CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 3:13. Good conversation.—Or, his “good life”; “good conduct.” The usual New Testament idea of “conversation.”
James 3:14. Strife.—Prefer “rivalry.”
James 3:15. Sensual.—Or, “animal.”
James 3:17. Gentle.—Lit. “forbearing.” Intreated.—Persuaded. Partiality.—Chap. James 2:4; R.V. “variance”; without doubtfulness, vacillation, which leads to wrangling.
James 3:18. Sown in peace.—So as to consist in peace. “Every good deed is a fruit produced by the good seed sown in good soil; and every such deed is in its turn the seed of a future fruit like in kind.” “True wisdom will go on to sow the fruits of righteousness in peace, and thus, if it may be, to make peace in the world. And that which is sown in peace will produce a harvest of joys. Let others reap the fruits of contentions, and all the advantages they can propose to themselves by them; but let us go on peaceably to sow the seeds of righteousness, and we may depend upon it our labour will not be lost” (Matthew Henry).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 3:13-18
Practical Wisdom seen in the Spirit of a Life.—Two things need to be kept in mind if the point of teaching in this passage is to be apprehended.
1. St. James began his epistle by dwelling on the importance of wisdom. He meant that sort of practical wisdom for the ordering and guiding of life and relations which comes to a man through
(1) waiting upon God in believing prayer, and
(2) through sanctified personal observations and experiences.
2. St. James recognises that these would-be teachers, who set up for themselves in the Jewish Christian Churches, claimed a superiority of wisdom and knowledge, and based their claim to teach on this claim to superior wisdom. The claim was founded on self-assurance; there was no characteristic Christian humility in it. And self-assertive work was doing the practical mischief in the Churches which it always does. It could be known by the bad fruits that it was bringing forth. There is something very like satire in the contrast between the false wisdom and the true in this passage. The man truly wise never is found pushing himself into the place of teacher—he has to be found out; and he will be known by the character of his ordinary conversation, and by the skill with which he orders all his conduct, and tones all his relationships.
I. What will indicate the wise man?—How may we recognise him? What tests shall we apply to him? Here is a man who claims to be wise for the practical management of life, and possessed with altogether superior intellectual knowledge. How shall we satisfy ourselves concerning his claim?
1. It is a ground of suspicion if he pushes himself forward as a teacher. True wisdom always has humility for its companion. The man who thinks himself to be something, generally is nothing. Men find out the true teachers; very seldom do they find themselves out. The true teacher teaches because he cannot help it, and often does not know that he can teach. The man who pushes himself into the teaching-place will usually be found more interested in self-aggrandisement than in teaching.
2. It is suspicious if the supposed wise man is more anxious about putting other people’s lives straight than about putting his own. Let a man be really wise, and the responsibility of the trust of his own life is sure to weigh heavily upon him; and he will be anxious about his own “conversation,” his own turning about in the relations of life, his own good conduct. Let a man assume wisdom for self-seeking ends, and he will usually be found indifferent to his own conduct and relations; attention to these things will in no way serve his purpose.
3. It is more than suspicious if there is to be seen no sign of “meekness.” Meekness, in the Scriptures, is not precisely the same thing as “humility.” It is the opposite of “self-assertiveness.” The meek man never pushes himself to the front. He trusts to value, not to show; to what he is, not to what he can make himself out to be. But precisely what these would-be teachers in the Churches, whom St. James reproves, lacked, was this meekness in their so-called wisdom. From this James 3:13 the importance of personal character and holy example in all Christian teachers may be earnestly presented. Holy living must ensure confidence in him who teaches, and wing the arrows of his good words.
II. What will indicate the unwise man?—The results of his personal influence and of his teaching. His pushing will create envying. The places into which he gets other people will be sure to think that they ought to have. Hence will come strife, contentions, disputes, rivalries, schemes for injuring one another, and every evil work. James and John wanted to push into the chief places in the coming kingdom, and they upset the kindly relations of the apostolic company, introducing envying and strife. And that which is true of the unwise man’s personal influence will also be true of his teaching. It will upset the kindly relations of the people. It will be inconsiderate. It will be peculiar. It will exaggerate the teacher’s own ideas. It will fail to keep the harmony and proportion of Christian truth; and so it will cause heart-burnings, jealousies, envyings, hatred, strife. It is the secret of sectarianism. One is for Paul, and separates himself to Paul. One is for Apollos, and separates himself to Apollos. One is for Cephas, and separates himself to Cephas. And so sectarianism creeps in, and in Christ’s Church there is confusion and every evil work.
