James 1:2-8

The paragraph, like its successors, has no special link with its context: it is the writer's habit to throw out a series of aphoristic comments on topics, with as much connexion as there is between the essays of Bacon or successive cantos of Tennyson's In Memoriam. It is the manner of Wisdom literature (cf. especially Ecclus.). The paradox with which the epistle opens is an expansion of the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20). The tense of the verb, when you have fallen, gives the key. James has not forgotten the Lord's Prayer; but when a devout man has been brought into trial, he recognises it as God's will, and therefore to be received with joy. He who has inflicted the trial will deliver from the evil which alone makes it distressing. A man untried is rejected, was a saying attributed to Christ. The word rejected is the negative of the adjective here wrongly translated proof: read (as in 1 Peter 1:7) the approved (genuine) partwhat is sterling in your belief. Faith, as elsewhere in Jas., means religious belief or creed. Truth which has been inwardly digested, and not swallowed whole, can produce spiritual robustness. Endurance is a great note of Jas. (cf. James 5:11). Let it work thoroughly, and you will be thorough and complete, with nothing wanting. By a characteristic feature of style, the word wanting suggests the next thought. Wisdom, practical knowledge that informs conduct, is to be had for the asking from the only Wise. God gives to all (Matthew 5:45) bountifully Gr. nearly as in Romans 12:8 without reproaches for their failure to attain. Cf. especially 1 Kings 3:9. Note the echo of Matthew 7:7. The condition of James 1:6 is also from Christ's teaching (Mark 11:23, etc.). He who hesitates is lost when he prays. For the simile, cf. Isaiah 57:20; Ephesians 4:14. The two-selfed man a trimmer or wobbler, or even one living a double life, a Dr. Jekyll alternating with Mr. Hyde cannot expect to win the answer that only Faith's virile grasp can seize. The man has no firm footing, whatever path he treads.