One must not think that James discredits faith. He does not. He assumes the need of it. In verse 24 James uses “justified” more in the sense of final approval (set right at last) than of the initial restoration of peace with God. And even so “the faith as a ground of justification is assumed as a starting point” (Hort).
“Ye see,” says James, leaving his imaginary opponent and turning again to his readers. They can see the point, whether the empty-headed disputant does or not. It is hard for a controversialist to see anything but his own side of the question. It is “not only by faith” that a man is justified. The case of Abraham shows that works must follow faith in the natural order of grace. James has administered a severe rebuke to the antinomians who deny any responsibility for holy living and disclaim the force of the moral law. There has always been a curious type of pietism that runs easily into immorality with no compunctions of conscience, a sort of emotionalism without ethical tone or flavor. Abraham was not simply the father of the Jewish people but the father of all the spiritual Israel—the believing children of God in all the ages since, who form the elect of God and of the earth.
One wonders why James selects a case like this after speaking of Abraham, the father of the fruitful and God’s friend. Oesterley doubts how this verse could come from the pen of a Christian. But James may have wished to select another example at the furthest possible point from Abraham, a heathen and a proselyte, “the first of all the proselytes” in the land of Canaan (Hort). Certainly if a woman like Rahab could be saved, no one else need despair. She expressed her faith in God: “I know that the Lord hath given you the land ... the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath” (Josh. 2:9, 11, AV). Besides, she showed her courage by avowing the cause of Jehovah and of Israel, by protecting the messengers (spies, in reality), and by a life of uprightness thereafter.
It was a crisis in the history of Israel as they came to Jericho, and Rahab took her stand for God at the start; hence the high honor accorded her. She is mentioned in Hebrews 11:31 in the famous list of heroes of faith. In Matthew 1:5 she appears in the genealogy of Christ. She was counted one of the four chief beauties of Israel along with Sarah, Abigail, and Esther (Mayor). “Eight prophets who were also priests are descended from the harlot Rahab” (Megilla 14b). Certainly there is no desire in James nor in Hebrews to dignify her infamous trade, which she renounced, but only to single her out as a brand snatched from the burning by the power of God.
This is what James pleads for, not the divorce between creed and conduct, which is alas only too prevalent even today. 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.” By “spirit” here James means simply the breath of life, without which the body is dead. “False faith is virtually a corpse” (Hort).
By this striking paradox James attacks the root of the whole matter and has his last word on the subject. Hort remarks that James by the use of the phrase “justified by works” seems to be answering Paul in Romans 4:2 or a misuse of Paul’s “justified by faith” (Rom. 5:1), though he does not see how James could have seen Paul. I have already expressed my own conviction that James and Paul are not really answering one another. They are discussing different aspects of the subject and touch only at points and go off along other lines. In all probability each would agree to the statements of the other if the language of each were put in the proper perspective. Certainly they agreed when they were together in Jerusalem (Acts 15; Gal. 2:1-10). But it is important for us that our faith shall be real and vital, not hollow and dead.
James carries on the discussion of “slow to speak” (1:19). He has just been writing about idle faith in 2:14-26, and now he proceeds (Plummer) to expound the peril of the idle word, “wrong speech after wrong action” (Hort). Indeed, in 1:26 he has already mentioned the failure to bridle the tongue as a sure sign of vain religion. Now he expands the matter in a remarkable paragraph.
The transition is thus not so abrupt as at first seems to be the case, and apparently from the first he planned this discussion of the tongue. Probably it comes here (Plummer) because controversies about faith and works were already rife. Here James speaks “against those who substitute words for works” (Plummer), a rather large class. “In noble uprightness, he values only the strict practice of concrete duties, and hates talk” (Reuss), if it is only talk. James has the gift of condensation. He can write on talk without taking twenty volumes, like Carlyle, to prove that if speech is silvern, silence is golden (Plummer). The “overvaluation of theory as compared with practice” (Mayor) condemned in chapter II is still present with James as he discusses the tongue.
We are not here to think simply of official teachers like Paul’s apostles, prophets, teachers (1 Cor. 12:28 f.; Eph. 4:11). In the Didache (xiii. 2, xv. 1, 2) teachers are placed on a par with prophets and higher than bishops and deacons. There is no doubt that teaching received tremendous emphasis in the work of the early Christians. Jesus is the great Teacher of the ages and is usually presented as teaching. In the Jewish “houses of learning” (synagogues) teaching was as prominent an element as worship. The official teachers passed away, and the modern Sunday school movement is an effort to restore the teaching function in the churches.
The true preacher should be a teacher also, but many preachers are more evangelistic and hortatory than didactic. The best preachers combine all these elements and build up the saints in the faith to which they have been won. The mission work of modern Christianity also has had to lay new emphasis on the educational side of Christian effort. There is no reason why the morning service in public worship should not be a teaching service and the evening service more evangelistic. Teachers are necessary. People “having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts” (2 Tim. 4:3).[75] Epictetus (bk. III, chap, xxiii, § 29) says: Rufus “used to speak in such a way that each of us as we sat thought that someone had accused us to him.”
But James here is thinking of the unofficial teachers in the churches. In the Jewish synagogues there was wide latitude allowed for strangers and others to speak. Jesus took advantage of this opportunity and taught freely in the synagogues (Matt. 12:9 ff.; Mark 1:39; Luke 6:6 ff.). There would be interruption and violent opposition at times (cf. John 6:59-66). Paul used the courtesy to strangers to speak in the Jewish synagogues and met with open opposition at times (cf. Acts 13:15, 45; 18:6).
In Corinth we have a striking instance of the evil of promiscuous teaching, unrestrained and unregulated (1 Cor. 14). It became necessary for Paul to rebuke the church for unseemly disorder. There were many who were only too ready to be carried away by any newfangled doctrine. There is safety in free discussion, which acts as a safety valve and also leaves a deposit of truth. But the acrimonious spirit had a fine opportunity to display itself. Men of arrogant convictions and little knowledge felt that they “had no need to learn anything from their brethren, but were fully equipped as teachers” (Johnstone), “desiring to be teachers of the law, though they understand neither what they say, nor whereof they confidently affirm” (1 Tim. 1:7).
Some men with a certain fluency of speech really had no message and only spoke out of vanity and really “thought more of the admiration which they might excite by a display of their powers than of the light and strength which through Gods grace they might give their brethren” (Dale). Evidently James is here concerned with these promiscuous, officious, irresponsible, self-appointed teachers, men with a cocksure explanation of all difficulties, not afraid to rush in where angels fear to tread.
