CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 1:12. Is tried.—Better, “hath been approved.” δόκιμος is properly spoken of money as having been tried and refined. Crown of life.—See figure in Isaiah 28:5; and compare 2 Timothy 4:8; 1 Peter 5:4. “Crown of life” is peculiar to St. James.
James 1:13. Tempted.—Here meaning, “enticed to evil.” Distinguish between trials used as moral discipline, and temptations used to degrade and destroy souls. With the latter the thought of God must never be associated as originator. Confusion arises from the dual meaning of the term “evil.” It is sometimes “sin” and sometimes “calamity.” Cannot be tempted.—Better, “is not a tempter in the way of evil.” Tyndale, “God tempteth not unto evyll.”
James 1:14. Drawn away.—This is a better form, “is tempted by his own lust, being drawn away by it.” Lust, or unregulated desire, includes passion for safety, riches, ease, as well as sensual pleasure. Plumptre says, “Adversity and persecution expose men to the solicitations of their lower nature, to love of ease and safety, no less than luxury and prosperity. In both ‘desire’ tempts the will to depart from what it knows to be the will of God.”
James 1:15. Bringeth forth.—The second Greek word so translated differs from the first, and is a stronger term. It suggests the production of a monstrosity. It may be rendered “engendereth.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 1:12-15
The Mission of Temptation as Excitement to Evil.—From temptation as moral testing St. James proceeds to deal with temptation as a force alluring to the sin of apostasy. Temptation as enticement would seem at first sight to be altogether and only evil. Yet in view of the sinful condition of man, and the redemptive work to be done in him, even temptation in this sense may prove to be an important remedial force, and the man may be blessed who comes into the power of it, but endures, stands fast, effectually resists. The man gains a distinct moral uplift who has come safely through such temptations. It is the moral dignity of Christ that He was tempted, and did endure. Temptation to evil applied to moral beings is an essential condition of moral culture, and we cannot conceive of moral culture being accomplished in any other way. The untempted have no virtue. But this brings up the question, Whence comes temptation to evil?
I. St. James does not here declare the source to be a great evil spirit.—He wants those to whom he writes to feel that the responsibility in the matter rests on themselves, and therefore he avoids the bare possibility of their shifting the responsibility on any Satan. But the question of the existence and work of a personal devil need not be introduced here, as St. James puts it away from consideration. Whatever idea of the power and authority of Satan we may have, it is distinctly understood that he is no co-ordinate power with God, as, perhaps, Ahriman is with Ormuzd; but a strictly subordinate power, working within the Divine restraints, and working in reality towards the Divine beneficent ends.
II. St. James deals with those who say that temptation to evil comes from God.—He affirms that God is never the direct source of temptation. He says that He cannot be, because He Himself cannot be tempted with evil. “At first it might seem as if this assertion did not meet the thought to which it appears to be an answer; but the latent premiss of the reasoning seems to be, that no one tempts to evil who has not been first himself tempted by it.” Satan the tempted one is the tempter.
III. St. James affirms that the source of temptation is found in the nature of man, and the occasion of temptation in the circumstances of man.—“He is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” Man is made for pleasure, and is entrusted with desires. It is his nature to want what will please and gratify him. In this of itself there would have been no difficulty; but in the simple gratification of desires there would have been no character, and no possible creation of character. There came a revelation of God’s will to man, which required that he should put his desires into restraint. If he would not, he sinned. In asserting his self-will against God he changed desires into lusts; put himself into the power of his lusts, which tempted him, enticed him, drew him aside to evil. The external world of things, being set in relation to his bodily nature, became the occasion of temptation, when, having lost his self-restraint, desires had become lusts.
IV. St. James assures that the consequences of sin as yielding to temptation to evil are inevitable.—They come in the ordinary and necessary outworking of moral laws, and are as certain as any results of the outworking of natural laws. Let unrestrained desire do its work, and it will bring forth sin. Let sin do its work, and it will bring forth death. The only possible arrest of the process is in man’s own hands—with the Divine help. It lies in gaining that self-mastery which God is ever helping us to gain by bringing us through the sterner discipline of life.
