did. Contrary to what you’ve heard, my strong view is that James was Paul’s equal when it came to understanding grace.

How, then, are we to account for his behavior in Acts 15 where he appears to lay law on the Gentile believers?

The Jerusalem Council

Is it a stretch to say that Acts 15 contains the minutes of the most important committee meeting in history? At first glance, this was a meeting about whether the Gentiles needed to be circumcised. But the real issues were much larger. This was the first time the old covenant banged heads with the new in the New Testament church. It was a contest of covenants – law versus grace. Happily, grace won!

Here’s the back-story: Certain men went from Judea to Antioch preaching mixture (“snip the tip”) and the result was a full-blown blarney with Paul and Barnabas. The relevant parties all ended up back in Jerusalem to settle the issue. Those preaching mixture said “the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses” (v.5). But Peter stood up and said:

“No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” (v11)

There is a danger here of missing the Big Point. The small point was this: should the Gentiles be circumcised? But the big point was this: on what basis are all of us – Jews and Gentiles – actually saved? For hundreds of years Jews had been drawing a big fat line between themselves and everybody else. They were separate. They were special. If the Gentiles wanted to join their club, they had to follow their rules. But Peter recognized that God was doing a new thing:

“God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.” (v8-9)

No longer would God relate exclusively to the law-abiding Jews, for Jesus had died for all men. And if Christ had died for the circumcised along with the uncircumcised, what did circumcision matter? As Paul would later write, “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value” (Gal 5:6). There was no distinction, said Peter. God, who knows the heart, was already accepting Gentiles without any reference to the law.

And now to James…

After hearing both sides of the argument, James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, announced his decision:

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” (v19)

James realized that God was doing something among the Gentiles and that his best course of action was to stay out of God’s way. He understood that circumcision and the laws of Moses were an obstacle to receiving the grace of God. In case we should be in any doubt about where he stood, James does five things to show he was 100% with those in the grace group:

(1)    he acknowledges Peter’s testimony of God accepting the uncircumcised and law-less Gentiles (v14)
(2)    he connects the current move of God with Amos’s prophecy describing the new covenant as one relevant to all Gentiles, i.e., those apart from the law (v16-18)
(3)    he rejects the call for circumcision and, by association, the requirement to obey the law of Moses (v19)
(4)    he co-authors a letter to the Gentiles distancing himself from those unauthorized men who had gone out and troubled them by what they said (v24)
(5)    lest his words be lost in translation, James chose to send his letter with “our dear friends Barnabas and Paul” (v25)

This was a devastating blow for those in the circumcision group! They were left with nothing. They had asked for the Gentiles to be circumcised but were now being told that their own circumcision counted for naught. They had asked that the Gentiles be held to the law of Moses, but were now being told that salvation was by grace alone. You can just imagine Paul and Peter high-fiving. Game over. Grace had won!

But what about the three requirements?

Having declared his position on the issue of grace versus law, James makes three requests which are subsequently added to the letter sent to the Gentiles:

“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.” (v28-29)

It is astonishing to me that people have used this one verse to infer that James was preaching law. He had just indicated in five separate ways that he is on the side of grace. How more clear could he have been? Yet because of the three small requirements listed at the end of this letter, some have concluded that James was confused about the basis of our salvation.

So what was James thinking? Didn’t he know that 21st century Christians would get confused? We will let James speak for himself:

“Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” (v20-21)

James was not laying law on the Gentiles; he was showing grace to Jews.

James knew that there would be a synagogue in every Gentile city. For the sake of the Jews, James asked the Gentiles to be sensitive to these well-known aspects of the law, namely food and sex. Paul was of the same mind. He wrote an entire chapter advising the Corinthians not to eat food sacrificed to idols. Paul wasn’t preaching law to the Corinthians; he was trying to win those who had weak consciences:

“We are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” (1 Cor 8:8-9)

James said the Gentiles should avoid sexual immorality. So did Paul (Rms 13:13, Col 3:5) and he got very agitated when they didn’t (1 Cor 5:1). It is a bad witness indeed when believers fool around with sex. It shows that we are still enslaved to our sinful natures and no different from those who live in darkness (Gal 5:19, Col 3:5). Jesus died to make us holy, so live holy.

Finally, we should note that James’ letter to the Gentiles was not actually penned by James, but by the “apostles and elders” (v23). It is as much Peter and Paul’s letter as it is James’s. So if James is preaching law, then so are Peter and Paul. But he’s not and back then no one thought he was. When the letter was read out in the church at Antioch, the people were “glad for its encouraging message” (v30). The grace of God, revealed through James, Peter and Paul, is still encouraging us today.

In Part 4 of this study, we will look at some of the strange things James seems to say in Acts 21.
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Related posts:
- Did James understand grace? 6 reasons to say ‘yes!’
- James: Preacher of grace
- The gospel comes to Laodicea

The good news, though, is that the Holy Spirit did not make a mistake when He inspired James to write his letter to the twelve tribes. As we saw in our study of the Book of James last year, his message is the same as the one Jesus lived and Paul preached.

But what of James the man? Why are Christians so divided on James himself?

