Verses 1-27
Chapter 1
1:1 James, the slave
of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, sends greetings to the twelve
tribes who are scattered throughout the world.
At the very beginning of his letter James describes himself by
the title wherein lies his only honour and his only glory, the slave of
God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. With the exception of Jude he is the
only New Testament writer to describe himself by that term (doulos, Greek #1401) without any qualification. Paul describes himself as the slave of Jesus Christ and his apostle (Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1).
But James will go no further than to call himself the slave of God and
of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are at least four implications in this
title.
(i) It implies absolute obedience. The slave knows no law but
his master's word; he has no rights of his own; he is the absolute
possession of his master; and he is bound to give his master
unquestioning obedience.
(ii) It implies absolute humility. It is the word of a man who
thinks not of his privileges but of his duties, not of his rights but of
his obligations. It is the word of the man who has lost his self in the
service of God.
(iii) It implies absolute loyalty. It is the word of the man who
has no interests of his own, because what he does, he does for God. His
own profit and his own preference do not enter into his calculations;
his loyalty is to him.
(iv) Yet, at the back of it, this word implies a certain pride.
So far from being a title of dishonour it was the title by which the
greatest ones of the Old Testament were known. Moses was the doulos (Greek #1401) of God (1 Kings 8:53; Daniel 9:11; Malachi 4:4); so were Joshua and Caleb (Joshua 24:29; Numbers 14:24); so were the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deuteronomy 9:27); so was Job (Job 1:8); so was Isaiah (Isaiah 20:3); and doulos (Greek #1401) is distinctively the title by which the prophets were known (Amos 3:7; Zechariah 1:6; Jeremiah 7:25). By taking the title doulos (Greek #1401)
James sets himself in the great succession of those who found their
freedom and their peace and their glory in perfect submission to the
will of God. The only greatness to which the Christian can ever aspire
is that of being the slave of God.
There is one unusual thing about this opening salutation. James sends greetings to his readers; using the word chairein (Greek #5463)
which is the regular opening word of salutation in secular Greek
letters. Paul never uses it. He always uses the distinctively Christian
greeting, "Grace and peace" (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 1:3
). This secular greeting occurs only twice in the rest of the New
Testament, in the letter which Claudius Lysias, the Roman officer, wrote
to Felix to ensure the safe journeying of Paul (Acts 23:26), and in the general letter issued after the decision of the Council of Jerusalem to allow the Gentiles into the Church (Acts 15:23). This is interesting, because it was James who presided over that Council (Acts 15:13). It may be that he used the most general greeting that he could find because his letter was going out to the widest public.
The letter is addressed to the twelve tribes who are scattered
abroad. Literally the greeting is to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora (Greek #1290),
the technical word for the Jews who lived outside Palestine. All the
millions of Jews who were, for one reason or another, outside the
Promised Land were the Diaspora (Greek #1290).
This dispersal of the Jews throughout the world was of the very
greatest importance for the spread of Christianity, because it meant
that all over the world there were synagogues, from which the Christian
preachers could take their start; and it meant that all over the world
there were groups of men and women who themselves already knew the Old
Testament, and who had persuaded others among the Gentiles, at least to
be interested in their faith. Let us see how this dispersal took place.
Sometimes--and the process began in this way--the Jews were
forcibly taken out of their own land and compelled to live as exiles in
foreign lands. There were three such great movements.
(i) The first compulsory removal came when the people of the
Northern Kingdom, who had their capital in Samaria, were conquered by
the Assyrians and were carried away into captivity in Assyria (2 Kings 17:23; 1 Chronicles 5:26).
These are the lost ten tribes who never returned. The Jews themselves
believed that at the end of all things all Jews would be gathered
together in Jerusalem, but until the end of the world these ten tribes,
they believed, would never return. They founded this belief on a rather
fanciful interpretation of an Old Testament text. The Rabbis argued like
this: "The ten tribes never return for it is said of them, 'He will
cast them into another land, as at this day' (Deuteronomy 29:28).
As then this day departs and never returns, so too are they to depart
and never return. As this day becomes dark, and then again light, so too
will it one day be light again for the ten tribes for whom it was
dark."
(ii) The second compulsory removal was about 580 B.C. At that
time the Babylonians conquered the Southern Kingdom whose capital was at
Jerusalem, and carried the best of the people away to Babylon (2 Kings 24:14-16; Psalms 137:1-9
). In Babylon the Jews behaved very differently; they stubbornly
refused to be assimilated and to lose their nationality. They were said
to be congregated mainly in the cities of Nehardea and Nisibis. It was
actually in Babylon that Jewish scholarship reached its finest flower;
and there was produced the Babylonian Talmud, the immense sixty-volume
exposition of the Jewish law. When Josephus wrote his Wars of the Jews,
the first edition was not in Greek but in Aramaic, and was designed for
the scholarly Jews in Babylon. He tells us that the Jews rose to such
power there that at one time the province of Mesopotamia was under
Jewish rule. Its two Jewish rulers were Asidaeus and Anilaeus; and on
the death of Anilaeus it was said that no fewer than 50,000 Jews were
massacred.
(iii) The third compulsory transplantation took place much
later. When Pompey conquered the Jews and took Jerusalem in 63 B.C., he
took back to Rome many Jews as slaves. Their rigid adherence to their
own ceremonial law and their stubborn observance of the Sabbath made
them difficult slaves; and most of them were freed. They took up
residence in a kind of quarter of their own on the far side of the
Tiber. Before long they were to be found flourishing all over the city.
