Healthy

 A few years back, my little brother talked me into getting a physical. It took him a while, and he had to employ my wife as his co-conspirator until I finally relented and went in. It’s irksome hearing two people nag at you in stereo about how you’re getting to a certain age, and it would be good to know if something was amiss. I understood they were coming from a good place. I understood it was out of love, so I didn’t push back too hard; I just ignored them for a season.

It’s not as though their concern was unfounded. I’m a bit on the husky side; my mom died of a heart attack in her mid-forties, my grandmother on my mom’s side was diabetic, and my dad thinks he has diabetes, so you know, no one mistakes our family for being descendants of Adonis.

Even so, I’ve always been one of those rub some dirt on it and drink more water sort of people, so the idea of voluntarily surrendering my own blood was not something I looked forward to. I’d been sickly as a child and played at being a human pincushion for the better part of seven years, so I have a particular aversion to anything pointy that looks like a needle attached to something that looks like a syringe.

I finally went in because getting stabbed at by a nurse with pink hair and shaky hands was a better prospect than the nagging. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but getting stuck again wasn’t pleasant either. Once my test results came in, my doctor said something that both vindicated me and made me chuckle heartily: “You’re healthier than you look to be!”

Sure, there was the standard you could stand to lose a couple of pounds and watch your sugar intake, but if I was looking to go to astronaut school besides the girth and flat feet, I was good to go.

Most of us are self-aware enough to know when something’s off. We are self-aware enough to know when something isn’t right or isn’t as it should be. This is valid for our physical man as well as our spiritual man. That we tend to ignore the telltale signs, both spiritually and physically, is also a general truth that is so common it is undeniable.

If you are feeling physically unwell, the first thing one does is try to figure out what’s causing it. If you’re feeling queasy, you think back to what you ate. If you’re coming down with a fever, you try to remember who you were around and if they sneezed spittle in your face. More often than not, if you can figure out why you’re feeling like you went twelve rounds with a kickboxer, you’ll be able to remedy the situation by eliminating what made you sick from your life.

Although there are a multitude of reasons why we might feel physically unwell, when it comes to spiritual malaise, there is only one reason: disobedience! You’re welcome. If you are spiritually stunted, dry, cold, unwell, indifferent, or lethargic, it is always due to the disobedience of God and His word on your part.

That sounds a bit harsh there, butterball. So does when a doctor tells a patient that they’ve got six months to live, but it’s just the reality of the situation. The doctor isn’t trying to be mean, condescending, unfeeling, or cruel. He has to give you the bad news because it’s his duty. The same goes for individuals who still hold to the truth of Scripture and deliver it unabashedly.

Spiritual illness is the direct result of disobedience. When we do not heed the Word of God, when we ignore the counsel of God, our spiritual man inevitably suffers. The remedy is well known but requires humility, brokenness, and repentance on our part. Men can choose to return to obedience, but more often than we would like, the flesh wins the tug of war, and repentance is not forthcoming.

You can have a healthy body but a withered spiritual man. Some try to put on a brave face, insisting they are on top of the world, but no matter how much they gain, amass, and squirrel away, they feel empty and hopeless because their spiritual man is on life support, barely breathing, ready to expire.

There are also those who, by all accounts, should be pitied by the world yet have joy and peace because their spiritual man is strong and vibrant, and their hope is tethered in something other than the things of this world.

The bulk of James’s writing concerns the spiritual man, his well-being, maturing, and nourishment. He understood, as did his contemporaries, that if the spiritual man is suffering, you can have the world itself, and it would still profit nothing. We’ve seen it play out in our modern era time and again, yet somehow fail to learn the lesson. We tell ourselves we’ll beat the odds. We’ll be happy if we nab that brass ring, buy that McMansion, or get that dream car. It’ll all be worth it once we get what we want, and once we get it, the shine wears off faster than Joel Osteen at a sound doctrine conference.

True peace comes from God. True joy is found in Him. Everything else is an illusion, a forgery, and a cheap one at that. When was it that the church strayed from this truth? When did we shift our focus from the things above to the things of this earth? Inquiring minds want to know.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Priorities

 As introductions go, you couldn’t get much briefer than greetings. That was it. Straight, to the point, without any other well-wishes or encouragements, as most all other epistles seem to have toward the tail end. Even Jude’s ending seemed downright verbose compared to James’s introduction. James wanted to dispense with the niceties as quickly as possible to get to the essential core of why he was penning this letter.

