Part 7

This touch of life is one of many modern notes in the Epistle of James. The embarrassment of the usher in the presence of two such incongruous strangers at once is probably due to the fact that he knows full well the atmosphere or tone of the church. It is aristocratic or select; evangelical and orthodox, not evangelistic or missionary; a haven of rest for the stately pious, not a rescue station for the lost. The officers of the church thus make distinctions between the attendants at church and sort out the congregation according to worldly standards. They are “judges of evil thoughts” and act with partiality in bestowing courtesies on strangers in the house of God. All this is in such marked contrast to the spirit and conduct of Jesus that one can hardly credit his eyes when he sees it happen in church. It is increasingly difficult to get the poor to come to some of the churches. The churches themselves may sometimes become suspicious that the very poor come to church to receive financial help. So the breach widens.

Prejudice Against the Poor (2:5-7)

James now has fewer maxims and a more argumentative style, like that of Paul. He makes a passionate appeal for attention: “Hearken, my beloved brethren.” He writes as an impassioned speaker speaks (cf. 1:16; 4:13). God’s choice of the people of Israel seems to be in the background (Deut. 14:1 f.). The Jews had come in many cases to look on earthly prosperity as a mark of divine favor and poverty as a sign of God’s disfavor (cf. Psalm 73).

The Pharisees were lovers of money (Luke 16:14). But the troubles of the Jews, in spite of many wealthy Pharisees and Sadducees, had led many of them to see a blessing in poverty. See Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Gad. vii. 6: “For the poor man, if, free from envy, he pleaseth the Lord in all things, is blessed beyond all men.” Oesterley (_in loco_) quotes _Chag._ 9_b_ as saying that poverty is the quality that above all befits Israel as the Chosen People. Epictetus (bk. IV, chap. i, 43) says: “Another (thinks the cause of his evils to be) that he is poor.” Epictetus (Stob. 10) says further: “Riches are not among the things that are good.” Luke 6:20 has: “Blessed are ye poor,” where Matthew 5:3 has “poor in spirit.”

It is certain that the gospel made a powerful appeal to the poorer classes of society among Jews and Gentiles. Jesus claimed it as part of his messianic mission “to preach good tidings to the poor” (Luke 4:18), as Isaiah (60:1 f.) had foretold. He asked the messengers of John the Baptist to take back to Macherus the news that “the poor have the good tidings preached to them” (Luke 7:22) as one proof of his messiahship. Paul enlarges on the choice (1 Cor. 1:27 f.) by God of the foolish, the weak, the despised classes to add to his own glory. The early churches were gathered largely from the proletariat. Slaves and masters, rich and poor, mingled together in fellowship and brotherly love.

The papyri discoveries have shown us the world of Jesus and of Paul “in the workaday clothes of their calling.”[66] Deissmann adds: “We should be sorry indeed not to have been told that Jesus came from an artisan’s home in country surroundings.”[67] The fact that Jesus was a carpenter, a workingman in the modern sense of that term, should enlist the sympathy and the interest of all workingmen. They should heed the call of the Carpenter.

Here James boldly champions the cause of the poor as against certain rich Jews, probably not members of the church, who have oppressed the Christians and dragged them before courts of justice. With their own hand these rich Jews had dragged Christians before tribunals. Rich Sadducees had done this with Peter and John (Acts 4:1). As one of these potentates, yea, as a tyrant, Paul had once dragged men and women before the Sanhedrin (Acts 8:3; 22:4). He had even tried to make them blaspheme (Acts 26:11). It was not necessary to have special laws against the Christians. As objects of dislike it was easy enough, as Paul found out, to hale them into court. Paul came to know only too well how the tables could be turned on him when he became a Christian. He had to take his own medicine (Acts 13:50; 16:19). Jesus indeed had foretold that just this fate would befall his disciples before the courts of Jews and Gentiles (Matt. 10:17 f.; John 16:2).