James 1:12 (R.V.). The Mission of Temptation as Trial.—“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love Him.” It is plain that St. James has two very distinct, yet very closely related, senses in which he uses the word “temptation.” Sometimes he means attraction or enticement to sin; sometimes he means trial, trouble, affliction. How these two differing things came to be so closely associated in his mind we can easily understand. Like the other writers of general epistles, he was anxious about the influence of prevailing persecutions on the faith of the Jewish Christians. Persecutions were trials to be borne. But those Jewish Christians were proving them to be much more than trials; to them they were temptations, enticing them away from their new-found faith, back to their old and formal Judaism. How trials become temptations may be illustrated from the effect produced by the family calamities on Job’s wife. She was altogether upset when the crowning distress came, and her husband was smitten with a foul and humiliating form of disease. She was tempted by trial, and drawn away from her submission and trust. “Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die.” “The element of testing is recognised as in every trial that comes to the good man. But testing involves temptation. The test is this—Will you resist what you are tempted to think or feel or do under these circumstances of trial? Job was tested by the fiery trials through which he had to pass; but the testing involved temptation to “curse God and die.” We are, however, proposing now to treat St. James’s word “temptation” as meaning “trial.” But as soon as we begin to think of the trials that come into our human lot, an important distinction comes into view. So many of our human troubles we bring upon ourselves; they are the direct, natural, and necessary outcome of our dispositions, cherished habits, negligences, indulgences, or wilfulnesses. Limit thought to any small period of life, say a single year, and it will both surprise and humble us to observe how many of the troubles of that period were manifestly unnecessary and avoidable, if we had been other than we were. It is indeed the exceeding bitterness of human life, to the seriously thoughtful man, that he has brought most of his sufferings upon himself. It is often set before us how true this is in relation to bodily pain and frailty. So much of it is the natural result of our self-indulgent habits, in eating and drinking, in clothing, in exposures, in over-exertions. It may also be shown in relation to those more serious troubles that come through misunderstandings with our fellow-men, and which for many persons make up at least three-fourths of the bitterness of life. Every one of them might have been avoided, if we had cultured a better disposition, exercised a wiser self-restraint, set a worthier watch upon the door of our lips, or shown a readier willingness to seek explanations and reconciliations. We really have only ourselves to blame for such misunderstandings; they are entirely human-made calamities; they are not in any sense heaven-sent trials; and all the bitter hours we may have had, and all the unworthy things we may have been led to say and do, which make wretched hours of woe for others, are all the necessary and natural outworking of our own conduct and our own spirit; they are the woes which we have made for ourselves. But some of our troubles we may fully recognise as sent by God. They come in circumstances which we are wholly unable to control. They are not—save in some very indirect way—related to our own weaknesses or wrong-doings. It may sometimes be very difficult to distinguish between the troubles which we bring upon ourselves and the troubles which God sends; and yet the distinction can be made, and is indeed actually made. Under many of our trials we have a great fretting of conscience—those are our man-made trials. Under other trials conscience is quiet and silent—those are our God-sent trials. The distinction is clearly seen in the life of Abraham. He made trouble for himself in Egypt and at Gerar, when he deceived with the idea of saving his life. He came into troubles which God sent, when he went to Moriah to sacrifice his only son. What we need to see is that all the troubles which we bring upon ourselves bear the character of judgments. They are always the whip that scourges the wilful. They are always designed to arouse to a sense of sin. They are disciplinary and corrective, but in the way of punishment, of judgment. The troubles which God sends have no judgment-element in them—to teach this one truth is the great message of the book of Job. We need to look this truth full in the face. God-sent troubles are not judgments, are not punishments. Job was not punished, Job was not judged, by his trials. God-sent troubles are Divine testings, and are culture rather than discipline. They are for the nourishing of virtue, rather than for the correction of fault. And therefore it is fitting that for those who endure God-sent trials there should be provided gracious and even abundant rewards, summarised in the figure of the “crown of life.” There are periods in the histories of individuals and of Churches, when the God-sent character of their troubles is brought very closely home to them; as there are other periods—which are far harder to bear—when the review of the immediate past shows troubles, cares, burdens, which are manifestly related to our wrong-doing. We see quite plainly that we “sowed the wind,” and we had to “reap the whirlwind”; we followed the devices and desires of our own hearts; and the days went on until we found ourselves deep in the bog and quagmire of the proper fruitage of our own doings. Now we are purposing to read the “temptation” of our text as “our God-sent trials.” So read, “Blessed is the man that endureth trial.”
