By the leading of the Lord, we decided to have the crystallization-study of the Epistle of James. This Epistle has been a topic of debate throughout the centuries. Martin Luther called James a book of straw. This word is too extreme. There is some straw in James, but not all the points of this book are straw. To decide what is straw and what is not straw needs a top discernment.

We need to point out that under God's sovereignty, there are the Old Testament and the New Testament with the old dispensation and the new dispensation. God has two peoples: the old people, Israel, and the new people, the church. Also, there are the old man and the new man. When we speak concerning the Epistle of James, we must realize these four pairs of items: the Old Testament and the New Testament, the old dispensation and the new dispensation, God's old people and God's new people, and the old man and the new man. I consider the apostle James as the top mixer. He mixed the New Testament with the Old Testament, the new dispensation with the old, the new people of God with the old, and the new man with the old man. The debate on the book of James cannot be resolved unless one sees these factors.

James is on Christian perfection, but is this perfection by the old man or by the new man, by the natural man or by the regenerated man? In the book of James there is a mixture. Many points in James indicate that he does not refer to the regenerated man but to the natural man. There are other points in James, however, that point to the new man, not the old man. The New Testament tells us we have to put off the old man and put on the new man (Eph. 4:22-24). It also tells us that we have to deny the self, which is the corrupted soul, the old man (Matt. 16:24). Then we need God's strengthening to strengthen our entire being into the inner man, which is the new man (Eph. 3:16). Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the sharp word of God operates to divide our soul from our spirit. This is a base for our study on James in this first message.

The stress of the Epistle of James is Christian perfection. According to history and according to James's writing, there are different perfections on different levels in different ages. Job 1:1 says that Job was a perfect man. The problem in the book of Job is how to discern Job's perfection. In Philippians 3:6 Paul said that as to the righteousness of the law he had become blameless, perfect. This was before Paul was saved. While he was Saul of Tarsus, he was a blameless person; he was perfect. Job's perfection was before the law, and Saul's perfection was under the law. Now we have James's perfection, but in what age? His perfection is not only in the age of the law but also in the age of grace. James is a person with one foot in the age of law and the other in the age of grace. Thus, he is one person standing in two ages. This is the perfection of James, but this is not the genuine Christian perfection revealed in the entire New Testament. Job's perfection is before the law, without law; Saul's perfection is under the law; and James's perfection is under both the law and grace. The genuine Christian perfection is purely under the absolute grace of God. We need to remember these four kinds of perfections according to history and the Bible. The Christian perfection stressed by James was under both the law and grace, by both the old, natural man and the new, regenerated man. This is a mixture. Now we want to see the virtues of the perfection stressed by James.