The anger of these rich Jews against Jesus and Christians leads them actually to blaspheme the name of Christ. The Sadducees will not even call the name of Jesus when they discuss the case of Peter and John. They refer with contempt to “this name” (Acts 4:17), though in the threat they have to name Jesus (v. 18). The disciples rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name” (Acts 5:41). So “the honorable name,” “the beautiful name,” “the noble Name” (Moffatt) came to be the shibboleth of the believers in Jesus. His name was to be “the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:9 f.). It was already the only name with power to save (Acts 4:12), as Peter boldly informed the Sanhedrin. That was the meaning of the name Jesus (Matt. 1:21).

Here one sees afresh the Christology of James. The honorable name is the name of Jesus, with a possible reference to the use of it in the baptismal formula—“by which ye are called,” “which is called upon you.” At any rate, they bear the name of Christian, given probably as a reproach (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:14, 16). This name is now their badge of honor and glory. When called upon to say, “Anathema be Jesus,” they reply, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3). Certainly the early Jewish Christians had everything to make them fear the powerful rich who had frowned upon Jesus and his cause.

And yet James dares to say to the Jewish Christians: “But ye have dishonored the poor man,” “now you insult the poor” (Moffatt). They had done it out of cringing fear of the rich Jews with all their power, or out of anxiety to please the rich so as to win them with fawning flattery. We are not to think that all the Jewish Christians had shown such narrowness or such cowardice, but some instances had come to the notice of James. Per contra note the case of Ananias and Sapphira, who wished to gain credit for great liberality to the poor by the use of part of the wealth, keeping back half though pretending to give all. All the early Christians were not poor. The cases of Barnabas, Joseph of Arimathea, and Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary occur to one at once. Jesus did not denounce rich men per se, though he did point out with great power the peril of wealth.

James is not to be understood as denouncing the rich in a wholesale fashion. Consecration is what sanctifies riches—the use of money for the glory of God and the blessing of mankind. A man is not a child of the devil just because he is rich or poor. God deals with men in the raw manhood. “A man’s a man for a’ that.” The distinction between the upper and the lower classes is partly fictitious and is not a stable condition. The slums are a dreadful fact and a disgrace to modern civilization. People should have decent homes, good food, fresh air, and clean clothes. Extreme poverty is a peril to a man’s soul, as is great wealth. It is not a sin to be rich, but dangerous, though most of us are willing to take the risk. Epictetus (Stob. 10) says: “It is difficult for a rich person to be right-minded or a right-minded person rich.” Riches and poverty are not essential criteria of character. Over against the slums in our cities one may place the pious poor of Scotland, as seen in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” Over against the wild and reckless _nouveaux riches_ one may note the generous givers of millions to missions and to education.

One must learn to be just to all classes and to do justice to all. A person needs full knowledge of the social conditions about him and the courage to apply the gospel of Christ to these conditions. But let no one imagine that sociology can take the place of the gospel of Jesus. Christianity is sociological, but sociology is not necessarily Christian. We need intelligent sympathy, but most of all we need the love and grace of God in the heart. But minister and man must be independent of bondage to either rich or poor and stand in the freedom of Christ.

Prof. H. C. Vedder makes a very serious charge against modern ministers: “This attitude of the clergy can be explained only on the ground of their economic dependence upon the privileged classes. They are the hirelings of capitalism, and, to do them justice, they earn their wages.”[68] This is a bitter attack upon the ministry for always championing the cause of capital whenever labor and capital clash. The charge is not always true, as anyone who observes should know. Organized labor is sometimes in the wrong. Corporations that are unjust to labor are often denounced in the pulpit. Let every case be met on its merits. Certainly the minister of Christ should be on the side of manhood against mere money. A man’s life is more than money.

James reminds his readers that God is not ashamed of the poor. In fact, he often calls the poor, as the world regards them, to be rich in faith. After all, the riches of the spirit and of fellowship with God are the true riches. So often a turn in the wheel of life leaves a man poor today who was rich yesterday. And death will separate one from all his wealth, save what he has given away. The wicked rich man may scout the poor saint here, but Lazarus will rest in Abraham’s bosom while the wicked rich man is in torment in hades.