Dio Cassius says of them, "They were often suppressed, but they
nevertheless mightily increased, so that they achieved even the free
exercise of their customs." Julius Caesar was their great protector and
we read of them mourning all night long at his bier. We read of them
present in large numbers when Cicero was defending Flaccus. In A.D. 19
the whole Jewish community was banished from Rome on the charge that
they had robbed a wealthy female proselyte on pretence of sending the
money to the Temple and at that time 4,000 of them were conscripted to
fight against the brigands in Sardinia; but they were soon received
back. When the Jews of Palestine sent their deputation to Rome to
complain of the rule of Archelaus, we read that the deputation was
joined by 8,000 Jews resident in the city. Roman literature is full of
contemptuous references to the Jews, for anti-Semitism is no new thing;
and the very number of the references is proof of the part that the Jews
played in the life of the city.
Compulsory transplantation took the Jews by the thousand to
Babylon and to Rome. But far greater numbers left Palestine of their own
free-will for more comfortable and more profitable lands. Two lands in
particular received thousands of Jews. Palestine was sandwiched between
the two great powers, Syria and Egypt and was, therefore, liable at any
time to become a battleground. For that reason many Jews left it to take
up residence either in Egypt or in Syria.
During the time of Nebuchadnezzar there was a voluntary exodus of many Jews to Egypt (2 Kings 25:26).
As far back as 650 B.C. the Egyptian king Psammetichus was said to have
had Jewish mercenaries in his armies. When Alexander the Great founded
Alexandria special privileges were offered to settlers there and the
Jews came in large numbers. Alexandria was divided into five
administrative sections; and two of them were inhabited by Jews. In
Alexandria alone there were more than 1,000.000 Jews. The settlement of
the Jews in Egypt went so far that about 50 B.C. a temple, modelled on
the Jerusalem one, was built at Leontopolis for the Egyptian Jews.
The Jews also went to Syria. The highest concentration was in
Antioch, where the gospel was first preached to the Gentiles and where
the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. In Damascus we read
of 10,000 of them being massacred at one time.
So, then, Egypt and Syria had very large Jewish populations. But
they had spread far beyond that. In Cyrene in North Africa we read that
the population was divided into citizens, agriculturists, resident
aliens and Jews. Mommsen, the Roman historian, writes: "The inhabitants
of Palestine were only a portion, and not the most important portion, of
the Jews; the Jewish communities of Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor and
Egypt were far superior to those of Palestine." That mention of Asia
Minor leads us to another sphere in which the Jews were numerous. When
Alexander's empire broke up on his death, Egypt fell to the Ptolemies,
and Syria and the surrounding districts fell to Seleucus and his
successors, known as the Seleucids. The Seleucids had two great
characteristics. They followed a deliberate policy of the fusion of
populations hoping to gain security by banishing nationalism. And they
were inveterate founders of cities. These cities needed citizens, and
special attractions and privileges were offered to those who would
settle in them. The Jews accepted citizenship of these cities by the
thousand. All over Asia Minor, in the great cities of the Mediterranean
sea coast, in the great commercial centres, Jews were numerous and
prosperous. Even there there were compulsory transplantations. Antiochus
the Great took 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon and settled them in
Lydia and Phrygia. In fact, so great was the drift from Palestine that
the Palestine Jews complained against their brethren who left the
austerities of Palestine for the baths and feasts of Asia and Phrygia;
and Aristotle tells of meeting a Jew in Asia Minor who was "not only
Greek in his language but in his very soul."
It is quite clear that everywhere in the world there were Jews.
Strabo, the Greek geographer, writes: "It is hard to find a spot in the
whole world which is not occupied and dominated by Jews." Josephus, the
Jewish historian writes: "There is no city, no tribe, whether Greek or
barbarian, in which Jewish law and Jewish customs have not taken root."
The Sibylline Oracles, written about 140 B.C., say that every land and
every sea is filled with the Jews. There is a letter, said to be from
Agrippa to Caligula, which Philo quotes. In it he says that Jerusalem is
the capital not only of Judaea but of most countries by reason of the
colonies it has sent out on fitting occasions into the neighbouring
lands of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coelesyria, and the still more remote
Pamphylia and Cilicia, into most parts of Asia as far as Bithynia, and
into the most distant corners of Pontus; also to Europe, Thessaly,
Boeotia, Macedonia, Aetolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, and the most and
best parts of the Peloponnese. And not only is the continent full of
Jewish settlements, but also the more important islands--Euboea, Cyprus,
Crete--to say nothing of the lands beyond the Euphrates, for all have
Jewish inhabitants.
The Jewish Diaspora was coextensive with the world; and there was no greater factor in the spread of Christianity.
James writes to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora. Who has he in his
mind's eye as he writes? The twelve tribes in the Diaspora could equally
well mean any of three things.
(i) It could stand for all the Jews outside of Palestine. We
have seen that they were numbered by the million. There were actually
far more Jews scattered throughout Syria and Egypt and Greece and Rome
and Asia Minor and all the Mediterranean lands and far off Babylon than
there were in Palestine. Under the conditions of the ancient world it
would be quite impossible to send out a message to such a huge and
scattered constituency.
(ii) It could mean Christian Jews outside Palestine. In this
instance, it would mean the Jews in the lands closely surrounding
Palestine, perhaps particularly those in Syria and in Babylon. Certainly
if anyone was going to write a letter to these Jews, it would be James,
for he was the acknowledged leader of Jewish Christianity.
(iii) The phrase could have a third meaning. To the Christians,
the Christian Church was the real Israel. At the end of Galatians Paul
sends his blessing to the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16).
