James 3:16

This passage follows James’s long warning about the tongue in James 3:1–12, where a bit turns a horse, a rudder steers a ship and a small spark sets a forest ablaze. Having shown how much harm words can do, James now goes to their source, the heart and the kind of wisdom it lives by. The way a person speaks and treats others shows where his wisdom comes from. The thread runs on into the next chapter, where James asks, “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” (James 4:1).

James writes “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1), Jewish Christians who knew the wisdom of Proverbs, where wisdom is the skill of living well by God’s revealed will. Among the Greeks and Romans, wisdom was prized as philosophy, clever argument and polished speech, and it often served a man’s own advancement. The Greek word, sophía, covers wisdom of every kind, higher or lower, worldly or spiritual, which is why James can call both of his two kinds “wisdom”. What divides them is where they come from and what they produce. The churches he wrote to knew real tensions, such as favouritism (James 2:1–4) and harsh words against one another (James 4:11–12), so this teaching met them where they lived.

James opens with a question: “Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?” He asks it so that each reader will look at himself. “Endued with knowledge” translates epistēmōn, a person of understanding. Then he gives the test: “let him shew”. The verb deiknýō means to show, make known or demonstrate, and it points to evidence that others can see. The wise man proves his wisdom by his works (érgon), his deeds, and those deeds come “out of a good conversation”.

This is the teaching that runs through the whole letter. In James 2 he wrote that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26), and here wisdom is held to the same standard as faith. Jesus gave the same test for telling true from false: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16–20).

With “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts”, James turns to the other kind of wisdom and names its marks. Envying is zēlos, which comes from a word meaning to boil and properly means heat or fervour. It can name a good zeal, such as zeal for God, and here, joined with pikrós, “bitter”, it names a harsh, resentful jealousy that wants what another has and resents his success.

Strife is eritheía. The word comes from a root to do with working for hire, and it came to mean intrigue and faction. In the New Testament it stands for selfish ambition, rivalry and a party spirit that puts self first. The two belong together. Bitter envying is the corrosive feeling inside, and strife is the self-serving pursuit of one’s own ends that grows out of it and divides people.

“In your hearts” places both in a person’s innermost being, the seat of desire, motive and character. Scripture says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23), and Jesus said, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). This is why James follows his teaching on the tongue with this verse. The words of verses 1–12 rise from what the heart holds.

The early churches knew these things firsthand, in disputes over status, influence and teaching. Paul met the same at Corinth: “for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” (1 Corinthians 3:3). He tells the Romans to walk honestly, “not in strife and envying” (Romans 13:13), and he counts “variance, emulations, wrath, strife” and “envyings” among the works of the flesh, warning that “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19–21).

“This wisdom descendeth not from above.” The words “from above” (ánōthen) point to God as the giver of true wisdom, the God of whom James wrote, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God” (James 1:5). The wisdom that breeds envy and strife has another source, and James describes it with three words that climb from bad to worse.

Earthly is epígeios, from “upon” (epi) and “earth” (gē). It describes what belongs to the earth. This wisdom is bounded by the world’s values and concerns, by status, possessions and the things of the present life, and it lacks any heavenly perspective.

Sensual is psychikós, from psychē, soul or life. The word means “natural”, and here it means unspiritual: the wisdom of a person who relies on his own faculties, apart from the Spirit of God. Paul uses the same word when he writes, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). He also sets the mind of the flesh against the mind of the Spirit: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:5–8).

Devilish is daimoniṓdēs, demon-like, having the character of demons. This is the strongest of the three. A wisdom that sows envy and strife bears the mark of the adversary, whose purpose is to divide and destroy, and it serves his ends. Clever, ambitious thinking that sets people against each other belongs to a real spiritual battle, so believers need discernment about where their own thoughts and motives come from. The signs are the ones verse 14 gave. Counsel that keeps leading to jealousy, division and self-exaltation has come from below.

Scripture says where true wisdom starts: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Paul asks, “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20–25), and he speaks of God’s hidden wisdom, “which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:6–8).

