True Humility from a True Slave of Christ

Justin Peters

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Hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters, I hope that you and your family are doing well today.

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I want to thank you very much for watching this video. This is another one of my short devotional videos, and this one kind of picks up where the last one left off.

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In the last devotional video I talked about how there is just one race. There are not many races, there is just one race.

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Act 1726 talked about that and how if we are believers we have been adopted into the family of God and this one kind of picks up where that left off in a way.

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So I want us to, there goes Mia, I have to raise my voice for the microphone and poor little

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Mia, she does not like it when voices get raised. So as you watch these videos you will probably notice she walks out of the room more often than she walks in because she does not like my voice to be raised, even though I never yell at her.

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She is too sweet. But at any rate, I digress, sorry about that. So let's talk about James.

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I want us to look at just the opening verse of James and make just a real quick observation here.

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James opens his letter and he says, James, the bondservant of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Now I have a few points I would like to make about this because I think there is really a lot in that one little verse.

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This is James the half -brother of Jesus. Now there are four different James mentioned in the

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New Testament and really the only possibility for the author of this letter is

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James the half -brother of Jesus. None of the other three could possibly be the author of this work.

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So this is the half -brother of Jesus and of course we refer to James as the half -brother of Jesus because Jesus was conceived of a virgin and after Jesus' birth, then

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Mary and Joseph had other children, the old -fashioned way, shall we say, much to the consternation of the

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Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

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She ascended into heaven, by the way, didn't even die, she just went up into heaven and went up into heaven as a virgin.

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That is not the case. Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus was born.

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So we refer to James as being the half -brother of Jesus. This is a very striking thing because you might remember that in Jesus' earthly ministry, his siblings, brothers and sisters by the way, his siblings did not believe in him.

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They thought he was crazy. They thought he had just lost his marbles with the claims that he was making and the following that he had and even the signs,

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I suppose, that was not enough to convince them. But it was not until after his crucifixion and bodily resurrection that James came to believe that his half -brother is indeed who he said he was,

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God in human flesh. And I'm struck by how

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James references himself. James does not appeal to his familial relationship with Jesus to get any kind of credibility, you know, street creds or whatever.

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He doesn't open his letter by saying, I am James, the half -brother of Jesus.

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I was raised under the same roof. Jesus and I were siblings.

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We played together and did all these things and no, he doesn't appeal at all to his familial relationship with Christ.

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And it's especially striking when you consider that James was one of the leaders in the church in Jerusalem.

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And so, you know, if you're a leader in a church, you'd be pretty hard -pressed to find any more credibility than to say, yeah, you know,

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Jesus, the son of God, the man that we are worshiping, yeah, he's my half -brother.

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No, he didn't do that. He did not appeal to that relationship at all. He said, I am James. Now, the

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English translations say bond -servant, it's a weak translation because the word in the Greek is doulos, it is slave.

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James is saying, I am James, the slave of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. James knew that his most important relationship to Christ was not a familial one.

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It was not as his half -brother. His most important relationship to Christ was as his slave.

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When we are converted, when the Holy Spirit of God convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, convicts us of the truth of the gospel, grants to us saving faith and repentance from sin, he baptizes us into the body of Christ.

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We become a member of his body. We are given a new family. Our most important relationship oftentimes is not familial relationships.

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It is with brothers and sisters in Christ because we are all part of the family of God.

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As members of his family, though we are joint heirs, we are still his slaves.

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We are the slave of Christ. It is just a beautiful picture here that James gives for us.

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This is real humility. This is humility that can only come via the new birth.

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This is the humility that can only come when you are regenerated and saved by the working of the

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Holy Spirit of God and sealed by the Holy Spirit of God. This is what real humility looks like.

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James does not say, I am the half -brother. He says, I am the slave of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. True humility we see in this short opening verse.

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We see another beautiful truth that, as I said, it kind of hinted at just a moment ago. Oftentimes our most important, most meaningful relationships are not with our own family members, not with our own blood kin necessarily.

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Our most important and meaningful relationships are with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who have been adopted into the family of God.

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Now if your family members are also believers, that is wonderful, praise the Lord, but if they are not, our most important meaningful relationships are with our brothers and sisters in Christ who have been adopted into the family of God by the merits of Christ.

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So thank you very much for watching, dear ones. I hope that this has been an encouragement to you to see what real humility looks like on the part of someone who has been saved.

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That should be true of all of us. If we are truly saved, then there's really no room for pride, even though all of us still struggle with it, but genuine conversion engenders in us real humility.

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It certainly should. So to my fellow douloi, in the

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Greek plural there for doulos, to my fellow douloi, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.