I. Blessed is the man who has some trial to endure.—“Blessed” is the rightly chosen word. There is an important difference between the words “happy” and “blessed.” Men are happy, in a lightsome way, with what may “hap” or “happen.” Men are blessed, in a serious way, with what they can see God ordains, arranges, or bestows. Happiness is too light a thing to be the issue of any enduring of trial. It represents but a seeming, passing good. Blessedness expresses the very highest condition man can reach. It is man’s most delightful mood; it is man’s truest riches. Blessed puts the print of heaven on a man. And blessedness cannot fail to be the issue of enduring God-sent trial. Would not our life upon the earth be altogether brighter, better, worthier, without these God-sent trials? Why should we have such things to endure? Our hearts often cherish feelings which, if they took shape as words, would speak like this. But in just this way you have heard the child wonder over the meaning of his school-life—the strain of learning, and the correction of faults. Why cannot we live through our human life without these school-tasks and this school-discipline? The answer to the school-boy is the answer to us. You can be something. If you are ever to be what you can be, you must be subjected to school-discipline. To the Christian we must say—You can be something. It is to the honour of God and to your own eternal joy that you should be what you can be. And the God-sent trials are God’s ways of making you what you can become. Is it better to go through life as a being scarcely superior to an animal, which the man is who has never known school-training? And could it possibly be better for the Christian to remain all through his life just the saved thing of his conversion-time? And such he must remain for ever if he does not come under the school-training of God, taking shape as heaven-sent trials. We fret under our own particular trials, think them strangely unsuitable for us, and far more severe than anybody else has to endure; and exactly so, and quite as unreasonably, does the child at school. Have you ever sat quietly down to think over the God-sent trials of your lives, and to ask yourselves which of them you could have done very well without? If you have, you have surely found that you had given yourself no easy task. You looked them carefully over,—diseases that spoiled life’s plans and left permanent marks on the body, in helpless limbs, or recurring pain, or local frailties; disasters which swept away income, and compelled you to begin life again; bereavements that plucked away your life-support, and left you fallen, bruised, helpless, almost hopeless: yes, you passed them all in review, and looked out this one and that, quite sure that they were unnecessary. But you examined them again; and, as you looked, a flood of Divine light fell on them, and in that light was revealed their mission. You saw the good which they had wrought in you and for you, and you had to put them back into the list, close it up, and say, “I would have had nothing of the God-sent trial other than it has been, for He has made all things work together for good.” Blessed is the man that has some God-sent trials to endure. Life with them is hopeful. Life without God-sent trials—who could wish for that?
II. Blessed is the man who endures the trials God does send him.—That word “endure” reminds us that God-sent trials are seldom, if ever, single events or incidents—they are processes; we have to keep up for some time our right relations to them. Single acts of submission under strokes may be comparatively easy; but the keeping on, the enduring, is always so hard. Enduring is so much more, and so much more noble, than bearing. It is not very much to lie down and let the trials of life trample over you, and bear without uttering a groan. Yet that is many people’s best idea of the right attitude towards Divinely sent afflictions; but that is not, Christian endurance. Eastern devotees can do that sort of bearing work far better than we can. In the ceremony of the Doseh a long line of men will cast themselves down on their faces, and let the whole procession of men and horses trample over their backs without a murmur. No, no, enduring is nothing like that; it is intelligent; it is the resolve of the will, based on the good judgment of the mind, and the right feeling of the heart. Enduring is lifting up oneself to take a right position in relation to our trials, and keeping oneself uplifted so long as the trial stays. Enduring is cheerful. Enduring never separates a man from his duties, his relations, and his services. The man who endures goes about his earthly life as bravely and brightly as ever he did, with his great woe bound fast like a burden on his shoulder, but determined that, if he feels it himself, nobody shall see it, nobody shall suspect it. That is the holy enduring of God’s saints. They may try to make their brave burden-bearing invisible, but they cannot quite do it. Lines in their faces, pathos in the tones of their voices, tell us all about it. But then we keep silence too, only saying in our souls, “Blessed are they who endure temptation.”
