James Chapter Five, The Prayer of Faith

 

James 5:15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. [16] Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

 

The prayer of faith is a powerful tool in a saint’s arsenal. When King Hezekiah was told by Isaiah the prophet that God had pronounced his impending death, the king did not fail to immediately seek the Lord. “Then King Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly,” 2 Kings 20:2, 3. God’s response through the prophet was immediate and miraculous, 2 Kings 20:5, 6. Tears, it would seem, are prayers in proper context. When we grieve because of this present evil world and its effects upon creation, our Creator grieves beside us, John 11:33-35.

James Chapter Five, Problems & Prescriptions

 

James 5:13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. [14] Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

 

James, by all accounts, was a practical man. His desire was to see the fervency of one’s faith manifest in our daily life via every action considered. God is our center and our whole. If we are in Him then our lives will reflect His beauty and holiness, however imperfectly. Always concerned with true faith that is testable and realistic, James prescribes antidotes and answers for various situations. On the heels of his commentary regarding persecution from the rich, James wonders if any of his readers are suffering. The idea behind the question isn’t ailment (which he gets to shortly) but rather suffering trouble or hardship, perhaps asked in light of what he just wrote. If so his solution is prayer instead of grumbling, James 5:9.

James Chapter Five, The Example of the Prophets

 

James 5:10 My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience. [11] Indeed, we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.

 

Much can be said of the Old Testament prophets and the sundry trials they endured while speaking, “Thus sayeth the Lord” to a contrary people for hundreds of years. The anonymous writer of Hebrews tells us, “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of…the prophets…others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented,” Hebrews 11:32, 36, 37. While the author of Hebrews generalizes the wicked way in which the prophets of God were often treated, we’ll look to Jeremiah for example of what the prophets endured.

James Chapter Five, The Patient Farmer

 

James 5:7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. [8] You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

 

“Patience is a virtue,” happens to be an old saying, which has fallen into the realm of clichés. But clichés are what they are for good reason. In our current world patience is not seen as a virtue any longer since technology is being produced to make patience obsolete. With the click of a button from virtually anywhere in the world we can access nearly anything we desire. The fast food lifestyle has given way to the fast everything lifestyle, and the practice of patience has fallen by the wayside. We are certainly living in a time when, “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase,” Daniel 12:4.

James Chapter Five, The Cost of Wealth

 

James 5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! [2] Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. [3] Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.

 

It is fairly typical to envy the rich in this or any era. They have “it,” and we, the unwashed masses, want “it.” But what is “it?” Wealth, of course, and the power and influence that comes with it. Solomon, in his epic search for existential meaning, wrote, “A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes merry; but money answers everything,” Ecclesiastes 10:19. The purpose of a banquet is to amuse oneself, the purpose of wine, to cheer the spirit. But money answers to every pleasure desired. It is why wealth is dangerous. Money of itself is not evil; it is the love of money. Rather, it is the lust for what money can provide. Money is like a key that gets us into a lavish room, filled to brimming with every carnal pleasure our minds can perceive. And with reckless abandon, many of us run straight into that shipwrecked way of thinking. “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,” 1 Timothy 6:9.

Spare the Rod, Part 2 (of 2)

 

Borrowing again from Solomon we read, “Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right… The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother,” Proverbs 20:11, 29:15. The latter portion of this passage is interesting. The child left to himself brings shame. Why? Because it was accepted universally and until rather recently on history’s stage that parents were to govern their children. We are to teach, correct, rebuke. Failure to do so reflected not so much on the child, but the parent. Clearly the reservoir of knowledge stored up in the mother was not given to her child. He is simply, “left to himself.”  We live in an era where we are standing witness to children given peculiar rights. They are granted access to questionable or controversial things such as identifying gender pronouns or gender reassignment, though our government does not recognize a child as having the right to vote, marry, smoke, drink, drive, or hold a job. In this curious and dangerous era our role as parents must be reemphasized and reinforced. If we abdicate this role, rest assured someone else will be more than eager to fill it. For those of us who claim to be Christian, but side with this unusual subjective liberality, God calls out to us, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,” Isaiah 5:20, 21.

