James

James asks of faith what he asks of hearing: that it be done. A faith that leaves the hungry with a blessing and nothing to eat “is dead, being alone” (2:17), and the devils have that much faith already: they “believe, and tremble” (2:19). His proof is Abraham. God counted Abraham righteous when he believed the promise (Genesis 15:6). When he offered Isaac, years later, “the scripture was fulfilled” (2:23), and “by works was faith made perfect” (2:22). Paul quotes the same verse (Romans 4:3) to shut out “the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28), and asks for “faith which worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6). Augustine put the agreement in one sentence: Paul said that a man is justified through faith without the works of the law, but not without those works of which James speaks.

The tongue comes up in every chapter: the religious man who “bridleth not his tongue” (1:26), the believer who says “Depart in peace” to the hungry and gives nothing (2:16), the brother spoken against (4:11), the oath (5:12). Chapter 3 explains its weight. The tongue is a little member, like the bit that turns a horse or the helm that turns a ship, and yet “the tongue can no man tame” (3:8). The same mouth blesses God and curses men “made after the similitude of God” (3:9), as if one fountain gave sweet water and bitter. Against it James sets the wisdom that is “from above,” “first pure, then peaceable” (3:17), which God gives to any who ask (1:5).

James speaks of the rich three times, and each time measures riches against the end. The lowly brother rejoices that he is exalted, the rich “in that he is made low,” for “as the flower of the grass he shall pass away” (1:10). In the assembly, the best seat for the gold ring is “respect of persons” (2:1), when God has “chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom” (2:5). And the rich who kept back their reapers’ hire by fraud hear that the reapers’ cries “are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth” (5:4), the LORD of hosts, who in the prophets is witness against “those that oppress the hireling in his wages” (Malachi 3:5). Their gold is already cankered; they have “heaped treasure together for the last days” (5:3).

The letter opens and closes on patience. “The trying of your faith worketh patience” (1:3), and the man who endures “shall receive the crown of life” (1:12). At the end the brethren are to be patient “unto the coming of the Lord” (5:7), as the husbandman waits for the early and latter rain, with the prophets and Job for their examples, and they are to know “that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (5:11). In both places patience goes with prayer. The man who lacks wisdom is to ask in faith (1:5–6); at the end the afflicted pray, the elders pray over the sick, and Elias, “a man subject to like passions as we are,” shut and opened the heavens by prayer (5:17–18).