It is undeniable that James has one priority: the spiritual well-being of the brethren. What does that have to do with us, you might ask? He wrote it to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. Given that we were grafted into the family of God, you may receive this epistle as though written to you, but if this does not suffice, we return to the foundational tenet that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, including the epistle of James.

James 1:2-3, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

Right out of the box, it has nothing to do with prosperity or living your best life but about trials and how you should react toward them, knowing that the testing of your faith produces something demonstrably tangible in you that cannot be purchased with silver or gold.

It is a shocker that so few study the book of James nowadays or that it has been so belittled throughout the church age by those who would rather not contend with hard truths penned by one of Christ’s half-brothers.

If the testing of your faith produces patience in you, something arguably noble and virtuous, the question that we must wrestle with before going any further is, who allows the testing of our faith?

Yes, I know Jesus wouldn’t beat up His bride on their wedding night; I got that part. The guys in skinny jeans and hipster glasses made sure to let us all know that right before they went into rehab, divorced their wives for their best friend Rod, or renounced their faith and went the way of the world. I’ve heard a few other ones just as myopic and infantile, but honest question: given what we know the testing of our faith produces, who allows the trials?

Would the devil pursue something, knowing it would benefit you spiritually in the end? By the same token, God is not sadistic, wherein He puts us on the hamster wheel and then shoots spit wads at us until we fall off. The answer to the question is not as simple as it first seemed, is it?

I’ve thought about it for longer than you might believe, and the only viable answer is that the devil can’t help himself. Just in case there’s that one chance in a million that he can cause you to stumble, he attacks incessantly, and those who have learned to stand and resist him reap the fruit of patience that the testing produces.

That said, God allows our faith to be tested because He knows the pressure of trials produces good fruit in us. They allow our spiritual man to grow and mature and learn to walk in faith and obedience. Even though James insists we should count it all joy when we fall into various trials if all they ever did were leave us bruised and bloodied, disillusioned and shipwrecked, it would be kind of hard to put on a happy face, wouldn’t it?

Often, we bemoan, grumble, complain, and murmur about the trials God allows in our lives that would produce wondrous things in us if we were to count them as joy and persevere through them.

We pray for God to remove the trial before the trial has a chance to bear fruit, rejoicing that the trial has ceased, not realizing we just shortchanged ourselves. Am I saying we shouldn’t pray for healing? No, praying for healing is Biblical. However, if we pray and healing is not forthcoming, we must accept that God has a bigger plan.

There is also the promise that all things work together for good to those who love God, including the trials, the hardships, the seasons in the valley, as well as the seasons on the mountaintop. All things means all things, not just some things or most things. Trials are not pointless. The testing of your faith isn’t pointless. They produce patience, and patience is one of those underappreciated virtues that pays dividends throughout one’s life. Just like love, joy, or peace, patience is something you can’t buy. You can buy counterfeits to love, which is physical lust; you can purchase counterfeits to joy, which is chemically altering your mood; you can buy counterfeits to peace, which is insulating yourself from the world outside, but the real things can’t be had in exchange for legal tender.

Sometimes, all it takes is patience and the ability to keep silent for your enemy to fall into the snare he’s prepared for you. You don’t have to scream or shout or guffaw; all you have to do is be still and watch it all unfold before your eyes in such a way that you will know with certainty no amount of screaming or gnashing of teeth would have come close to a resolution.

In reading this epistle, I get the feeling James is writing more out of personal experience than anything. I could only imagine what he had to endure once he acknowledged the Lordship of Christ and became a fearless proclaimer of His sovereignty. It’s one thing to become a believer and have a church body or a community of Christians you can fellowship and grow with; it’s another when everyone you’ve ever known, save a handful of souls, is out for blood, and looking to do you harm because of it.

The only way to understand the bravery of men such as James, Jude, Paul, Peter, Matthew, Luke, John, and any other who put quill to parchment is to contextualize the time they lived in and what the climate was like for believers. These men did not write from the comfort of their dens overlooking the sea while the breeze blew through the open windows, causing the white drapes to dance lazily.

They wrote their letters while in prison or being hunted, grateful for friends and wary of enemies, knowing that their end would likely be violent and would come about for Christ’s sake.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Confirmation

 Matthew 13:53-57, “Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these parables, that He departed from there. When He had come to His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things? So they were offended at Him.”