III. Blessed is the man who gains the crown of life promised to them that endure under trial.—It is not certain where St. James got his idea of the “crown of life” from, or exactly what he meant by it. St. Paul had associations with the great Grecian games, and took his figures from the parsley or the myrtle crowns which decked and honoured the victors in the race or in the fight; but we cannot be sure that St. James had any such associations. We must do what we can toward fixing a meaning for ourselves. Let us try two.
1. Life may be the crown. And this will fit into St. James’s teaching. He is speaking of the discipline under which men are placed. They are training for life, just as we say that the lads at school are training for life. And when they have endured right through, and the training and disciplining work is done, they are crowned with life; the life for which they have been preparing so long comes to them, and it is a dignity, a glory, a joy, as is a crown.
2. Or it may mean that the life of enduring they have lived through will be crowned, as the victor in the old games had his victory shown, and gloried in, by placing on his head the myrtle crown—the deathless myrtle crown. It may be that we shall prefer this meaning, since the crown of life is plainly the gracious recognition and reward that our Lord will give. Oh the thrill of the old victor as he steps forward, with ten thousand eager eyes fixed upon him, and ten thousand voices shouting glad acclaim, towards the royal seat of the mightiest King of all the kings there, and then feels the King’s own royal hand placing the myrtle crown upon his head—the crown which declares he has fought, he has borne, he has endured, he has won! Can it be that the hand of the King of kings will place the crown of life upon our brow? Yes, if we endure—nobly endure, sweetly endure, persistently endure—our God-sent trials. Our God-sent trials! The past has a rich record of them. The future will surely bring some more of them round to us. And “blessed is the man that endureth temptation,” if the temptation take shape as God-sent trial.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 1:12. Christian Enduring.—This is the charm of our Lord’s life on the earth. Enduring is the only word that covers and compasses His story. It is fittingly associated with its close, when “He endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself.” It is possible to find “submission” in the cross of the Lord Jesus. It is possible to find something grander far than submission. It is possible to find “endurance,” the active doing, not the merely passive bearing. For this is the thrice noble spirit, this is sublime endurance—a man or a woman keeping on doing cheerfully the life’s work with their great earth-burden bound tightly on their shoulders. Heroes in the strife are they.
Power to endure a Sign of Manliness.—If we would quit ourselves like men, let us be patient men. It is not a manly thing to be grumbling continually, as some people do, about this, about that, about almost everything—the weather, the state of trade, their health, their neighbours, and so forth. Now whatever troubles us can or cannot be avoided. If it can be avoided, let it be avoided; if it cannot, let it be patiently borne; but let there be no peevishness. I think there is something worthy of respect, and even of admiration, in the idea of manliness entertained by many uncivilised peoples, that a man, worth calling a man, should be able to bear almost any amount of physical torture without a groan. Civilisation has perhaps rendered that too hard a test for us; but we surely need not be so impatient of suffering as to mourn and complain about trifling annoyances.—H. Stowell Brown.
The Crown of Life.—The issue and outcome of believing service and faithful stewardship here on earth is the possession of the true life, which stands in union with God; in measure so great, and in quality so wondrous, that it lies on the pure locks of the victors like a flashing diadem, all ablaze with light in a hundred jewels. There is such a congruity between righteousness and the crown of life, that it can be laid on none other head but that of a righteous man; and if it could, all its amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they touched an impure brow.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
The Purpose of Temptation.—There is a purpose in temptation. It is not an accident of our history or nature. It serves great moral and spiritual ends which, so far as we know, could not be otherwise attained. It is essential to virtue. In the New Testament the word has a double meaning. It means the inducement to sin. It means the endurance of suffering. At root they are the same. Suffering tests the character, tries the faith, and so tempts us as much and as surely as does the direct and immediate solicitation to sin. Suffering may tempt men to evil just as certainly as it may train them to good. St. James means by the word “life,” not of course mere vitality, for that the man must have had to be tempted at all; nor only immortality, for that might conceivably be his whether he “endured” temptation or not; but “life” in the sense of character—of virtuous and noble character—which is the really vital thing in man, and in which alone a man’s true life consists. He receives the “crown of life” as the natural issue and consummation of his endurance. Without the cross of temptation no man can have the crown of life. How is temptation disciplinary? In what way does it influence our spiritual life?