The nation Israel had been the specially chosen people of God; but they
had refused to accept their place and their responsibility and their
task. When the Son of God came they had rejected him. Therefore all the
privileges which had once belonged to them passed over to the Christian
Church, for it was in truth the chosen people of God. Paul (compare Romans 9:7-8)
had fully worked out the idea. It was his conviction that the true
descendants of Abraham were not those who could trace their physical
descent from him but those who had made the same venture of faith as he
had made. The true Israel was composed not of any particular nation or
race but of those who accepted Jesus Christ in faith. So, then, this
phrase may well mean the Christian Church at large.
We may choose between the second and the third meanings, each of
which gives excellent sense. James may be writing to the Christian Jews
scattered amidst the surrounding nations; or he may be writing to the
new Israel, the Christian Church.
1:2-4 My brothers,
reckon it all joy whenever you become involved in all kinds of testings,
for you are well aware that the testing of your faith produces
unswerving constancy. And let constancy go on to work out its perfect
work that you may be perfect and complete, deficient in nothing.
James never suggested to his readers that Christianity would be
for them an easy way. He warns them that they would find themselves
involved in what the King James Version calls divers temptations. The
word translated temptations is peirasmos (Greek #3986), whose meaning we must fully understand, if we are to see the very essence of the Christian life.
Peirasmos (Greek #3986) is not temptation in our sense of the term; it is testing (trial in the Revised Standard Version). Peirasmos (Greek #3986)
is trial or testing directed towards an end, and the end is that he who
is tested should emerge stronger and purer from the testing. The
corresponding verb peirazein (Greek #3985),
which the King James Version usually translates to tempt, has the same
meaning. The idea is not that of seduction into sin but of strengthening
and purifying. For instance, a young bird is said to test (peirazein, Greek #3985) its wings. The Queen of Sheba was said to come to test (peirazein, Greek #3985) the wisdom of Solomon. God was said to test (peirazein, Greek #3985) Abraham, when he appeared to be demanding the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1).
When Israel came into the Promised Land, God did not remove the people
who were already there. He left them so that Israel might be tested
(peirazein, Greek #3985) in the struggle against them ( 2:22; 3:1; 3:4). The experiences in Israel were tests which went to the making of the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 4:34; Deuteronomy 7:19).
Here is a great and uplifting thought. Hort writes: "The
Christian must expect to be jostled by trials on the Christian way." All
kinds of experiences will come to us. There will be the test of the
sorrows and the disappointments which seek to take our faith away. There
will be the test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right
way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices, the
unpopularity which the Christian way must so often involve. But they are
not meant to make us fall; they are meant to make us soar. They are not
meant to defeat us; they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant
to make us weaker; they are meant to make us stronger. Therefore we
should not bemoan them; we should rejoice in them. The Christian is like
the athlete. The heavier the course of training he undergoes, the more
he is glad, because he knows that it is fitting him all the better for
victorious effort. As Browning said, we must "welcome each rebuff that
turns earth's smoothness rough," for every hard thing is another step on
the upward way.
James describes this process of testing by the word dokimion (Greek #1383).
It is an interesting word. It is the word for sterling coinage, for
money which is genuine and unalloyed. The aim of testing is to purge us
of all impurity.
If we meet this testing in the right way, it will produce
unswerving constancy (or steadfastness as the Revised Standard Version
translates it). The word is hupomone (Greek #5281), which the King James Version translates as patience; but patience is far too passive. Hupomone (Greek #5281)
is not simply the ability to bear things; it is the ability to turn
them to greatness and to glory. The thing which amazed the heathen in
the centuries of persecution was that the martyrs did not die grimly,
they died singing. One smiled in the flames; they asked him what he
found to smile at there. "I saw the glory of God," he said, "and was
glad." Hupomone (Greek #5281)
is the quality which makes a man able, not simply to suffer things, but
to vanquish them. The effect of testing rightly borne is strength to
bear still more and to conquer in still harder battles.
This unswerving constancy in the end makes a man three things.
(i) It makes him perfect. The Greek is teleios (Greek #5046) which usually has the meaning of perfection towards a given end. A sacrificial animal is teleios (Greek #5046) if it is fit to offer to God. A scholar is teleios (Greek #5046) if he is mature. A person is teleios (Greek #5046) if he is full grown. This constancy born of testing well met makes a man teleios (Greek #5046)
in the sense of being fit for the task he was sent into the world to
do. Here is a great thought. By the way in which we meet every
experience in life we are either fitting or unfitting ourselves for the
task which God meant us to do.
(ii) It makes him complete. The Greek is holokleros (Greek #3648)
which means entire, perfect in every part. It is used of the animal
which is fit to be offered to God and of the priest who is fit to serve
him. It means that the animal or the person has no disfiguring and
disqualifying blemishes. Gradually this unswerving constancy removes the
weaknesses and the imperfections from a man's character. Daily it
enables him to conquer old sins, to shed old blemishes and to gain new
virtues, until in the end he becomes entirely fit for the service of God
and of his fellow-men.
(iii) It makes him deficient in nothing. The Greek is leipesthai (Greek #3007)
and it is used of the defeat of an army, of the giving up of a
struggle, of the failure to reach a standard that should have been
reached. If a man meets his testing in the right way, if day by day he
develops this unswerving constancy, day by day he will live more
victoriously and reach nearer to the standard of Jesus Christ himself.
1:5-8 If any of you is
deficient in wisdom, let him ask it from God, who gives generously to
all men and never casts up the gift, and it will be given to him. Let
him ask in faith, with no doubts in his mind; for he who oscillates
between doubts is like a surge of the sea, wind-driven and blown hither
and thither. Let not that man think that he will receive anything from
the Lord, a man with a divided mind, inconstant in all his ways.
