COUNSELS FOR THE TEMPTED AND TRIED
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 1:1. Salutation. James.—Greek Ἰάκωβος, a familiar Jewish name. Two so named were in the apostolic company. James the son of Zebedee, and James the son of Alphæus. This is thought to be a third James, known as the “brother of the Lord,” and identified as James the Just, who in ecclesiastical history is stated to have been the first bishop of the Jewish Christian Church at Jerusalem. Servant.—δοῦλος. Strictly, “bond-servant.” The term is similarly used at the beginning of their letters by St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude (Romans 1:1; Titus 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1:1). And of the Lord.—Some would render, “even the Lord Jesus Christ”; but this puts the Deity of Christ into a more dogmatic form than was at that time attained. Twelve tribes.—The nation was still conceived and addressed as a whole. The idea of the “lost ten tribes” is evidently not apostolic. Scattered abroad.—ἐν τῇ διασπορᾷ; “in the dispersion.” Moved by commercial instincts, the Jews had found entrance into every part of the then civilised world. It is of importance to notice that James addresses only Jewish Christians, and Jews who were not Christians. He takes no notice whatever of Gentile Christians. This suggests an early date for James’s epistle.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 1:1
The Gospel according to James.—In what we now know as the truths of Christianity, there is the essential and invariable, and there is the non-essential and variable. And we may make grave mistake by unduly contending for the merely human shaping and setting of truth which, not being essential and invariable, has not taken precise revelational form. An essay was read at a ministers’ meeting with this suggestive title, The Minimum of the Evangelical Faith. The writer dealt with the limit of faith that suffices to ensure salvation. He should have dealt with the limits of the evangelical creed behind which we must entrench ourselves, as Wellington did at Torres Vedras. In these days, when everything is searchingly criticised, we are in danger of coming to feel that everything is uncertain; and we need to fix for ourselves some things which are unquestionable, axiomatic, beyond criticism. But there is an opposite evil into which we may fall. We may fit the evangelical truth into a creed, and then persist that every point and item of our creed-form must be contended for unto the death. “The faith once delivered unto the saints” should never be confused with the creed formulated and adopted by any particular Church. The New Testament gives us the Christian truth in very sharp, crisp, suggestive sentences. Of one such we may be reminded. “There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, Himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5, R.V.). According to that verse the Christian truth contains five truths:
1. The unity of God.
2. The mediatorship of Christ.
3. The true humanity of Christ.
4. The self-sacrifice of Christ.
5. The vicariousness of Christ’s sacrifice. But the essential truth—the very gospel—is the place and power of the person Christ. This is the very heart of the gospel. Sincere belief in Christ brings a man into the power of Christ. St. Philip went down to Samaria and preached Christ unto them. And that was the gospel. This comes clearly into view when the gospel was first preached to the Jews, as it was on the Day of Pentecost. Doctrinal truths about Christ had not at that time been formulated. There could be only the faith in Christ which received Him as Messiah the Saviour. But that faith sufficed to altogether change a man’s life, and make him a new creature, living and breathing in a new atmosphere. When this is clear, we may be reminded—
1. That preaching Christ must have the individuality of the preacher stamped upon it. The two first gospel preachers were St. Peter and St. Stephen; but how different were their settings and points of view! And—
2. That the individuality of the preacher is always tempered by his efforts to adapt himself to his circumstances, and to his audiences. St. Paul adapts his settings of the one gospel to meet the case of ignorant heathen, cultivated Pagan, and covenant Jew. But will the essential, the saving, gospel truth bear these human settings and adjustments without injury? The answer is that it has done so through the long ages. Translations of the New Testament into the languages of mankind have been imperfect translations, constantly needing revisions; but the imperfect word has always been, and is to-day, God’s power unto salvation. The human caskets have sufficed for carrying to men the Divine jewel of saving truth. Moreover, the