1. By teaching us the bitterness of sin. With the first taste of the forbidden fruit we taste the bitterness of sin. It is this knowledge of sin, this awakened consciousness of guilt, which lies at the foundation of our Christian character, and gives to us our place and part in the redemptive work of Christ.
2. By revealing us unto ourselves. Self-knowledge is the root of all virtue. It is one of the secrets of moral safety and of spiritual growth. In our self-ignorance is our peril.
3. By the general development of the character. Before their temptation Adam and Eve were as children. They were children in their innocence. After their temptation the innocence was lost, and lost for ever; but in place of it was a bitter knowledge and a stern experience, which were as distinct a development on what they were before as is manhood to infancy. Temptation brought them into a wider range of being. By their fall life was altogether changed for them. Their feelings ran in new and deeper channels; their knowledge moved in larger spheres; and the peaceful safety and simplicity of Eden were possible for them no more. What is true of Adam and Eve is true equally of us. We are born innocent. Childhood is our Eden. Though innocent, we are temptable and frail—the more temptable and frail because we are their children. We likewise are tempted to our fall, and through the fall we learn exactly what Eve and Adam learnt, the knowledge of good and evil—the blessedness of obedience to the will of God, the poisonous bitterness of wrong. And the wider knowledge admits us into wider life, and instead of continuing children we spring up into the stature of women and of men. The gates of a lost innocence close behind us, and we find ourselves in the great world struggling amid the thorns. Through temptation men fall and sink into unfathomed depths of misery and degradation. It is true. But through temptation also they rise into the image of Christ, “who is the image of God.” Through the test and trial of temptation men grow to manhood—manhood grows to sainthood—and sainthood is at last borne into the Divine haven of the eternal peace—the peace of a perfectly harmonious and completed character, every disturbing and discordant element of which has been vanquished, and for ever left behind. So that no temptation would mean no manhood—no sainthood. It would even mean no Christ. For it was out of temptation that Christ came to save us, and it was through temptation that He saved and saves.—Johnson Barker, LL.B.
James 1:13. Nature is God’s Work only.—Some cannot see in nature (as J. S. Mill) “the work of a being at once good and omnipotent,” and prefer to doubt the latter quality sooner than the former. But this nineteenth-century conclusion is no advance beyond the dual system of the Persians, or rather of Mani, who corrupted with his Indian fancies the faith of Zoroaster. The Manichees settled the difficulty better than our deists, by declaring the existence of a good God and a bad one, and appealed to the daily strife between virtue and vice, nay life and death, in witness of their simple creed.
God no Tempter.—Man does not directly say, “I am tempted of God”; but he is ready sometimes to accuse Him indirectly by saying—God has placed me in such and such circumstances; and therefore God is really the author of the sin into which those circumstances have led me. And it is true that God is the author of temptation in the sense that He provides men spheres of moral discipline. God cannot be thought of as enticing any one to sin. He did put Adam, Abraham, etc., into scenes that were disciplinary. He deals with His people now in the same way. God “tempteth not any man.” That is true. But this is also true, “God did tempt Abraham.”
Is God the Author of Sin?—The wider notion of temptation includes the allurements of desire, as well as the trials of adversity. In both cases men found refuge from the reproof of conscience in a kind of fatalism. God had placed them in such and such circumstances; therefore He was the author of the sin to which those circumstances had led. The following sentence is from the son of Sirach: “Say not thou, It is through the Lord that I fell away” (Sir. 15:11).—Farrar.
God not the Author of Evil.—God is made the author of evil, either directly or indirectly.
1. Directly. If we say, Nothing can possibly root it out of my mind that I shall be right in doing what God does; and the more I feel my relation to Him, and the fact that I am formed in His image, the more right this will seem to me.
2. Indirectly. If I feel that a certain thing is necessary for the attainment of a great, good end, and secures it, I cannot help feeling that, as a means to such an end, it is right, and I should be justified in doing it.
