He did not at first believe in the divinity of his seemingly ordinary brother. This man was his sibling but surely nothing special. He would have noticed!
It was only after the resurrection that James believed in Jesus – and he was apparently convicted. In the early days of the church, James was an elder and a spiritual leader. And of course, he was still the brother of the Lord.
And yet, his epistle does not begin with any of these humanly lofty identifiers!
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:
Greetings. ~ James 1:1
He calls himself a servant of the Lord.
Years previously he had once tried to claim priority as Jesus’s brother (Matthew 12:46). Knowing Jesus changed how he saw himself. He was a servant of Jesus. He no longer lived by his own ideas or agenda but by those of the risen Lord. This terminology was not new to heroes of faith. Both Moses and Joshua are referred to as “servants” of the Lord:
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord ~ Deuteronomy 34:5
And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. ~ Judges 2:8
Indeed, the more we know Jesus, the more we will understand the immense privilege it is to be a servant of the Lord. In John’s words:
He must increase, but I must decrease. ~ John 3:30
Photo by Chidy Young on Unsplash
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