But even here the pious poor stand high with God, while the wicked rich are despised. The poor may be heirs of the kingdom. Think of that—heirs of the kingdom of God, the glorious messianic kingdom promised of old and now begun, the fulness of which is in the future with God, the heavenly kingdom. But even here and now the poor saint is a child of the King and has riches untold. He has love and joy in his heart, a superiority to adversity, an elevation of spirit, the peace of God that passes all understanding; and that is worth more than all the gold of Ophir.

It is not mere pious platitude on the part of James when he writes thus. He is but interpreting the soul of mystic Christianity, real Christianity, as set forth by Jesus in the Beatitudes, where those only are felicitated who have the joy of the spirit independent of outward condition or circumstance. After all, the piety of the poor is a nation’s best asset. The poor will someday, many of them, be rich. May they still be pious! The upper classes run down and run out, alas, and have to be recruited constantly from the lower classes. It is the law of life. If we save the masses, we may save the classes. At any rate, it is a pitiful business to see a church of Jesus Christ ashamed of the poor, as the world regards them, for Jesus our Lord was himself poor for our sakes, voluntarily poor. “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9)—rich in God’s mercy and grace, rich in character, in likeness to Jesus.

The Royal Law (2:8 f.)

The poise of James appears again. He has no wish to stir the passions and prejudices of the poor against the rich. Surely it is not a sin to love rich people. They are entitled to the same love as other people, many far more because of the noble use made of their wealth. If you really fulfil the royal law—a law fit for kings or such as a king will be sure to follow (cf. Psalm 72; Zech. 9:9) and supreme over other laws (Matt. 22:40)—you do well. We should love both rich and poor alike. This royal law was in the Old Testament (Lev. 19:18) and is here quoted. It was sanctioned by Jesus (Matt. 19:18 f.) as one of the two chief commandments on which hang the whole law and the prophets (Matt. 22:38-40). Love of God and man covers all else. One may compare also the Golden Rule as given by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, which is just another way of stating the royal law of loving one’s neighbor (one near in need, whether in proximity or not) as oneself, a very high standard for most people.

The royal law forbids the partiality in church of which James has been speaking, this respect of persons. It is more than an error of judgment or a breach of etiquette. It is an act of sin, a slip in ethics, a missing of the mark that is fraught with grave consequences. It is bad enough to be convicted by the law as transgressors by this servile regard for the rich. It is worse to note the evil effect on the church and the community. A church of a clique is doomed. A church is only of use when it is open to the people who need the help of the gospel. The church opens its doors to let people in, does not put up bars to keep them out.

Stumbling in One Point (2:10 f.)

At first blush it seems that James has Draconian severity in these verses, but it is not the severe punishment of small crimes or venial offenses. The long list of capital crimes in ancient England shows how slowly men have learned to temper justice with mercy. Some of the Stoics said that the theft of a penny was as bad as parricide. The “blue laws” of Connecticut come to mind also. James does not say that all sins are equal, that one sin is as bad as another. As a matter of fact, each man discounts his own sins. The rake looks with scorn on the grafter. The man guilty of spiritual pride scouts the drunkard. It is a hard task to convince a man that he is guilty of his own sin.

The burden of the law was very heavy. The curse of the law (Gal. 3:13) was more than violation of particular precepts, though that was true to the last detail (Deut. 11:26, 28, 32; 27:26), as Jesus explained (Matt. 5:18 f.). The Jewish fathers put a hedge or fence about the law (_Pirke Aboth_ i. 1) and made it very difficult to keep all of it (the law as a whole, hard enough as it was), plus the traditions of the elders, which often contradicted and set at naught the commandment of God (Mark 7:8 f.). Compare Sirach 27:12. Rabbi Hunnah, in a midrash on Numbers 5:14, taught that he who committed adultery broke all commandments, and some of the rabbis placed the sabbath above all else and held that if one profaned it, he had broken all the commandments. Mayor, per contra, quotes some of the rabbis as saying that to keep the law about fringes and phylacteries was to keep the whole law. There was a constant tendency to make the ceremonial cover up moral and spiritual lapses.

