he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison; but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
Agrippa I was the son of Aristobulus IV and Bernice I and the brother of Herodias (cf. Mark 6:15–28). Only the New Testament refers to Agrippa I as “Herod,” a name that more or less functioned as a dynastic name since the time of Agrippa’s famous grandfather Herod the Great. (Agrippa I is called Herod several more times, in Acts 12:6, 11, 19–21.)
In the passage cited from the book of Acts we are not told specifically why Agrippa arrested some of the Christians. Whatever his motive, he executed James son of Zebedee, the brother of John, and then, seeing that it pleased certain people, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. The church prayed for Peter, Peter then enjoyed a miraculous escape and safely reached the house of a woman named Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:6–16), who later accompanied Paul on his first missionary journey. It is in the conclusion of this remarkable story that James the brother of Jesus is mentioned.
After Peter describes his escape (Acts 12:17), he says, “Tell this to James and to the brethren” (12:17). The narrator then remarks abruptly and with little detail, “Then he departed and went to another place” (12:17). From this cryptic remark it is assumed that Peter has quit Jerusalem and that James the brother of Jesus has assumed the leadership. Not long after leaving Jerusalem, Peter visits Antioch and eventually takes up residence in Rome.
Peter’s instructions “Tell this to James and to the brethren” implies that James is “second in command,” as it were. But it also implies that James was not expected to quit Jerusalem, as Peter and others found it necessary. Why is this? Judging by the advice that James will later give (in Acts 15) and by the tradition of his piety and devotion in the precincts of the Jerusalem temple, along with no evidence that James either condemned the temple priesthood or threatened the temple with its destruction (at least not until shortly before his martyrdom), we may infer that James’s commitment to Jewish faith and practice was such that the religious and political authorities saw no reason to take action against him. Evidently, the religious devotion of James was such that temple authorities saw no reason to persecute this particular leader of the Jesus movement.
What we learn from Acts 12:17, which records Peter’s abrupt words “Tell this to James and to the brethren,” is that, in the absence of Peter, James has become the leader of the Jesus movement. When the Church grapples with the vexatious question of whether Gentiles who become believers must also become Jewish proselytes and then turns to James (and not to Peter or Paul) for guidance, we begin to appreciate the gravity of his leadership and the respect with which James is treated by the Church.
If the author of the letter of James was in fact the brother of Jesus, which is the position taken here, then a disagreement with Paul would be a serious matter indeed. But was there really a disagreement? Some think so. Many will recall Martin Luther’s famous dismissal of James as a “strawy epistle” whose character lacked the marks of the gospel. Luther said this because his critics claimed that James contradicted the great reformer’s emphasis on Paul’s doctrine of salvation by God’s grace, received through faith alone, not by works.
James was held to be at odds with Paul because of the letter’s declaration that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17) and that a person “is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). These categorical statements are not isolated; they reflect the tenor of the letter’s thought throughout. James exhorts his readers to accept trials and testing with joy and to let it have its “perfect work [ergon teleion]” (1:3–4, NKJV). He urges his readers to become “doers of the word [poiētai logou], and not hearers only” (1:22). He speaks of the “perfect law [nomon teleion]” (1:25). He urges his readers not to be forgetful hearers but to be “a doer of the work [poiētēs ergou]” (NKJV), who “shall be blessed” (1:25).
The spirit of this teaching, as well as some of the vocabulary, brings to mind the teaching of Jesus, especially as we find it assembled in the Sermon on the Mount. According to Jesus, the person who “does them and teaches [poiēsē kai didaxē] them [the commandments] shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:19). The righteousness (dikaiosynē) of the disciples must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. How this can be accomplished is spelled out in the five antitheses that follow (5:21–47). At the conclusion of the antitheses, Jesus sums up his teaching: “You, therefore, must be perfect [teleioi], as your heavenly Father is perfect [teleios]” (5:48).5 Perfection cannot be achieved without doing the commandments, as Jesus has taught. The conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount drives home this point (emphasis added):
“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (7:21)
“Every one then who hears these words [tous logous] of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.” (7:24)
“And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand.” (7:26)
Elsewhere in Jesus’ sayings in Matthew, we find similar teaching (emphasis added):
“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (12:50)
“Which of the two did the will of his father?” (21:31)
“[Do] and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not [do].” (23:3, RSV, modified)
“They do all their deeds to be seen by others.” (23:5, NRSV)
We may well hear echoes of this teaching in James’s exhortations to be “doers of the word” and a “doer of work”—works that exemplify the “perfect work,” “perfect law,” and the “royal law.”
Verse 27 sums up the point of the first chapter of James: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
This brings us to James 2. The second chapter is chiefly concerned to explicate the second commandment of the famous Great (or Double) Commandment (Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–29), whereby one is to love God with all that one is and all that one has (Deut 6:4–5) and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self (Lev 19:18). The partiality described in James 2:1–13 fails to fulfill the second commandment, which is quoted in James 2:8. Although the remainder of the chapter (vv. 14–26) defines genuine faith, the focus remains on what it means to fulfill the second commandment. To fulfill “the royal law” (James 2:8) is to fulfill Leviticus 19:18, a commandment that lay behind much of what Jesus taught, either explicitly or implicitly.6
Failure to fulfill the second commandment has implications for the first commandment, to which allusion is made in 2:19: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder.” The mere belief, or faith, that God is one hardly fulfills the obligations to love one’s neighbor and, harking back to James 1:27, hardly fulfills the command to “visit orphans and widows in their affliction.”
To support his argument, James appeals to the example of Abraham, who was “justified by [his] works [ex ergōn edikaiōthē], when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar” (2:21). His willingness to obey God demonstrated that his faith was genuine. His “work” in Genesis 22 (where he showed that he was willing to sacrifice Isaac) fulfilled the statement of Scripture in Genesis 15:6 (James