The world was full of roving teachers with every sort of patent ism to dispense to the public. Both Jews and Athenians were eager for something newer than the last stale theory (the very latest fad). The synagogues of the Jews and the churches of the Christians offered a fine platform for these cranks to air their notions. Besides, some of the best of men, earnest Christians, have a “lust for talk” (W. Robertson Nicoll) that leads them into all sorts of excesses.
James, therefore, is pleading for restraint and moderation when he says, “Be not many of you teachers,” “do not swell the ranks of the teachers” (Moffatt). Teachers are absolutely necessary, but the thing can be overdone. Some learners (disciples) are needed. Liberty within reasonable limits must be allowed, but not rank license. Men must not be too eager to teach what they do not know.
There is no danger of an oversupply of well-equipped teachers, who are masters of the message of Christ. There are still too many who are incompetent, and therefore the accent on teacher-training in the Sunday schools is most timely. The caution of James is pertinent today, but we must not discourage timid souls who can learn to teach and who ought to undertake it. The greatness of the teacher’s task must not be overlooked. James warns us against its abuse. There is a mental sloth that is as bad as this eagerness to be teachers, a lazy satisfaction with the elements of Christianity and failure to grow into the position of teachers of the doctrines of grace, continuing as babes unable to digest solid food (Heb. 5:12).
Teaching has to be done. There is no escape from that, but those who teach must understand their responsibility. They are doctors (from doceo, to teach) of the mind and heart. They cannot escape their responsibility as spiritual surgeons, for they deal with the issues of life and death, “knowing that we shall receive heavier judgment.” In seasons of religious excitement it is particularly desirable that men shall bear this fact in mind. There is danger for the teacher and for those that hear and are led astray by foolish talk.
Feeling was probably running high in some of the churches, and there was occasion for the sobering words of James. “The penalty of untruth is untruth, to imbibe which is death” (Taylor). One has only to recall the words of Jesus: “And I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matt. 12:36 f.). It is easy to be overconfident, like the complacency of the Jews of whom Paul said that each was confident that he was “a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of babes” (Rom. 2:20). “Blind leaders of the blind” (Matt. 15:14) are they. It is bad enough to break one of the least commandments, but whoever does “and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19).
There is no escaping the fact that a heavier penalty rests on preachers and teachers who leave a trail of error behind them. This point of view explains Paul’s anxiety in the pastoral epistles for the future of Christianity, as it had to confront Pharisaism, Gnosticism, Mithraism, the emperor cult, and the hundred and one vagaries of the age. Certainly a teacher must speak his mind. He must be intellectually honest and tell what he sees, but he is not called upon to give his guesses at truth as truth. He ought to be interesting if he can, but not at the expense of truth. Freedom of teaching is quite consonant with fidelity to truth. One does not have to be a mere traditionalist in order to escape wild speculation. He must bring forth things new and old if they are true.
The severest words that fell from the lips of Jesus are against the Pharisees who filled the place of teachers for the Jews but who “say, and do not,” who “sit on Moses’ seat” as authoritative teachers and yet “strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel” (Matt. 23:2-3, 24). “Woe unto you lawyers! for ye took away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered” (Luke 11:52). The child was kept in the dark while at school because the teacher did not let in the light. “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”
Others besides teachers have pitfalls, for teachers are not the only errant men. “For in many things we all stumble.” James includes himself in this category. The Vulgate reads “ye” in verse 1 (sumitis), not willing to admit that James ran any risk about the heavier judgment; but that is not the correct text. James shows no disposition to exempt himself. One and all we make many slips, stumble over something in the path. Our falls are only too frequent. Who is the perfect man? Seneca (Clem. 1:6) says, “We all sin” (peccamus omnes). But Epictetus (bk. IV, chap. iv, § 7) uses the word for sin for merely “commit a fault.” He has a weak conception of sin. Epictetus also (bk. I, chap. xxviii, § 23) says, “No man stumbles on account of another’s action.” But surely he is in error here.
Teachers are particularly liable to stumble in speech, for precisely in that sphere their activity lies (Plummer). This point is common to all. Most assuredly, all men are guilty of sins of speech. Each one is sure to stumble there sooner or later. This is a very easy test of one’s perfection. He can be prodded by the tongue. “The scribes and the Pharisees began to press upon him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things; laying wait [ambush] for him, to catch [as if wild game] something out of his mouth” (Luke 11: 53 f.). Yes, but they were all the more angry when the one perfect Man kept control of his tongue.
Smart lawyers often try to trip a witness in his talk. It is hard to be consistent in talk, true in talk, clean in speech. “If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man,” “whoever avoids slips of speech is a perfect man” (Moffatt). “Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth” (Prov. 6:2). Compare Sirach 28:12-26 for pungent remarks on speech. “That which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man” (Matt. 15:11). The chemical reaction to talk is a test that we cannot refuse. Teachers cannot escape this inevitable test. The rest of this discussion consists of a series of remarkable illustrations of the power of the tongue.
The man who does control his tongue is able to bridle the whole body also (cf. 1:26), for the body goes with the tongue. In fact, nothing is commoner than for one to make a rash statement and then feel compelled to stand by it for the sake of imaginary consistency. 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. This figure of bridling the tongue, as already noted (1:26), is one of the most vivid figures in all languages. David said: “I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle” (Psalm 39:1).
It is not merely that the tongue is so hard to put a bridle on but also that the tongue has such an influence on the whole body, able thus to lead the body by the bridle.[76] The horse has to follow his mouth, in which the bridle is placed. The purpose of the bridle is that the horses may obey us, and it is thoroughly successful, as a rule. “We turn about their whole body also” along with the mouth. So we should place bridles in our mouths for the deliberate purpose of controlling the tongue. It will not happen by accident.
We are to repress the impulsive and petulant word. Thus we train our own tongues and make it easier to subdue the other members of the body. One member cannot be allowed to lead the whole body into sin. Pluck it out, if it be the right eye or the right hand (Matt. 5:29). The members of the body are all so related as to be affected by what the others experience. “The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee” (1 Cor. 12:21). Without this bridle on the tongue there is no true self-control. A tongue loose at both ends means a man whom everyone shuns as a nuisance. If the bridle is good for the horse, it is far more so for the man. The difference is that the man has to put the bridle into his own mouth and in dual capacity as rider and horse master himself, the most unmanageable of steeds.
