Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Their fate is set in
     stone. “The rich man will pass away like a flower in the field. Forno sooner does the sun rise with its scorching heat, which withers the field, than
     the flower dies and its beauty perishes. So it shall be with the rich man” (James
     1:11). James goes so far as to suggest that one cannot truly be a follower of Jesus
     if one does not actively favor the poor. “Do you with your acts of favoritism [toward
     the rich] really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” he asks. “For if you
     show favoritism, you commit sin and are exposed as a transgressor of the law” (James
     2:1, 9).
    James’s fierce judgment of the rich may explain why he drew the ire of the greedy
     high priest Ananus, whose father had schemed to impoverish the village priests by
     stealing their tithes. But in truth, James is merely echoing the words of his brother’s
     Beatitudes: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe
     to you who are full, for you shall hunger. Woe to you laughing now, for soon you will
     mourn” (Luke 6:24–25). Actually, much of James’s epistle reflects the words of Jesus,
     whether the topic is the poor (“Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich
     in faith and heirs to the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” James
     2:5; “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” Luke 6:20);
     the swearing of oaths (“Do not swear, either by heaven or earth, or by any other oath;
     let your yes be yes and your no be no.” James 5:12; “Do not swear at all, either by
     heaven, which is the throne of God, or by the earth, which is God’s footstool.… Let
     your yes be yes and your no be no.” Matthew 5:34, 37); or the importance of putting
     one’s faith into practice (“Be doers of the word, not just hearers who deceive themselves.”
     James 1:22; “He who hears these words of mine and does them will be like the wise
     man who built his house on a rock … he who hears these words of mine and does not
     do them is like the foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matthew 7:24, 26).
    Yet the issue over which James and Jesus are most clearly in agreement is the role
     and application of the Law of Moses. “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
     and teachesothers to do so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says in the
     gospel of Matthew (Matthew 5:19). “Whoever keeps the whole law but trips up on a single
     point of it is guilty of [violating] it all,” James echoes in his epistle (James 2:10).
    The primary concern of James’s epistle is over how to maintain the proper balance
     between devotion to the Torah and faith in Jesus as messiah. Throughout the text,
     James repeatedly exhorts Jesus’s followers to remain faithful to the law. “But he
     who looks to the perfect law—the law of liberty—and perseveres [in following it],
     being not just hearers who forget, but doers who act [upon it], he shall be blessed
     in his doing” (James 1:25). James compares Jews who abandon the law after converting
     to the Jesus movement to those who “look at themselves in the mirror … and upon walking
     away, immediately forget what they looked like” (James 1:23).
    There should be little doubt as to whom James is referring in these verses. In fact,
     James’s epistle was very likely conceived as a corrective to Paul’s preaching, which
     is why it is addressed to “the Twelve Tribes of Israel scattered in the Diaspora.”
     The epistle’s hostility toward Pauline theology is unmistakable. Whereas Paul dismisses
     the Law of Moses as a “ministry of death, chiseled in letters on a stone tablet” (2
     Corinthians 3:7), James celebrates it as “the law of liberty.” Paul claims that “one
     is not justified by the works of the law but only through belief in Jesus Christ”
     (Galatians 2:16). James emphatically rejects Paul’s notion that faith alone engenders
     salvation. “Can belief save you?” he retorts. “Even the demons believe—and shudder!”
     (James 2:14,19). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “a man is justified
     by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). James calls this the opinion
     of a “senseless person,” countering that “faith apart from works [of the law] is dead”
     (James 2:26).
    What both men mean by “works of the law” is the application of Jewish law in the daily
     life of the believer. Put