Joy In Trials?!

We’ve now reached the last in our series of ‘Messages of Encouragement’. And we’ve come to a very difficult piece of teaching!

‘James’ – whoever James may be – tells us TO CONSIDER IT PURE JOY WHENEVER WE FACE TRIALS OF MANY KINDS! Wow! That sounds crazy! How can we understand it?

The general rule to understanding anything is that you have to understand the context. To take a trivial example, if I say the word ‘band’, you don’t know if I’m talking about jazz or a stretchy thing to put round my packet of pasta shells. You need to know the context.

The same applies to understanding scripture. When I trained to become a minister, lecturers emphasized ‘context, context, context’. That’s right. We want to understand the context in order to understand what a passage of scripture means.

But it’s difficult to do for THIS passage. Bible scholars aren’t sure WHO wrote the letter of James – apart from the fact that it was someone called James, WHEN it was written, or really, WHY it was written!

There are two significant people called James in the New Testament. There’s Jesus’ disciple, James. He’s sometimes known as James the Great. And there’s Jesus’ brother, James. He’s sometimes known as James the Less. Although he was ‘James the Less’ he was still a very significant figure. He was in many ways the leader of the early church, and he was the first Bishop of Jerusalem.

Most Bible scholars DON’T think that James the Great, Jesus’ disciple, wrote the Letter of James. He was put to death by Herod very early in the life of the church so it’s unlikely that he wrote the letter.

Many Bible scholars think that it WAS James the Less, Jesus’ brother, who wrote the Letter of James. But they have hesitations. For one thing, the Letter of James is, according to Bible scholars, written in very good, almost classical, Greek. The Bible scholars don’t think that Jesus’ brother James would have such good Greek. That sounds a bit prejudiced, but maybe they’re right! Perhaps James was the author but someone else was involved in getting the letter into its final form.

Just as we’re not quite sure WHO wrote the letter, we also don’t know WHEN it was written. We believe that James the Less, Jesus’ brother, was martyred in around 62 A.D. So, if it was this James who wrote the letter, he must have written it before 62 A.D. But that still leaves a wide range of possible dates! And maybe James the Less didn’t write this letter anyway.

The point is, we’d like to know the context, but in reality, we know very little of the context. What we know of the context doesn't help us much as we try to understand James' meaning. How can it be pure joy to face trials of many kinds?

As I was preparing for this talk, I read part of a commentary on James by someone called Scot McKnight. McKnight wrote in his introduction:

“In teaching the letter of James, one should walk to the front of the room and write these words in big letters on a chalkboard:

‘Read James!’

Under that the person then needs to write:

‘First, read James in light of James!’”

I get McKnight’s point. We can waste time wondering what other people say about James. Let’s get on and read it!

Look at verses two and three again.

“Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” [NASB].

What kind of trials do we suppose James is talking about? He definitely has in mind trials that come from being a Christian. The Letter of James has quite a bit to say about money so perhaps James is thinking about economic pressures. But he could mean any kind of trial.

Here in the UK a person might find that his old friends avoid him after he becomes a Christian. In many countries, people lose their jobs if they become Christians. In some countries a young person might be beaten by their dad if he discovers them reading the Bible. All of these are forms of persecution. But there are other kinds of trials. For the Israelites, passing through the wilderness on the way to the land of Canaan was a trial. Would God take care of them? It was a test of faith.

So, there are all sorts of trials. But trials that come about because you messed up don’t count. You shouldn’t take joy from the trial of being in the headmaster’s office after a fight in the school playground!

But HOW can trials be a source of joy? James STARTS his explanation in verse three. He tells the people he's writing to to consider the trials a source of joy KNOWING that the testing of our faith produces ENDURANCE.