A. T. Robertson

“ Evidently James is all ablaze as he faces the situation of his readers. These Jewish plutocrats, some of them shysters, have made their money out of the blood and sweat of the toiling poor. And then they spend it in a way to anger the wronged workers still more. They live in the most luxurious extravagance and waste of money while the cold, half-naked, hungry toilers who made the wealth go unpaid. It is no wonder that such laborers grow bitter at heart. ”

“ And now James draws a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle hearers, the hangers-on in revival meetings, like the scum that comes first to the surface, lighthearted, impulsive, nonchalant, without depth of purpose or seriousness in life. Such a frivolous listener glances at his face in a mirror, taking note to see that he looks natural and proper. A quick look 69 suffices for that, for “his natural face,” the face of his birth, the only one that he has. If nothing is awry about his appearance reflected in the mirror, he is satisfied (or dissatisfied) with the momentary glance. ”

“ Many modern men have no faith in prayer of any kind save as a wholesome reaction on the mind of the one who prays. They scout the idea that the God of the universe would condescend to listen to the feeble chatter of such worms in the dust as men. They conceive it as impossible that God would alter his will in any particular because of such insignificant requests. Least of all do they admit the possibility that God would change the weather in response to the prayer of one or many individuals. ”

“ And now in the temple of God the worshipers of Jesus show the same pride of wealth and station as at a social function. The preacher talks of forgiveness of sins and the comfort of the Holy Spirit; but he and the ushers keep a sharp eye upon the man who wears the fine clothes, pompous and self-conscious as that man probably feels. The soul of the poor man is made more bitter still as he leaves the church of the rich and the proud to see if he can find God at home or the devil in the saloon or other den of iniquity. ”

“ The critic of the law prefers to find flaws in the law rather than to undertake to obey it. He assumes that he can enact a better law, but it is all assumption. James shows his impatience with such criticism by saying, “But who art thou that judgest thy neighbor?” See Romans 14:4. In common law we are to give every man the benefit of the doubt and to assume his innocence till his guilt is proven. But in current speech the sharp tongue follows no such rule of reason but creates suspicion and sows hate and strife at every turn. ”

“ James does not mean that we are not to try to cure any of the ills of life, not to overcome ignorance, poverty, disease, crime. There is here no surcease for the war on the evil conditions of modern life in home or city or state. But many things cannot be changed. Others will be alleviated by and by. Meanwhile the Christian can rise to the height of cheerful, joyful patience. It is the practice of cheerfulness that we so much need. We do not have to shut our eyes to the facts of life and of the human reason and deny the existence of sin and sickness. ”

“ There should be an indissoluble marriage between faith and works, a union as close as that between spirit and body. “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no other way than the slow way of life. The mushroom springs up in a night and goes as quickly away. The oak grows a few inches a year and lasts for centuries. The finest product in God’s garden is the soul of man, ripe with the long years of toil and sorrow. ”

“ The law of God is attractive and perfect to the doer of work, as the psalmist has it: “The law of the Lord is perfect” (Psalm 19:7) . But it is not a law of compulsion but of freedom. One is free to accept or to reject it. Certainly James does not have the view of the Judaizers, who made the law a yoke of bondage even for Gentiles, but rather that of Paul, who accented the freedom in Christ (Gal. 5:1) . Jesus held out freedom as the great blessing of truth (John 8:32) —freedom to exercise one’s highest functions and faculties held in bondage by sin and mere legalism. ”

“ Christ claims the right of a partner in our business, not a silent but an active partner. We are in business with Christ and for Christ. The Christian has no right to have rotten riches. He should have clean money, not filthy lucre. Sound money is more than mere phrase. Money represents labor, and labor is the sweat of brain and brawn. The gambler cannot offer clean money to God. He has robbed a man of his money.
“Your garments are moth-eaten.” We have the prophetic perfect here, and James sees the outcome as a reality in a state of completion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many who live in accord with the outward ethical standards of life who turn away from the knowledge of Jesus, who go after the strange gods of gold, of so-called knowledge, of materialistic monism, of “new thought,” of Christian Science, of Russellism, of any new fad in science or philosophy or religion, of any new form of old wives’ fables that lead men astray. These are, in reality, more difficult to win back to the truth as it is in Jesus, for they have the pride of knowledge and look with compassionate condescension on those who still worship Jesus as God and Saviour from sin. ”

“ With James the source of wisdom is God, not the Jews. So then, when our supply runs short, ask of God. It is like a bank to which we go to get our money. God is the banker whose supply of wisdom never gives out. Unlike other bankers, he asks no security save the name of Jesus. ”

“ 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 prayer of faith is the only kind that is real prayer, and it is trust in God with full acknowledgment of God’s power and love. Some men have always had the idea of a God so aloof from the world that he cares nothing about it or is powerless to help. There is nothing in modern scientific knowledge inconsistent with an immanent, yet transcendent, God who holds the key of life in himself. The wondrous laws of nature are all of God, and there are many more that we do not yet understand. ”