Some people will always see you as you once were. They will judge you based on your lineage, heritage, birthplace, economic standing, and a myriad of other things that have nothing to do with who you are today, who He made you, and who you’ve become. It’s myopic and infantile and says more about the one doing the judging than the one they’re judging, but man is stubbornly consistent when it comes to seeing others through varying lenses. Even if it’s a small thing, something trite and irrelevant, as long as it somehow lessens the person, we dwell on it and make it the focal point of their existence.

I can’t say that Jesus was homesick, but He wanted to go home, so He came to His own country and began teaching in their synagogue. So far, so good, but it’s only the start of it because the people who heard Him were astonished given that they knew who Joseph was, as well as Mary, Christ’s four brothers, and His sisters. They were ignorant of His supernatural conception and assumed Joseph had sired him, along with his siblings. It wasn’t an issue or a point of contention but a statement of fact.

Again, it’s telling that there was no insistence upon Jesus having siblings, nor did James or Jude, for that matter, introduce themselves as the half-brothers of Christ. It was common knowledge during those days, something readily accepted as factual. No one was trying to push the issue or try to fit in Christ’s siblings edgewise as some people do their credentials or titles. The people of His day were amazed that Jesus spoke with such wisdom due to who His family was and whom He grew up around. They assumed Joseph the carpenter was His father and knew his brothers and sisters, as well as Mary, His mother.

Like many today, they were trying to find a reason not to believe the words of Jesus, and they thought pointing out the family He was born into was a good enough reason. They weren’t trying to prove or disprove whether or not Jesus had half-siblings; they were just trying to discredit Him so they may disregard His words.

When you can’t find fault with the message, you try to discredit the messenger. It’s the next best thing. After all, if the messenger is flawed, how can the message be perfect? If the messenger can be called into question, why can’t the message?

I’m not talking about pretend messengers bringing messages highlighting their accomplishments and promoting their ministries. I’m talking about true messengers walking in obedience who are rejected because their mannerisms are too direct, they seem too gruff, and they don’t bow and scrape or suffer fools.

The church has created a cottage industry around placating foolish people with delusions of grandeur. We’re selling doctorates, diplomas, and accreditations like they were going out of style, knowing full well they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on, never mind the five grand they charge for them.

Everyone knows it would help the bottom line to no end if they would just go along with the recently widowed millionaire octogenarian who feels there aren’t enough ministries focused on getting one’s pets saved, and so they do.

Jesus wasn’t accredited, He didn’t have a pedigree, He didn’t come from the right family, yet here He stood in the synagogue teachings, and that was something they could not abide. That they confirmed James and Jude to be Christ’s half-brothers was unintentionally prescient, but knowing God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, it’s no surprise.

There’s a good chance that James, this selfsame man who now declares himself to be a bondservant of the Lord Christ, was among those who came to lay hold of Jesus thinking He was out of His mind.

Mark 3:21, “But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.”

Now, this same man declares unashamedly that not only is he a bondservant of Christ, but also that Christ is Lord. Such detail is neither trivial nor irrelevant. It only serves to underscore the importance of the epistle of James and the heartfelt appeal to any who would hear that Jesus, his half-brother, was everything He claimed to be, died, rose again, and ascended back to the Father just as He said He would.

Perhaps this is the reason James begins his epistle in a conciliatory manner. He knew that he, too, once doubted; he knew that he, too, was once lost. Nobody’s born saved, and that’s something we would do well to remember when we are inclined to judge harshly and withhold grace from those who are new to the faith, immature, and learning.

Your judgment is ill-placed, for it’s the wolves among the sheep you should be angry toward, not the lambs among the sheep.

My grandfather loved sheep cheese, so whenever we were in Romania, we frequented a handful of sheep herds up in the hills that made it fresh. They didn’t mass market or mass produce it, so you had to know the shepherds to show up and buy some. I tagged along on most of those trips, not because I particularly enjoy sheep cheese, but because I enjoyed spending time with my grandpa. On occasion, I had the opportunity to see a ewe being born, and if you’ve ever seen it, you know how wobbly and uncertain they are, how readily they fall when they try to stand, but eventually, they learn, and soon enough, they’re running around with the other sheep.

You can’t expect a newborn to be fully matured overnight. You can, however, expect a mature sheep to act in accordance with their level of maturity.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Cousins

 How far would you go to defend an untenable position? What lengths would you go to in order to convince people that kale tastes great or that bellbottoms are a good idea? I guess it all depends on what’s at stake. If it was just a question of personal preference, you might voice an opinion or two, but at the first sign of pushback or evidence to the contrary, you’d let it go and try to deflect, redirect, or diffuse the situation.