III. What will indicate the Christianly wise man? (James 3:17).—This verse seems distinctly to lift us into a higher plane. St. James appears now to be thinking of the true Christian teacher, in whom is both the spirit and the wisdom of the “great Teacher”; the man who is not inspired to teach by a self-seeking, self-satisfied, and self-reliant spirit, but by the wisdom and the grace that come down from above; the man who is wise through the gifts and teachings of the Holy Spirit; the man who is an “epistle of Christ.” St. James does not describe the true Christian teacher; he says that you can always know him by the tone which is on all the results of his personal influence and Christian work. The terms he uses express two things: righteousness, peaceableness. The Christian teacher stands firm to that which is right, just, pure. He shows no partiality, favours no one to serve his own end, is “without hypocrisy”; he always is what he seems to be, and so can be fully trusted. And he is peaceable; never makes difficulties, always smoothes them; is accessible to all, pitiful to the erring, gentle to the weak, and inventive in forms of service to others. The atmosphere in which alone the Christian can work is the atmosphere of peace. Spiritual life can never be cultured by any Christian teaching where self-assertive men are creating envying and strife, confusion and every evil work. Three go together—wisdom, humility, and peaceableness.
IV. What will be the moral power of the Christianly wise man? (James 3:18).—He who makes peace wherever he goes, sows peace; and when the seeds of peace come to their fruitage, that fruitage is found to be “righteousness.” And that is the supreme end of Christ’s work; and the supreme end of all the work which Christ’s servants do for Him. Heaven is come when of humanity it can be said, “The people are all righteous.” Out of the seeds of the wise Christian teaching, that makes for peace, that universal righteousness alone can come.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 3:12. Wisdom seen in Wise Speech.—“Let him show out of a good conversation his works.” While it may be admitted that St. James uses the term “conversation” in the general sense of “conduct,” it may also be recognised that he had in mind the sins of the tongue, and the mischievous talking and teaching of those who pushed themselves into places of authority in the Christian Churches. We may therefore take St. James to suggest that a man can always be known by his talk. Illustrate from different kinds of men: the unclean-minded man; the vain man; the hypocrite; the shallow-minded man; the foreigner; the learned man; the humorous man; the depressed man; etc. The same must be true of the Christian man.
1. What should be the characteristic conversation of a Christian man?
2. How can he secure that the right character shall always rest upon his conversation? To answer with St. James we may say—It depends upon his keeping the “meekness of wisdom.” Several shades of meaning attach to the term “meekness,” and in each of them we may notice a close connection with wisdom, that is, with the practical wisdom which enables a man to order his life aright, gaining a restraint over himself, and over his circumstances, which is at once represented and illustrated by the control he gains over his speech. 1. Meekness may mean humility, the spirit of the man who has come to estimate himself aright. But that right estimate is the work of wisdom, which guides judgment and presents the Divine standard. A man is never humble until he is wise enough to look at himself in the light of God and God’s claims.
2. Meekness may mean modesty, the spirit that does not push, that will not assert itself. And this never comes to a man save out of the practical wisdom that reads life aright, and knows that in the long-run God always proves to be on the side of the man who is good, not on the side of the man who asserts that he is.
3. Meekness may mean receptiveness, the disposition which keeps a man open to ever fresh supplies of Divine grace and strength. And only practical wisdom brings home to a man that sense of insufficiency which prepares him to receive ever fresh Divine help.
James 3:14-16. The Secret Source of Strife.—Self is pushing to the front somewhere. That will always be found the source of strife in families, churches, society, nations. Somebody wants something for himself. His getting it is against the interests of others. Nevertheless, he is determined to get it.
James 3:15. A Threefold Description of False Wisdom: “Earthly, Sensual [Animal], Devilish [Demoniacal].”—Each word is full of meaning.
1. The counterfeit wisdom is “earthly” in its nature and origin, as contrasted with that which cometh from above (Philippians 3:19).