A garrulous man is a bore at best, while a woman with a sharp tongue is a terror to the community. Tell no secrets to a talkative man, and few to anyone save your wife. A man who talks to hear himself talk will be sure to tell what he ought not to say. The writer of Hebrews refuses to go on with too many details about his heroes of faith, “for the time will fail me if I tell” (Heb. 11:32), “time will leave me telling.” If the audience held the bridle, the preacher might stop sooner. The phonograph can be turned off at will, permitting only so much “canned” talk at a time. And yet talk is one of the most delightful things in all the world. But there can be too much of a good thing, if, forsooth, it is good. There are few greater nuisances than the interrupter, who breaks into a conversation with no regard for the courtesies of the occasion. He is as bad as the man who monopolizes the conversation and allows no one else to talk at all. He needs a stopper, not a bridle, in his mouth.
With great wealth of imagination James proceeds to illustrate still further the power of the tongue over the rest of the body. The point is clear from the illustration of the bridle and the horse, but it is made still clearer by the other figures. The importance of the subject justifies this piling up of metaphors. “This combination of the horse’s bridle and the ship’s rudder as illustrative of the tongue is found” (Hort) in Philo and Plutarch. “The argument is à fortiori from the horse to the man, and still more from the ship to the man, so that the whole forms a climax, the point being throughout the same, namely, the smallness of the part to be controlled in order to have control over the whole” (Plummer).
The horse is an irrational creature and yet can be managed by the bridle. The ship has no mind at all and yet is moved “by a very small rudder,” “turned about,” “whither the impulse of the steersman willeth.” The “impulse” may be like “the rush of water” in Proverbs 21:1, which is there compared to the king’s heart, for God “turneth it whithersoever he will,” or like the rush or onset of the Gentiles and Jews to injure Paul in Iconium (Acts 14:5). Here it is the gentle pressure or touch of the hand of the steersman who guides the ship on its course straight ahead, as he decides (intention, purpose rather than mere will).[77]
The complete mastery of the steersman over the ship is accented by a comparison of the size of the ancient boats with horses. “Behold, even the ships” (probably we are to translate “even” rather than “also”), which, though they are so great (cf. 2 Cor. 1:10), “are yet turned about by the impulse of the steersman,” even when they are being driven by rough winds (if here again we translate “even” instead of “also”). One is reminded of the boat in which Jesus and the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee “now in the midst of the sea, distressed by the waves” (Matt. 14:24). The “rough winds” (cf. Prov. 27:16), “stiff winds” (Moffatt), were particularly dangerous for the small (from our standpoint) ships of the ancients. But the steersman could hold to his course even over a rough sea.
The point of James about the size of the ships would apply with far more force today, when modern leviathans of the deep plow the waters. There is now less peril from the stiff winds, but there is all the more ground for wonder that the tiny rudder can control at will the giant of the ocean. The steersman can drive the mighty monster straight upon an iceberg and sink it in a few minutes, as in the crash of the Titanic. Great as the ship is, the silent forces of nature are still greater. Man has not yet mastered all the powers of nature. But the ship, blind to its fate, responded to the will of the steersman, who dashed against the iceberg.
The lesson is only too obvious. One must watch the tongue if he is to avoid shipwreck. The tongue may dash the whole life in blind rage against God. The ship is one of the most beautiful of objects as it rides the waves in proud majesty. But more beautiful still is a life that is not marred by bad or bitter words. Plutarch (De Garrulitate, 10) says that speech beyond control is like a ship out at sea, broken loose from its moorings.
The power of the tongue over the body in general is shown by the bridle and the rudder. Now the power of the tongue for evil is specifically illustrated by the metaphor of fire. True, the tongue is a little member, and yet it “boasteth great things,” “can boast of great exploits” (Moffatt).
It is not a mere empty boast that the tongue can make. It is hard to exaggerate the power of the tongue, which is able to sway great multitudes for good or ill, to stir the wildest passions of man to uncontrollable fury, or to exalt men to the highest emotions of their natures. The tongue can soothe the dying or damn the living. The tongue can sing like a songbird or growl like a lion. The tongue can speak words of tenderest love or of venomous hate. It can speak like a megaphone in trumpet tones or in a whisper almost inaudible save to an eager ear. Plummer tells the story of Amasis, king of Egypt, who sent a sacrifice to Bias the sage with the request that he send back the best part and the worst. He sent back the tongue.
James adds, “Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire,” “what a forest is set ablaze by a little spark of fire” (Moffatt). The figure is that of timber or woodland rather than a pile of wood. Mayor quotes Milton: “Into what pit thou seest from what height fallen.” The inflammatory Oriental audience with the high pitch of voice, confusion of tongues, and wild gesticulation is aptly compared to a forest fire (Oesterley).[78]
There is pathos in the dreadful forest fires that annually devastate our country. The damage each year amounts to several hundred millions of dollars, besides the injury to future generations in the loss of the blessings in many ways from the forests. In most instances these forest fires, which rage with uncontrollable fury when the wind gets up, are due to accident or mischief. A spark from an engine, a cigarette thrown in the leaves, a burning match cast to one side by a hunter, a smoldering campfire, a shot from a gun—these and other like causes explain most of the conflagrations.
The situation is so serious that the national government has a fire patrol to guard the forest reserves. Once a prairie fire starts there is hardly any stopping it till it burns out. Mice and matches cause over twelve hundred fires each year in New York City. Only a start is needed, a start long enough to get beyond control, and we have the horrible holocausts of Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, San Francisco. “A burning fire kindles many heaps of corn” (Sir. 11:32). The scholiast on this verse adds, “There is nothing which more devastates the world than an evil tongue.” Nero set fire to Rome to see the grandeur of the spectacle, and he fiddled while the city burned. Similar irresponsibility is seen often in the reckless use of the tongue. We should not light a fire which can blaze beyond our control.
So James adds, “And the tongue is a fire.” See Proverbs 16:27, “And in his lips there is a scorching fire.” Compare Sirach 28:21-23. “The effect is that of an underground flame, concealed for a while, then breaking out afresh” (Carr). Indeed, “the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue,” “the tongue proves a very world of mischief among our members” (Moffatt). The tongue was made for good use and in itself is good, but it has been prostituted to evil. So here the very word for “is” (cf. 4:4, “maketh himself”) brings out this distinction. The tongue “is constituted” so, is not so by nature. Now we say that a man’s tongue has run away with him. The tongue has made a career for itself, “the world [realm] of iniquity,” “the unrighteous world” (Hort). It was made the best of members but has run riot till it has become the personification of injustice and all sorts of wrong. The Vulgate has it here universitas iniquitatis rather than mundus. One thinks of our use of “university,” a world in itself for good or ill.