There is a close connection between this passage and what has
gone before. James has just told his readers that, if they use all the
testing experiences of life in the right way, they will emerge from them
with that unswerving constancy which is the basis of all the virtues.
But immediately the question arises, "Where can I find the wisdom and
the understanding to use these testing experiences in the right way?"
James' answer is, "If a man feels that he has not the wisdom to use
aright the experiences of this life--and no man in himself possesses
that wisdom--let him ask it from God."
One thing stands out. For James, the Christian teacher with the
Jewish background, wisdom is a practical thing. It is not philosophic
speculation and intellectual knowledge; it is concerned with the
business of living. The Stoics defined wisdom as "knowledge of things
human and divine." But Ropes defines this Christian wisdom as "the
supreme and divine quality of the soul whereby man knows and practises
righteousness." Hort defines it as "that endowment of heart and mind
which is needed for the right conduct of life." In the Christian wisdom
there is, of course, knowledge of the deep things of God; but it is
essentially practical; it is such knowledge turned into action in the
decisions and personal relationships of everyday life. When a man asks
God for that wisdom, he must remember two things.
(i) He must remember how God gives. He gives generously and
never casts up the gift. "All Wisdom," said Jesus the son of Sirach,
"cometh from the Lord and is with him for ever" (Sirach 1:1).
But the Jewish wise men were well aware how the best gift in the world
could be spoiled by the manner of the giving. They have much to say
about how the fool gives. "My son, blemish not thy good deeds, neither
use uncomfortable words when thou givest anything...Lo, is not a word
better than a gift? But both are with a gracious man. A fool will
upbraid churlishly, and a gift of the envious consumeth the eyes" (i.e.,
"brings tears") (Sirach 18:15-18).
"The gift of a fool shall do thee no good when thou hast it; neither
yet of the envious for his necessity; for he looketh to receive many
things for one. He giveth little, and upbraideth much; he openeth his
mouth like a crier; today he lendeth, and tomorrow will he ask it again;
such an one is to be hated of God and man" (Sirach 20:14-15). The same writer warns against "upbraiding speeches before friends" (Sirach 41:22).
There is a kind of giver who gives only with a view to getting more
than he gives; who gives only to gratify his vanity and his sense of
power by putting the recipient under an obligation which he will never
be allowed to forget; who gives and then continuously casts up the gift
that he has given. But God gives with generosity. Philemon, the Greek
poet, called God "the lover of gifts," not in the sense of loving to
receive gifts, but in the sense of loving to give them. Nor does God
cast up his gifts; he gives with all the splendour of his love, because
it is his nature to give.
(ii) We must remember how the asker must ask. He must ask
without doubts. He must be sure of both the power and the desire of God
to give. If he asks in doubt, his mind is like the broken water of the
sea, driven hither and thither by any chance wind. Mayor says that he is
like a cork carried by the waves, now near the shore, now far away.
Such a man is unstable in his ways. Hort suggests that the picture is of
a man who is drunk, staggering from side to side on the road and
getting nowhere. James says vividly that such a man is dipsuchos (Greek #1374),
which literally means a man with two souls, or two minds, inside him.
One believes, the other disbelieves; and the man is a walking civil war
in which trust and distrust of God wage a continual battle against each
other.
If we are to use aright the experiences of life to beget a
sterling character, we must ask wisdom from God. And when we ask, we
must remember the absolute generosity of God and see to it that we ask
believing that we shall receive what God knows it is good and right for
us to have.
1:9-11 Let the lowly
brother be proud of his exaltation; and let the rich brother be proud of
his humiliation; for he will pass away like a flower of the field. The
sun rises with the scorching wind and withers the grass, and the flower
wilts, and the beauty of its form is destroyed. So the rich will wither
away in all his ways.
As James saw it, Christianity brings to every man what he
needs. As Mayor put it "As the despised poor learns self-respect, so the
proud rich learns self-abasement."
(i) Christianity brings to the poor man a new sense of his own
value. (a) He learns that he matters in the Church. In the early church
there were not class distinctions. It could happen that the slave was
the minister of the congregation, preaching and dispensing the
sacrament, while the master was no more than a humble member. In the
Church the social distinctions of the world are obliterated and none
matters more than any other. (b) He learns that he matters in the world.
It is the teaching of Christianity that every man in this world has a
task to do. Every man is of use to God and even if he be confined to a
bed of pain, the power of his prayers can still act on the world of men.
(e) He learns that he matters to God As Muretus said long ago, "Call no
man worthless for whom Christ died."
(ii) Christianity brings to the rich man a new sense of
self-abasement. The great peril of riches is that they tend to give a
man a false sense of security. He feels that he is safe; he feels that
he has the resources to cope with anything and to buy himself out of any
situation he may wish to avoid.
James draws a vivid picture, very familiar to the people of
Palestine. In the desert places, if there is a shower of rain, the thin
green shoots of grass will sprout; but one day's burning sunshine will
make them vanish as if they had never been. The scorching heat is the
kauson (Greek #2742).
The kauson was the south-east wind, the Simoon. It came straight from
the deserts and burst on Palestine like a blast of hot air when an oven
door is opened. In an hour it could wipe out all vegetation.
This is a picture of what a life dependent on riches can be
like. A man who puts his trust in riches is trusting in things which the
chances and changes of life can take from him at any moment. Life
itself is uncertain. At the back of James' mind there is Isaiah's
picture: "All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of
the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the
Lord blows upon it; surely the people is grass" (Isaiah 40:6-7; compare Psalms 103:15).