3. If a certain state of things in the Divine providence is the best attainable, I cannot possibly feel it to be wrong. These three representations are essentially the same. A necessary means to a good end, or the best attainable condition in a world governed by God, must be in harmony with His will—cannot be felt to be wrong. Free-thinkers and others constantly represent evil as necessary, as a means to a good end, as in harmony with the Divine will. This cannot be evil. Then there is no such thing as evil. Sin is a mistake, a fancy of ours, nothing to God. But when you have made the thing itself not wrong, when you have quite hidden its moral deformities under the Divine sanction, and have painted the most hideous results with the plausible sophistry of a good appearance in results—which is done when God is made the author of evil—you have left no room for conscience. There is no wrong to be condemned by conscience; there are no evil results, for all is working to a good end. There is no imaginable reason why a man should not do just what he likes best, at least so long as he can escape any threatening law. And that law has surely no right to be resisting what after all is good. Thus the moral foundations are swept into complete ruin. Can that be true of which the legitimate result is such? The value of religion consists in its purity, and its power to awaken pure sympathies in the souls of men. It is not the province of religion strictly speaking—nor is there any occasion for it—to give us the principles of morality, rules for right conduct. To those who acknowledge no supreme Being, and therefore no religion in our sense, all these principles remain precisely the same as to us. They have their foundations, eternal and imperishable, in the very nature of man and the constitution of human society. Religion is that which can elicit our devotion to these principles by kindling our love and reverence for their highest and most perfect embodiment—as, for example, in Christ. Religion is identical with morality in its principles and aims, yet above it, as moving in a higher sphere of influence and inspiring power. It is this view that renders so indisputable our clear conception of God as good and only good, involved in no evil. If God were a sovereign lawgiver, whose commands could neither be impugned nor judged, we could have no ground for denying that what we call evil might originate with Him. Here the bitter conflict of life arises very much from the confused mixture of good and evil, right and wrong. But in all this the reliance of the mind is on the profound conviction that there is One in whom no such confusion exists. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the religion of the New Testament is, that it marks out with such exact precision, and yet in such grand and lofty outlines, the right and the wrong, and the principles that place them beyond the possibility of being confounded.—Samuel Edger, B.A.
James 1:13-14. The Secret of the Tempter’s Power.—Every man is tempted, but every man is differently tempted. Temptations take specific and individual forms, and each age and class, position and pursuit, has temptations of its own. Every generation has its own temptations, since each age brings with it its own social circumstances, its own religious and political conditions, and so—its own temptations. Every man is tempted according to the class to which he belongs, the generation in which he is born, and according to that individuality of character and history which can be his alone. But there is one thing in which they are all alike. The secret of their power over us is ourselves. We are ready enough when we fall to blame some one else. St. James insists that the real responsibility when we are tempted is not in any tempter: it is in ourselves. The real source of temptation is in us. To be tempted is to be “drawn away,” “enticed”—caught like an animal in a noose—lured like a bird into a trap. And we are “drawn away” not so much by any skill or subtlety of the tempter as by the sensuousness of our nature, the keenness of our appetites, the strength of our desires, the ambition of our intellect, the infirmity of our temper, the weakness of our will, the depth of our selfishness, the greatness of our pride, the greediness of our vanity, the feebleness of our faith. The power of temptation lies in some moral frailty which the cunning of the tempter only brings into the light. By “lust” St. James means desire, longing, appetite, animal or otherwise. Desire unregulated—inordinate—ill controlled. Lust in its lower form we call sensualism, meaning by that desires which spring directly from the senses, and have the animal instincts for their immediate origin and root. The senses are the primary creators of temptation. What are Eve and Adam in their fall but a symbol of the senses at their first and keenest? What was the history of our first-remembered sin? Was it not this?—The strength of our sensuous or sensual desires quickened by some external seduction into longing after that which we knew to be forbidden, and which, though forbidden, we longed for nevertheless. There are other forms of lust—lust of power, and lust of gold. When the spirit of ambition becomes the ruling spirit of a man, the tempter has him in his grip. He becomes selfishness incarnate. The question, “Who shall be greatest?” is a question which has been the bane of the world, and the bane of the Church. It is the bane of every society into which it enters. It is destructive of all peace, of all charity, of all brotherhood. It may be destructive of every virtue and of all morality. There is also the lust of gold, the love of money. It is the spirit of covetousness. It is one of the forms which the love of power may take. There is no more fertile source of temptation and of sin. There are two ways in which temptation culminates and is made complete:
1. The sinful impulse is so strong that the man courts or creates the circumstances which shall gratify it, and it is thus developed into outward acts of guilt. The man tempts the tempter.