Jesus spoke of “the mammon of unrighteousness,” “the judge of unrighteousness.” So the tongue represents the world of iniquity and has become “the chief channel of temptation from man to man” (Mayor). “They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth” (Psalm 73:9, AV). This microcosm epitomizes the macrocosm of evil. Bengel has it a macrocosmo ad microcosmum. The evil wrought by the tongue ramifies through the whole of society and goes on and on in its deadly influence.
It “defiles the whole body,” “staining the whole of the body” (Moffatt).[79] The Vulgate has maculat. Jesus had said, “That which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man” (Matt. 15:11). At first James seems to overstate the matter, but modern science reinforces his point. It is now known that angry words cause the glands of the body to discharge a dangerous poison that affects the stomach, the heart, the brain. The effect is usually temporary but sometimes fatal. It is literally true that such choler defiles the whole body. 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. “It is the palmary instance of the principle that the best when perverted becomes the worst—corruptio optimi fit pessima” (Plummer).
The tongue “setteth on fire the wheel of nature,” “setting fire to the round circle of existence” (Moffatt), “the whole circle of innate passions” (Oesterley), “the wheel of man’s creation” (Hort, who adds “one of the hardest phrases in the Bible”), “the wheel of birth” like the Orphic mysteries (P. Gardner), “sets the whole creation in flames” (Johnstone). Perhaps the idea is that the tongue at the center (hub) of the wheel of nature sets on fire the rest of the wheel. One sees just this thing happen in a pyrotechnic display, where a wheel is set on fire in the center. The more it burns the faster it revolves, till the whole wheel whirls in a blaze of fire, spitting fire as it whirls. Certainly, the tongue can set fire to all the baser passions in the wheel of life, such as envy, jealousy, faction, anger, avarice, lust, murder. This fire spreads, not simply through the whole man, but may infect “various channels and classes till the whole cycle of human life is in flames” (Plummer). Its range of devastation frequently is wider than the life of the person who spoke.
It is not surprising that James adds, “and is set on fire by hell,” “with a flame fed by hell” (Moffatt), inflammata a gehenna (Vulgate). It is the devil, the slanderer par excellence, who sets on fire “the chariot-wheel of man as he advances on the way of life” (Hort). It is first inflamed by hell (place of the wicked, not the unseen world for all) and then inflames all the wheel of nature. The torch is lighted in hell, and the hellish flame kindles the tongue, which in turn sets fire to the whole nature. Thus the fire was started and is habitually replenished (the tense is imperfect). The Valley of Hinnom or Tophet was first just the type of the abode of the wicked, and then the continual fires kept burning there were transferred to the next world. (Cf. “the fire of Gehenna,” Matt. 5:22.)
But one must not forget that while the tongue can be set on fire of hell, it can also be touched by a live coal from God’s altar. Isaiah said, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin forgiven” (6:5-7).
Let us gain comfort from the experience of Isaiah in the contemplation of the solemn warning of James. One may note also that tongues as of fire sat on the heads of those who were filled with the Holy Spirit on the great day of Pentecost. The tongue can be set on fire of heaven and can pass on the holy fire of God from soul to soul, thus lighting the light of God in the human life.
James recurs to the beasts (cf. horse and bridle) for a broader discussion. The tongue is unbridled all too often and is the most unmanageable of wild animals. He had just said that the tongue is set on fire of hell. “The fact that the tongue is the one thing that defies man’s power to control it is a sign that there is something satanic in its bitterness” (Mayor). He uses the language of Oriental exaggeration in giving further proof of his strong statement, a justifiable hyperbole: “For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind.” “The art of taming is no new thing, but has belonged to the human race from the first” (Mayor).
It is perhaps not strictly true that every conceivable animal has been subjected by man, but no one in the light of the past and the present can say that any animal is untamable. It is now a common enough thing to see in a wild animal show performing tigers, leopards, lions, elephants, monkeys, dogs, horses, parrots, seals, bears, and even serpents. It is not merely that wild animals may be domesticated (cf. the wolf and the dog), like the zebra and the wild turkey (America’s contribution to the world’s barnyard), but they may be taught to do acts and tricks that show rudimentary reasoning powers. The eye of man can subdue the lion, the tiger, and the serpent as Jesus subdued the untamable demoniac (Mark 5:4), “and no man had strength to tame him.” Man has proved his kingship over the other creatures as God gave him dominion (Gen. 1:26). In many cases animals have become so domesticated that they no longer feel at home elsewhere.
Man is proud of his lordship over beast and bird and over 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. Strictly speaking, of course, the tongue is merely the organ of speech, and speech is under the control of the mind. By a bold figure James almost personifies the tongue as a separate personality. “It combines the ferocity of the tiger and the mockery of the ape with the subtlety and venom of the serpent” (Plummer). It is thus the very chimera of wild beasts!
This is the picture of the tongue in its natural state, the tongue of the unregenerate man. The Spirit of God can cleanse a man’s mouth of profanity and unclean speech. “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile” (Psalm 34:13). Paul puts up the bars: “Nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, or jesting, which are not befitting” (Eph. 5:4). Once more he says: “Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth” (4:29). Surely, if one has such an untamable little animal in his mouth as the tongue, he needs to watch it with ceaseless care. The evil of the tongue echoes and re-echoes through a community and often through the ages. The evil slander can never be stopped. The lie is fleet of foot and eludes truth in a race.
“It is a restless evil,” “plague of disorder that it is” (Moffatt), “a disorderly evil” (Hort), iniquitum malum (Vulgate). It is unstable and unreliable, inconsistent and quixotic. It can never be trusted to the full. It will turn on one when off guard, like the lion when the keeper turns his eye away. It can be brought under no rules that will work.
“It is full of deadly poison.” It is “death-bringing” poison like the poison of asps under their lips (Psalm 140:3). “Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear” (Psalm 58:4). The poison of the serpent is deposited in a little pocket under the mouth. So the tongue is charged with the venom of hate, as the serpent with poison. The hiss of the serpent and the hiss of the goose are often reproduced in the sibilant tongue of slander.