2. It is “sensual.” The word is used by classical writers for that which belongs to the “soul,” as contrasted with the “body.” This rested on the twofold division of man’s nature. The psychology of the New Testament, however, assumes generally the threefold division of body, soul, and spirit, the second element answering to the animal, emotional life, and the third being that which includes reason and will, the capacity for immortality and for knowing God. Hence the adjective formed from “soul” acquired a lower meaning, almost the very opposite of that which it once had, and expresses man’s state as left to lower impulses without the control of the spirit. What St. James says of the false wisdom is, that it belongs to the lower, not the higher, element in man’s nature. It does not come from the Spirit of God, and therefore is not spiritual.
3. In “devilish” we have a yet darker condemnation. Our English use of the same word “devil,” for two Greek words, διάβολος and δαιμόνιον, tends, however, to obscure St. James’s meaning. The epithet does not state that the false wisdom which he condemns came from the devil, or was like his nature, but that it was demon-like, as partaking of the nature of “demons” or “unclean spirits,” who, as in the gospels, are represented as possessing the souls of men and reducing them to the level of madness. Such, St. James says, is the character of the spurious wisdom of the “many masters” of James 3:1. Met together in debate, wrangling, cursing, swearing, one would take them for an assembly of demoniacs. Their disputes were marked by the ferocity, the egotism, the boasting, the malignant cunning of the insane.—Dean Plumptre.
James 3:17. Practical Christian Wisdom.—If a man has it, no doubt it will find its first sphere in the management of his own body, mind, temper, passions, etc. But it will be sure also to find its sphere in the relationships and associations of life. It will direct all his dealings with others, and give them a peculiarly gracious character. What will be the leading features of that character? Will they, as St. James gives them, go into the word “sensitiveness” (not touchiness, nor the mere weakness of a nervous disposition)?—sensitive to the clean, to the very beginnings of strife, to the needs of others, to insincerity, to everything unsympathetic, and to a proper response, in good fruits, to the grace of which the Christian feels himself to be the monument. “Confound not wisdom with erudition. They may be connected, and should accompany one another; but they are not always so, and perhaps only in a few instances. Confound not wisdom with a sullen, morose character, with a gravity frightful to all mirth and pleasure, with a life consisting entirely in rigid abstinence and perpetual mortification. Confound not wisdom with singularity in the bad sense of the term, according to which it is an endeavour to attract notice, and to distinguish oneself from others, not so much in important and essential matters, as in insignificant trifles relative to externals. Confound not wisdom with understanding and sagacity. They come, indeed, the nearest to it, are more or less implied in it, and belong in some measure to it; however, they are not wisdom itself.”—Zollikofer.
James 3:18. Righteousness and Peace always go together.—“The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.” “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” “Then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Righteousness always works towards peace. Peace provides a seed-bed in which righteousness can be sown. Find either one of these anywhere, and you will find the other close by. If everybody simply wanted the right, and worked for the right, there could be no wars of nations, no contentions of society, no ruptures in families. The absolute right may sometimes seem to be unattainable; but the Christian right is always within our reach, and that is the interest of my brother and my neighbour rather than my own. In the triumph of the Christian right comes the world’s eternal peace.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
James 3:13. The Power of Temptation lessens as Life advances.—The precious sago-palm, when young and tender, is covered with strong sharp thorns, which effectually guard it from injury by wild animals. As soon, however, as the tree, shooting on high, grows strong, and is no longer a tempting morsel to wild hogs and other animals, the thorns fall off. It is very often thus with young Christians. They frequently display an asperity and sharpness in their treatment of the ungodly that answers something in their case to the thorns of the sago-palm. There is a use in this. They are inexperienced in the Christian life, and especially are liable by reason of their youth to be snared and enticed by the world’s blandishments. This very roughness and angularity is a great preservative in erecting around them, as it were, a bristling fence, and cutting them off from contact with dangerous foes. But as faith and love grow, as experience is gained, and they become established in grace, their life, though not a whit less faithful, becomes less severe and forbidding. The power of many temptations which especially beset the young as the pilgrim’s path is further pursued becomes necessarily lessened with the lessening heat of the calmer pulse of age. The head that once may have been turned by pride with advancing years has been tutored to “wise meekness” by long and invaluable discipline. Now that they are not in so much danger from the world as formerly the thorns fall off. There is a similar train of thought to be met with in the poet Southey’s verses on the “Holly.” This tree somewhat resembles the sago-palm in that its lower leaves only are armed with thorns, while those which rise out of reach are quite smooth. Unlike our palm, however, these thorns on the leaves near the ground never fall off with age, but continue to the last.—James Neil, M.A.