James' point is this. If life is so uncertain and man so
vulnerable, calamity and disaster may come at any moment. Since that is
so, a man is a fool to put all his trust in things--like wealth--which
he may lose at any moment. He is only wise if he puts his trust in
things which he cannot lose.
So, then, James urges the rich to cease to put their trust in
that which their own power can amass. He urges them to admit their
essential human helplessness and humbly to put their trust in God, who
alone can give the things which abide for ever.
1:12 Happy is the man
who meets trial with steadfast constancy because, when he has shown
himself of sterling worth, he will receive the crown of life which he
has promised to those who love him.
To the man who meets trials in the right way there is joy here and hereafter.
(i) In this life he becomes a man of sterling worth. He is dokimos (Greek #1384);
he is like metal which is cleansed of all alloy. The weaknesses of his
character are eradicated; and he emerges strong and pure.
(ii) In the life to come he receives the crown of life. There is
far more than one thought here. In the ancient world the crown
(stephanos, Greek #4735) had at least four great associations.
(a) The crown of flowers was worn at times of joy, at weddings and at feasts (compare Isaiah 28:1-2; SS 3:11). The crown was the sign of festive joy.
(b) The crown was the mark of royalty. It was worn by kings and
by those in authority. Sometimes this was the crown of gold; sometimes
it was the linen band, or fillet, worn around the brows (compare Psalms 21:3; Jeremiah 13:18).
(c) The crown of laurel leaves was the victor's crown in the games, the prize which the athlete coveted above all (compare 2 Timothy 4:8).
(d) The crown was the mark of honour and of dignity. The
instructions of parents can bring a crown of grace to those who listen
to them (Proverbs 1:9); Wisdom provides a man with a crown of glory (Proverbs 4:9); in a time of disaster and dishonour it can be said, "The crown has fallen from our head" (Lamentations 5:16).
We do not need to choose between these meanings. They are all
included. The Christian has a joy that no other man can ever have. Life
for him is like being for ever at a feast. He has a royalty that other
men have never realized for, however humble his earthly circumstances,
he is the child of God. He has a victory which others cannot win, for he
meets life and all its demands in the conquering power of the presence
of Jesus Christ. He has a new dignity for he is ever conscious that God
thought him worth the life and death of Jesus Christ.
What is the crown? It is the crown of life; and that phrase
means that it is the crown which consists of life. The crown of the
Christian is a new kind of living which is life indeed; through Jesus
Christ he has entered into life more abundant.
James says that if the Christian meets the testings of life in
the steadfast constancy which Christ can give, life becomes infinitely
more splendid than ever it was before. The struggle is the way to glory,
and the very struggle itself is a glory.
1:13-15 Let no man say
when he is tempted, "My temptation comes from God." For God himself is
untemptable by evil and tempts no man. But temptation comes to every
man, because he is lured on and seduced by his own desire; then desire
conceives and begets sin; and, when sin has reached its full
development, it spawns death.
At the back of this passage lies a Jewish way of belief to
which all of us are to some extent prone. James is here rebuking the man
who puts the blame for temptation on God.
Jewish thought was haunted by the inner division that is in
every man. It was the problem which haunted Paul: "I delight in the law
of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war
with the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin which
dwells in my members" (Romans 7:22-23).
Every man was pulled in two directions. Purely as an interpretation of
experience the Jews arrived at the doctrine that in every man there were
two tendencies. They called them the Yetser (Hebrew #3336) Hatob (Hebrew #2896), the good tendency, and the Yetser (Hebrew #3336) Hara' (Hebrew #7451),
the evil tendency. This simply stated the problem; it did not explain
it. In particular, it did not say where the evil tendency came from. So
Jewish thought set out to try to explain that.
The writer of Ecclesiasticus was deeply impressed with the havoc that the evil tendency causes. "O Yetser (Hebrew #3336) Hara' (Hebrew #7451), why wast thou made to fill the earth with thy deceit?" (Sirach 37:3).
In his view the evil tendency came from Satan, and man's defence
against it was his own will. "God made man from the beginning and he
delivered him into the hand of him who took him for a prey. He left him
in the power of his will. If thou willest, thou wilt observe the
commandments, and faithfulness is a matter of thy good pleasure" (Sirach 15:14-15).
There were Jewish writers who traced this evil tendency right
back to the Garden of Eden. In the apocryphal work, The Life of Adam and
Eve, the story is told. Satan took the form of an angel and, speaking
through the serpent, put into Eve the desire for the forbidden fruit and
made her swear that she would give the fruit to Adam as well. "When he
had made me swear," says Eve, "he ascended up into the tree. But in the
fruit he gave me to eat he placed the poison of his malice, that is, of
his lust. For lust is the beginning of all sin. And he bent down the
bough to the earth, and I took of the fruit and ate it." In this
conception it was Satan himself who succeeded in inserting the evil
tendency into man; and that evil tendency is identified with the lust of
the flesh. A later development of this story was that the beginning of
all sin was in fact Satan's lust for Eve.
The Book of Enoch has two theories. One is that the fallen
angels are responsible for sin (85). The other is that man himself is
responsible for it. "Sin has not been sent upon the earth, but man
himself created it" (98: 4).
But every one of these theories simply pushes the problem one
step further back. Satan may have put the evil tendency into man; the
fallen angels may have put it into man; man may have put it into
himself. But where did it ultimately come from?
