James mixed the practice of the New Testament economy with that of the recovered Old Testament dispensation. This is indicated by his use of the word “synagogue” in 2:2. We have seen that the Greek word sunagogeis composed of two words: sun,together and ago, to bring; hence, a collecting, gathering, congregation, assembly. It came to denote the place of gathering and was used in the New Testament to denote the congregation (Acts 13:43; 9:2; Luke 12:11) and congregating place (Luke 7:5) of the Jews. In Jerusalem there were quite a few synagogues of various kinds of Jews (Acts 6:9).
Synagogues did not exist before the Babylonian captivity of the children of Israel. After the temple was destroyed, the synagogues were formed. The Jews came to the synagogue seeking the knowledge of God by studying the Holy Scriptures (Luke 4:16-17; Acts 13:14-15). When the Jews returned from captivity, they brought back to their own country this practice of meeting in synagogues. This was a practice of the recovered Old Testament dispensation after the Jews had been recovered from Babylon. In Jerusalem there were synagogues for Jews who had returned from different areas and had their own languages and customs. After they came back to Jerusalem, they established synagogues according to these languages and customs. This was the reason there were different synagogues among the Jews in Jerusalem.
In 2:1 and 2a James says, “My brothers, do not have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with respect of persons. For if there comes into your synagogue....” In 2:1 James speaks of the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in verse 2, of the synagogue. This clearly indicates a mixture of God’s New Testament economy with the practice of the Old Testament dispensation after the recovery from Babylon. Apparently, James did not have any concept concerning the distinction between Christians and Jews. As used by James, the word synagogue may indicate that he regarded the assembly and assembling place of the Jewish believers as one of the synagogues among the Jews, perhaps a Christian synagogue. This may indicate that he considered the Jewish Christians still as a part of the Jewish nation, as the chosen people of God according to the Old Testament. If so, this indicates that he lacked a clear vision concerning the distinction between God’s chosen people of the Old Testament and the believers in Christ of the New Testament. What a serious mixture this is!
In chapters two and four of his Epistle we see that James still kept the Old Testament law of letters. For example in 2:9 and 10 he says, “But if you respect persons, you commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” This word indicates that James still practiced the keeping of the Old Testament law. This corresponds to the word in Acts 21:20 spoken by James and the elders in Jerusalem to Paul. Many thousands of Jewish believers still remained in a mixture of the Christian faith and the Mosaic law. James and the others even advised Paul to practice such a semi-Judaic mixture (Acts 21:17-26). In Acts 21 James encouraged Paul to keep the law. He was not aware that the dispensation of law was over and the dispensation of grace should be fully honored, and that any disregard of the distinction between these dispensations was against God’s dispensational administration and would be a great damage to God’s economical plan for the building up of the church as the expression of Christ. Thus, James’ Epistle was written under the cloud of a semi-Judaic mixture.