2. Against or irrespective of his will the man is brought face to face with circumstances which tempt what is temptable in him, and he lacks the presence of mind or the strength of will necessary for resistance. Unsought the tempter meets him. He puts a crafty finger on an unsuspected weakness, and in an instant the simple soul is trapped. In each case the strength of the temptation was in the frailty of the man—natural and pardonable frailty, if you will—but frailty, and sinful frailty, none the less.—Johnson Barker, LL.B.
James 1:14. The Limitations of Satan.—Satan can merely act on his general knowledge of human nature, aided by particular guesses at the individual before him, whom he would fain destroy. He has learned too well the deep corruption of the heart, and knows what gaudy bait will most attract the longing and licentious eyes.
The Devil as an Objective Person.—There is no more reason to suppose that God has created any such being, or that any such really exists, than there is to suppose that there is a real being called the prince of this world, or another called antichrist, or two others called Gog and Magog. The devil is that objective person, whose reality is the sum of all subjective seductions, or temptations to evil, viz. those of bad spirits, and those of the corrupted soul itself. These bad spirits, sometimes called Legion, together with our own bad thoughts, are all gathered up into a great king of art and mischief, and called the devil. Whether it is done by some instinct of language, or some special guidance of inspiration, in the use of language, or both, we do not know: the latter is more probable. But however it came to pass, we can see that it serves a most important use in the economy of revelation. In the process of recovery to God men must be convinced of their sins, and made thoroughly conscious of their guiltiness, and this requires a turning of their minds upon themselves in reflection, and a state of piercingly subjective attention to their own ill-desert. And yet they must be taken away, somehow, from a too close or totally subjective attention even to their sins. For if they are to be taken away from their ill-desert and guiltiness, they must be drawn out into a movement of soul in exactly the opposite direction, viz. in the direction of faith which is outward. And this exactly is what the grand objective conception of the devil prepares and facilitates. First, their sin is all gathered up, with its roots and causes, into the bad king conceived to be reigning without; and then it is permitted the penitent, or the disciple struggling with his enemy, to conceive that Christ, in whom he is called to believe, is out in force, to subdue and crush the monster.—Horace Bushnell, D.D.[2]
[2] Dr. Bushnell’s note is given as suggestive of thought, not as approved.—Ed.
James 1:15. The Conflict in the Believer.—Even in the heart of the believer two principles of action are at work—the renewal “in the spirit of his mind” after the image of God, and the sinful desire which renders the soul accessible to temptation.—Webster and Wilkinson.
Milton’s Allegory of Sin and Death.—In Milton’s marvellous allegory of sin and death (Paradise Lost, bk. ii. 745–814) Satan represents intellect and will opposed to God, sin its offspring, self-generated, and death the fruit of the union of mind and will with sin. In the incestuous union of sin and death that follows, and in its horrid progeny, Milton seems to have sought to shadow forth the shame and foulness and misery in which even the fairest forms of sin finally issue.
The Allegory of Sin and Death.—In looking at the allegory as a whole we note—
1. Its agreement as to the relation of sin and death with the teaching of St. Paul (Romans 5:12).
2. Its resemblance to like allegories in the literature of other nations, as in the well-known choice of Hercules that bears the name of Prodicus, in which pleasure appears with the garb and allurements of a harlot.—Farrar.
