James

James is a letter, and from its first line it is addressed not to one church but to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. It names its writer only as James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then it stops introducing itself and starts giving instructions. It is packed with direct commands across its five short chapters. It moves quickly, from trials to wisdom, from the tongue to the treatment of the poor, from quarrels to prayer, and it rarely pauses to explain how one subject leads to the next.

What holds it together is a single insistence, that what a person believes will show up in what a person does or it was never really belief at all. Faith without works is dead, the letter says, and it means that sentence to land on ordinary things: on how you speak, on whom you favor, on what you do with your money and your anger. It is among the most practical books in the New Testament, and the least interested in being admired from a distance. It expects to be read slowly and then obeyed.