James, a servant of God
and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
—James 1:1
An ossuary was a twenty-inches-long and eleven-inches-wide limestone box that was commonly used in New Testament times to store the bones of the deceased.
Perhaps you heard about the one that created such a stir sometime back. The Aramaic inscription on it said: “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”
And that’s where all the commotion started. Could this ossuary actually contain the bones of James, the brother of Jesus Christ?
I feel sure that James would be uncomfortable with the hoopla. If those are his bones, and if he had written the epitaph, it would have said: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s the way he opened his New Testament letter—the way he saw his life.
I hope it’s the way we see ours.
Disciples of Jesus don’t think less of themselves
—they just think less about themselves.