The inconsistency of the conduct of the tongue is graphically portrayed by these verses. Plummer happily terms it “the moral contradictions of the reckless talker.” There is in very truth moral chaos if the Christian does not control his tongue. Inconsistency is not an evil per se. If one is wrong, he ought to be inconsistent enough to change and do right. But it is terrible to see a professing Christian lightly lapse into loose and licentious language. “The fires of Pentecost will not rest where the fires of Gehenna are working” (Plummer).
James had spoken (1:8) of the double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. The tongue with the gift of double-entendre is one of the very worst, for its word passes muster in polite circles and yet carries to the initiated a sinister or salacious meaning. Epictetus (Ench. xxxiii, § 16) says, “But dangerous also is the approach to indecent speaking.” But the double tongue talks one way with one person, another with another; it is the way of hypocrisy, the slick tongue, the oily tongue of the two-faced man whose word cannot be depended upon, whose word is not so good as his bond.
Sirach (5:13) says: “Honor and shame are in talk; and the tongue of man is his fall.” He also has this: “If thou blow the spark, it shall burn; if thou spit upon it, it shall be quenched; and both these come out of thy mouth” (28:12). It looks as if James had seen this passage from the Twelve Patriarchs (Benjamin 6:5): “The good mind hath not two tongues, of blessing and of cursing, of contumely and of honour, of sorrow and of joy, of quietness and of confusion, of hypocrisy and of truth.”
We may omit the inconsistency of “sorrow and of joy,” for that is the lot of all of us, but certainly the tongue must not play the part of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Therewith bless we the Lord and Father,” the only instance of this precise combination of words in the Bible, expressing God’s power and loving approachableness (cf. Matt. 11:25). The highest function of human speech (Hort) is the praise of God the Father. Note how when Zacharias recovered his speech, he first praised God (Luke 1:64). It is glorious to praise God in prayer, in song, in sermon. “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise” (Psalm 51:15). “Praise ye Jehovah. Praise Jehovah, O my soul. While I live will I praise Jehovah: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being” (Psalm 146:1 f.).
“Bless, and curse not” (Rom. 12:14). Curse not God in anger or in flippant profanity. The tongue that praises God surely will not profane his name. But curse not men who are made after the likeness of God, those who are like God in their moral and spiritual nature and not like the beasts of the field (Gen. 1:26; 2 Cor. 3:18). And yet, horribile dictu, this is precisely what we do. “Therewith curse we men.” James here includes himself in the common run of humanity.
The tongue exercises this strange power of running away with us like a runaway horse with the bit in his mouth. The scorn of men for men is seen in John 7:49, in the Pharisees’ sneer at the mob: “This multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed.” It is most likely, however, personal abuse that James here refers to. Men who are made in God’s image are abused by the very tongue that blesses God. We curse other children of our common Father, God. James does not mean, even by implication, to approve cursing at all. It is the wicked man whose “mouth is full of cursing” (Psalm 10:7). If we do not love our brother, we do not love God (1 John 4:20). And yet “out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing.” We make our tongue a sort of combination of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. “My brethren, these things ought not so to be”—a mild statement all the more effective from its very temperateness.
The point is easy to illustrate. “Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter?” James was familiar with the brackish waters of parts of Palestine. The water of the Dead Sea is really bitter, though fed by the snows of Hermon and the sweet springs of the Jordan valley. The waters of Marah were bitter (Ex. 15:23), and one may recall “the water of bitterness that causeth the curse” (Num. 5:18, 23). See also Revelation 8:11 for the waters that were made bitter. Pliny (N. H. ii. 103) tells a fable of a fountain of the sun that “was sweet and cold at noon and bitter and hot at midnight” (Mayor). It is possible to sweeten water, as we see in the great filtering plants in our modern cities. And sweet water can become bitter. But water is not sweet and bitter at the same time from the same fountain. You have sweet water on Hermon and salt water in the Dead Sea (also called the Salt Sea), but not both in the same place.
James has not only a new image here but also a new point of view (Hort). He has, in verses 9-11, shown the inconsistency of two kinds of speech from the same tongue. Now he goes deeper to the heart behind the utterance. The comparison is here made between the heart and its utterance (tongue). The grape and the fig are the commonest fruits in Palestine. “Each tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:44). Yes, and Jesus had just said (6:43): “For there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit; nor again a corrupt tree that bringeth forth good fruit.” It is not uncommon to find the point made somewhat as James has it. So Epictetus (Diss. ii. 20) says: “How can a vine grow, not vinewise, but olivewise, or an olive, on the other hand, not olivewise, but vinewise?”[80] And Jesus says: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt” (Matt. 12:33). Once more hear Jesus: “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:16). It is the appeal to life.
It has been charged that James exaggerates the evil of the tongue, but one who knows life as it is must agree with James. Sirach says, “Curse the whisperer and the double-tongued, for such have destroyed many that were at peace” (28:13). Plummer quotes also a clause from the Syriac that is not in the Greek: “Also the third tongue, let it be cursed; for it has laid low many corpses.” Sirach (28:14 f.) continues: “A third [or backbiting] tongue hath unsettled many, and driven them from nation to nation; and strong cities hath pulled down, and overthrown houses of great men. A backbiting tongue hath cast out capable women, and deprived them of their labors.” The “third tongue” injures three classes (Plummer): the person who utters the slander, the one who listens, and the one of whom the slander is told. It is a triple sin and only sin. “Neither can salt water yield sweet,” James adds, and his conclusion falls with the force of a trip hammer. The crisp wisdom of James about the tongue makes one wonder afresh if his mother had not taught him some of these aphorisms as a child.
The connection between the paragraph about wisdom (3:13-18) and the preceding discussion of the perils of the tongue is very close. James is still thinking of the men who supposed that they had true faith but who did not practice it; “men who supposed that they had a deeper wisdom and a larger knowledge than their brethren, and who were continually asserting their claim to be teachers” (Dale). But Hort considers the passage on the tongue a “long digression,” a view hardly tenable. These ambitious teachers had overlooked the havoc wrought by tongue (and pen).
James has given a needed warning about that phase of the subject and now turns to the subject matter itself. The ambitious teacher will do all the more harm if he is not merely a bungler of real wisdom but a disseminator of false wisdom. Already the air was full of all sorts of fads and fancies that appealed to the unthinking and the unwary. The Essenes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Mithraists, the Gnostics, the Judaizers, the cult of emperor worship, with more or less distinctness were clamoring for a hearing. There were professional sophists who traveled over the country with patent solutions of all problems. Some appealed to the nervous or the neurotic, like Christian Science today; others to the ignorant, like Russellism or Mormonism. Paul will later discuss both speech and wisdom “as good things liable to grievous abuse” (Hort), in 1 Corinthians 1:5, 17; 2; and 3.