Verse 16 opens with “For” (gár) and gives the reason James has been so severe: “where envying and strife is, there is confusion.” The two words from verse 14, zēlos and eritheía, now describe a whole atmosphere, a settled disposition in a person or a church. Their result is akatastasía, which means instability, disorder, commotion or tumult. The word is used of civil unrest and upheaval, and James uses it for the breakdown of peace and order that envy brings into a heart, a home or a church.

Paul uses the same word when he writes, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Corinthians 14:33). Confusion runs against who God is, and so it shows that the wisdom behind it comes from somewhere else. Proverbs knew this long before: “He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife: but he that putteth his trust in the LORD shall be made fat” (Proverbs 28:25). James had already warned that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:19–20).

James wrote to churches, and the warning applies to them first. It holds wherever people live together, in families, workplaces and nations, and in a single heart.

Then James turns to the wisdom he wants his readers to have: “But the wisdom that is from above”. Here sophía is qualified by ánōthen, “from above”, so this is God’s own wisdom, given as a gift. The word ánōthen can also mean “from the first” or “anew”, and here it marks where the wisdom comes from. James lists eight marks, counting mercy and good fruits separately, and each one answers something in the verses before it. This wisdom reflects the character of God himself, so when you see these qualities in a believer you are seeing something of who God is.

James closes with a picture from the farm: “And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” Fruit, karpós, is here the natural result of what has been done. Righteousness, dikaiosýnē, means equity of character and act, uprightness and conformity to God’s will, the life of someone who is right with God and lives rightly before others. So the fruit of righteousness is the visible outcome of such a life, in justice, integrity, compassion and good works.

That fruit “is sown in peace”. Sowing is deliberate and goes on season after season, and peace is the soil in which this crop grows. Peace, eirḗnē, probably comes from a verb meaning to join. It means the end of conflict and also wholeness, well-being, prosperity and rest, much like the Hebrew shalom that James’s first readers knew. Righteousness flourishes where people are at peace, and the strife of verse 16 chokes it.

The sowers are “them that make peace”. James means people who work for peace in their homes and churches, who seek reconciliation, listen humbly, forgive readily and speak words that build up. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Proverbs promises that “to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward” (Proverbs 11:18). Hebrews speaks of “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11), and Paul prays that believers may be “filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11). After a chapter about the tongue’s power to destroy (James 3), James ends with what the tongue and the heart can do when heavenly wisdom guides them. They sow peace, and righteousness grows.

Every mark of the wisdom from above is seen whole in Jesus Christ. Paul calls him “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24) and says that in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is the wise man of verse 13 in full, whose whole life was a good conversation and whose works were done in meekness.

He was pure, “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), and he could ask his hearers, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:46). He made peace “through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20), and “he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:14–16). He was easy to be intreated by all who came to him in faith, and full of mercy toward the sick, the lowly and the sinful, telling his critics, “go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). He gave his grace to people of every station. Where earthly wisdom seeks its own advancement, he said, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John 5:30). Paul tells us to have the same mind, the mind of the one who “made himself of no reputation” and humbled himself to the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) overturned earthly wisdom and called people to humility, love and the kingdom.

Through his death and resurrection Christ atoned for the sins that envy and strife produce, and he gives his Spirit, “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (Ephesians 1:17). The Spirit grows in believers the fruit of Galatians 5:22–23, which is the wisdom from above lived out. To seek this wisdom is to seek Christ and to grow like him.

The wisdom James describes is a gift, and God gives it to those who ask: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5). You can ask for it with confidence, and you will know it by its fruit, because it makes a person humble, peaceable, merciful and sincere.

These verses also give us a way to search our own hearts. When envy rises at another person’s success, or when winning an argument matters to us above peace, James names the source plainly, and the remedy is to bring it to God, who gives grace to the humble. In a family or a church, our calling is to be among those who make peace, by listening, yielding where we can, showing mercy and treating everyone alike. Righteousness is sown in that soil, and in God’s time it bears its fruit.