I had a lady tell me she thought she understood why James was so passionate about not showing partiality. Showing favoritism was considered such a great offense to James and he spent a lot of time proving the harm of it. This sweet lady suggested that James perhaps struggled with living in the shadow of his older brother. If Jesus, his older brother, was fully God and fully man he was also sinless. James on the other hand was fully man and therefore a sinner.
I can imagine how hard it must have been to be the one who messed up all the time.
I wonder….. how many times his mother said, why can’t you just be like your bother Jesus?
I wonder…… if James knew first person the hurtful feeling of not being on the “in-circle”?
I wonder…. if some of why he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, while they were growing up, was due to his personal perspective of not ever measuring up.
I imagine that once James came to the full realization of who Jesus truly was, He became passionate that no one had the authority to push someone out of the “inner circle” of Jesus family. I wonder if he realized that HE (James) was the one who had isolated himself from Jesus’s inner-circle all those years before.
I wonder….