Augustine (Epistle to Jerome, 167) compares this teaching of James with the Stoic doctrine of the solidarity of virtues and vices as mentioned. But certainly James has a higher view than these hair-splitting punctilios. Paul saw that the essence of sin lies in the motive (Rom. 14:23) and that desire to glorify God should pervade all our acts (1 Cor. 10:31). It seems hard to hold someone who makes one slip to strict account and hold him guilty of all. That is true only in the sense that James proceeds to explain that any violation of law makes one a lawbreaker.[69]

One does not have to break all the laws to become a lawbreaker. One offense places him in that category. The matter is put with this sharp emphasis because of the complacent self-satisfaction of the perfunctory ceremonialist (James 1:26), who may yet commit the sin of partiality in church. James is seeking to convict such “pious” sinners of their guilt, to rouse them out of their smug self-satisfaction.

It is quite possible that those who were guilty of spiritual pride and other sins of the spirit boasted of their freedom from adultery and murder (Hort). At any rate, we must not forget that out of the heart are the issues of life, that murder springs out of hate and that all of God’s laws come from the same will (Mayor). It is disobedience to the will of God that constitutes the essence of sin. It is not a light matter to be guilty of any sin. Our only hope is in the grace and forgiveness of God. There is no room for pride on the part of sinners, setting up one sin against another sin.

A Law of Liberty (2:12 f.)

But James is not a pharisaic legalist nor a Judaizer. He adds these verses to make it plain that he does not have in mind the painful observance of separate rules and details. The spirit is greater than the letter. Our words and deeds are to be judged by “a law of liberty” (cf. 1:25), not of bondage. We are under grace, not the old law. We live in an atmosphere of love and liberty, not of repression and slavery. God watches the real motive in our conduct toward the rich and the poor as in all things. “Mercy glorieth against judgment”; mercy triumphs over judgment. God shows mercy to us in spite of our shortcomings, for Jesus is the pledge of our fidelity and our hope.

We make so many mistakes that we should have no heart to go on if we had to be held to strict account every time we stumbled in one point. Still, we must not overlook the fact that we did stumble. It is our duty not to stumble at that point again. So we go on our stumbling way toward that goal of perfection which is ever before us. It was Jesus who said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). James seems to know this saying, as he lays emphasis on the spirit and motive in holy living.

VII The Appeal to Life

We now come to the famous passage that is supposed by some scholars to be an attack on Paul’s doctrine of salvation by faith instead of works. James is interpreted by many to be a champion of works as against Paul’s theory of grace. It is an old controversy and is the occasion of Martin Luther’s slighting allusion to the Epistle of James as “a veritable epistle of straw.” He thought it contradicted the Epistle of Galatians, which he loved dearly as his “wife.” It is necessary, therefore, to clear the atmosphere a bit before proceeding to the exposition.

The Standpoint of James

This depends on the date of the epistle. (For the discussion of this question, see chapter I.) It is here assumed that James wrote before the Jerusalem Conference, before A.D. 50.

Paul wrote Galatians and Romans, as well as 1 and 2 Corinthians, in the heat of the Judaizing controversy, to answer the contention that circumcision was essential to the salvation of the Gentiles, that Christianity alone was not sufficient but must be supplemented by Judaism. No issue ever stirred Paul’s nature like this. It is possible that Paul may have had in mind a misuse of James 2:14-26 by the Judaizers when he wrote, knowing that James in reality agreed with him in the matter (Acts 15:14-21; Gal. 2:1-10). But James clearly is not attacking Paul or Paul’s theory of grace. He rather has in view a perversion of the Christian emphasis on the spiritual side as opposed to the ceremonial ritualism of the Pharisees.