gospel did get a variety of settings from the great Teacher Himself. The Sermon on the Mount differs in a remarkable manner from the discourses on the good Shepherd and the living Bread. Suppose then that a Christian teacher should keep entirely in the line of the Sermon on the Mount, would he preach the gospel? There is one writer in the New Testament who has done this. The epistle of St. James has no formulated Christian doctrine in it. It deals with life, conduct, relations, duties, temptations; it is given by a “servant of Jesus Christ,” who wants to do his duty, to other servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, who want to know and do their duty. But is that the gospel? The one gospel of Christ’s life has gained four different settings. The four gospels are not alike. St. Peter, St. James, St. Paul, and St. John give us four epistles, bearing relation to Christian truth, but they are not alike. The gospel was first preached to Jews by St. James. Then the Gentiles were permitted to share with Jews in gospel privileges under the lead of St. Peter. And then the gospel was differentiated for Gentiles by St. Paul. St. James sees Christianity as completed Judaism, as providing for it just the element it lacked, and failed to meet man’s need because it lacked. St. Peter sees Christianity as a reformed, enlarged, and comprehensive Judaism, and never breaks away from his Jewish associations. St. Paul sees Christianity as the universal human religion, of which Judaism was the inspired and Divinely guided preparation. He therefore aroused the jealousy of the exclusive Jews, and was compelled to break with them. Look carefully at the gospel according to St. James, or at his setting of Christianity. His epistle seems strange to Christian readers because of what it does not contain. There is no doctrine of redemption in it. He was possibly the Lord’s brother (1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19), certainly he was a strict Jew, who kept his Jewish ideas along with his belief in Jesus as Messiah, and along with his personal loyalty and devotion to Him. But that must have been the first idea of a Christian. The Jews were divided into those to whom Jesus was an impostor, and those to whom Jesus was the Messiah; and St. James was the leader of these latter Jews. He wrote for men who knew themselves as the people of God, and whose one question was, What is righteousness? and how is it obtained? The Jew was familiar with the answer—Righteousness is keeping the law; then keep the law, and be righteous. But the Jew felt that he had no power to perform. St. James tells him that personal faith in Christ will bring the law in to him. It will give him power unto righteousness. That is the gospel according to St. James. It is precisely the setting of the gospel that we want who have believed. We want help toward working our belief out into our life. St. James had not to deal with the Jews’ standing before God. St. Paul had to deal with the Gentiles’ standing. St. James, as a Jew, neither questioned his own standing, nor theirs to whom he wrote. So St. Paul’s “justification by faith” did not come into his thoughts. St. James inculcates the gospel of right conduct to men who had accepted a new Master. He puts the Master’s principles and the Master’s spirit alongside their characteristic Jewish frailties. To him the gospel is a holy leaven. It is the person Christ, offered to faith as the Son of God and Saviour of the world. Put that faith into a man’s life, what will it do? St. James helps us to this answer. It will give a man mastery over his evils. It will make all things new. It will help him to win righteousness. It will sanctify. And we need that setting of the gospel.
Service dignified as the Life-service of the Lord Jesus.—Sometimes the writers of epistles speak of themselves as “apostles,” but apostles are only “sent servants.” St. James calls himself—
1. A servant. The word means a “bondservant”; but not one who is bound by force, against his will, but one who has bound himself, and made a loving surrender of his will, and finds service to be the truest liberty. Bond-service has always to be estimated in view of him to whom we are bound. If it be bond-service to Christ, that service is perfect freedom.
2. A servant of two Masters. “Of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The addition “of God” is made because St. James must make it quite clear that, in asking service for Christ, he did not take Jews away from their allegiance to the God of their fathers.
3. A servant of two Masters who are really one. For the deeper we get into the mystery of the Divine Being, the more satisfyingly we see that Jesus is but “God manifest in the flesh,” and that serving Him is serving God.
