AN EPISTLE OF STRAW?

I am currently preaching from the book of James and so I have read through the book as a whole several times now.

It's an interesting process to read a Biblical book repeatedly before focusing on some smaller part of the whole - you find that much of the depth of Scripture is not revealed in casual or patchy reading. 

The book of James used to strike me as being a fairly random collection of commandments, but I am starting to see the author's framework more clearly. James seems to build the entire book around a basic contrast of how believers are to act and to speak within God's family as opposed to how the godless world carries on in their ignorance and unbelief. 

It seems a relevant reminder that the world which the believer has left behind still exerts a powerful draw upon him or her. It still holds influence over our actions and speech. 

James really is a striking bit of Scripture.

So I was surprised in my research to come across a rather negative take on the book from none other than Martin Luther who, according to N.T. Wright, "dismissed James for containing nothing evangelical, teaching nothing about Jesus." Luther, in fact, "declared that it is not an apostolic letter but an epistle of straw"! 

That should serve as yet another warning against putting too much stock in the theological opinions of any pillar of church history.