CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 1:19. Wrath.—ὀργήν; an abiding, settled habit of mind with the purpose of revenge.
James 1:21. Filthiness.—Not limited to sensualities, but including everything that defiles the soul. Superfluity of naughtiness.—“Overflow of mental wickedness,” or of malice. Or, “the remains of your perversity.” See 1 Peter 3:21. Plumptre renders, “excess characterised by malice.” “The Greek word had come to be associated mainly with the sins that have their root in wrath and anger, rather than with those that originate in love of pleasure.” Engrafted word.—Implanted. See above the reference to the “word of truth” as the instrument by which the new and better life was engendered.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 1:19-21
Hindrances to Spiritual Receptiveness.—In His parable of the sower our Lord presented to view some of the more usual hindrances, such as come from preoccupation, shallow-mindedness, and worldly cares. St. James presents to view those which in a special manner affected the Jews of the Dispersion. Loquacity, quarrelsomeness, self-assertion, love of mastery, were characteristic of them; and all of these spoil receptiveness, and tend to destroy it. Good influences can only enter in at the doors which meekness, and quietness, and anxiety to learn and serve, can open. Men’s character-conditions usually suffice to explain the limitations of Divine blessing to them. They have not, because they are not able to receive. Power to receive depends on resolute dealing with our personal evils in character.
I. One great hindrance is hasty talk.—“Slow to speak.” Much talk is perilous; but hasty talk is more perilous. Much talk usually goes with little thought. Hasty talk goes before thought, and often utters what the thought would neither approve nor support. Hasty talk is no less a hindrance when it is pious talk, or talk about religious things. There are no persons more difficult to influence for good than those who have “too much to say.” Hasty talk expresses and nourishes self-conceit and self-satisfaction. Mere fluency is the gravest peril of the Christian teacher.
II. Another great hindrance is hasty temper.—“Slow to wrath.” It is difficult for us to realise the suddenness, unreasonableness, and intensity of anger in Eastern countries, and, perhaps we may say, even specially among the Jews. One writer says: “I have never met with a people so much disposed to violent anger, especially from slight causes, as in the case of the inhabitants of the East. Men get angry with each other, with their wives or children or animals, or even with inanimate things, with surprising frequency. The noticeable points are, want of control, and want of anything like ordinary proportion between the cause and degree of the emotion. These fits of anger, to any save a superior, are marked by most expressive demonstration.” Evidently St. James feared that among the Jewish Christians the new Christian spirit was not recognised as a force bearing on the restraint of this national characteristic. Still appeal is often made, in excuse of failure, to “human nature.” A man will explain his wrong-doing by his disposition, as if the first sphere of the Christian sanctifying were not that very disposition. The power of wrath in man is a necessary and noble element of character. The expression of wrath is often a sign of lack of self-restraint. Lack of restraint is a condition in which evil can work effectively, but good cannot. Good takes a man who is in restraint. Temper spoils the work that good would do. The Christian religion is a distinct force unto self-restraint. It helps to the possession of every “vessel of the body in sanctification and honour.” And that represents a condition of full receptivity to gracious influences.
III. Another great hindrance is found in the relics of old corruptions left in us.—“Putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness.” John Bunyan, in his Holy War, represents some Diabolians as left lurking and hiding in “Mansoul,” and ever hatching and plotting mischief. St. Paul speaks of the “old man with his corruptions”; evil habits, unregulated and unsubdued desires and passions; injurious friendships; all that is involved in the term “the flesh,” as used by the apostle.
“The flesh and sense must be denied,
Passion and envy, lust and pride.”
IV. A last hindrance is our failure duly to cultivate some sides of the Christian character.—“Receive with meekness the engrafted word.” Meekness is one of the neglected sides, partly because we do not see how that can be cultivated. And it cannot be directly. It can be indirectly. Active graces can be nourished by direct dealing with them; passive graces can only be cultured by attention to the things which form for them good soil and atmosphere. There are specialities of character in male and female; the Christian character is inclusive of both, and the Christian never can gain his full receptivity unless both the characteristic male and female graces are duly nourished into fulness of strength and beauty.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 1:19. Swift to Hear rather than to Speak.—If we were as swift to hear as we are ready to speak, there would be less of wrath and more of profit in our meetings. I remember when a Manichee contested with Augustine, and with importunate clamour cried, “Hear me! Hear me!” The father modestly replied, “Nec ego te, nec tu me, sed ambo audiamus apostolum” (“Neither let me hear thee, nor do thou hear me, but let us both hear the apostle”).—Manton.
Talkativeness.—We are overhasty to speak—as if God did not manifest Himself by our silent feeling, and make His love felt through ours. The disciples of Pythagoras, especially if they were addicted to talkativeness, were not permitted to speak in the presence of their master, before they had been his auditors five years.—M. Evans.
James 1:20. The Besetting Sin of the Jews.—The besetting sin of the Jews was to identify their own anger against what seemed sin and heresy with the will of God; to think that they did God service by deeds of violence, and that they were thus working out His righteousness. The teaching of St. James here is after the pattern of the purely ethical books of the Old Testament.
James 1:21. Engrafted, and so within us.—The gospel word, whose proper attribute is to be engrafted by the Holy Spirit, so as to be livingly incorporated with the believer, as the fruitful shoot is with the wild natural stock on which it is engrafted. The law came to man only from without, and admonished him of his duty. The gospel is engrafted inwardly, and so fulfils the ultimate design of the law.—Fausset.