4. A servant to serve other servants of the same Master. “Twelve tribes which are of the dispersion.” Jews, who were servants of God. Jewish Christians, who were servants of God, and of the Lord Jesus. The servant may serve by direct attentions paid to the Master Himself. But he equally serves when he carries out the Master’s ministries among the other servants. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
5. A servant who serves both the Master and the other servants cheerfully. “Greeting”; margin, “wishing joy.” Sending greeting means that the sender cherishes happy, kindly, hopeful feeling, and is really glad to do some kindly service for those to whom he writes. It honours Christ for His servants to work at His work with uplifted heads and glad hearts.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 1:1. Relation of Epistle to the Sermon on the Mount.—No student of the epistle has failed to notice the sturdy common sense of the writer, and his emphasis on practical Christianity. Yet it has not always been observed how fully he represents in this respect the teaching of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. Even his language is strikingly similar to our Lord’s. Compare James 1:22 with Matthew 7:24. In each case the thought is clinched by a picture or parable. The use of parables and proverbs by St. James suggests that, with all his common sense, he had a fine poetical vein in his nature. His imagination lends liveliness to his maxims. Dr. S. Cox says, “He is a born poet, though he writes no poetry.” As there is nothing more difficult than to cast stale or familiar maxims into fresh and attractive forms, St. James must have been a man of rare and high natural gifts. On the human side, the poetical trait in the Lord Jesus and in St. James (regarded as the Lord’s natural brother) may go back to the mother whose hymn of praise St. Luke has preserved for us.
Scattered Abroad.—
1. They were dispersed in mercy. For the diffusing of the light of revelation, which they had received.
2. They began now to be scattered in wrath. The Jewish nation was crumbling into parties and factions, and many were forced to leave their own country, as having now grown too hot for them.—Matthew Henry.
The Disappearance of the Ten Tribes.—The legend as to the disappearance of the ten tribes, which has given rise to so many insane dreams as to their identification with the Red Indians of America, or our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, appears for the first time in the apocryphal Second Esdras (13:39–47), a book probably of about the same date as the Revelation of St. John.—Plumptre.
The Ten Tribes not Lost.—The ten tribes of the kingdom of Israel, though they had been carried into a more distant exile than Judah and Benjamin, were thought of, not as lost and out of sight, but as still sharing the faith and hope of their fathers. See also Matthew 19:28; Acts 26:7; Revelation 7:5-8.—Ibid.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
James 1:1. The Jews of the Dispersion.—Long before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and even the preaching of Christianity, Jewish colonists were found in Europe as well as Asia. Milman says: “Even where they suffered most, through their own turbulent disposition or the enmity of their neighbours, they sprang again from the same undying stock, however it might be hewn by the sword or seared by the fire. Massacre seemed to have no effect in thinning their ranks, and, like their forefathers in Egypt, they still multiplied under the most cruel oppression.” While the Temple stood these scattered settlements were colonies of a nation, bound together by varied ties and sympathies, but ruled in the East by a Rabbi called the Prince of the Captivity, and in the West by the Patriarch of Tiberias, who, curiously, had his seat in that Gentile city of Palestine. The fall of Jerusalem, and the end therewith of national existence, rather added to than detracted from the authority of these strange governments; the latter ceased only in the reign of the emperor Theodosius, while the former continued, it is said, in the royal line of David, until the close of the eleventh century, after which the dominion passed wholly into the hands of the Rabbinical aristocracy, from whom it has come down to the present day.—Ellicott’s Commentary.
A Kingdom become a Religion.—The Dispersion “showed to both Jew and Gentile alike that the barriers which had hedged in and isolated the hermit nation had broken down, and that what had ceased to be thus isolated had changed its character. A kingdom had become a religion. What henceforth distinguished the Jews in the eyes of all the world was not their country or their government, but their creed. “Through this they were henceforth to influence men as under the old conditions was impossible.” “They themselves also were forced to understand their own religion better. When the keeping of the letter of the law became an impossibility, they were compelled to penetrate into its spirit.” The universality of the services of the synagogue taught the Jew that God’s worship was not confined to Jerusalem, and their simplicity attracted proselytes. Even in matters of detail—the lessons, the singing, the ritual—the services of the synagogue prepared for the services of the Christian Church.—After Dr. Plummer.