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

 

DAY THREE 

Within a year or two of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the early Christian movement was gaining momentum in Jerusalem. Thousands of people in Jerusalem had believed in Jesus, were baptized, and became a part of the church. Even though some of the apostles were beaten and thrown in prison, God had delivered them so they could continue preaching and teaching. The final straw for some of the Jewish leaders may have been when many priests believed in Jesus (Acts 6:7). Just after this, as he was proclaiming the good news of Jesus, Stephen, one of the early leaders in the Jerusalem church, was grabbed by the Sanhedrin (the Jewish ruling council). As they listened to his sermon retelling of Israel’s history, these men were incensed. The culmination of Israel’s story, according to Stephen, was not the Law or the temple. The climax of God’s plan for His people was not the restoration of the temple or a group of people who perfectly kept the Law. For Stephen and the other Christians, the culmination of God’s plan for His people was the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus, the true Messiah and Savior. And the Jewish rulers had been a part of His execution, just as their fathers had killed the prophets before them (Acts 7:51–53).

For these men, this was blasphemy! The Pharisees saw themselves as Israel’s leaders and champions, not its villains. And to attack the place of the Law and the temple was just too much. The men of the Sanhedrin took off their coats, picked up stones, and began throwing them at Stephen. Even as he died, he continued to proclaim Jesus, the true Savior and Messiah.

As they prepared to stone Stephen, the men laid their coats at the feet of Paul. This may even symbolize his authority as one of the key leaders in this group. In any case, he was certainly approving of the action and encouraged it to continue. After Stephen’s martyrdom, Paul moved to a whole new level of persecuting the church. Over the next several months or years, he devoted himself to stamping out the followers of Jesus. Acts tells us that Paul was “ravaging the church” (Acts 8:3) and “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). Paul himself wrote that he “persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Gal. 1:13).

Protecting the law and wiping out anyone who undermined  it was his self-proclaimed mission from God, so Paul took it upon himself to round up as many Christians as he could find in Jerusalem. He had to stop them from spreading their heresy about a Messiah who rose from the dead and claimed to be greater than the Law itself. When he heard about this message spreading beyond Jerusalem to places like Damascus, he had to go there and stop these heretics. And so, Paul set out for Damascus with official authorization from the high priest in Jerusalem to arrest any followers of Jesus, this pretend Messiah. However, his trip did not go as planned. As he traveled to Damascus, he was confronted by the resurrected Lord Himself.

We can point to many differences in their upbringing and early life, but both James and Paul were raised to follow the Law and to be devoted to the God of Israel. Both rejected Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah when they first heard, and both encountered the risen Lord, and their lives were set on a new trajectory.