The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other. The Jews had laid too much emphasis on religious duties (cf. James 1:26), and some of the Christians went to the extreme of thinking that no works at all were needed in the Christian life. Some of the Jews, on the other hand, had already gone so far as to consider creed alone essential. “As soon as a man has mastered the thirteen heads of the faith, firmly believing therein ... though he may have sinned in every possible way ... still he inherits eternal life.”[70] This Jewish unconcern for real piety in life is reflected in the lives of some of the Jewish Christians and is the occasion of the remarks of James.

James’s use of righteousness or justification is in the sense of actual goodness as Jesus uses it in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:1) and of sanctification as Paul has it in Romans 6 to 8. It is not the “imputed righteousness” of Paul in Romans 3 and 4. James has a practical purpose, not a theological one. He is not discussing the question as to how Abraham was set right with God, how faith was reckoned as righteousness, the point seized on by Paul in the verse. James quotes the whole verse (Gen. 15:6), as Paul does, but he is concerned with it as proof that when put to the test, Abraham lived up to his faith in that he actually “offered up Isaac his son upon the altar” (James 2:21). It is the deed as proof of faith that James emphasizes, though both points are in the narrative.

James looks upon works as proof of faith, not as means of salvation. John the Baptist had demanded “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). Jesus had said, “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matt. 7:20). Paul will discuss death to sin on the part of the believer (Rom. 6:1-11). Peter will show how the life will make the calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10). The whole Epistle to the Hebrews is a clarion call to hold fast the confession of faith to the end. John will insist that those who say they are in the light do not walk in darkness (1 John 1:6; 2:9). Certainly then, James is in harmony with the full drift of the gospel message in his insistence on works as proof of the new life.

Paul, in his contrast between faith and works, has in mind the Jewish doctrine of works as means of salvation. See 2 Esdras 9:7 f.: “Whoever shall be able to escape either by his works or by his faith shall see my salvation.” And even here “by faith” does not mean what Paul has in mind, saving trust, but rather creed. The Pharisees taught the value of works of supererogation, the “merit” of the fathers, in particular, the merit of Abraham, whose faith and works were a storehouse for the Jews. “We have Abraham to our father.” That was enough. So the Roman Catholics hold that the saints may help us out of purgatory if we pay enough for their intercession. Prayer itself becomes an _opus operatum_, a credit in the balance sheet with God. Most Jews held works alone to be the means of salvation. The point was keenly discussed in the Jewish schools in Jerusalem and Alexandria.

As to faith, in this passage he is thinking of mere intellectual assent to the unity of God or other theological tenets. This was the use of “faith” by many of the Jews. After some of them became Christians, they got no further. It is this idle and empty faith that James is condemning. James does have the other sense of trust for the word, as in 2:1, “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,” the sense in which Paul uses the term when he contrasts it with works (Rom. 3:20-30). It is quite important to note this distinction.

The antithesis in James is not, in reality, between faith and works but between live faith and dead faith, the two uses of the term just mentioned. In verse 18 the point is made absolutely clear. It is not personal trust in Christ that James ridicules but an empty theological tenet that does not stand the test of actual life. So then, James and Paul go off at tangents when the same words occur, for they are talking about different things.

Not Pious Pretense (2:14-17)

Once more James corrects a possible misapprehension. He properly places mercy above justice, but no one need think for a moment that good deeds do not matter. God is full of mercy, but there is a limit even with God. He demands some performance, not mere profession. “What doth it profit?” James pointedly asks. _Cui bono?_ What is the use? What good is it for a man to say he has faith who has no works to prove his faith? How can men know that he has any faith? The mere assertion is all that men have at first. In the beginning the claim to faith is accepted, but the life must confirm the claim if men are to continue to believe it. God can read the heart, but even God demands that the life show the change of heart. The life must give expression to what the heart has felt.