Spare the Rod, Part 1 (of 2)

 

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward, Psalm 127:3.

 

I understand that Christmas tends to be the season when most people want to give sermons about Christ’s birth, and I certainly enjoy being reminded of it. But this Christmas I wanted to switch our focus from the Christ’s advent to our own children’s. As in the verse cited above, children are a heritage and reward from God. Later in that Psalm, which is penned by Solomon, we learn that happy is the man whose quiver is filled with children. Children are likened to the arrows of a warrior, and this invites a comparison. What did Solomon mean when he said this?

James Chapter Four, Presumption

James 4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; [14] whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

 

Chapter four has showcased two examples of worldly or carnal behavior in Christians thus far. To summarize: verses 1-10 deal with the temptation and consequences of loving the sinful enticements the world offers. We are commanded that “you present your bodies a living sacrifice…and do not be conformed to this world,” Romans 12:1, 2. For the saint that conducts himself in obedience to the faith we acquire, “boldness in the day of judgment; because as He (Christ) is, so are we in this world,” 1 John 4:17; see also John 17:16.

James Chapter Four, Playing God

 

James 4:11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. [12] There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?

 

The apostle moves on to a word of caution about evil speaking. Though this topic was already covered more extensively in chapter three verses 1-12, there is a difference. First, the subject in chapter three was the responsibility of sound teaching in accordance with Christ’s commandment. Second, when the apostle spoke of blessing God and cursing men, it was in the language of generalities; in other words, “men” in James 3:9 meant “all humanity” saved or unsaved. Growing even more circumspect, James warns us as Christians not to speak evil of our fellow saints.

James Chapter Four, To Be Humbled

 

James 4:8b Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. [9] Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. [10] Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

The idea of this portion of verse 8 is that God wants us to have the filth of handling the world washed away from us. The use of the words “hands” here suggests that the saints have held or used something that has made them filthy. Like a child at play covered in dirt, the parent scolds them for entering the house so filthy and tells them to go clean up. It conveys a different spirit than what Jesus taught His disciples in the upper room. There He girt Himself with a towel and washed His disciples’ feet. When a confused Peter confronted Jesus about this, the Lord answered, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean,” John 13:10. When the traveling Jew was received as a guest, the owner of the house would provide water for them to wash their feet as was custom. They would wash to remove the filth of their travels. As we travel through this sin-stained world we are to cleanse one another’s feet. If we are to serve as the Lord commands, it must be one foot at a time, and we will be treading through a world adrift in the moral corruption and spiritual barrenness that sin’s curse wrought upon it. Service and fellowship toward other saints is refreshing; it enlivens their spirits and our own. “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend,” Proverbs 27:17.

James Chapter Four, Pride Goeth...

 

James 4:6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” [7] Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

 

Verse 5 asked the recipients of the letter if they believed that God spoke in vain throughout the Old Testament about yearning jealously for the people of His name. In other words, was He speaking to no avail or pointlessly? God’s word never returns to Him void. Where sin abounds through the excess of our carnality, grace abounds much more, because what we have done cannot compare to the glory of what Christ has done for us, and desires to do within us, Romans 5:20. Even for those who love the world; they are not too far-gone and it is our responsibility when we see a fellow saint err so grossly to help them back. I believe this is the essence of James 5:20, when he writes, “he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death.”

James Chapter Four, The Holy Spirit's Jealousy

 

James 4:1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? [2] You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. [3] You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

 

It is extremely sobering to remember that James is addressing fellow Christians. This portion of his epistle is not directed at unbelievers, but fellow saints. The same passions that inspire and conspire within us remain, subdued by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence but always lusting against Him, Galatians 5:17. There seems to be the flavor of hedonism here. Twice James says the believers that his accusations are leveled against sacrifice all for the desire to gratify sensual pleasure. Now I don’t mean sensual in the purely sexual way, though that may also apply. What I mean is just that: sensual, or derived from the senses and the lure we are ensnared by when we follow them.

