Stanza 3 of Hymns, #541 says, "Not philosophy nor/Any element/Can to Christ conform us/As His complement;/But 'tis Christ Himself who/All our nature takes/And in resurrection/Us His members makes." No philosophy, regardless of how good or high it is, can produce the Body of Christ as the complement to Christ. Ethical teaching, such as James's mixed teaching, can never make members of Christ. The members of Christ can be produced only by the teaching according to God's New Testament economy. Stanza 4 says, "Not religion, even/Christianity,/Can fulfill God's purpose/Or economy;/But 'tis Christ within us/As our all in all/Satisfies God's wishes,/And His plan withal."
In this message we want to see four main items: 1) the vague vision in the Epistle of James; 2) the side effects of James's teaching; 3) the tragic issues of James's mistake; 4) the wiping out by God. Certain medicines have side effects. James's teaching is a kind of medicine that heals you to some extent in some sense, but the side effects are greater. Because of James's vague vision and his teaching that produced side effects and issued in tragedies, God came in to wipe out the vague situation and mixture in Jerusalem.
The word dispensation is a subsidiary word to economy. A dispensation is a part of the economy. For God to carry out His economy as a whole in the Old Testament and the New Testament, He needs four dispensations. Dispensation means the way to deal with something. To carry out anything, you need a way to deal with things. God used at least four ways to deal with His people in four ages in order to carry out His economy. The first age is the age before the law, or the age of the fathers, from Adam to Moses. The second is the age of the law from Moses to Christ's first coming. The third is the age of grace, from Christ's first coming to His second coming. The fourth is the age of the kingdom. Every age has its own dispensation. In the dispensation before law, God dealt with His people in a particular way. In the age of the law, the way God used to deal with His people was by the law. In the age of grace, God's dispensation to deal with His people is by grace. Then in the age of the kingdom, God's dispensation will be to deal with people according to His kingdom.
In God's way to deal with people, James was very vague. He was not clear. James was born and reborn in the age of grace, but he carried out God's work in two ways, in two dispensations, that is, in the way of the dispensation of law and in the way of the dispensation of grace. In James's short Epistle of five chapters, these two ways in which God deals with His people were mixed up. He said that we have been brought forth, or born, of God by the word of truth, the law, from the Old Testament (1:18). This is a mixture of two ways. James spoke of regeneration, but there was no regeneration in the Old Testament. He also said that the Spirit of God indwells us (4:5), but the Spirit's indwelling was not the way God dealt with His people in the Old Testament. It is the way with which God deals with His people in the New Testament. Not only so, his opinion was that God regenerated people to keep the law. Regeneration, however, is in the new dispensation, and to keep the law is in the old dispensation.