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” The question does not mean that nobody is wise and understanding, but it calls a halt on the rush of volunteers who have apparently a superfluity of wisdom. An overplus of conceit is intolerable for normal persons. Job (12:2) has our sympathy when he retorts to his officious advisers: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.” Once more Job (28:12) asks: “But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?” Here, as very often in the Old Testament, we have wisdom and understanding used together. God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding (1 Kings 4:29). “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; ... get understanding” (Prov. 4:7). In Psalm 107:43 we have the question: “Who is wise?” James is thoroughly acquainted with the wisdom literature of the Jews, both canonical and uncanonical, and is at home in the handling of this theme. His words are not many, but they carry much of depth and power.
Many of the professional wise men, then as now, were frauds who easily duped the gullible populace. They were magicians like Simon Magus, who gave it out that he was some great man, and the idle crowd took him at his high estimate of himself (Acts 8:9 ff.). Note also the cases of Bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6 ff.) and the Jewish exorcists (19:13 ff.). The success of these men is one of the most humiliating contemplations about our common humanity. Carlyle bluntly called most people fools. But there were really wise men then also, like the Magi and others, who sought light and truth. Oesterley thinks that James by this question appeals to the self-respect of his hearers, who are tired of men with “the lust of teaching and talking” (Plummer). James is still directing blows at sham religion, and there is ample cause for such attacks in all the ages. Hypocrisy flourishes in all ages and in all climes. This meanest of parasites has a marvelous vitality.
The combination of “wise” and “understanding” is not without point (cf. Deut. 4:6; Isa. 5:21). This is the only instance of the combination in the New Testament. In classic Greek the second word was used of a skilled or scientific person who had gained technical knowledge of a subject. It implies personal acquaintance and experience, not mere abstract knowledge or intellectual apprehension of the theory of a thing. It is book learning plus practical application, as opposed to one without this special training. Then the word for wise is given by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. I. v.) to mean “the understanding of things human and divine, and their causes.” It is the word found in the term “philosophy” and implies thoughtfulness, penetration, grasp of the relations of things, and the right use of one’s knowledge for the highest ends. There are learned fools, men who have a lumber of learning in their heads but in a disorderly jumble. In the use of James the only really wise man is he who places God in the center of his life, who serves Christ as Lord and Master, who keeps the intellect in subjection to the will of God.
There are plenty of ignorant fools also, men who have neither intellectual apprehension nor practical wisdom. It is hard to tell which is the sadder spectacle, the learned fool or the ignorant fool. But, certainly, a premium is not to be placed upon either class. Both classes of fools are to be kept out of the ranks of teachers and preachers if it can be done. Advice on all sorts of subjects is so plentiful that there seems to be an abundance of easygoing wisdom. But the world is still eager to listen to the true wise man if he can be found (cf. Van Dyke’s Other Wise Man). But the very reputation for wisdom may lead to posing as a wise man. James dares to challenge the candidates for teachers of wisdom in the churches. Is it not possible that not enough care is taken in the choice of teachers in the churches and the ordination of preachers of the gospel?
Wisdom is not a matter for mere technical inquiry. One has to stand an examination on wisdom; but it is that of life, unwritten and written—that of deeds, not of words. “Let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom.” This test of the wise man is put in a peculiarly Jacobean style. The very position of the word “show” is emphatic; it is the first word in the sentence. If one may use the vernacular, we are all “from Missouri” and “have to be shown” when it comes to each other’s wisdom. The test is the acid test of deeds, not words. We may quibble over words and talk like a wise man, but time will prove our words by our deeds.
One may speak like a wise man and in reality be the biggest sort of a fool, yea, a scoundrel. People have learned to discount mere talk when it stands alone. Just being a preacher is not enough. One must practice what he preaches. 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.
The greatest asset that the preacher has, after all, is his life, a long life of piety and consecration. There is no answering that argument—“by his good life his works.” This is the only proof that counts in the long run. The King James Version has here “good conversation,” which was at one time good English (conversatio, conversari), originally one’s conduct or bearing (turning oneself about, the precise idea in the Greek word). But long ago the English confined the word to talk, perhaps because some people did little else but talk. But quaint English must give way to the modern preciseness of speech.
It is the beautiful manner of life that speaks the language of business today, the flower of a white life that adorns the profession of the service of Christ. But even so, it must be behavior that is sincere, that finds expression in acts, not mere external mannerisms, posing, attitudinizing, stage effect. Nothing is more repulsive than professional pietists who attract attention to themselves rather than to Christ the Lord. It is a case pre-eminently where actions speak louder than words and where words alone do more harm than good. Bengel puts it tersely: re potius quam verbis. In simple truth, the more a man says in claim of superior wisdom, the less he is credited with the possession of any wisdom.
But it is not merely a case of deeds versus words but also of “gentleness and modesty versus arrogance and passion” (Mayor), “in meekness of wisdom,” “with the modesty of wisdom” (Moffatt). Meekness was not ranked high among the Greeks. Aristotle (Eth. Nic. IV. v) considered it a second-rate virtue, “the mean between passionateness and impassionateness” (Plummer). Epictetus (bk. II, chap, i, § 36) says: “But think that thou art nobody and that thou knowest nothing.”
The Christian conception rests upon the idea in the Psalms that meekness is a favorite trait of the devout. “The meek will he guide in justice; and the meek will he teach his way” (25:9). “Jehovah upholdeth the meek” (147:6). In Sirach (3:18) we read: “The greater you are, the more you humble yourself.” But there is no word comparable to that of Jesus, who said of himself, “I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29), in his plea for men to come to him as teacher. It is an essential prerequisite in the teacher, else he is unapproachable and is aloof and cold. Jesus pronounced a Beatitude on the meek (Matt. 5:5), but he did more—he exemplified meekness in his life.
By meekness James does not mean effeminacy or weakness (any more than did Jesus). He does mean the absence of pretentiousness and wilfulness. Peter (1 Peter 3:15) uses the expression “with meekness and fear” for the spirit with which one is to defend the faith, the “reason concerning the hope that is in you.” There can be firmness and courage without bumptiousness and bigotry. There are frequent exhortations in the New Testament along this line (cf. Gal. 6:1; 2 Tim. 2:24; 1 Cor. 4:21). The wise man wears the crown of modesty. This spiritual paradox seems absurd to the merely worldly-wise.