The Engrafted Word.—“Engrafted,” or “implanted,” here has special reference, as the Greek shows, to the object in view. The word is designed to fructify, and it is something not akin to the recipient. An agency is implied, and in this connection the apostle is thinking of ministers as the planters; and the heavenly doctrine so enters the soul and pervades it as to become a second nature, thoroughly identified with the life, even as the graft which has taken well becomes after its insertion into the stock completely one with it. And yet it is from the stock it draws sustenance and strength, and becomes a fruit-bearer.
Truth received with Meekness.—The truth is not to be received with a passive meekness merely. Unless it be received with an active meekness, the engrafted word, that might have grown and converted the whole tree, dies. To get the full illustration of this, we must suppose a wilful crab stock, not merely passive, but endued with a power of self-determining perverseness, to say to the gardener, “You may cut me and apply your graft to the cutting, but not one particle of my sap shall ever enter into its vessels.” The consequence would be, inevitably, that the crab tree would remain a crab tree, and the fruit-bearing graft, for want of co-operation on the part of the crab tree, unsustained by the sap, would die; it could not grow unless received with active energy by the crab tree.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
James 1:19. Slow to speak, slow to wrath.—In a cavalry squadron of the great German army which fought so bravely at Gravelotte, the youngest officer was from Westphalia. He was an impetuous, hasty young man. Among his men there was one who often excited his anger, for he was, as every one agreed, a very stupid recruit, and as the lieutenant was hot-headed and quick, so was the recruit slow and awkward in everything. Constantly was it said to the poor recruit, “You can do nothing right!” But, however men may speak and judge, they cannot see into the inmost heart, and God, who knows everything, judges differently from them, and knows what such despised ones can and will accomplish. In the terrible battle of Gravelotte the Westphalian squadron, after a hitherto victorious struggle, was at last, by fresh attacks of superior forces, so hardly pressed that the men were separated from each other. Then it happened that our lieutenant, too, parted from the rest of his troop, was fallen upon by two powerful troopers, but by putting forth all his strength he defended himself against these, till his arm became weary and his eye grew dim. He had already looked death in the face, and in his heart said farewell to his loved ones at home. But now suddenly, in furious gallop, a horseman rushes up. He had been halting some hundred yards off behind a wall, and in a few moments could safely have rejoined his company, for he heard the French signal given to retreat, and the trumpets of his own company coming nearer. But when he saw his lieutenant in danger of death, with a firm hand he grasped his sword, jumped over the wall and dealt first to one and then to the other of the hostile troopers blows which stretched them both upon the ground. When, after a few moments, the lieutenant succeeded in bringing his foaming horse to a standstill, and the soldier, who was no other than the so-called stupid recruit, was again firmly in the saddle, the latter gazed at his officer with beaming eyes and said, “Have I done right now?” But before the lieutenant could reply and say, “Yes, yes, you have indeed done right,” a bullet whizzes from out of the bushes and pierces the soldier through the forehead, so that he drops down dying from his horse. The lieutenant throws himself weeping upon the man, and calls into his ear, “Yes, comrade, you have done right.” He hears no more. He has received his sentence from another Judge.
Anger.—As Plato, having taken his man in a great fault, was of a sudden exceedingly moved, and having gotten a cudgel as though he would have beaten him, notwithstanding desisted, and used no further punishment, one of his friends standing by him and seeing this thing, demanded of him why he had gotten such a cudgel; to whom he answered, that he had provided it to correct and chastise his own anger, which seemed to rebel against him and would no longer be ruled by reason; in like manner should we do when we are troubled with this passion of anger, and get either a knife or a sword to cut the throat of it when it beginneth, and is as it were in its infancy; for we may easily at the first oppose ourselves against it, as against a tyrant, and not permit it to have rule over us; but if we suffer it to increase and to fortify itself, it will, by little and little, overrule us, and at length become invincible.
Anger in the East.—I have never met with a people so much disposed to violent anger, especially from such slight causes, as in the case of the inhabitants of the East. I scarcely met with a native, during some months, who was not subject, upon even slight provocation, to what would be called with us unreasonable anger. It is common with men and women, old and young, rich and poor. It scarcely seems possible, in many cases at least, to heighten or deepen the expression of bad temper by any new gesture, or look, or word, or tone of voice that is not employed. One can hardly imagine the almost frightful energy with which they give vent to their fiery and ungovernable passion in many cases. Two men will stand facing each other for minutes, often rising to the highest pitch of violence in gesture and look and language; yet they seldom strike one another. I have watched, for example, a large Turk face to face with an equally large Nubian, black and glossy as polished ebony, who acted towards each other, for minutes, as if nothing could satisfy them save the annihilation of one or both parties, and yet the only personal damage done was that the Nubian spat in the face of the Turk, and then walked away as if he had finished his adversary—who looked, in his turn, as if he had been beaten. They seldom proceed to personal violence. Your dragoman must quarrel with his servants, and these with one another. Every village you pass you hear the sound of quarrelling—generally, so far as you can observe, without any adequate cause. I can well understand why the expression “angry without cause” should have been used.—National Sunday-school Teacher.