Dynamic Studies in James

Welcome to what I hope you’ll find to be a most enjoyable study of the book of James, part of the Judeo-Christian documents which we call the Bible. Many believers claim James as their favorite body of Scripture because of its practical application to everyday life.
As we consider how this book fits into the whole of the New Testament documents and the Tanakh (the name used for the Old Testament by Jews, is used here to emphasize the Jewishness of the Scriptures), we need to realize a number of things. We need to stand in awe of this collection of 66 books, written over thousands of years by at least 40 different authors. Every detail of the text is there by design. It explains history before it happens, and comes to us from outside the dimension of time. It is, in short, the most amazing, most authenticated, and most accurate book available in the world.
If this claim is not strong enough, add to it the indisputable fact that the words contained therein have changed more lives than any others now in existence.
And now back to this particular study.
I intended this particular study to be used in a small group setting; however, it can also be adapted to a larger group or individual study.
While the subject of our study, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, are demonstrably perfect, my prepared studies are not. There is no way that I, or anyone else, could possibly incorporate the depth of the text into individual sessions. I simply desire to provide a vehicle for others to use in their investigation of the Scriptures as they incorporate these timeless truths into their lives.
Brief BACKGROUND TO THE BOOK OF JAMES

The book of James appears to have been written no later than 62 A.D., 62 years after the birth of Christ, and no more than 30 years after His death and resurrection.
If you are fifty years of age or more and you think back to what happened thirty years ago, it seems very fresh in your memory. This was the case for James and his readers at the time. Everything was fresh and real. They had absolutely no logical reason to doubt about what so many of them had seen, heard, and touched. Imagine shaking hands with Jesus Christ.
In this book, we find at least sixty imperatives in only 108 verses. The Fourth Edition of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt American Heritage Dictionary, copyrighted and updated in 2008 defines an imperative in its’ electronic edition for Smart Phones as “a command, an order, an obligation, a duty, a rule, a principle, or instinct that compels a certain behavior.” We find more such guidance in this very short book than in any other book of the New Testament.
For this reason, many believers find James to be their favorite book in the whole of the Bible.
It is true that God gave us this book and the whole of his Word because He loves us. However, the fact that he needed to spell things out so clearly in this book is no great compliment to those to whom it was written, or to us.
More than anything else, the fact that God needed to give us this book through James proves our depravity without Him. A number of years ago Mahatma Ghandi, a very famous leader in India, was asked what he saw as the greatest barrier to Christianity in India. He replied in one word: “Christians.”
The way we behave toward people reveals how we feel about God and speaks volumes about our relationship with God.
James draws us back to the reality of our relationship with God and the supremacy of His Word.
He repeats in real terms of everyday life and action what we find throughout the Scriptures. He reminds us of our responsibilities and what must happen in our lives to accomplish our calling.