Now imagine that there were billions upon billions of dollars at stake, an entire city with golden domes and golden crosses, real estate holdings throughout the world, prestige, and a couple of billion people hanging on your every word. How far would you go to defend your position then?

People will perpetuate deceit for a lot less, so it’s no surprise that no one is willing to have the conversation about Jesus and his half-brothers and sisters and what that implies in real-world terms.

I have cousins, and I have brothers. I’ve never referred to my cousins as my brothers, nor have I ever referred to my brothers as my cousins, but these are the lengths to which some will go to maintain that Mary did not have a relationship with Joseph after the birth of Jesus, resulting in offspring.

When you have to butcher the Bible to maintain your assertions as valid, you’ve got a problem on your hands. It’s the kind of problem no amount of backpedaling or propaganda can fix, either.  

This is why the foundation of something matters. It is, in fact, paramount. If the foundation is slanted or built upon shifting sands, no matter how opulent or grandiose the edifice, it is still compromised and uninhabitable. You’ll always have the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, ready to drop when you least expect it. It may not be visible to the naked eye at first, but build it tall enough, and you have the leaning tower of Pisa where you can’t help but notice it’s askew.

How long do you think it was before someone noticed the tower was leaning to one side? However far along they were, someone deemed it too expensive to tear down and build it anew. They’d invested too much money and time, so good enough would have to do. In all fairness, it is said the tower didn’t lean initially, but even so, it is foundational issues that caused it to lean eventually.

That in itself is a learning lesson worth pondering. Everything seemed fine until pressure was brought to bear, and because the foundation was not built solidly enough, once the weight of the tower bore down on it, it began to slip.

Whether or not Mary had children with Joseph after the birth of Jesus matters because clearly the Bible says she did, and two of the epistles within the New Testament were written by men whom those of their time knew as half-brothers to the Christ.

It was not something in dispute during the time they were alive. It was only much, much later that fanciful notions of what the word brother means began to be floated about. There’s a cascading effect that occurs when you call into question this one central point, which goes to undermine the credibility and validity of the whole. If James and Jude were not the half-brothers of Jesus, then we can ignore the things we don’t like in the things they wrote and not feel so bad about it.

What would they know of walking in the way of truth if they were just a couple of guys who got bored one day and decided to write letters?

Why would the twelve tribes scattered abroad pay this man James any heed if he were just another Jew?

The familiarity with which James writes to the twelve tribes undergirds the historical records that tell us he was a devout Jew, well known among the Pharisees, and a letter from him declaring unashamedly that he was a bondservant of Christ would have thrown a wrench into the narrative being formulated that Jesus was just another grifter and that it was His disciples who stole his body from the tomb.

It’s one thing to get a letter from a cousin twice removed and another to get one from a man’s half-brother, who, up until recently, was doubtful of his claims. Close family is usually the hardest to convince of something, especially if their first inclination is not to believe you. They’re around you all the time, can detect any inconsistency, and if they’re set on dismantling your narrative, if you’re not wholly truthful and honest, they will find a way.

Always be wary of anyone who tries to contradict or dispute the Bible while claiming to be an adherent of it. There’s always an agenda behind it, always some vested interest that they’re trying to keep hidden lest the individual they are attempting to convince sees through their intent.

The pacifists among us are quick to say that as far as they’re concerned, it doesn’t matter if James and Jude were cousins of Jesus or half-brothers. It doesn’t take away from who Jesus was, after all. All that may be true, but one is the truth, and the other is a lie. One is fact; the other is a fiction created by men because it allows them to be the gatekeepers to grace, forgiveness, salvation, and heaven.

Jesus said, let he who thirsts come to Me and drink. He never mentioned a middleman you’re supposed to go to who will tell you the hoops you must jump through in order to find Him. There are no gatekeepers. Jesus is waiting; it’s just men’s desperately wicked hearts keeping them from seeking Him out.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

War Dogs

 As of this writing, three hundred people are dead and well over a thousand wounded to varying degrees of severity. No matter how they try to spin it, this was an unprovoked attack on a civilian populace, and that they took hostages, which they later killed as well, only rubs salt in the wound.

