39—Forty Days with James: James the Martyr

Douglas Jacoby Podcast

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

• James was martyred in AD 62.
  • Prophet, Peacemaker, Martyr
  • Martyrs and confessors in the early church
• James’s execution
  • Thrown from pinnacle and beaten over the head (Jos. 2.23.12).
  • “If a priest performed the temple service while unclean… the young priests take him out of the temple court and split his skull with clubs” (Sanh. 81b).
• Responses to James:
  • The rich: Ananus II reacted violently to James’ denunciations of the rich and influential, perhaps more than to his lack of patriotism and his following a false messiah.
  • Yet James was highly respected among the Jews. Even the Pharisees defended him.
• Much in the epistle of James indirectly points to the danger James was in—James, the prophet and peacemaker who was executed early in his 4th decade as a follower of his brother (1:12; 2:6-7; 4:1-2; 4:13-14; 5:10-11; 5:6).
• Champions of righteousness and peace often meet violent deaths: Mahatma Gandhi; Martin Luther King; Oscar Romero… Jesus and James.
• “[Jesus] flatly refused the temptations of power and fame offered him by the Grand Inquisitor from hell. He was no Judas Maccabaeus redivivus [explain]. His conspiracy was not that of the Zealots of his day. His revolutionary manifesto was not a bloody call to arms like that of Marx and Engels, Hitler and Himmler, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. His mission was not at the point of a sword like Muhammad’s. In fact, Jesus was the unarmed prophet who renounced the sword, and seemed to turn away from the use of force that any civilization needs in order to build and sustain itself. And he appeared to show little or no interest in many of the burning issues that parade across our television screens, shout at us in the headlines of our newspapers, and rage like wildfire through our social media.” Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 95.
• James breathed and lived in that same spirit!

Next / finally: My personal takeaways