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James 1 - Peake Arthur S. and Grieve A. J. - Peake's Comment

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James 1

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

3 knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:

10 but the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

11 For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

14 but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.

17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

20 for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.

27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

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James 1

Jas 1:1 . The greeting is in one of the ordinary forms with which public or private letters open (cf. Act 15:23 ). Like his brother Judas (Jud 1:1 ), James calls himself “servant of . . . Jesus Christ”: he would no longer claim a brother’s relation, except what all shared (Mar 3:35 ). On our theory we might easily conjecture that James wrote simply “servant of God,” the additional words being a very early adaptation to overtly Christian use. “The Twelve Tribes settled in foreign lands” retain their ideal completeness (Act 26:7 , Mat 19:28 , Rev 7:4 ff; Rev 21:12 ), though but few (cf. Luk 2:36 ) could trace their descent to the “Lost Ten.” God was “able of the stones to raise up children” to Israel.



Jas 1:2-8 . The paragraph, like its successors, has no special link with its context: it is the writer’s habit to throw out a series of aphoristic comments on topics, with as much connexion as there is between the essays of Bacon or successive cantos of Tennyson’s In Memoriam. It is the manner of “Wisdom” literature (cf. especially Ecclus.). The paradox with which the epistle opens is an expansion of the Beatitudes (Luk 6:20-23 ). The tense of the verb, “when you have fallen,” gives the key. James has not forgotten the Lord’s Prayer; but when a devout man has been “brought into trial,” he recognises it as God’s will, and therefore to be received with joy. He who has inflicted the “trial” will “deliver from the evil” which alone makes it distressing. “A man untried is rejected,” was a saying attributed to Christ. The word “rejected” is the negative of the adjective here wrongly translated “proof”: read (as in 1Pe 1:7 ) “the approved (genuine) part”—“what is sterling in your belief.” “Faith,” as elsewhere in Jas., means religious belief or creed. Truth which has been “inwardly digested,” and not swallowed whole, can produce spiritual robustness. “Endurance” is a great note of Jas. (cf. Jas 5:11 ). “Let it work thoroughly, and you will be thorough and complete, with nothing wanting.” By a characteristic feature of style, the word “wanting” suggests the next thought. “Wisdom,” practical knowledge that informs conduct, is to be had for the asking from the “only Wise.” God gives to “all” (Mat 5:45 ) “bountifully”—Gr. nearly as in Rom 12:8 —without reproaches for their failure to attain. Cf. especially 1Ki 3:9-12 . Note the echo of Mat 7:7 . The condition of Jas 1:6 is also from Christ’s teaching (Mar 11:23 , etc.). “He who hesitates is lost” when he prays. For the simile, cf. Isa 57:20 , Eph 4:14 . The “two-selfed” man—a trimmer or wobbler, or even one living a double life, a Dr. Jekyll alternating with Mr. Hyde—cannot expect to win the answer that only Faith’s virile grasp can seize. The man “has no firm footing, whatever path he treads.”



Jas 1:9-11 . The paradox of a “bragging” that comes of humility and faith is common to James and Paul: it starts from Jer 9:23 t The “brotherhood” which levels all differences into a glorious “liberty, fraternity, and equality” is the community of God’s faithful people. The rich man, as such, has only the common lot to expect: he needs to be lifted down, as the beggar is lifted up, to the place of eternal safety. James vividly expands the famous simile of Isa 40:6 from the conditions of Palestine: the easterly sirocco at sunrise (Mar 4:6 ) blasted vegetation (cf. Psa 103:16 ). The “goings” are trade journeys (cf. Jas 4:13 )—he is cut off while still “on the move.”



Jas 1:12-18 . The Beatitude on Endurance (cf. Jas 5:11 and note). “Trial” is still neutral: it is affliction which tests and develops loyalty. But since human nature has a bias towards evil, a trial “exerted upon man’s evil “desire” (Jas 1:14 ) becomes a “temptation.” As in Rom 5:4 , “endurance” produces approvedness,” which brings the reward. The word “crown” (as papyri show), can mean a royal diadem as well as a wreath of victory: the latter is better here. Peter’s “unfading crown of glory” is the same idea, and both (as in Rev 2:10 ) go back probably to an unrecorded saying of Jesus (cf. 2Ti 4:8 , also Deu 30:20 ). The denial that God “tempts” is based on the self-evidenced fact that there is nothing in Him to supply the seed of evil. This comes from our “desire” when still unbent by submission to God’s will. In itself “desire” is neutral; Jesus Himself had it (Luk 22:15 ). The allegory of Sin as mother of Death is magnificently worked out by Milton, P.L. ii. In contrast to this error, James declares that “Every gift that is good, every bounty that is flawless ‘droppeth from heaven upon the place beneath’”—so we may render to suggest the effect of a metrical quotation probably recognisable in the original. For “the Father of the (heavenly) lights,” cf. Job 38:7 . Unlike the moving sun, the earth and moon with light and shadow succeeding, He knows “no mutability, nor overshadowing of change.” We are His offspring by the act of His will through Truth’s own fiat: not literally the “first-fruits” of His creation, Man becomes such in dignity by the fact that God is his Father, and not only his Creator.



Jas 1:19-27 . “Be sure of it” (cf. mg.), he goes on, and turns to ask what conduct right views of God should produce. Humility and self-control, firstly, then purity, gentleness, and teachableness, with unsparing honesty that turns every creed into a code of action. “Quick to hear” not only God’s warning, but both sides of a human quarrel, “slow to speak” angry words, the peril of which James expounds in ch. 3, such conduct will be free from that “human wrath which can never help forward God’s ideal of Right.” “Filthiness” or “baseness”—the word was often used of counterfeit coin (but cf. also Rev 22:11 )—is coupled with a “rank growth of malice,” lit. “overflow”: there is an allusion to the Lord’s reminder that speech is “the overflow of the heart.” “The implanted word” (cf. Mat 13:21 ) can “save” the whole self”: it is the phrase which in ordinary parlance means “to save lives.”—The teaching on Hearers and Doers comes from the lips of Jesus (Mat 7:24 ff.): cf. also Rom 2:13 . The “natural face,” the features of “birth,” contrasted implicitly with the unchanging and eternal Ideal, may be studied” (the word of Luk 12:24 —it does not imply a mere glance) in the more or less polished metal mirror (1Co 13:12 ), but memory refuses to preserve the picture after the man goes away. To print the image of the Ideal on our souls we must “look right down into” it (Luk 24:12 , Joh 20:5 ; Joh 20:11 , 1Pe 1:12 ) and “stay by” it, so as to transform the momentary hearing into permanent working. The Law that is Liberty (Jas 2:12 ) is called “perfect” or “mature” because it works by the complete coincidence of man’s will with God’s—“Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.” Rom 8:2 might be an intended comment. The passionate love of the pious Jew for the Law (cf. Psa 19:7 ; Psa 119:97 ) colours this estimate of its ideal. A final foil is provided by the self-deceived “worshipper,” punctilious in external religion, but cruel, foul, or frivolous of tongue (cf. Jas 3:2 ; Jas 3:9 ; Mat 12:36 ). Such “worship” is “futile,” for it never reaches the Throne. For God is Father, and He only receives the worship of love towards His needy children, and of purity from the world’s selfishness (see 1Jn 4:20 ). “Visit” is a strong word (cf. Luk 16:8 , etc.). The depreciation of external religion as an end is very striking from the Ups of one so noted for his love of it as a means of grace.




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Rights in the Authorized (King James) Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Published by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge Univ. Press & BFBS
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