“many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God”
Download discussion questions: James 4:10-5:6
Jump to beginning of James Discussion Group Blog
I encourage you to look at the passage in James before you read this Blog entry. What do you see in the text yourself? What questions come to your mind? How would you interpret what the writer says? After even a few minutes examining and thinking about the text you will be much better prepared to evaluate the comments in the Blog.
Is James the most disorganized writer in the New Testament, jotting down random thoughts in arbitrary order? Or is he one of the most discerning teachers, weaving various themes together intentionally and carefully, knowing that he will be judged with greater strictness (3:1)?
Disjointed or Discerning?
Our discussion began with the observation that this passage (as with some previous texts) seems disjointed, jumping among different topics – speaking evil (4:11-12), planning for the future (4:12-17), sins of the rich (5:1-6).
Our group has spent too much time in careful inductive study (especially in James) to dismiss unclear texts as haphazard. That conviction comes from our shared diligent study of the whole letter of James. Someone pointed out that our weekly studies are usually limited to a relatively small part of the letter (thirteen verses this week, a little over ten percent of what James wrote). Reading a fraction of anything is likely to seem disjointed without an overview of the work as a whole. Regularly going back to read (or listen to) the whole letter can be invaluable for such an overview.
Any writer (and certainly one under divine inspiration) most likely has particular goals to communicate. One person suggested that James has several key themes that constantly intermingle in his mind. We might prefer a more “encyclopedia style” presentation that exhaustively covers one topic at a time. James intertwines those themes so we can discern how the different issues actually affect our lives and the lives of others.
Not Speaking Evil
When James begins this passage (v. 11) with “Do not speak evil…” (ESV), we recognized that this is not his first mention of the topic. Someone pointed back to multiple admonitions early in the letter (1:19, 26; 2:12; 3:5-12). This passage moves past the general instructions about being slow to speak and about bridling the tongue to a very specific sin of “speaking against” (NASB) or even “slandering” (NIV) a fellow believer.
We considered the different possibilities that “speak against” (καταλαλέω, katalaleō) might mean – accusation, slander, gossip. The word James uses could cover all those possibilities.[1] In any case, the main concern for James, as a group member pointed out, is the condition of the heart that prompts the negative words, the presumption to take on the role of judge. The problem is not just judging the person but the added arrogance of judging the law itself. One person suggested that such presumption consists of deciding how the law applies to the actions of another person. Even more concerning is the tendency to “over-apply” the law, to extrapolate the actual law to fringe areas.
James does not use the word “pharisaical,” but someone in our group did. That tendency among Christians can seem like “judging the law.” We can feel that the law doesn’t go far enough, so we need to add to it. James points out that such an attitude attempts to usurp the unique role of God, the only lawgiver and judge. The practical answer is simple and direct: “Who are you to judge your neighbor?”
Then the question came up in our group about the context where James admonishes not to “speak against” one another. He just called them “adulteresses” (4:10), “sinners” and “double-minded” (4:8). Does James practice what he preaches? We are supposed to confront sin in the body of Christ someone said, citing 1 Corinthians 5 and other passages. Another member looking ahead to the end of the letter pointed out James’s own words about turning back one who strays from the truth (James 5:19 – a good example of the importance of keeping the overview of the whole letter in mind!).
Someone referred back to James’s mirror analogy (1:22-24), suggesting a possible result of forgetting our own faults. The one who “looks intently” at the law without remembering his own failures is more likely to apply (or over apply) that law to others.
A comment from another member of our group suggested the difference in motive between judgment and judgmentalism. Is the motive to bring back a wanderer, expressed with humility and as much gentleness as possible? Or is prideful superiority behind an aggressive attitude of confrontation? “Redemptive versus contemptuous” was another suggestion for evaluating our motive for “turning back a wanderer.”
Presumptive Planning
Then James moves into another seemingly unrelated topic (v. 13-17) about planning to travel and conduct business and make a profit. Taking verse 13 out of context could lead to misinterpretation about travel or business or profit as the focus of James’s admonition.
As a person pointed out, the root problem is essentially the same as the previous paragraph. Here, instead of usurping God’s prerogative as lawgiver and judge, the autonomous attitude presumes on God’s providence. We concurred that James is not criticizing planning or profits. His concern is what one author surprisingly calls “ungodliness” even among Christians.
Ungodliness may be defined as living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence on God. You can readily see, then, that some can lead a respectable life and still be ungodly in the sense that God is essentially irrelevant to his or her life…. Now the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day’s activities and basically live as though God doesn’t exist.[2]
One comment in our discussion suggested that such ungodliness was another expression of the double-mindedness James warns against near the beginning and near the end of his letter (1:8, 4:8). James is addressing those “double-minded” who want both the world and Christ. The desire to travel for business and make a profit is not wrong in itself. But that desire can become the driving force of one’s life, the passion to make life work the way I want (James 1:14-15). Someone pointed out that this is another expression of the contrast between self obsession, and God obsession. James criticizes the ungodliness of a self-obsessed life focused on managing circumstances and manipulating people, or as one member expressed it, “practical atheism.” Even desires for good and legitimate blessings can be distorted by self-obsessed craving to manage life apart from God. The obsession that says, “I need _______ for life to be OK” is a red flag of practical ungodliness.
