James and Peter were both apostles. One was killed by an evil king, and one was miraculously delivered from death by that same king when an angel led him out of the jail in the middle of the night.
So what was the difference?
Why was one killed and not the other? Why was one miraculously delivered from
death, and the other allowed to die? Was
that God’s will for the one to die but not the other?
The account is found in Acts 12:1–3 1 Now about that time Herod the king laid hands on
some who belonged to the church in order to cause them harm. 2 And he had James the brother of John put to death with a sword. 3 When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter
also.
We could speculate why this happened, but the
Bible tells us.
Acts 12:5 (NASB95) 5 So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for
him was being made fervently by the church to God.
Apparently, James was killed suddenly before
anyone had time to react. Peter was
imprisoned first, so the Church could respond.
And they responded with fervent prayer. And that made the difference.
Do we know that?
Yes, because it is a detail in the story that
wouldn’t have been added if it wasn’t the missing piece.
A long time ago, I learned about the Lord’s
Prayer.
It’s a prayer that is meant to be prayed every
day and early in the day. I explain all
that in other places, but it would be too long here.
The prayer has a petition: deliver us from
evil. Some translations say ‘evil one.’ It could be translated as ‘protect us from
the evil one,’ but the lexicon notes 3 possible different translations for this
expression – the evil one, evil, or that which is evil. I believe translating it as ‘evil’ is
consistent with the rest of the Bible, though Matthew twice uses the same
expression as a term for Satan. Cf.
Psalm 91:10,121:7, Proverbs 1:33, 12:21
If this prayer is to be prayed everyday early in
the day, that means that this prayer is prayed before we encounter evil. It’s a prayer for protection to keep us from
evil happening to us.
Did James pray this when he got up that
morning? We don’t know. I do know when people are busy and things are
going well, we don’t expect bad things to happen. It seems James’ death was sudden.
Was it God’s will? Some will say yes, and some will say, maybe
not. The text clearly suggests that if
the Church had been praying as fervently for James as they were for Peter, he
would not have been killed
The fact is that Jesus taught us how to pray
twice (Matthew 6 and Luke 11), and He told us to pray everyday for protection
from evil. Some Bibles say that that
phrase is missing from the earliest manuscripts of Luke’s gospel, but it is
definitely in Matthew’s.
If Jesus tells us to pray everyday for protection
from evil, that doesn’t sound like a suggestion. I think He expects us to.
Does that mean that nothing will ever go wrong in
our life?
Often those bad things are opportunities for good
things.
Now I wouldn’t call this an evil thing, but
recently I was trying to do something and cracked a window in my kitchen. The guy came out to fix it and saw that the
window did not stay open by itself. He
offered to fix it. Now a window that was
hard to lift and that wouldn’t stay up by itself and was never going to be
fixed opens with a finger’s touch and doesn’t need to be propped up
anymore.
Something that could have been really annoying
and ruin my day actually made it better.
But, no, that was not a evil thing.
There is a story in the book of Ezra (chs. 4-6)
where the people were rebuilding the temple, and they faced hostile opposition
from the neighbors. The neighbors
stopped the work while reporting them to the authorities. The authorities in turn essentially told the
neighbors not only to leave them alone but to help them in some pretty
extraordinary ways.
So what was a case of apparent evil turned into
something very good.
But either way, Jesus said we should pray every
day early in the day for protection from evil.
Let God figure out the details.
Just do it, and stop asking so many questions.
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