I’m sure others will dissect this event in detail and lay out what the obvious geopolitical ramifications are likely to be, but I’m a simple man and have come to a handful of simple assumptions. They’re not earth-shattering by any means; they are quite obvious, but sometimes, we miss the obvious and fail to understand the gravity of something that just occurred.

The first thing that most will likely overlook is the speed with which nations can go from probability of conflict to inevitability of conflict. It’s like flipping a switch. One event, and you go from a tenuous ceasefire to a hot war. The Middle East has never been a peaceful place, and Israel has never been a carefree country with no enemies, but there was always a sense that the cooler heads were trying to keep things from going to all-out war. This does not seem to be the case any longer.

War isn’t coming; war is here, and like a vortex, it will drag the world in, compelling everyone to choose a side. That our commitment is half-hearted at best, and politicians are forced to make statements condemning the violence because the polling tells them to does not bode well for the viability of long-term support Israel will need going forward. It’s no surprise; the Bible told us it would be so.

Make no mistake, this was a well-planned, coordinated attack that had many moving parts and took a long time to construct. This wasn’t a handful of men with slingshots and bottle rockets; there were individuals who had been living among the people they slaughtered, who had integrated and pretended to be docile and peaceful. That reality should be a teachable moment for every nation with a high number of unvetted migrants streaming across its borders, but it won’t be because willful blindness is very hard to cure.

By the time a nation wakes up to the reality that it’s been invaded, it’s already too late. The coming chaos will not be contained in the Middle East but will become a global issue. It will spread like a brushfire in high winds on a dry day.

Given that every intelligence agency got caught unaware that no one got a hint of what was being planned, perhaps they should drop the word intelligence altogether and admit that their reputations are undeserved. This wasn’t just a failure but a catastrophic failure, and innocent people paid with their lives.

There are war dogs, and there are mad dogs, and you send the war dogs out to deal with the mad ones. American politicians can encourage self-restraint until they are blue in the face, but I get the feeling it will be in short supply. Once you massacre women and children, any expectation of a quarter or peaceful resolution is done and gone. The only thing left to do is make the cost of what your enemies did so unbearable and astoundingly high that they’ll think twice about ever doing it again.

While modern-day prophets and prophetesses regaled the church with stories of being beamed to heaven from porta-potties and how you’ll get a pet dinosaur when you go to heaven, other more sober-minded souls have been warning ceaselessly about the hour that is coming, and the darkness that will blanket the earth. They were ignored and rejected because it’s markedly easier to hear about unicorns in heaven than wars and rumors of war on earth.

The days about which the church was warned were coming are now here, and those found unprepared to meet them head-on have no one to blame but their own indifference. There will be a tipping point when men can no longer pretend they’re not living in the days they’re living in, and when they will have to acknowledge that what they are witnessing is what the Bible warned of, even if they, themselves, did not believe they would be here for it. What they do with that realization and how they react will be telling.

Going by what the Bible tells us, many will fall away, grow bitter, and begin to persecute those who remain faithful. Given the Bible’s success rate at predicting future events, I wouldn’t be so quick to roll my eyes or say that could never happen here. We’ve made that mistake one too many times, and the things we said could never happen have, and much worse to boot.  

Revelation 6:3-4, “When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Preliminares

 James 1:1, “James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad: Greetings.”

To avoid descending into a Bible version of who’s on third, we must first determine how many men named James are in the New Testament and which of these authored the epistle we will be studying. Relax, I’m not assigning you homework; I already did it for you. Although some insist there are three men named James within the pages of Scripture, there are actually four. Four men named James are found within the pages of the New Testament, one of these being the half-brother of Jesus and, coincidentally, the individual responsible for penning the epistle.

Evidently, James was a popular name in Jesus’ day, equivalent to Jack, Jim, or Mike in our modern age. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a Mike. However, every Mike is a unique individual with a unique story, family, history, and identity.

It’s hard enough identifying the right person with the advent of last names. Imagine having to do so based on the father’s name or his occupation and nothing else. Usually, if there is more than one individual with the same name, we are told whose son they were, so we might differentiate between them. It matters because even within the context of this discussion, there are two men named Judas, one who hung himself and was already dead while the other had gathered in the upper room with the disciples of Christ.

If not for the Bible’s insistence that it was a different Judas, disingenuous souls would have quickly jumped on it and pointed out a perceived inconsistency. Any little thing will do because they have to get their shots in where they can.

