The Epistle of James was unflatteringly dubbed "an Epistle of straw" by that forthright reformer Martin Luther. Luther felt that James focused entirely too much on works, to the detriment of the gift of God's grace.

James does have a different agenda than Paul (or Luther for that matter). But that does not necessarily indicate that James disagrees with Paul's masterful articulation of the great gift of the gospel. If James' work is to be characterized as "straw," it should be qualified as builder's straw. When bricks are painstakingly constructed by hand out of earth and water, good builders know that adding straw to the mixture gives it greater strength and coherence. For James to focus on the gift of grace and not stress an accompanying offspring of good works is to seriously misundersta…