A person suggested that the economic aspect (“making a profit”) might reflect the circumstances of a displaced people (“dispersed abroad” – James1:1) suffering trials (1:2). In that situation there would certainly be financial hardships that affected some believers more than others. Disparity among believers could bring significant strains to relationships. Another member commented that this relates to the previous paragraphs about “speaking against one another” (4:11). The ungodliness of ignoring God in our interpersonal relationships results in quarrels and conflicts and envy (4:1-3). James continues to carefully weave together the persistent problems among his audience.
Rebuke of the Rich
Perhaps the mention of business and profit (4:13) turn James’s thoughts to those most likely to engage in those practices. Early in his letter he drew attention to the inequality, even in church, between the treatment of rich and poor (1:9-11). Preferential treatment for the rich might be the first example of double-mindedness mentioned in 1:8.
In this passage, James has nothing good to say to or about the rich. They certainly seem to be the ones self-obsessed with making life work, protecting their comfort at any cost to others. They have laid up treasure (5:3b) by tricking their workers (v. 4) in order to support their luxury and self-indulgence (v. 5). Perhaps the arrogance of making plans apart from God (4:16) also made them ignore the wage owed to their workers. Did their profits depend on defrauding their employees?
We discussed the question of the spiritual status of the rich who James addresses. Were they believers or not? He doesn’t call them brothers in this passage. As one person commented, James describes their “open, wanton carnality.” Also, someone else pointed out that he doesn’t offer them any corrective action. In many earlier sections, James explains the sin involved (e.g., jealousy and ambition, quarrels and conflicts, speaking evil of one another, making plans apart from God), and in almost all of those contexts he includes the positive action his readers should take. But not for the rich. He exhorts them to lament “for the coming miseries” (v. 1) and proceeds to list the consequences they are facing. But he provides no solution other than (as suggested by one of our group members) the obvious implied corrective of “Stop doing all the bad things you are doing!” Unlike most other parts of his letter, he offers no explicit instruction to correct the sinful behavior.
Referring back to the beginning of James’s letter (1:9-11), we had noted that the reference to the poor or “lowly” uses the word “brother” while the parallel reference to rich does not. In that passage James says that like a perishing flower, “so also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.” Fading in the midst of pursuits sounds like the uncertainty of planning a business trip apart from God in 4:13-15.
Both this section (5:1-6) and the previous (4:13-17) “condemn a pursuit of wealth that fails to take into account the reality of God and his will for humanity.”[3] A noticeable difference is the corrective attitude in verse 15 (“Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, …’”). But no such corrective is included in the rebuke of the rich.
James’s style is that of the prophets pronouncing doom on pagan nations. He unrelievedly attacks these people, with no hint of exhortation.[4]
While our group had no clear consensus about the belief or unbelief of the rich in this passage, they are clearly oppressing believers. Neither wealth nor business nor profit is their sin but the oppressive misuse of their power. This oppression is another of the themes interwoven in this letter, as in 2:6, “is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court?” There the contrast seems to be between the oppressive (unbelieving?) rich and the Christian poor.
In the next sentence after this passage, he addresses the believing community, “Therefore be patient, brethren, …” (5:7). The “therefore” seems to refer back to the severe judgments pronounced on the oppressors. James assured the believers that the current trials and persecution would be resolved – the “how” will be discussed in the next passage.
Mists
One of the questions near the end of our discussion time was about James’s assertion that life is like a brief, transient mist (4:14b).
One (or more) of our members commented that age tended to make them more “heavenly minded” and more aware of the “misty” nature of life. Cumulative experiences tend to make the attractions of this world less attractive as they almost certainly disappoint eventually. Even the best of God’s blessings
are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.[5]
(That C. S. Lewis quotation, seemingly not directly related to our study of the passage, was shared near the beginning of our time together by a group member reading from Larry Crabb’s Real Church.[6])
That “inconsolable longing”[7] is what makes life as a mist endurable. The recognition that the dumb idols of this life do really have a fulfillment beyond our imagination builds our anticipation, our “heavenly mindedness.” The disappointments and losses in this life are still painful, but they are not the end of the story. The anticipation of that fulfillment enables our endurance, even the joyful endurance of James 1:2, through those trials.
As someone observed, we think so little of heaven because we have such a limited, hazy view. The distractions of this world draw our attention much more readily. The reality of heaven seems less real, less potent than the apparently concrete world around us. Heaven seems like a vague mist compared with the life we endure now. We need a way to correct that inverted image.
One of the great benefits of fantasy literature was described by Lewis. After describing the paralyzing inhibition that limited his religious belief in childhood he suggests:
And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency. Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?[8]
Our (at least my) “inconsolable longing” and endurance-enabling anticipation is most strongly stirred by many passages in imaginative literature by Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Charles Williams, Stephen Lawhead, et al.
Probably the best of many good examples is found at the end of Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia:
Then Aslan turned to them and said:
“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”
Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”
“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.[9]
May we endure and even flourish in the present mist in anticipation of the Great Story.
[1] https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/katalaleo Interestingly, the word is used only five times in the NT, three in James 4:11 and two in 1 Peter.
[2] Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins; Confronting the Sins We Tolerate (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2007), 54.
[3] Douglas Moo, The Letter of James (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2000), 209.
[4] Douglas Moo, The Letter of James (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2000), 210.
[5] C. S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring,” in The Weight of Glory And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). Kindle Edition, location 291, page 30.
[6] Larry Crabb, Real Church: Does it Exist? Can I Find It? (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 34, ff.
[7] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2017), kindle Edition, location 1095, page 85.
[8] C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” Of Other Worlds, Walter Hooper, ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 37.
[9] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia Book 7) (p. 93). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition, location 2108, page 121.