“The possession of wisdom was made a claim to teachership” (Hort). So the absence of wisdom is a positive disqualification. One may, no doubt, possess wisdom and yet not be able to teach. But the lack of wisdom is itself a sufficient bar. The wrong spirit shows the lack of wisdom. “But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart,” what then? There were many controversialists who had both of these vices.
Jealousy is not evil per se. It wavers between the good and evil sense and in itself is merely zeal, which may be for good or ill. (For the good use see 2 Cor. 11:2; Gal. 1:14.) Sometimes this zeal was not according to knowledge (Rom. 10:2). Envy is distinguished from zeal (emulation) by Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 11. 1). But in the New Testament the bad sense of this word prevails (James 4:5; 1 Cor. 3:3; Gal. 5:20; Rom. 13:13), and it is listed with the works of the flesh. The bitterness of jealousy is only too well understood by those who give way to this petty vice. It tastes bitter, and the taste lasts a long time. Bitterness is itself punishment enough for the victims of the sin (Eph. 4:31).
The other word, “faction” or “party spirit,” has an uncertain etymology, probably from the word for hireling. At any rate, the word is soon applied to partisans who court and bribe adherents to their candidate. It presents the very quintessence of partisanship and of narrow-mindedness. This is not a mark of wisdom and is not a thing to boast of, at any rate. “Glory not” about it, “do not pride yourselves on that” (Moffatt). And yet this is precisely what many of the Jewish Christians were doing already. Thus they lied against the truth, were “false to the truth,” as Moffatt has it. Such partisan triumph is usually obtained by underhand methods and by the suppression of part of the truth. There is such a thing as “poisoned truth.” So partisan victory often leaves a bitter sting, because those in defeat know that an unfair advantage has been taken of them and of the truth of God.
It is clear that these opening chapters in the Epistle of James reveal a pitiful condition of controversy among some of the Jewish churches, such as Paul has to rebuke in Corinth later (cf. 1 Cor. 1-4). “The whole Christianity of many a devotee consists only, we may say, in a bitter contempt for the sins of sinners, in a proud and loveless contention with what it calls the wicked world” (Stier).
The point of James is precisely this. The very contentiousness which they regarded as supreme proof of their qualifications as exponents of the faith is here urged by James as absolute proof that they are disqualified for the position of teachers. Their bitterness makes it improper for them to talk about love and gentleness. Sometimes the very fierceness of one’s contention for orthodoxy drives some people into heresy. It is a sad outcome when one’s high and holy ambition to teach the things of Christ is frustrated by a Christless spirit of wrangling and personal abuse.
Wisdom is precisely what we all need and desire, but the bitter self-seeking partisans just described “do not cherish the truth except as a possession of their own, or a missile of their own” (Hort). “This wisdom,” claimed by the pompous bigots in verse 14, can only be so described in terms of courtesy or, more exactly, of irony. It is only wisdom so-called and is real folly. It is at best worldly wisdom, “earthly,” not merely in the sense of taking place on earth rather than in heaven (John 3:12) but with the earthly horizon and outlook as opposed to the heavenly, like those who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). Such a wisdom passes for “the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 1:20; 3:19) but is distinctly not “God’s wisdom,” “a wisdom not of this world” (1 Cor. 2:6 f.).
“This wisdom” is not merely earthly but does not come down from above, more exactly, “is not of a kind that cometh down” (Hort)—not such a wisdom, indeed, as God gives (James 1:5). It has the smell of earth in the evil sense of that term. It is not from above but in reality from below. Jesus said to the Pharisees: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). The antithesis is complete both in origin and spirit. The axioms of the selfish, like “look out for Number One,” are the wisdom of the devil: “All that a man hath will he give for his life” (Job 2:4).
This selfish wisdom is merely that of the natural man, not a mark of the regenerate spirit. There is no single English word that properly renders this word. “Psychic” transliterates it but does not translate it. “Sensual” makes it too much a matter of the body, as does “fleshly,” like the Vulgate animalis. It does not appear in the Septuagint and only six times in the New Testament (James 3:15; Jude 19; 1 Cor. 2:14; 15:44, 46). The broad distinction between soul and body or mind and body (dichotomy) is not so hard to grasp, but the threefold division (trichotomy) into spirit, soul, and body, as in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, seems to place the psyche below the pneuma.[81]
It seems clear from 1 Corinthians 2:14 that the spiritual man is the regenerate man, while the natural man is the unregenerate man in his unsaved state of sin. So here, therefore, this earthly wisdom is that of the unregenerate man; it is not sanctified wisdom. He may not be carnal, the slave of the animal passions, but merely coldly unspiritual. Such a wisdom does not reach the higher levels of the man’s nature.
But it is still worse. Such a wisdom is demoniacal, devilish (diabolica, Vulgate), “in that it raised up the very devil in the hearts of both opposer and opposed” (Oesterley). It is wisdom such as that which demons have (Bengel), not such as God gives (1:5). It is the wisdom of those who do the will of the flesh (Eph. 2:2 f.), who follow the teaching of demons (1 Tim. 4:1). One is reminded of the words of Jesus in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil.” “Thus the wisdom shared by demons answers to the faith shared by demons of 2:19” (Hort), the tongue set on fire by hell (3:6).
It is indeed a keen knowledge of human nature that James here reveals, but it is a sad indictment all the same. It reads like nature in the rough, red in tooth and claw, the law of the jungle, not the law of grace. It is Nietzsche’s superman, not the love that serves, that came to minister and not to be ministered unto. The might of right is not understood by those who hold that might is right. There is a new paganism today in Berlin, in Paris, in London, in New York. It is very subtle and very scornful of the pity of Jesus.
Red blood is a good thing, to be sure, so be it that it courses through a clean heart. The survival of the fittest is the law of nature, but fittest for what? The law of the wolves is to turn and devour the wolf that falls in the chase. The philosophy of Nietzsche is a bit more brutal in its plainness of speech than the wisdom of the world usually puts it. But even so, its demoniacal character stands out more sharply. “I want; therefore, I have the right to get.” This is the policy of aggression on the part of nations and individuals, of rogues and rapists, of grafters and white-slavers, of bank-looters and oppressors of labor.