“ It is a brave word for reality in religion and against the hollow mockery of mere lip service.
In verse 9 we have a rather unusual exhortation for the New Testament. The word for repentance does not mean sorrow but change of mind and life. The need for a change implies sorrow for the sins of one’s life, to be sure. But one may have sorrow and still not change his heart and life. The thing that counts is the change, not the degree of the sorrow. But, certainly, sorrow for sin is appropriate and natural for the sinner who turns away from it. ”

“ The Roman Catholic doctrine relieves the priest from the obligation to live the morality which he preaches, but surely that is a travesty on the ethics of Christianity. It is false ethics and false religion. People have a right to hold the preacher to the standard of the gospel, just as he has the right to urge upon them the highest ideals of conduct. There is a wonderful leveling process going on all the time. Lincoln said with rare wisdom that a man may fool all the people part of the time and some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time. ”

“ Hort keenly observes that the force of “also” after “the whole body” is that a man who can bridle his tongue can bridle his whole body. The tongue is a real Bucephalus, and it takes an Alexander to master him. It is really wonderful how a spirited, impetuous horse can be subdued by bit and bridle. The spirit does not go out of the horse, but his restless energy is under control and guidance.
James does not mean that a man should be dumb and lifeless, without ambition and power, but simply that his tongue, like all the rest of the body, should be kept in control. ”

“ The uncertainty of life is one of the things that a wise man must consider and face. A clot of blood on the brain may cause instant and unexpected death. The heart, driven too hard, may suddenly cease to beat. “What is your life?” He does not mean manner of life or the life principle or eternal life. The question concerns all, the good and the wicked alike. The question as to the character of life pertains to its brevity and uncertainty on earth. “For ye are a vapor,” “you are but a mist” (Moffatt) . ”

“ Meekness is not a virtue that ranks high with all men. Many of the ancients counted it a vice, as Nietzsche has taught in our generation. But the spirit of Nietzsche’s superman is not the spirit of Jesus or of the true gentleman. There can be no true culture without gentleness and the grace of meekness.
If the seed of the Word gets root and is allowed to grow (compare the wayside, stony-ground, thorny-ground hearers in Christ’s parable in Matt. 13) , the tree of life will flourish in the garden of the soul. ”

“ Man is proud of his lordship over beast and bird and over 119 the forces of nature like wind and wave and electricity. Man can swim like a fish, can run like a deer, and can now even fly like a bird in the airplane with its artificial wings. He can talk without wires with unseen persons over thousands of miles. He can speed over land and sea like the wind. He can send a message around the earth with the swiftness of light.
But he cannot control his own tongue. “But the tongue can no man tame.” Here is the language of helplessness, as in the case of the demoniac in Mark 5:4. ”

“ Every church is, or ought to be, a lifesaving station, a rescue mission, a teaching center, a powerhouse, a lighthouse radiating knowledge of God in Christ.
The purpose of God in renewing us by the word of truth is that we in turn should win others. We are not an end in ourselves, though God does save us. ”

“ The preacher who has missed this joy of winning souls has missed the greatest reward in his ministry. If he has this, he can do without much else. He can stand many rebuffs, small salary, lack of help, if only there is this meat to eat that satisfied the soul of Jesus when he led one poor abandoned woman into the light and life of God. ”

“ This religion is free from pollution. There is in it no alloy of selfishness nor other sin. Moffatt renders it “unsoiled,” but it may have the notion of genuine metal.
This standard of purity and piety seems impossible, but God knows how to estimate the relation between listening and doing, between doing and loving, between loving and purity of life. The life must pass muster with God. At first sight one is perhaps depressed by the reflection that God’s standard of piety is so much higher than ours. What some men consider holy worship is to God hollow mockery. But then God is our Father. ”

“ There is no response to evil in God. He is not “man’s giant shadow skyward thrown.” The absolute holiness and ethical purity of God should at least protect him from the charge of leading us into sin. The worst of men, in their darkest moments of loneliness, sometimes come face to face with God. Then they do not flippantly blame God but confess their sins with broken heart. Two things are true about evil and God. One is that God himself tempts no man to sin. He does send trial but not temptation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He knows the limitations of environment in which the tree of life has grown.
James gives two very practical tests of genuine religion. One is mercy toward the suffering. The widow and the orphan appeal to the hardest hearts. And yet men have been known to spend thousands of dollars upon palaces of worship while the poor perished in the alley behind the church. The social side of practical religion is receiving more attention these days than it once did. The very hospitals and asylums are an expression of that love for our common humanity taught by Jesus. ”

“ Hate has the same effect. The chameleon changes color according to its emotions and environment. The tongue not only commits evil by lying, by defending sin, and by leading to sin, but it leaves a deadly stain in the very body and soul of the one who misuses it. ”