A Suggestive Image.—The image well depicts the repellent subject. The small beginning, from some vain delight or worldly lust and pleasure; next, from the vile embrace, as of a harlot—sin, growing in all its rank luxuriance, until it bear and engender, horribly, of itself, its deadly child. The word of parturition is frightful in the sense it would convey, as of some monstrous deformity, a hideous progeny tenfold more cursed than its begetter.—E. G. Punchard, M.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
James 1:12. Enduring Temptation.—There were two children who were placed in different homes, at a distance from the father whom they loved. One child was with a family, every member of which esteemed his father; his name was never mentioned but with love and veneration; his character was upheld as a very model of excellence, and the child’s admiration for his father grew with his years and strengthened with his ripening understanding. Far different was the case with his brother. The family he was placed with seemed bent on weaning his affection from his father, and undermining the confidence he reposed in him. They seldom indeed ventured upon open accusation, but were ever insinuating doubts as to his father’s uprightness, discretion, or love. The child was deeply hurt at these suspicions; he stifled them continually; but they awoke thoughts of which he could not always lose at once the painful impression. Often did he say to himself, “Let them talk as they will, I know that my father is good and wise and tender; I know that he loves me: how often have I proved it! I am foolish to be so distressed; ere long I shall see him face to face, and hear from his own lips an explanation of many things which I cannot now unravel: till then, suspect and suggest as they may, I will believe in his excellence and love!” In due time the father sent for both his children to his own home; but think you he welcomed that child with less affection and approval who would love on and trust him through base insinuation and suspicion? See here a picture of two believers. Few doubts ever assail the happy faith of one. The other passes through deep spiritual conflict, a malignant devil, an unbelieving world, and a corrupt heart, are ever whispering hateful suspicions of his God. “Though perplexed, he will not despair”; though silenced and confused, he continues to follow; though beaten by the waves, he clings to the rock. Though his Master is slandered and traduced, he keeps in His service. He continues with Him in his temptations; and in the day of God he too shall hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”—Bickersteth.
Temptation as Trial.—Temptation generally signifies no more than trial—any opposition or difficulty that may exercise our graces, and so make them known. In this sense God Himself tempts men—that is, tries and proves them; and thus He tempted Abraham. Sometimes temptation means dangerous trials and enticements to sin, which we are more likely to sink under than to overcome. In this sense God tempteth not any man, nor will He, if we resist such enticements, “suffer us to be tempted above what we are able” (1 Corinthians 10:13).—Clio.
James 1:15. The Wages of Sin.—A religious writer gives us this parable: A hermit was conducted by an angel into a wood, where he saw an old man cutting down boughs to make up a burden. When it was large he tied it up and attempted to lift it on his shoulders and carry it away, but finding it very heavy he laid it down again, cut more wood, and heaped it on, and then tried again to carry it off. This he repeated several times, always adding something to the load, after trying in vain to raise it from the ground. In the meantime the hermit, astonished at the old man’s folly, desired the angel to explain what this meant. “You behold,” said he, “in this foolish old man an exact representation of those who, being made sensible of the burden of their sin, resolve to repent, but soon grow weary, and instead of lessening their burden, increase it every day. At each trial they find the task heavier than it was before, and so put it off a little longer, in the vain hope that they will by-and-by be more able to accomplish it. Thus they go on adding to their burden until it grows too heavy to be borne, and then, in despair of God’s mercy, and with their sins unrepented of, they lay down and die. Turn again, my son, and behold the end of the old man whom thou sawest heaping up a load of boughs.” The hermit looked, and saw him in vain attempting to remove the pile, which was now accumulated far beyond his strength to raise. His feeble limbs totter over their burden; the poor remains of his strength were fast ebbing away; the darkness of death was gathering around him, and after a convulsive and impotent attempt to lift the pile, he fell down and expired.
Death in Sin.—The tale of the goblet which the genius of a heathen fashioned was true, and taught a moral of which many a deathbed furnishes the melancholy illustration. Having made the model of a serpent, he fixed it in the bottom of a cup. Coiled for the spring, a pair of gleaming eyes in its head, and in its open mouth fangs raised to strike, it lay beneath the ruby wine. Nor did he who raised the golden cup to quench his thirst, and quaff the delicious draught, suspect what lay below, till, as he reached the dregs, that dreadful head rose up, and glistened before his eyes. So, when life’s cup is nearly empted, and sin’s last pleasure quaffed, and unwilling lips are draining the bitter dregs, shall rise the ghastly terrors of remorse and death and judgment upon the despairing soul. Be assured a serpent lurks at the bottom of guilt’s sweetest pleasure.—Dr. Guthrie.