James Chapter Three, Peace Makers

 

James 3:16 For where envy and self seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

 

This verse seems to carry a similar indictment to Paul’s warning about the love of money. The NKJV tells us that the love of money “is the root of all kinds of evil,” whereas the KJV doesn’t add in the italicized words “kinds of” and simply reads, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Ephesians 5:5 associates covetousness (the love of money) with idolatry, or worshiping money as one’s god. A preoccupation with wealth is evil, or as Paul words it, “the root of all evil.”

James Chapter Three, The Wisdom the World Gives

 

James 3:13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. [14] But if you have bitter envy and self seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.

 

One more time James plunges us into the necessity of proper conduct in the Christian life and the wellspring from which said conduct should flow. Thus far we have seen the generalizations of faith in God seeing us through temptation (1:12) and faith producing effective action in us, not indifference in regard to how we perceive truth, (1:22, etc.). True religion, James says, puts us in life’s foxholes or else it is useless, 1:27. Chapter two teaches us to be wary of partiality and its stepchild: hypocrisy, 2:1, etc. Verse 14 of chapter two begins a long dialogue about genuine faith in God producing works in a believer’s life; again asserting that effective action is to be the defining witness in a Christian’s life.

James Chapter Three, Blessing God and Cursing Men

 

James 3:7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. [8] But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

 

Contrasting and comparing, James seems to remind his audience about the creation of mankind, and what God said regarding us. “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the ground. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” Genesis 1:26, 27.

James Chapter Three, The Tongue: A World of Iniquity

 

James 3:2 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.

 

Continuing the passage regarding teachers, James reminds his audience (and us) that we all make mistakes. We all err. Note how his pronoun choice includes him. James isn’t perfected in the sense that he as incapable of sin; the “we” reminds us that he is in the same boat. The first step to teaching should be to acknowledge that we do not know everything. We teach others, are taught by others, and together grow in the word and our love for Jesus Christ. Love ought to be our motivation for teaching: a fervent love for God that translates into a love for our fellow saints and unsaved men.

James Chapter Three: Counting the Cost of Teaching

 

James 3:1b …knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.

 

The term judgment (condemnation in the KJV) is the Greek word “krima,” and its definition is revealing. It is rendered “condemnation” or “judgment” five times in the New Testament: in Luke 23:40, 1 Corinthians 11:34, 1 Timothy 3:6, Jude 4, and here in James. In Luke one thief from the cross rebukes the other, reminding him that both are under the judicial condemnation their crimes justly warranted. Paul cautions the Corinthians not to make a mockery of their Fellowship when taking the bread and wine, lest they suffer condemnation for it. Paul, when explaining the parameters for appointing a bishop in the church, informs Timothy that they ought not to be a novice in the faith, unless he is condemned like the devil. Finally, Jude warns his audience about ungodly men infiltrating the church, corrupting the faith he desires the saints to earnestly contend for and meriting judgment for it.

James Chapter Three: A Warning for Teachers

 

James 3:1a My brethren, let not many of you become teachers

Giving of Thanks to God

Happy Thanksgiving to all! In light of this festive day, I wanted to share my giving of thanks by revisiting the preeminent doctrine of all Christendom: the gospel.

