Reading James

James writes to Jewish Christians scattered through the Roman empire. They know the Old Testament. They have saturated their minds with it. But there are quarrels among them. They are reading; they are not understanding. Hence, James goes back to the law over and again--the royal law, the perfect law.

Today I am reading "Eat this Book" by Eugene Peterson, a book about spiritual reading. Spiritual reading is how one reads the Bible to be shaped and formed by it. A Christian has to get this book into them as thoroughly as if they were eating it. Peterson uses the example of running. When he was running, he would read and read and read about running. How to heal injuries. How to stretch. What to eat. If it was running, he would read it. However, when he got an injury, he stopped reading. As long as he wasn't running, he wasn't reading about it. This was because in his running, his reading was an affirmation, an encouragement, companionship, a deepening, a validation of his life. Likewise for Scripture, when our lives are being given for its story, we will read it for sustenance. We will read it because without it, we starve. The world doesn't feed those who live against its ideals and its stories. God does through his word.

Back to James. In this letter we have a glimpse at a community encouraged to eat the Old Testament again. Take it in. Be shaped by it. See its royalty and perfection. And in seeing this encouragement, we are given part of our own Scripture to take in and eat and consume. We are to be fed by it, but this only happens as we are participating in the world of James--a world where Jesus is Lord, where leaders are humble, where we are slow to speak and slow to become angry. I think this captures why the word planted in us can save us.