Bible Commentaries

The Royal Law

James 2:1-9

We do not know what is meant by a man having on "a gold ring." The translators have Englished this matter down to simplicity. The persons referred to had not on "a" gold ring, they had as many rings on each finger as the finger would carry. That is a very different statement; that, however, is the historical fact; the hands were all jewelled, hardly any portion of the hand could be seen. We do not know what is meant by a man having "long hair" in this country, or in Western civilisation; when it is rebuked in the New Testament it is a very different thing from anything we have ever seen, unless we have travelled in Eastern countries. It is precisely the same with this matter of the gold ring, which in its singularity is perfectly justifiable, and may be very beautiful. We are to understand, however, by the gold ring of the text, foolish, extravagant, ostentatious luxuriousness. We do not know what is meant by "goodly apparel"; the word is better rendered lower down, "gay clothing." The reference is to people who were very fond of high colours, and who covered themselves with great glaring, staring, dazzling, blinding garments; no matter how the colours lay in relation to one another, provided there was plenty of colour, a man was satisfied. Now, says James 2:6—But ye have despised the poor—despised them, not because they were ignorant, perverse, foolish, worldly, or stupid, but ye have despised the poor because they are poor: if these very same men had been the recipients of ten thousand a year, then you would have quoted their names, and you would have said that your gardens adjoined one another, and that you were on hobnobbing terms with my Lord Ten-thousand-a-year. There would have been no change in the men, they have not been to school, they have not learned several more languages, they have not purified themselves of low desires; they have simply laid a great income upon their ignorance, and you look at the revenue and not at the superstition. Are ye not partial, and do ye not indulge evil thoughts? and is not your whole intellectual and social system thrown out of gear by these seductive temptations? Nor let the poor man imagine that he is despised when he is not. The poor man is apt to be sensitive; and sensitiveness is often stupidity, it is most offensive to everybody who has to do with the poor James 2:10-26

That seems to be hard. James is hard. He cuts like a diamond. Now and then he melts a little in his feeling, and then he says some gracious words; says indeed some of the most gracious words that can be found in the New Testament; then presently he straightens himself again as if he had never stooped to dry a tear. It seems unreasonable that, if a man be good in nine points, all the nine points should go for nothing because he is wrong or bad in the tenth point. Does it seem hard that the word should be marked as ill-spelt because there is one wrong letter in its composition? Yet that is what schoolmasters do: that is what even mothers are obliged to do; they do not want to do it, they would gladly wink when they come to the letter wrong, but having regard to the real progress of the scholar they are bound to point out the wrong letter which spoils the whole word. Which is the right letter in a word? They are all right letters; one letter is just as right as another; the h cannot boast against the q, and the t is quite unable to snub the s as an inferior member of that word. It seems hard for the child to have to go back to spell a long word with four syllables in it another time because one of the letters is not right, and perhaps because that one letter is not definitely pointed out: it seems twice hard not only to be told that we are wrong, but to go and find out where we are wrong. That is discipline. That is wise tuition. The lesson is a double one; we are first humbled, and then we are sent upon the quest of error, that through that quest we may come to conclusions that are right. Education is not one act; education is a series of acts all running into one another, and interplaying with effects in emphasis and colour in a way which could only be secured by this interaction. We cannot tell when we made our real progress; it was not in one step, it was not in any dozen steps, but the steps all went back upon one another and recurred and interplayed; yet almost suddenly we became conscious of the fact that we had got on one clear mile. What was it that charmed us on the road? We cannot tell. The birds, the flowers, the fragrant breeze, the lovely landscape, the sweet companionship,—which of them? None of them. How then? All of them. That is education; that is progress.

"The law,"—why not say the "laws"? That is the whole mystery of the occasion. We do not want these confusing plurals. It is because the term is singular, definite, indivisible, that life is made so solemn, yet so tender. Were it a question of laws, then it might be a question of proportion. If the laws are ten in number and we keep seven of them, we ought to be accounted as seven-tenths good. The commandments are not ten in any sense that destroys their unity. We have seen in our former study that there are not ten aspects of virtue, but there are ten ways in which vice has enabled itself to wriggle out of the right road: therefore the law says, Stop up every hole! The law is love, or light, or truth; some indivisible quantity: but because vice is so wily, law has made arrangements to check its progress and foil its mischievous policy. The law, then, is one. God is one. Truth is one. If we say a man is very truthful, but not very courteous, we utter a sentence that is anomalous and self-contradictory. It is impossible for a discourteous man to be a truthful man. How James 2:14).

There is no need to be afraid of this inquiry. No Paul's ghost need be started in order to scare the religious imagination, as if a great and irreconcilable discrepancy had been discovered between the two Apostolic teachers. James simply asks, Can faith save a man when it is detached from works? who knows then whether it is faith or not? How do we know the faith but by the works? The faith is the creator of the works; works, if honestly done, ought to represent the degree of faith that is in a man's soul. When man is right, action shall express character, but now it is often used for the purpose of concealing character; assuming honesty through every point of the soul, then every action is a word of truth, every attitude is a picture of inward beauty. "Can faith save him?"—that James 2:22).

