An Overlooked Brother of Jesus

I want you to make friends with an often overlooked character in the biblical story. Some have questioned his theology. Many have ignored his life. But we’re not going to make those mistakes.

Eyes show us a window into the soul, they say. Maybe so. But I think it’s the stories we hear and the stories we tell. Stories show us someone in full reality. Imagine this: I pair you with another person you don’t really know, and give you this instructions: “Find a spot to eat lunch or grab coffee and each person share four important stories, one from your childhood, one from your 20s, one from the most important thing that ever happened to you, and a story sharing how you got into the line of work you’re in.” By the end of that lunch, you would know that person in important and deep ways, maybe more deeply than most people you know. At the least, you would have established the baseline for a true friendship.

Today I want you to make friends with an often overlooked character in the biblical story. Some Christians have questioned his theology. Many Christians have ignored his life. But we’re not going to make those mistakes. We’re going to meet up with him for lunch. First we’re going to hear his stories, then we’re going to study his short but significant contribution to the Scripture.

We’re going to hear four stories from James’s life. First, when James was a boy; second, when he was an unbeliever in his 20s; third, when he encountered his older brother Jesus after the resurrection; fourth, when he became a foundational leader in the first Christian church. As we hear these stories, we will see the threads of these stories in James’ life at first separate and frayed, but then stitched back together. James understood feeling a tension between loyalty to family while remaining faithful to God. James understood the tension between being the smartest guy in the room and also deeply believing the faith of his fathers. James understood feeling loyal to two things that couldn’t live together. James understood feeling overlooked or never good enough. James knew what a divided life could be. James also understood how Jesus can heal a divided life. How Jesus came make us whole. His life and the book he wrote for his beloved brothers in Christ testify to an undivided life (as New Testament theologian Frank Thielman has noted). A life of wholehearted consistency. Of completion and fulfillment.

In James’s story and his book, we will see James’s heart—and more importantly, God’s heart—to make us whole, as well.

James at church and school

James was the second son of Mary and Joseph, the first son that was biologically both of theirs. His older brother was Yeshua, transliterated as “Jesus.” James, for what it’s worth, was actually Jacob, but somewhere along the line it got transliterated into James. James was probably very close in age to Jesus, maybe even only a year apart. So close, they were basically peers. Except, of course, they weren’t peers. Jesus was different and special. He was Messiah, Christ, and God in flesh. You don’t have to stretch your imagination to think that James probably felt some resentment and rivalry with his brother.

We find James at home with a tutor. Of course, his parents have been intentional to provide him training in the Hebrew Scriptures, Torah, like his elder brother, Jesus, and his younger brothers Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Mark 6:3). James dives full into the Scripture. Much later in life, James’s words and actions in Acts 15 and 21 and as Paul describes in Galatians 1-2 show us that James soaked his heart in mind in the Old Testament. He didn’t call it the Old Testament, of course, but simply the Scripture. One later scholar would be able to say that James would “elevate the status of his Bible as the central symbol of his religious life” something that he “routinely appeals to.”

But James also has shown exceptional academic aptitude. Said simply, James is brilliant, grasping concepts and language in a rare way. His parents have had him trained in Greek, the language of classical education. He learns to write and speak it fluently, which he shows with the eloquence of the letter written many years later. As James learns the Greek alphabet, then the basics of declining Greek verbs, he learns to read Greek primarily by reading the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture, the Septuagint. He learns to write Greek as his tutors coach him to copy passage upon passage of this text.

James as an unbeliever

Somewhere along the way, James’s dad, Joseph, died. While his elder brother Jesus was technically the man of the household, he said that he had another, heavenly Father who had given him a mission. Jesus left to become a wandering, religious teacher, and James had to care for his family. When his brother, Jesus, pushed things to the edge, and people called him crazy, James rallied the family to stop him: “Jesus entered a house, and the crowd gathered again so that they were not even able to eat. When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, ‘He’s out of his mind’” (Mark 3:20-21).

The scribes accused Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebub, the prince of demons (3:22), but Jesus quickly dismantled this accusation. “I came to defeat demons,” Jesus explained, “And if you think I’m doing demonic work, you’re actually the one on the side of Satan!” (3:23-30). At this point, “His mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent word to him and called him” (Mark 3:31). Jesus then startled the crowd, again. They told him his mom and brothers we asking for him, and he said that his true family was based on a relationship with God: “Who are my mother and my brothers? Looking at those sitting in a circle around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:33-35).

This hurt James, but even more it infuriated him. For James to be in the family of God as a Jew and to be in the family of Joseph were the same thing. How could his brother make himself out to be some special religious teacher and then disown his own family?

“Ok, Jesus, if you’re going to talk this big game, then prove it,” James thought. James hadn’t seen enough. Several times every year, the men of the family traveled to Jerusalem for the pilgrim festivals of worship. When one of the festivals, the Festival of Shelters arrived, James knew that Jesus wasn’t planning to go, because the religious leaders were angling to kill him (John 7:1). But James rallied the other brothers to challenge Jesus to prove himself: “So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples can see your works that you are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If you do these things, show yourself to the world’” (John 7:3-4).

