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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 595. After the Ascension
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After the Ascension
We have no information as to when or how he was placed in this position. No title is given to the office he held. There were elders in the Jerusalem Church; but James is never called an elder; nor is the title “bishop” given to him. Still we must not be slaves of words. In point of fact, James held at Jerusalem a position very similar to that of the several town bishops, or pastors, early in the second century, the position of the one pastor of a congregation.
2. There are several references in the New Testament to James after the Ascension.
(1) Eight or ten years after the Ascension (about 38 a.d.) St. Paul paid a visit to Jerusalem and stayed with St. Peter fifteen days, seeing no other Apostle, “save James the Lord's brother.” This has given rise to much discussion as to whether James was an Apostle.
(2) In Gal_2:1-10 St. Paul describes a later visit to Jerusalem after an interval of fourteen years, i.e. about 51 a.d. At this visit the leaders of the Church, James, Peter, and John, after hearing his report of his first missionary journey, signified their approval of his work, and “gave the right hand of fellowship,” agreeing that Paul and Barnabas should preach to the Gentiles and they themselves to the circumcision. St. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem is more fully described in Act_15:4-29, where James appears as president of the Council held to consider how far the Gentile Christians should be required to conform to the customs of the Jews. It is James who sums up the discussion and proposes the resolution which is carried.
(3) In Gal_2:11-14 Peter's inconsistency in regard to eating with the Gentiles at Antioch is explained by the arrival of “certain from James.”
(4) James is seen in the same position of authority in Act_21:18, when St. Paul presents himself before him on his return from his third missionary journey (58 a.d.). After joining in praise to God for the success which had attended his labours, James and the elders who are with him warn St. Paul of the strong feeling against him, which had been excited among the “myriads of Jewish believers who were all zealous for the law,” by the report that he had taught the Jews of the Dispersion to abandon circumcision and their other customs. To counteract this impression, they recommended him to join in a Nazirite vow, which had been undertaken by four members of their community, as a proof that the report was unfounded, and that he himself walked according to the law.
William Wilberforce lived his parliamentary life as a contemporary of William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Here was a galaxy of brilliance-the most polished and powerful orators who ever awoke the classic echoes of St. Stephen's! Wilberforce's figure conveyed the inevitable impression of insignificance. Yet when he rose to address the Commons the House instantly crowded. Members held their breaths to listen. The little reformer spoke with an authority rarely wielded by the greatest masters. He was heard in a silence, and with a respect which was never accorded to those illustrious statesmen whose utterances are to this day read in schools and colleges as models of rhetoric. And why? There is only one reason for it. Like Sir Galahad-
His strength was as the strength of ten,
Because his heart was pure.1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, The Luggage of Life, 130.]
3. His relationship to Jesus, and his intimate acquaintance with Him from boyhood, of course made James a marked man among the disciples, and doubtless contributed greatly to his reputation and authority. But such natural advantages do not alone account for the tremendous influence which he wielded for so many years-an influence which he did not share with his brothers. Only because he possessed at the same time the qualities of a leader, and uncommon zeal and devotion, could he acquire the universal credit he enjoyed.
But it was not simply his character as a Christian that contributed to James's influence and authority. His character as a Jew counted for a great deal with the strict Jews of the Mother Church. Though he was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus, as St. Paul was, his conversion produced an entirely different effect upon him. He had apparently passed through no such experience of the futility of endeavouring to keep the Law, and it was not a sense of the need of justification, or of deliverance from sin and death, that led him to Christ. He was evidently, before his conversion, an uncommonly devout and faithful Jew, and in accepting Christ he never thought of ceasing to be such, or of regarding the observance of the Law as of less importance than before. Rather, like his other Christian brethren, he must have regarded it as of even greater importance; and nothing in the teaching or conduct of Jesus suggested anything else to him. All that we know of him points to an excessive reverence for the Jewish law in all its parts, and a most scrupulous observance of it throughout his life; and in a Church constituted as the Church of Jerusalem was such a tendency naturally promoted greatly his reputation for piety.
How great his influence and authority was we now with difficulty conceive. No doubt if we look at it from the more general point of view, whether of the whole Jewish Christian world, or of the whole Gentile Christian world, it sinks into nothing before the majesty of Peter and of Paul. But place ourselves within the circle of those purely Palestine Christians who still frequented the services of the Temple, and adhered to the usages of the synagogue-confine our view to the horizon of the favoured land, which was the scene of the last expiring struggle of Jewish national life-and we shall find that, to whatever quarter we turn for information, James appears before us as the one authoritative ruler, as the one undoubted representative of the Christian society. If we open the contemporary Christian records of the Acts and Epistles, it is to his decision that the Council of Jerusalem bows-to him, as a pillar of the Church, taking precedence even of Peter and John, that St. Paul communicates the new revelation which had been entrusted to him. If we turn to the later traditions of the Jewish Christians themselves, as preserved in the fragments of Hegesippus or in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, he appears before us as the one mysterious bulwark of the chosen people-invested with a priestly sanctity before which the pontificate of Aaron fades into insignificance-as the one universal bishop of the Christian Church, in whose dignity the loftiest claims of the ecclesiastical dominion of later times find their earliest prototype. If we look to the impression produced on the mind of the Jewish people itself, we find that he alone of all the Apostles has obtained a place in their national records.
There are men and women born upon this earth, who, walking lightly, yet print deep, ineffaceable footprints upon the age in which they live. The world is better for them; their breath has purified the atmosphere they existed in. Ignorant of their predestination as they are, every word and act of theirs bears the seal of the Divine Intelligence. They were sent to do the work of the Most High.1 [Note: Richard Dehan, in Between Two Thieves.]