Trailblazin Ministries

Chapter 2 Overview - James 2

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Tuesday, 07 August 2007

Now that we have moved into chapter two of this letter from James, I want to make sure that we don't hurry our pace and still take time to properly exegete the Scriptures and glean what the Lord would have for us to learn from this epistle. This chapter picks up right where the first chapter left off, specifically with what he was saying in verses 26 and 27. Instead of diving right into the meat of this chapter, I want to spend today giving you an overview of what you will find in this chapter. Please take a moment right now to read through James chapter 2.

Reading through this chapter, you will notice that there are two prevailing themes, and each takes up an equal proportion of the chapter; the chapter is 26 verses and each section is 13 verses long. As I just stated, the first part of the chapter carries over his line of thought from chapter one, with us remembering that James didn't originally put in verse and chapter breaks, but it was done later by translators of the text. These first 13 verses speak about a particular sin, the sin of partiality. This is a sin that is very easy for us to fall into, even without thinking about it. It is with that in mind that James brings the issue to the forefront and reminds his audience that we are to treat each other equally, regardless of our social status. We will spend a significant amount of time here in our devotion series as we break this down into multiple segments pulling out everything that we possibly can so that we do not fall into this sin. This is where we will pick up our devotion on tomorrow.

Once we complete our study of the sin of partiality, we will then take a look at the second half of the chapter, which is a very familiar passage of Scripture for most Christians. Again, this particular portion of Scripture does not deviate very far from the end of chapter one, and indeed it falls right in line with the thought of having a worthless or pure religion. The idea is further elaborated by exploring the idea of faith versus works. This is a very meaty portion of Scripture and, as a result, we will walk very slowly through it so that we are not reading into it our previous thoughts and understanding of the passage; instead, we will see what the passage says minus all the extra stuff, and allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, by bringing in other texts to help us understand what James is saying.

I believe that once we get to the end of this chapter, we will have a greater understanding of what it means to not be a respecter of persons and to have our faith proclaimed through our works. Once that is complete, I think we will be well equipped to handle much of the rebuke that comes in the subsequent chapters that deal with the tongue and so forth. So, read over chapter two again, and re-examine what we have learned in chapter one; tomorrow we will dive in and get deep into James chapter two. Until then, God bless!