James reads closer to the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, Proverbs especially, than to any other New Testament epistle: short, punchy units of practical moral instruction on patience, speech, wealth, prayer, and impartiality, with almost none of the sustained theological argument found in Paul's letters. Its most famous and most argued over claim is that "faith without works is dead," illustrated by the example of Abraham, whose faith, James insists, "was completed" by the act of offering Isaac.
Because Paul, writing about the same Abraham, argues that righteousness comes by faith and not by works, the two texts have been read since at least the Reformation as standing in real tension, though most scholars now read them as addressing different problems rather than directly contradicting each other, Paul opposing reliance on law observance for righteousness, James opposing a merely verbal faith that produces no visible change in conduct. The letter is unusually blunt about wealth and poverty, warning the rich that their gold and silver "will corrode" as a witness against them, and it contains the New Testament's clearest instruction on anointing the sick with oil for healing, a passage still cited directly in the sacramental practice of anointing found in Catholic and Orthodox tradition.