To meet this problem, certain of the Rabbis took a bold and
dangerous step. They argued that, since God has created everything, he
must have created the evil tendency also. So we get Rabbinic sayings
such as the following. "God said, It repents me that I created the evil
tendency in man; for had I not done so, he would not have rebelled
against me. I created the evil tendency; I created the law as a means of
healing. If you occupy yourself with the law, you will not fall into
the power of it. God placed the good tendency on a man's right hand, and
the evil on his left." The danger is obvious. It means that in the last
analysis a man can blame God for his own sin. He can say, as Paul said,
"It is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells in me" (Romans 7:15-24). Of all strange doctrines surely the strangest is that God is ultimately responsible for sin.
From the beginning of time it has been man's first instinct
to blame others for his own sin. The ancient writer who wrote the story
of the first sin in the Garden of Eden was a first-rate psychologist
with a deep knowledge of the human heart. When God challenged Adam with
his sin, Adam's reply was, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me,
she gave me of the tree, and I ate." And when God challenged Eve with
her action, her answer was, "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate." Adam
said, "Don't blame me; blame Eve." Eve said, "Don't blame me; blame the
serpent" (Genesis 3:12-13).
Man has always been an expert in evasion.
Robert Burns wrote:
Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong;
And list'ning to their witching voice
Has often led me wrong.
In effect, he is saying that his conduct was as it was because
God made him as he was. The blame is laid on God. So men blame their
fellows, they blame their circumstances, they blame the way in which
they are made, for the sin of which they are guilty.
James sternly rebukes that view. To him what is responsible for
sin is man's own evil desire. Sin would be helpless if there was nothing
in man to which it could appeal. Desire is something which can be
nourished or stifled. A man can control and even, by the grace of God,
eliminate it if he deals with it at once. But he can allow his thoughts
to follow certain tracks, and his steps to take him into certain places
and his eyes to linger on certain things; and so foment desire. He can
so hand himself over to Christ and be so engaged on good things that
there is no time or place left for evil desire. It is idle hands for
which Satan finds mischief to do; it is the unexercised mind and the
uncommitted heart which are vulnerable.
If a man encourages desire long enough, there is an inevitable consequence. Desire becomes action.
Further, it was the Jewish teaching that sin produced death. The
life of Adam and Eve says that the moment Eve ate of the fruit she
caught a glimpse of death. The word which James uses in James 1:15,
and which the King James and the Revised Standard Versions translate
brings forth death, is an animal word for birth; and it means that sin
spawns death. Mastered by desire, man becomes less than a man and sinks
to the level of the brute creation.
The great value of this passage is that it urges upon man his
personal responsibility for sin. No man was ever born without desire for
some wrong thing. And, if a man deliberately encourages and nourishes
that desire until it becomes full-grown and monstrously strong, it will
inevitably issue in the action which is sin--and that is the way to
death. Such a thought--and all human experience admits it to be
true--must drive us to that grace of God which alone can make and keep
us clean, and which is available to all.
1:16-18 My dear
brothers, do not he deceived. Every good gift and every perfect boon
comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is none of that
changeableness which comes from changing shadows. Of his own purpose he
has begotten us by the word of truth so that we might be, as it were,
the first-fruits of his created things.
Once again James stresses the great truth that every gift that God sends is good. James 1:17
might well be translated: "All giving is good." That is to say, there
is nothing which comes from God which is not good. There is a strange
phenomenon here in the Greek. The phrase which we have translated,
"Every good gift and every perfect boon," is, in fact, a perfect
hexametre line of poetry. Either James had a rhythmic ear for a fine
cadence or he is quoting from some work which we do not know.
What he is stressing is the unchangeableness of God. To do so he
uses two astronomical terms. The word he uses for changeableness is
parallage (Greek #3883), and the word for the turn of the shadow is trope (Greek #5157).
Both these words have to do with the variation which the heavenly
bodies show, the variation in the length of the day and of the night,
the apparent variation in the course of the sun, the phases of waxing
and waning, the different brilliance at different times of the stars and
the planets. Variability is characteristic of all created things. God
is the creator of the lights of heaven--the sun, the moon, the stars.
The Jewish morning prayer says, "Blessed be the Lord God who hath formed
the lights." The lights change but he who created them never changes.
Further, his purpose is altogether gracious. The word of truth
is the gospel; and by the sending of that gospel it is God's purpose
that man should be reborn into a new life. The shadows are ended and the
certain word of truth has come.
That rebirth is a rebirth into the family and the possession of
God. In the ancient world it was the law that all first-fruits were
sacred to God. They were offered in grateful sacrifice to God because
they belonged to him. So, when we are reborn by the true word of the
gospel, we become the property of God, even as the first-fruits of the
harvest did.
James insists that, so far from ever tempting man, God's gifts
are invariably good. In all the chances and changes of a changing world
they never vary. And God's supreme object is to re-create life through
the truth of the gospel, so that men should know that they belong by
right to him.
1:19-20 All this, my
dear brothers, you already know. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to
speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the
righteousness which God desires.
There are few wise men who have not been impressed by the
dangers of being too quick to speak and too unwilling to listen. A most
interesting list could be compiled of the things in which it is well to
be quick and the things in which it is well to be slow. In the Sayings
of the Jewish Fathers we read: "There are four characters in scholars.
Quick to hear and quick to forget; his gain is cancelled by his loss.
Slow to hear and slow to forget; his loss is cancelled by his gain.
Quick to hear and. slow to forget; he is wise. Slow to hear and quick to
forget; this is an evil lot." Ovid bids men to be slow to punish, but
swift to reward. Philo bids a man to be swift to benefit others, and
slow to harm them.
