All Episodes
Displaying 21 - 40 of 90 in total
Episode 21: Quick to anger, slow to listen (part 3)
In this episode, I draw upon some of my own work as a minister and marriage educator to give you some simple, practical guidelines for learning to listen better.
Episode 22: Real righteousness
As we've seen, James 1:19-20 teaches that we should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. This episode examines the rest of what James says in t...
Episode 23: Finding fruit
In the gospels, we see Jesus using horticultural metaphors (sowing seed, pruning grapevines) to speak of the Christian life. James does something similar in James 1:21...
Episode 24: Gazing in a mirror
James 1:22-24 teaches that we must not only hear the gospel, but do what it says. He uses the metaphor of a mirror: don't we look in a mirror to see what we look like?...
Episode 25: Law and freedom
Depending on our cultural values, we may find it awkward to hold the words "law" and "freedom" together. But in James 1:25, the apostle speaks of "the law of freedom" ...
Episode 26: Freedom isn’t free
In the previous episode, we discussed how the distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to" might help us understand what James is teaching. In this episode, we ...
Episode 27: Speaking the truth in love, not anger
We've already spent some time with James' teaching about being quick to listen and slow to speak. But the problem isn't just that we don't listen enough or speak too s...
Episode 28: The things we do for status
Chapter 2 introduces one of the major concerns of the letter: in their pursuit of higher social status, Christians were mistreating each other. James 2:1-4 illustrates...
Episode 29: Inglorious glory
As we saw in the previous episode, Christians were showing favoritism toward the rich. In James 2:1, the apostle suggests that if people are doing that, they don't tru...
Episode 30: Changing the way we see
In previous episodes, we've explored the unjust favoritism believers were showing toward the rich. James 2:5-7 unmasks the hypocrisy of this behavior, pushing believer...
Episode 31: Seen, safe, soothed
We've seen how believers were giving preferential treatment to the rich and dishonoring the poor. This episode briefly explores what attachment theory and the example ...
Episode 32: The threat of punishment
What kind of father is our heavenly Father? To some of us, James 2:8-13 may sound a little threatening, with its emphasis on law and judgment. We'll need a few episode...
Episode 33: The law of love
"Love your neighbor," Jesus taught. But who is my neighbor? In this episode, we explore the relevance of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan for our understanding of ...
Episode 34: Blessed are the merciful
James 2:13 speaks of both judgment and mercy. This episode uses both the Lord's Prayer and Jesus' parable of the Unmerciful Servant as background to James' teaching.
Episode 35: The whole enchilada
When James teaches about the "royal law" of loving one's neighbor, he echoes the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus challenges his hearers' understand...
Episode 36: Mercy versus judgment
This episode completes our examination of James 2:8-13. There's a difference between an appropriate use of "judgment" and being judgmental or relating to people throug...
Episode 37: What good is your faith?
In James 2:14-17, the apostle offers what is meant to be a ludicrous example of the failure of Christian compassion. He does this to make a point: if you say you have ...
Episode 38: Wait...say what now?
Our visual perception works in a way that we see what we expect to see, and don't see what we don't expect to see. If you read James 2:18 closely, you might be surpris...
Episode 39: Bully for you!
James 2:19 uses a bit of rhetorical sarcasm to make a point. You can claim to be faithful in a way that might be true of any self-respecting Jew. But if it doesn't sho...
Episode 40: Don’t be such a fool!
In James 2:20, the apostle calls some of his readers "senseless." But didn't Jesus teach in the Sermon on the Mount that it was wrong to call someone a fool?