Paul Vs. James - An 8-Day Study On Faith & Works By Chris BrunoSample

 

DAY TWO - James the Brother of Jesus

I imagine it was difficult growing up with Jesus as your brother. Imagine if you had a sibling who never sinned. And He was born after an angel visited your mother and father to tell them about His miraculous birth. The Gospels don’t tell us anything about the dynamics of growing up with Jesus as one’s brother, but it had to be difficult at times.

John 7:5 tells us that His brothers did not believe in Him during His ministry before the resurrection, but the first time we hear about His brothers is in the episode recorded in Matthew 12:46–50 (with parallels in Mark 3:31–35 and Luke 8:19–21). As the crowds around Him increased, His mother and brothers had trouble accessing him. Jesus’ answer probably didn’t win Him many style points in their eyes: “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (v. 50). James may have just rolled his eyes or he may have been angry at what he saw as a slight to Mary. Some scholars have suggested that they were following John the Baptist. Given the family in which they grew up, I think this is possible, maybe even likely. In any case, James did not believe in Jesus during His earthly life. This does not mean, however, that James and his brothers were not interested in keeping the Law or following the God of Israel. In fact, one historical tradition says that James was a Nazarite who took special vows to devote himself to prayer and purity.

We hear about Jesus’ brothers again in the next chapter  in Matthew (Matt. 13:53–58; see also Mark 6:1–6). When Jesus returned to Nazareth to preach in the synagogue after teaching   in many nearby villages, His close family and friends were astonished. They knew Him growing up and surely saw that He was a unique boy, but they did not expect anything like the wisdom He showed in His teaching or the power He displayed in His miracles (v. 54). They knew His mother Mary and His brothers—James, Joses, Simon, and Judas. Since their father, Joseph, was not mentioned, it is most likely that he had died sometime before then. They took offense at Jesus and did not believe in Him (vv. 57–58).

In John 2, we get a fleeting glimpse at Jesus’ brothers and Mary when He stayed with them in Capernaum (John 2:12). Then John 7 is the only place we hear Jesus’ brothers speak, when they asked Him to go to Judea for the Feast of Booths. They told Him that He should not keep His works a secret but instead, “show yourself to the world” (v. 4).

Their motive, however, was not to increase His ministry. In fact, they asked Him this because they did not yet believe in Him (v. 5). They wanted more evidence before they would believe in Him. Or maybe they wanted Jesus to be exposed as a fraud so that He would return home and stop shaming the family. Either way, they were not asking Him to come to Judea out of good motives, and they were not with Him through His trial and execution (notice their apparent absence in John 19:25–27). Even  if they were followers of John the Baptist before Jesus was crucified, Jesus’ brothers did not believe He was the Messiah or that He was doing God’s will. Like another young Jewish man who grew up in Tarsus, they wanted to follow the God of Israel but did not at first believe that Jesus was really the Messiah. Then, after Jesus’ execution, everything changed.