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Thaddaeus (Jude) & James the Less
John 3:30, Luke 17:10
The disciples Jude, which is a form of the name Judas, but he’s not Judas Iscariot, this man’s also called Thaddaeus. Jude or Thaddaeus and James, son of Alphaeus, different from James son of Zebedee. They’re mysterious characters to us. They’re two disciples of Jesus, but we don’t know much about them from scripture. Christians over the years have tried to put them in a fuller context. Maybe they were brothers, maybe they were cousins of Jesus some have said, but we really don’t know.
What we can more safely assume is that after Jesus’ Ascension and after Pentecost, all the disciples, except for Judas Iscariot, went and carried out Jesus’ commission to preach the gospel to all the world, and went in different directions and did just that. Now, in the New Testament we have a couple of those avenues tracked out for us, especially the work of Peter and later Paul, but the other disciples were doing similar work that wasn’t recorded.
That makes me think of a statement John the Baptist gave. He said, “Jesus must increase. I must decrease.” He was the forerunner of Christ, and he was supposed to recede into the background so people would pay attention to the Lord, Jesus. And I think Jude and James really lived that out.
They were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry. They proclaimed the same gospel we hear Peter and Paul proclaiming in the Book of Acts. That Jesus was God’s Son who came and fulfilled the law for us to be our righteousness for the things we’ve done and the things we failed to do that make us guilty before God. He did atone for all of our sin. He rose from the dead so we can be assured of God’s peace and a place in heaven. Yet we don’t have books extolling their work or spelling it out in detail so that we can praise them today in that kind of specific detail. Instead, I would say we have evidence of their work in the faith of certain people in the world. You know, there were people that these men reached whose eternal futures and the eternal future of future generations in their families was totally changed because they came and brought them the message about Christ. But they were pleased to have themselves recede into the background of biblical history and even our knowledge about them today as long as Jesus would increase in the hearts and lives of these people.
You be of the same mind. Hold the conviction of the true faith in Jesus, fulfill your callings faithfully in life, and let your light shine. Be willing to tell people how meaningful your faith is to you and what assurance it gives you, ultimately embodying the attitude Jesus told us to have in Luke chapter 17. “We are unworthy servants. We have only done what we were supposed to do.” Say with John the Baptist following the example of Jude and James, “Jesus must increase. I must decrease.”