If it had been a question of Abraham only we might have been dismayed. We are not helped always by the great and shining characters of history: they may for our present state of vision be too dazzling in moral purity; we would like, therefore, some case nearer our own level. Blessed be God, in reading Scriptural biography we often come upon the spot, even in the sun of the finest character. It is at the contemplation of that spot we take heart again. James is not afraid, therefore, to set side by side with Abraham a character of another caste:—

"Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?" ( James 2:25).

This word cannot be softened out of its basest meaning, it is not to be rendered "innkeeper"; the woman must stand there with all her sins upon her: and yet she had something in her heart greater than herself, greater than her sin; and by that something she touched the Infinite, the Eternal, the fatherhood of God. Here we come to another aspect of the case that was presented in our first reading. We cannot always give an account of our actions; we do some things without being able to explain them; there may be a Christly inspiration for which we have no words and of which we have no direct consciousness. Rahab, why didst thou receive the messengers? She might be able to give one or two probable reasons, or reasons which seemed to her to be equal to the occasion: but we do not always realise our deepest consciousness, there is what may be termed a sub-consciousness, another and deeper self, a ministry and action of motive not to be set forth in palpable words open to literary criticism. Peter was in that condition; his lips were scarcely healed from the wound of the oath they had uttered, when he said, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee." What, below all that blasphemy? Was the blasphemy but foam? Was the soul but lashed into momentary excitement? Were there depths of ineffable peace? There may have been; the poor broken-hearted man could but say, I remember what happened a day or two ago; I was not fool only, but sinner, criminal, base man; yet I did not mean it all; thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. Here, then, is hope for many of us. We have done the things we ought not to have done, we have not done the things that we ought to have done, and yet in our soul's soul we are praying all the time. That is a mystery which the vulgar cannot understand; that is a mystery which often begets for us the undeserved character of inconsistency. Actions of the hand come and go, they are suddenly extorted from our very fingers; we speak extemporaneously what we feel at the moment, and often without due deliberativeness we express ourselves; yet, when we fall back upon our deeper consciousness, we find that the soul has never forsaken the altar, has never been untrue to Christ.

Everything, therefore, as to construction will depend upon the compass of the life we lead. There are some people who have not yet begun to live; they are living in points, they are excellent in aspects, they are people of promise, but the whole grand sublime idea of life they have never grasped. Nor are they to be blamed: who would reproach a child for not knowing as much as is known by an octogenarian? who would blame a young student that he is not as far advanced in knowledge and in wisdom as his veteran teacher? Much, therefore, of our judgment, must be regulated by circumstances, such as time, place, opportunity, degree of industry, and degree of faithfulness. The mischief is that a uniform standard is too often applied to men. We cannot tell how much it took to make some men go to church; other men are never happy but when they are there: are both the attendances to be marked down at the same valuation? They will not be so registered by God in his life-books. You do not know what it cost your brother to kneel down at his own bedside and utter family prayer for the first time. He was knocked down as with lightning—struck by the sound of his own voice; he had no sooner said "Our Father," than he became dizzy, the whole room seemed to be revolving swiftly, and everything seemed to be out of place; but he persevered, and now he can pray calmly, coherently, and with profit to others. One man has been, it may be, brought to church very much against his will; he says, No, certainly not; I cannot go: I have not been to church for years; do not ask me to go, let me see the green fields and hear the singing birds, or pass into the city and partake of its urgent life; anything but going to church. Yet you appealed again, by a chary use of wise words you persuaded him to come just inside, and told him that if he did not like the service he could easily retire. When he came over the threshold of the sanctuary he did more in the way of self-denial and self-mortification than many of us may have done for years. Let us, therefore, leave all judgment with God, and especially let us abolish the uniform standard; let us recognise psychological difficulties, differences amounting almost to opposing constitutions, and let God be judge.

Prayer

We come unto thee, Father of our spirits, in the name of thy Son Jesus Christ, who washed us from our sins in his own blood. He himself bare our sins in his own body on the Tree. He died, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, and be our everlasting King, eternal in his living, his intercession, and in his sovereignty. He is alive for evermore. Christ has abolished death. He himself tells us that he was dead, yet is alive, and is living for evermore. We wish to know somewhat of this fulness of life, this ocean-like roll of ages, this new revelation of duration. May we know that if we are in Christ we also shall share his blessed eternity; where he is there we shall be also, and as long as he is we shall live with him. We worship Jesus Christ thy Son, who is yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the same always, unchangeable, Alpha, Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the All-in-all, summing up in himself all majesty, all tenderness, all love. May we be in the world as he was, may he be our Ideal day by day, towards whose realisation we shall struggle with all our strength. The Lord help us, the Lord help us to see his son, the Cross of Christ, and the crown of Christ, so that having been with him in the fellowship of his sufferings we may also be with him in the power of his resurrection. The Lord hear us in these things and come to us daily with new revelations of light and love and power to help. All this we say at the Cross of him who died for us and rose again. Amen.