In particular the wise men were impressed by the necessity of
being slow to speak. Rabbi Simeon said, "All my days I have grown up
among the wise, and have not found aught good for a man but
silence...Whoso multiplies words occasions sin." Jesus, the son of
Sirach, writes, "Be swift to hear the word that thou mayest
understand...If thou hast understanding, answer thy neighbour; if not,
lay thy hand upon thy mouth, lest thou be surprised in an unskilful
word, and be confounded" (Sirach 5:11-12).
Proverbs is full of the perils of too hasty speech. "When words are
many, transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is
prudent" (Proverbs 10:19). "He who guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin" (Proverbs 13:3). "Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise" (Proverbs 17:28). "Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him" (Proverbs 29:20).
Hort says that the really good man will be much more anxious to
listen to God than arrogantly, garrulously and stridently to shout his
own opinions. The classical writers had the same idea. Zeno said, "We
have two ears but only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less."
When Demonax was asked how a man might rule best, he answered, "Without
anger, speaking little, and listening much." Bias said, "If you hate
quick speaking, you will not fall into error." The tribute was once paid
to a great linguist that he could be silent in seven different
languages. Many of us would do well to listen more and to speak less.
It is James' advice that we should also be slow to anger. He is
probably meeting the arguments of some that there is a place for the
blazing anger of rebuke. That is undoubtedly true; the world would be a
poorer place without those who blazed against the abuses and the
tyrannies of sin. But too often this is made an excuse for petulant and
self-centred irritation.
The teacher will be tempted to be angry with the slow and
backward and still more with the lazy scholar. But, except on the rarest
occasions, he will achieve more by encouragement than by the lash of
the tongue. The preacher will be tempted to anger. But "don't scold" is
always good advice to him; he loses his power whenever he does not make
it clear by every word and gesture that he loves his people. When anger
gives the impression in the pulpit of dislike or contempt it will not
convert the souls of men. The parent will be tempted to anger. But a
parent's anger is much more likely to produce a still more stubborn
resistance than it is to control and direct. The accent of love always
has more power than the accent of anger; and when anger becomes constant
irritability, petulant annoyance, carping nagging, it always does more
harm than good.
To be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen is always good policy for life.
1:21 So then strip
yourself of all filthiness and of the excrescence of vice, and in
gentleness receive the inborn word which is able to save your souls.
James uses a series of vivid words and pictures.
He tells his readers to strip themselves of all vice and
filthiness. The word he uses for strip is the word used for stripping
off one's clothes. He bids his hearers get rid of all defilement as a
man strips off soiled garments or as a snake sloughs off its skin.
Both the words he uses for defilement are vivid. The word we have translated filthiness is ruparia (Greek #4507);
and it can be used for the filth which soils clothes or soils the body.
But it has one very interesting connection. It is a derivative of rupos
(Greek #4509)
and, when rupos is used in a medical sense, it means wax in the ear. It
is just possible that it still retains that meaning here; and that
James is telling his readers to get rid of everything which would stop
their ears to the true word of God. When wax gathers in the ear, it can
make a man deaf; and a man's sins can make him deaf to God. Further,
James talks of the excrescence (perisseia, Greek #4050) of vice. He thinks of vice as tangled undergrowth or a cancerous growth which must be cut away.
He bids them receive the inborn word in gentleness. The word for inborn is emphutos (Greek #1721), and is capable of two general meanings.
(i) It can mean inborn in the sense of innate as opposed to
acquired. If James uses it in that way he is thinking of much the same
thing as Paul was thinking of when he spoke of the Gentiles doing the
works of the law by nature because they have a kind of law in their
hearts (Romans 2:14-15); it is the same picture as the Old Testament picture of the law "very near you; it is in your mouth, and in your heart" (Deuteronomy 30:14).
It is practically equal to our word conscience. If this is its meaning
here, James is saying that there is an instinctive knowledge of good and
evil in a man's heart whose guidance we should at all times obey.
(ii) It can mean inborn in the sense of implanted, as a seed is
planted in the ground. In 4Ezra 9:31 we read of God saying: "Behold, I
sow my law in you, and you shall be glorified in it for ever." If James
is using the word in this sense, the idea may well go back to the
Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-8),
which tells how the seed of the word is sown into the hearts of men.
Through his prophets and his preachers, and above all through Jesus
Christ, God sows his truth into the hearts of men and the man who is
wise will receive it and welcome it.
It may well be that we are not required to make a choice between
these two meanings. It may well be that James is implying that
knowledge of the true word of God comes to us from two sources, from the
depths of our own being, and from the Spirit of God and the teaching of
Christ and the preaching of men. From inside and from outside come
voices telling us the right way; and the wise man will listen and obey.
He will receive the word with gentleness. Gentleness is an attempt to translate the untranslatable word prautes (Greek #4240).
This is a great Greek word which has no precise English equivalent.
Aristotle defined it as the mean between excessive anger and excessive
angerlessness; it is the quality of the man whose feelings and emotions
are under perfect control. Andronicus Rhodius, commenting on Aristotle,
writes, "Prautes (Greek #4240) is moderation in regard to anger...You might define prautes (Greek #4240)
as serenity and the power, not to be lead away by emotion, but to
control emotion as right reason dictates." The Platonic definitions say
that prautes (Greek #4240)
is the regulation of the movement of the soul caused by anger. It is
the temperament (krasis) of a soul in which everything is mixed in the
right proportions.
No one can ever find one English word to translate what is a one
word summary of the truly teachable spirit. The teachable spirit is
docile and tractable, and therefore humble enough to learn. The
teachable spirit is without resentment and without anger and is,
therefore, able to face the truth, even when it hurts and condemns. The
teachable spirit is not blinded by its own overmastering prejudices but
is clear-eyed to the truth. The teachable spirit is not seduced by
laziness but is so self-controlled that it can willingly and faithfully
accept the discipline of learning. Prautes (Greek #4240)
describes the perfect conquest and control of everything in a man's
nature which would be a hindrance to his seeing, learning and obeying
the truth.