It may sound jaded, but I believe most people aren’t looking for the truth; they’re looking for an excuse not to accept the truth. They will overlook conflicting claims, contradictions, and inconsistencies as long as their position is validated. If their position is in danger of being exposed as a lie, they’ll ignore incontrovertible facts and evidence, pretending as though it were not clear and overwhelming.

Since I’d never ask you to just take my word for it, we will quickly go through the four men named James in the New Testament to get our bearings and begin this journey on the right foot. Because too many insist on making it up as they go along these days, in fact, entire denominations do so without shame or remorse, it’s always best to go to the Word and let it have the final say.

Yes, it would be easier to hop on the ‘trust me, bro’ bandwagon, but easy is easy; it isn’t right. Just take our word for it; it’s true, we promise. Biblical precedence, you say? What’s your problem with gold dust? Why are you so divisive? Why can’t you just accept it and move on? Why do you have to make such a big deal about it?

Because men will say the darndest things and twist themselves into pretzels just to prove their position valid, in no particular order, the four men in the Bible named James are:

James, the father of Judas, no, not that Judas, and he is mentioned twice. Once in Luke and another time in Acts.

Luke 6:16, “Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor.”

Acts 1:16, “And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying: Peter, James, John, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas; Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot; and Judas the son of James.”

Those who read the verses and don’t just gloss over them may have noticed another James being mentioned in this verse: James, the son of Alphaeus. Although counted among the disciples, very little is known about this James. He is mentioned one other time, in the gospel according to Mark, and is referred to as James the Less.

Mark 15:40-41, “There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joseph, and Salome, who also followed Him and ministered to Him when He was in Galilee, and many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.”

Then there is James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, affectionately known as the Sons of Thunder, and also known as James the Greater, who was beheaded with a sword by Herod Agrippa close to where he was a missionary to the Jews in Judea. 

Matthew 4:21-22, “Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.”

Matthew 10:2-4, “Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.”

Then there’s James, the Lord’s brother, mentioned a handful of times in Matthew, Mark, Galatians, and Acts.

Matthew 13:55, “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary? And his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?”

Galatians 1:19, “But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.”

One thing to notice, and it’s something that stood out to me, having met more than my fair share of people trying to convince me of something that wasn’t entirely true, is that nobody’s trying too hard to emphasize that Jesus had siblings. Both passages, within the context of the broader dialogue, can be considered throwaway lines.

Nobody’s trying to hammer home the point; they’re just stating a fact. Nobody’s trying to convince anyone that Jesus had brothers and sisters; it was common knowledge during that time, and Paul mentioned it because he’d met James, and the people discussed it because they knew the family Jesus came from and that he had brothers, James among them.

Be wary of people who try too hard to convince you about something. Truth is self-evident. Be matter of fact in presenting it, but once you have, you’ve done your duty, and the rest is on them.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

The Winner

 No, I’m not still counting votes. This, after all, was not an election. I didn’t have a horse in the race, so I wasn’t waiting around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the correct numbers to show up on my screen.

I tallied the votes a few days ago, but I needed to spend some time with the book we’re about to delve into and determine the best approach. If I’m going to take the time to write it out, and you’re going to take the time to read it, then it better be something substantive. Something worth both of our time.

When the votes started rolling in, I thought Job just couldn’t catch a break. Over and over, one after the other, on three different platforms, it was all James, all the time. Then, out of nowhere, Job started to make a show. He was a contender, to be sure, and the race got tighter as the days went by. Even so, it was not enough. The next book we will be delving into is The Epistle of James, and it promises to be an eye-opening journey, as having heard from one of Christ’s half-brothers, we will now hear from the other who happened to write a letter that was included in the canon of scripture.

Although they were brothers, James and Jude differed in character traits, which shows in their writing. While Jude came out both barrels blazing, James tried to be diplomatic and conciliatory, at least in the first few verses.

It’s also worth mentioning that though Jude wrote to those who are called and sanctified by God, James wrote to the twelve tribes that are scattered abroad. There is a reason for this, which we will delve into as we begin our journey because James wasn’t an early adopter of his half-brother being divine, or the Son of God, come in the flesh, who died and rose again. That he calls himself a bondservant of Christ while addressing his letter to the twelve tribes is significant, and it dispels doubts those of his time might have harbored regarding Jesus. Those who knew him knew his conversion was authentic and sincere because of his reputation.

As soon as we conclude our study of James, we will delve into Job, so no more voting for a while—my thanks to those who participated.

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.