In Part 1 of this study I identified three different opinions that you can have of James. Either (1) he didn’t understand the gospel of God’s grace, (2) at least not initially, or (3) he did. Before you read on, ask yourself, which of these has been my opinion of James?

The common view seems to be that James preached works while Paul preached grace. In other words, they did not agree. Paul said “faith alone” but James said “faith plus works.” You’ve probably heard clever people try to reconcile these statements. Usually they do so by adding to Paul’s words. Well of course Paul meant faith plus works, they say. There are always works associated with faith. Yet on many occasions Paul clearly said it was faith or works (see Rms 9:32 and Eph 2:8-9 for starters). It can’t be both, so which is it?

I addressed the works issue in my earlier study. Today we’re taking a different angle. We’re going to play the man rather than the ball, and my question is this: Did James understand the gospel of grace that Paul preached? Did he personally stand on the radical, pure, unalloyed grace of God? For 2,000 years the answer has been “probably not” or “no” or “maybe a little bit.” I have not read a single commentary that says James fully understood grace.

My view is that James has been misjudged. I admit the evidence is thin, but here are six reasons why I believe James probably did understand grace:

1.    James, like Paul, had a one-on-one encounter with the resurrected Christ (1 Cor 15:7)

Prior to seeing the risen Lord, both James and Paul had been opposed to Christ (Jn 7:2-5). Paul tried to take Christians by force, while James tried to take Christ by force (Mk 3:21). Paul had been an enemy of Christ but became one of his greatest followers. He spent the rest of his life testifying to the gospel of God’s grace (Acts 20:24). We know little about James’ encounter, but why do we assume his transformation was any less remarkable than Paul’s? Think about it: James had a divine encounter with Grace personified! Give God a little credit for the effect He probably had on James.

2.    Paul vouched for James

Only one person in the New Testament called James an apostle and it was Paul (Gal 1:19). After their respective encounters with the risen Lord, Paul became known as an apostle to the Gentiles, while James, like Peter, became an apostle to the Jews (Gal 2:9). Paul and James were long-term friends. On Paul’s first visit, James extended the “right hand of fellowship.” On a later visit James referred to Paul as a “dear friend” (Acts 15:25). Can you really imagine Paul being a long-term friend with a self-righteous grace-killer? Do you think it was possible to be friends with Paul and remain unaffected by his message of radical grace?

3.    Paul never blamed James for Peter’s back-step

Peter withdrew from the Gentiles after “certain men came from James” (Gal 2:12). This makes it sound as if the men were representing James. But Paul clarifies that these men “belonged to the circumcision group” (Gal 2:12) which James opposed in Acts 15. We should not confuse the certain men from James with James himself. Yes, they were in his church, but they held to a different message. James distanced himself from these men when he wrote that “some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said” (Acts 15:24). Paul was not one to shy away from a confrontation. When Peter got a little muddled, Paul opposed him to his face. If James had been preaching mixture, Paul would’ve said so. Yet Paul never says a bad word about James.

4.    James was intimately familiar with Paul’s message

Some have written to me saying that James was ignorant of the gospel of grace that Paul taught, but the Bible says otherwise (see Gal 2:2). Unlike those of us who’ve merely read Paul’s gospel, James heard it straight from Paul’s mouth! And he glorified to God when he learned of its fruit (Acts 21:20).

5.    James did not compel Titus to be circumcised (Gal 2:3)

Yes, James asked the Gentiles to do three things in Acts 15 (more on this in Part 3), but circumcision was not one of them. For any law-abiding Jew, circumcision was the key issue. What was the point of obeying only parts of the law if you refused to be circumcised? Nowhere does James preach circumcision.

6.    Paul submitted to James’ counsel

Paul said if anyone preached a gospel different to his, that person should be condemned to hell (Gal 1:9). If James preached a different gospel from Paul, there’s no way Paul would have gone along with the purification vow in Acts 21. Paul, like any grace preacher, was highly sensitive to mixture. He smelled it out in Galatia from hundreds of miles away. Yet when James says, “go shave your head,” Paul does it! People have said to me that James was still learning about grace, but Paul wasn’t. Acts 21 comes near the end of Paul’s life. It is inconceivable that Paul would’ve done anything to send a mixed message about the cross. His motive for doing go through with the rite must have been the same as James’ motive for suggesting it: he wanted to win Jews. (More on this in Part 4.)

As we will see in the final two parts of this study, there is actually no evidence to suggest James preached mixture, but considerable evidence to suggest he held to grace. This is a radical departure from the traditional view, so let me ask you: are you yet convinced that James understood grace?

Of course it’s perfectly fine to hold a different view from me as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences. The fact is we don’t know for sure what James was like. But one day we will know and if it turns out that I have been wrong about James – that he was, in fact, confused about grace – then he may thank me for thinking the best of him. Afterall that’s what love does – it thinks the best of others (1 Co 13:7).

But if I’m right about James, then those of you who have dismissed him as irrelevant or confused might be embarrassed when you finally meet him.

Just something to think about.

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Related posts:
- How do we pervert the gospel of Christ?
- Watch out for the dogs of law
- Romans 2:13 – Justified by law?