1:22-24 Prove
yourselves to be doers of the word, and not only hearers, for those who
think that hearing is enough deceive themselves. For, if a man is a
hearer of the word and not a doer of it, he is like a man who looks in a
mirror at the face which nature gave him. A glance and he is gone; and
he immediately forgets what kind of man he is.
Again James presents us with two of the vivid pictures of which
he is such a master. First of all, he speaks of the man who goes to the
church meeting and listens to the reading and expounding of the word,
and who thinks that that listening has made him a Christian. He has shut
his eyes to the fact that what is read and heard in Church must then be
lived out. It is still possible to identify Church attendance and Bible
reading with Christianity but this is to take ourselves less than half
the way; the really important thing is to turn that to which we have
listened into action.
Second, James says such a man is like one who looks in a
mirror--ancient mirrors were made, not of glass, but of highly polished
metal--sees the smuts which disfigure his face and the dishevelment of
his hair, and goes away and forgets what he looks like, and so omits to
do anything about it. In his listening to the true word a man has
revealed to him that which he is and that which he ought to be. He sees
what is wrong and what must be done to put it right; but, if he is only a
hearer, he remains just as he is, and all his hearing has gone for
nothing.
James does well to remind us that what is heard in the holy
place must be lived in the market place--or there is no point in hearing
at all.
1:25 He who looks into
the perfect law, which is the law in the observance of which a man
finds freedom, and who abides in it and shows himself not a forgetful
hearer but an active doer of the word, will be blessed in all his
action.
This is the kind of passage in James which Luther so much
disliked. He disliked the idea of law altogether, for with Paul he would
have said, "Christ is the end of the law" (Romans 10:4).
"James," said Luther, "drives us to law and works." And yet beyond all
doubt there is a sense in which James is right. There is an ethical law
which the Christian must seek to put into action. That law is to be
found first in the Ten Commandments and then in the teaching of Jesus.
James calls that law two things.
(i) He calls it the perfect law. There are three reasons why the
law is perfect. (a) It is God's law, given and revealed by him. The way
of life which Jesus laid down for his followers is in accordance with
the will of God. (b) It is perfect in that it cannot be bettered. The
Christian law is the law of love; and the demand of love can never be
satisfied. We know well, when we love some one, that even though we gave
them all the world and served them for a lifetime, we still could not
satisfy or deserve their love. (c) But there is still another sense in
which the Christian law is perfect. The Greek word is teleios (Greek #5046)
which nearly always describes perfection towards some given end. Now,
if a man obeys the law of Christ, he will fulfil the purpose for which
God sent him into the world; he will be the person he ought to be and
will make the contribution to the world he ought to make. He will be
perfect in the sense that he will, by obeying the law of God, realize
his God-given destiny.
(ii) He calls it the law of liberty; that is, the law in the
keeping of which a man finds his true liberty. All the great men have
agreed that it is only in obeying the law of God that a man becomes
truly free. "To obey God," said Seneca, "is liberty." "The wise man
alone is free," said the Stoics, "and every foolish man is a slave."
Philo said "All who are under the tyranny of anger or desire or any
other passion are altogether slaves; all who live with the law are
free." So long as a man has to obey his own passions and emotions and
desires, he is nothing less than a slave. It is when he accepts the will
of God that he becomes really free--for then he is free to be what he
ought to be. His service is perfect freedom and in doing his will is our
peace.
1:26-27 If anyone
thinks that he is a worshipper of God and yet does not bridle his
tongue, his worship is an empty thing. This is pure and undefiled
worship, as God the Father sees it, to visit the orphans and the widows,
and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
We must be careful to understand what James is saying here. The
Revised Standard Version translates the phrases at the beginning of James 1:27 : "Religion that is pure and undefiled is....." The word translated religion is threskeia (Greek #2356),
and its meaning is not so much religion as worship in the sense of the
outward expression of religion in ritual and liturgy and ceremony. What
James is saying is, "The finest ritual and the finest liturgy you can
offer to God is service of the poor and personal purity." To him real
worship did not lie in elaborate vestments or in magnificent music or in
a carefully wrought service; it lay in the practical service of mankind
and in the purity of one's own personal life. It is perfectly possible
for a Church to be so taken up with the beauty of its buildings and the
splendour of its liturgy that it has neither the time nor the money for
practical Christian service; and that is what James is condemning.
In fact James is condemning only what the prophets had condemned
long ago. "God," said the Psalmist, "is a father of the fatherless, and
protector of widows" (Psalms 68:5).
It was Zechariah's complaint that the people pulled away their
shoulders and made their hearts as adamant as stone at the demand to
execute true justice, to show mercy and compassion every man to his
brother, to oppress not the widow, the fatherless, the stranger and the
poor, and not to entertain evil thoughts against another within the
heart (Zechariah 7:6-10).
It was Micah's complaint that all ritual sacrifices were useless, if a
man did not do justice and love kindness and walk humbly before God (Micah 6:6-8).
All through history men have tried to make ritual and liturgy a
substitute for sacrifice and service. They have made religion splendid
within the Church at the expense of neglecting it outside the Church.
This is by no means to say that it is wrong to seek to offer the noblest
and the most splendid worship within God's house; but it is to say that
all such worship is empty and idle unless it sends a man out to love
God by loving his fellow-men and to walk more purely in the tempting
ways of the world.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)