Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

If you're doing our new testament plan, you've finished your fifth book today,

and if you're doing the whole Bible, you've finished your 44th book.

This book has a lot going on, so we'll only have time to hit the major points. Let's get into it.

This book was written by the half-brother of Jesus which is incredible given that

his brothers used to mock him. But this book shows what an incredible change of heart

James went through because it opens with the author

calling himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, from mocking him to serving him.

But spoiler alert, this book isn't actually by James.

Huh?

It seems the real name of this James and every other James in the Bible is Jacobus or

Jacobus or Jacob in English, so that's what we'll call him. It turns out that there was a problem

a few hundred years ago when they translated this book to English, so only English speakers

encounter this issue. We'll link to more info on this in the

show notes in case you're interested. This letter is written to the church outside

of Israel and that's important. It's written to believers. If we take it out of that context, it sounds like this book is

listing things we have to do in order to earn God's approval instead of them being

things that serve as markers of knowing him. Over the centuries this book has caused quite a stir because it seems

to be advocating salvation by works which is contrary to everything else in

scripture. But if we remember the rules of Bible interpretation, the first of which is that scripture is the

lens we use for interpreting scripture, and if we remember the author's original audience

and context, then all those things help us understand this book rightly.

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