The further comment of James elucidates his point: “For where jealousy and faction are (v. 14), there is confusion and every vile deed.” Jealousy and faction come from the devil. He sows suspicion in the churches, in the midst of families, in the hearts of those who let him in. James had already (3:8) accused the tongue of being a restless evil and (1:8) had spoken of the unstable man. God is not the God of confusion but of peace (1 Cor. 14:33), so that the factions in the churches cannot claim God as supporting them, any more than nations at war have the right to make flippant claims that God is on their side in a conflict.
Oesterley has a fine description of the spirit of the professional controversialist: “Acute argument, subtle distinctions, clever controversial methods which took small account of truth so long as a temporary point was gained, skilful dialectics, bitter sarcasms, the more enjoyed and triumphed in if the poisonous shaft came home and rankled in the breast of the opponent—in short, all those tricks of the unscrupulous controversialist, which are none the less contemptible for being clever—this was wisdom of a certain kind.” But in reality it left the way open for “every vile deed,” for the word here for “vile” means worthless, not immoral.
In the realm of morals what is merely indifferent soon gets to be bad. The Vulgate puts it omne opus pravum. So in John 3:20 we read: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light.” Bugs and bats hate the light. There is a toboggan slide in sin. The easy way is the evil way. See per contra James 1:17. Anarchy brings moral chaos (Plummer) to the soul as to nations. The wiseacres of the world play havoc with the souls and bodies of men who follow their lead to hell. In every town there is a bunch of men who cling together in their evil life and profess a wisdom superior to that of the gospel. They know it is a lie, but they comfort each other and are too proud to break away from the gang. But the end will come. There are no happy old men save those that are Christians.
There is wisdom from above, that is, from God, as James had already said (1:5). This is the true wisdom, God’s wisdom both in source and character. James had not, of course, seen Paul’s remarks on wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, if he wrote his epistle by A.D. 50. But he had full opportunity to be familiar with Proverbs, the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. “For the Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding” (Prov. 2:6, AV). “Wisdom may praise herself, and glory in the midst of her people” (Sir. 24:1). “For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; and she also passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure effluence from the glory of the Almighty; therefore no defiled thing falls into her. For she is a reflection of the everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the efficiency of God, and image of his goodness” (Wisd. 7:24-26).
Once more: “For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above every position of stars, being compared with the light, she is found superior” (Wisd. 7:29). But while James is undoubtedly conversant with the wisdom literature of the Jews, he is no mere copyist. He has the Christian standpoint and makes his own contribution to the discussion of wisdom. His words are few, but they fit and strike right to the heart of the subject.
It is “first pure.” Purity is the inner characteristic of the wise. It is pretty nearly like the Latin purus (pure) and means not so much cleansed (cf. Matt. 5:8, “the pure in heart”) as a combination of this idea and consecration as holiness. It is thus free from stain or defilement of any kind (not merely sexual purity), like a ray of light, “in holiness and sincerity of God” (2 Cor. 1:12). Christ himself is called pure (1 John 3:3), the ideal toward which we are to strive. We must learn to put first things first. In wisdom purity of character and motive is absolutely essential at any cost.
“Then peaceable.” Important as peace is, purity is paramount. Peaceableness is, to be sure, the outer characteristic of wisdom, and if one has the bright light of inner wisdom, he will have it. But wisdom does not desire peace at any price or at the cost of purity. “All her paths are peace” (Prov. 3:17), and the chastening of God’s hand yields “peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). Plummer wisely notes that the order of James here is logical and not always strictly chronological.
One is not to compromise with evil and error, but all the same, if one is to have no peace till he has absolute purity of every sort in his environment, he must needs be always at war and never rest at all. An equation of common sense must, of course, be struck, though there is the constant temptation to get used to unpleasant surroundings and finally to make no protest at all. Plummer likewise observes that James places the emphasis on the spiritual and moral, not on the intellectual, just the opposite of modern ideals of culture and education. There is nothing in the position of James to justify the Spanish Inquisition, for instance. The persecutor has often consoled himself with the thought that he is doing his victim’s soul a real service by rescuing him from his error.
Certainly, if one is pure, it is easier for him to be peaceable, provided he also loves. “If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men” (Rom. 12:18). There is a great deal in the New Testament on the subject of peace. It is true that Jesus said, “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34), when men are wedded to sin and can only be shaken loose by the sword of truth. But there are those who let the peace of God rule in their hearts as umpire (Col. 3:15). We are to pursue the things of peace (Rom. 14:19) as men of peace but not to be afraid to stand up for truth and righteousness (purity), even if we have to fight.
Then “gentle,” “forbearing” (Hort). The word is used by Thucydides (viii. 93) of men who will listen to reason, and (i. 76) of moderation, like the Latin clementia. Originally the word meant what was fitting, fair, reasonable, but it was also associated with the idea of yielding, “implying one who does not stand on his rights, but is ready to give way to the wishes of others” (Mayor). Matthew Arnold gathered the idea into his phrase “sweet reasonableness.” Aristotle (vi. 11) uses it of the forgiving man, one who does not stand on strict justice but who listens to merciful consideration. Certainly gentleness is the true mark of the gentleman who does not stickle over little points, who, in a word, is considerate.
The Christian wisdom, therefore, does not like to give pain. Paul makes an appeal “by the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:1). See also Acts 24:4; 1 Timothy 3:3; Titus 3:2; 1 Peter 2:18 (gentle masters); and in particular, Philippians 4:5: “Let your forbearance be known unto all men.” It means the very essence of fairness as opposed to unreasonableness (Ps. Sol. 5:14). Compare Paul’s panegyric on love (1 Cor. 13).
It is also “easy to be entreated,” “conciliatory” (Moffatt). The word is a common one for military discipline (4 Macc. 8:6; Jos. War ii. 20,7), though it does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. As “gentle” refers usually to one in a superior position, so this word is used mainly of one in an inferior rank (Mayor). The good soldier is the one who has learned how to execute orders. Philo employs it as the opposite of the disobedient. It is tractabilis, not morosa. The Vulgate has suadibilis. It is a word in common use about children, pupils, all who obey laws. If preachers were always gentle, perhaps the church members would be more docile and teachable. This wisdom from above is suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.
It is also “full of mercy and good fruits.” This is just the reverse of the party feeling already condemned. Mercy is the active principle of compassionate love. One may note already 1:8, 27; 2:13 in contrast with 2:15. This wisdom bears good (“wholesome,” Moffatt) fruits, not mere leaves (empty boasting). The plural (fruits) shows that there is variety and abundance for all. It is not satisfied with abstract virtue but wishes to bless others.