“Ok, big brother,” James was saying, “Prove yourself if you’re going to make this big claims for yourself.”

He wasn’t genuine, though. Maybe he even wanted to get his brother killed. We know that “not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5).

And so it went for James with Jesus.

Jesus went on teaching, saying more and more radical things, claiming to be equal with Yahweh, the great I Am (John 8:58). Supposedly doing miracles, and generally provoking the religious establishment. “He’s going to get himself killed,” James thought, “And he’s have no one to blame but himself.” James knew the law for blasphemy, and Jesus would deserve what he got. Eventually, Jesus did get himself killed. As a brother, James grieved, but as a loyal follower of Torah, he was somewhat relieved. James was thinking: “My brother suffered the judgment of Yahweh. Torah tells us in the fifth book of Moses that a man who dies by hanging on a tree is cursed. May Yahweh have mercy on him, though, I suspect he will suffer the contempt of eternal death that Daniel warned about” (Dan 12:2).

Well, thought James, that is that. At least he got a proper burial. He’s dead and buried, and that chapter is closed.

And, of course, the chapter was closed, but the story was still open, wide.

James as a Christian

Three years later, we find James meeting with another zealous Jewish man, who had overseen the execution of Christian leaders after Jesus’s resurrection. This man, Saul in Hebrew, had become infamous for persecuting Christians. But he had recently became known for doing a complete 180 and now was proselytizing Christianity! James understood, completely. He told Saul (sometimes called Paul in Greek), his own story. All of his skepticism about Jesus, his own brother, all of his unbelief, all of it. Then he told Paul something else.

“Jesus, my brother, who had died and been buried, appeared to me, Paul!” James had told him. “In the flesh! I mean, it was him. I’ve known him my whole life. It was him. He came and he showed me that he was who he had said he was all along. He forgave me for rejecting him before. He told me he loved me and that he had never stopped loving me. That he died not for his own sins, but for my sins. That he did die under the curse of Yahweh, but for my curse before Yahweh! I became a part of his little group, his little church that day. I watched my brother ascend up into the sky, promising to return. I went with everyone else, Peter, mom, everyone, to the second-floor room where we prayed and waited for whatever it was he wanted for us next.”

More than twenty years, after Paul and James first shared stories about Jesus together, Paul reflected on that meeting this way, saying he had received the good new story, the gospel: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:3-7).

James as a Pastor

James had always been brilliant, educated, godly, passionate for Scripture, a natural leader of men. Now he was a believer too. He rocketed to leadership in that little group in that little upstairs room. “They all were continually united in prayer, along with the women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers” (Acts 1:14). That church became the mother of all the churches from Antioch to Rome, to Spain to South Florida. And James became the lead pastor of the Jerusalem church. He prominently speaks at a leadership council in the Jerusalem church, when there is a debate about including the Gentiles into the church (Acts 15). He counsels Paul even as he believes the gospel to honor the Law, so that he won’t cause Jewish believers to stumble (Acts 21).

In the early days of that Jerusalem church, they were all together, in worship, community, and mission. But they were making too many moves. Too many people were following Jesus. Too many things were happening that the religious leaders couldn’t explain. Things changed after one of the newly elected deacons of the church, Stephen, preached a banger of a sermon. He called all who were listening, Jewish people and Jewish leaders alike, to repent and believe in Christ. They condemned him for blasphemy, and threw rocks at him until he died.

Everyone but James and the other apostles scattered away from the city, moving north into the next region. As they went, they told everyone they talked to about Jesus, and many more people followed Jesus. By now, James had become a pastor in the church, and his heart ached for his scattered flock, his brothers, not biologically, but spiritually. He now believed with all of his heart what his big brother Jesus had said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” So James wrote a letter to his church, his brothers (as he calls them twenty times).

So, now that you know a little more of the story of James, take a look at the book of James. James provides a needed perspective on life with God and others. Sort of like those “rules for life” posters from the 90s, James’s book provides principles and instructions for living well in Christ. It’s instruction and training in Christian wisdom. One writer (Calvin) has said that James complements the rest of the NT, and especially Paul, much like Solomon’s Proverbs complement his father David’s Psalms, or like John’s theological story of Jesus’s life complements the side of the story told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In total, James wants to remind them, and us, about what it means to live an undivided life, a life of wholehearted devotion to God in Christ. Jesus, his big brother, had shown up and tied together the frayed threads of James’s life. He can do the same for you.

You can see different parts of yourself, loyalties divided in different directions. Maybe you just feel broken. James the little brother of Jesus can help you learn to become whole; and like a work of kintsugi art, reassembled with veins of gold, you life can be more whole, more beautiful and precious than before. God can reassemble the disconnected chapters of your story, glued together not with veins of gold but with veins of the blood of his Son.