James Chapter Two, Part 6

 

James 2:24 You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

James points the reader to the illustration given in verses 21 through 23. Abraham was held up as an exemplar of what faith practically lived looks like. The entire epistle is sewn with the care of an apostle that is scrutinizing how the outward actions of the saints reflect their inward confession. Chapter two summarizes the apostle’s point. Faith alone, of itself, is dead. Let it be stressed that James’ is not accusing his readers of being spiritually dead. Rather he is inciting them to a fervor for works that accompany salvation, Hebrews 6:9-12. In James 1:2, 2:1, and 2:14 he refers to his readers as “my brethren.” He is instructing fellow Christians whose dead faith will lead to grave consequences when at last they meet their Lord. Nor is James inferring that works are requisite for one’s salvation. Refer back to verse 18. “But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” The idea presented is justification of one’s confession of faith before men. As noted, the Bible makes it clear that God does not need our works, but sees the heart. We are justified before God through faith alone, Mark 16:16; John 3:16, 18; Acts 16:31; Romans 4:5, etc.

James Chapter Two, Part 5

 

James 2:20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

 

This marks the second of three times James comments that “faith without works is dead,” the first being verse 17, the final being verse 26. Verse 17 is preceded by an illustration about how words or intentions void of a corresponding action to reinforce them are useless. Further, James likens faith severed from works to a body without the spirit: incapable of acting for good or evil. A body is simply the container for the person housing it, while the spirit determines the course that body will take. Bereft of the spirit, the body simply rots.

James Chapter Two, Part 4

 

James 2:14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?

James is deeply interested in the actions of his readers and the motives that spawn them. A man walking in faith, drawing close to God and resisting temptation will receive reward, James 1:12. The latter, failing that temptation or trial as daily habit becomes sinful lifestyle, results in death, James 1:15. Many sins may naturally result in death. Drug use, drinking, sexual perversion resulting in STD’s…the list goes on. God does not need to strike one down from one high dramatically. He need only permit the sinner to chase their folly to its natural end, Deuteronomy 32:35. The writer reiterates how actions (doers, his word) justify one’s faith, James 1:22-25.

James Chapter Two, Part 3

 

James 2:7 Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?

“They” in this verse again refers back to the rich; the rich that oppress others, drag them into court, and now blaspheme that noble name by which we are called. Mind you, as I stated before, these are generalizations regarding the mentality the wealthy possess. Or perhaps the mentality that is garnered by the acquisition of wealth. It is a general and unfortunately common disposition. Stereotypes tend to occur because the trait the stereotype depicts too often portrays truth, however embellished it may be.

James Chapter Two, Part 2

James 2:5 Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?

James focuses his lens for a moment on the plight of the poor. To define: he is describing the materially poor believers of this present world. The New Testament seems to indicate that the rich are far more likely to reject the gospel than the poor. The secular argument may go something like this: "The poor would more readily accept the message of the gospel because the gospel is escapism. Somewhere 'out there' is a better world and the poor can be content in their poverty believing that one day God will make it up to them." In other words the poor would latch onto the message of the gospel because it has a placebo effect.

James Chapter Two

 

James 2:1 My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. (2) For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, (3) and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” (4) have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

 

The passage suggests a very human bias that people of every age struggle with. The wealthy are always revered. We put them on a pedestal because they’re rich. We envy them and their accomplishments. We are jealous of what they have and, if given the chance, strive to curry favor with someone of affluence. The disciples James refers to in this hypothetical scenario appear to be doing just that. Because the man is finely dressed and boasts golden trinkets he deserves a position of prominence. But judging a man based on wealth can lead to some unfortunate results. It’s an old argument, that the wealthy must be blessed while the poor are cursed, presumably by God. Much of the book of Job contends with a narrative akin to this type of thinking.

 

A Long Time Coming

 I apologize for the long delay, but life happens as we all know. I intend, by God's grace, to continue James where I left off and soon share a post, the topic of which I was convicted of not long ago about finding hope in a hopeless world. I am also searching for potential new domains for What's in a Name? I will post here when I have finished my search and potentially begin my move, so to speak. For now, I'm going to turn to James tonight and, God willing, post soon. On a side note: it's good to be back. Life may change, we may change, and often do. But God and His word never changes. He is immutable, and that is a characteristic of his person I find very comforting! God bless!