James 4

With meekness. Meekness is love at school—love at the Saviour’s school. It is Christian low-lihood. It is the disciple learning to know himself; learning to fear and distrust and abhor himself. It is the disciple practicing the sweet but self-emptying lesson of putting on the Lord Jesus, and finding all his righteousness in that righteous Lord. It is the disciple learning the defects of his own character, and taking hints from hostile as well as friendly monitors. It is the disciple praying and watching for the improvement of his talents, the mellowing of his temper, and the amelioration of his character. It is the living Christian at the Saviour’s feet, learning of him who is meek and lowly, and finding rest for his own soul. Hamilton.

15. Earthly, sensual, devilish.** The distinction is admirably drawn. The evils of the world may be reduced to these three heads: covetousness, sensuality, pride, suitable to the treble bait that is in the world: profits, pleasures, honors. The three great ends of our creation are our salvation, the good of others, and the glory of God. But, when men melt away their days in pleasure, they neglect the great salvation; covetousness is the bane of charity; and pride and self-seeking do quite divert us from serving God’s glory. All sins grow from these roots.

16. Such wisdom as serves envy and strife can not be good wisdom, for it brings forth evil effects. Wisdom from above is for holiness and meekness; wisdom from below is for confusion and profaneness. For an envious, contentious spirit is an unquiet, disorderly spirit. Nothing more discomposes the mind than envy. The contentment and felicity of others is the very sorrow of the envious. Satan works upon nothing so much as envy and discontent; such a spirit is exactly fit for Satan’s lure! T. M.

17. “Lord, set a watch on my mouth; keep the door of my lips”: this prayer of David must constantly be ours. If with this be combined the earnest striving after the wisdom which cometh down from above, which James recommends to us, we shall also on this path be preserved from many false steps. Van O.—Without hypocrisy. The praise of a hypocrite is not of God, but of man; the praise of a Christian is not of man, but of God. The former desires to seem good, that he may be admired; the latter to be good, that God may be honored. Seeker.

18. They that with their peaceable endeavors unite a care for righteousness shall have a threefold blessing—increase of grace, with peace for the present, and shall reap the crop of all hereafter. Whatever we do in this life is seed. As we sow, so we reap. The metaphor is used in Scripture both ways, in point of sin and duty. It may be long first, but the crop will be according to the seed. This is our comfort against all the difficulties and inconveniences that holy and peaceable endeavors meet with in the world, your reward is with God; you have a pledge of it in your own souls. While strifes lessen grace in others, you grow and thrive, and you shall reap in glory. T. M.—God abides none but charitable discussions, those that are well grounded and well governed with Christian charity and wise moderation, those whose beginning is equity and whose end is peace. If we must differ, let these be the conditions. Let every one of God’s ministers be ambitious of that praise which Gregory Nazianzen gives to Athaseus, viz., to be an adamant to them that strike, and a loadstone to them that dissent from him—the one not to be removed with wrong, the other to draw those hearts who disagree; so the fruit of righteousness shall be sown in peace of them that make peace. Bp. H.

1. FROM whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your 2 lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and 3 cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive 4 not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever 5 therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scrip- 6 ture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw 8 nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify 9 your hearts, ye doubleminded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be 10 turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the 11 Lord, and he shall lift you up. Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: 12 but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one law- 13 giver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another? Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, 14 and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth 15 away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that 17 knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Under the laws of Providence, life is a probation; probation is a succession of temptations; temptations are emergencies; and for emergencies we need the preparation and the safeguard of prayer. We have duties which are perilous. We meet surprises of evil. We struggle with a wily adversary. We feel perplexities of conscience, in which holy decision depends on the mind we bring to them. We encounter disappointments which throw us back from our hopes rudely. We have difficult labors, in which we sometimes do not know what to do. We have an unknown experience opening upon us every hour. Providence is thus continually calling for the aids of prayer; and in a soul which is keen in its vigilance, prayer will be continually responsive to providences, often anticipative of them. There is often a beautiful alliance between providence and grace in these experiences. A Christian who will be studious of his own history will probably discover that often the occasions for such fragmentary communings with God follow hard upon these secret incitements to them. Emergencies come soon for which they are needed. The Holy Spirit has anticipated them, and sought to forearm us. Providence and grace thus hover over us, not far asunder. In this view, those Biblical exhortations to prayer, which men have sometimes deemed extravagant, are transparently rational: “Continue in prayer”; “Continue instant in prayer”; “Pray without ceasing”; “Rejoice in the Lord always!” Such exhortations contemplate a state, not insulated acts, of prayer. They fit in well to the system of things in which we are living. A. P.

1-5. The apostle had in the former chapter spoken against strifes as proceeding from envy, and pressed them to a holy wisdom; he here speaks against strifes and contentions as proceeding from other lusts, as ambition, covetousness, etc., which made them vex one another, and break out into unseemly brawlings. He proceeds by way of question and conviction, as appealing to their consciences. T. M.—Nothing can be more clear than that far the greater part of the evils we suffer ourselves, and of those we bring upon others, arise from the dominion of the passions. From whence come murders, robberies, oppression, and fraud, breaches of friendship and hospitality, ruin, infamy, and remorse, confusion and distress to whole families, the destruction of health and repose, the dissipation of fortunes, but from the violence of headstrong and unruly desires, bursting forth like a torrent upon mankind, throwing down every obstacle, and breaking through every the most sacred fence that opposes itself to their impetuous course? P.—Unruly lusts within are the cause of the unquietnesses and contentions abroad in the world. One man will have his corrupt will, and another his, and thus they flock and justle one another; and by the cross encounters of their purposes, as flints meeting, they strike out these sparks that set all on fire. L.

3. Consume upon lusts. We would have something from God to give to our enjoyments: health and long life, that we may live pleasantly; wealth, that we may fare sumptuously every day; estates, that we may raise up our name and families; success in our undertakings, that we may live independently of God’s providence. T. M.

4. In every man there is a root of selfishness. So long as we follow the impulses of our nature, we are apt to refer everything to some selfish end, to our own pleasure, to our profit, to our advancement and exultation. Again, in every man there is a root of worldly-mindedness. Our aims, our purposes, our wishes, our hopes, our fears are all hemmed in by the world, and summed up in it. Moreover, in every man there is a root of fleshly-mindedness. His soul is drugged from childhood upward with the stimulants and opiates of the senses. In every man’s heart there is this triple root of sin—no one who knows his own heart will dispute it—the root of selfishness, from which spring self-indulgence, self-will, self-esteem, and the whole brood of vanity and pride; the root of worldly-mindedness, which issues in ambition, in covetousness, in the love of money, in the desire of advancement, of honor, of power; and the root of carnal-mindedness, from which, if it be not cut down betimes, and kept diligently from shooting up again, the lusts of the flesh will sprout rankly, and overrun and stifle the soul. Hare.

“The friendship of the world is enmity with God.” There is a similar expression used by Paul. “The carnal mind is enmity against God”—averse and adverse! So does the world not only withdraw the heart from God, but oppose him. They who would join worldliness with religion seek to unite two of the most unsuitable things in the world! Worldly people are here called adulterers and adulteresses because of their unfaithfulness to God; they give their best affections to the world. Worldliness in Christians is most unsuitable to the marriage covenant, the covenant of grace, wherein God propounds himself to be all sufficient. T. M.

5. Envy is only a malignant, selfish hunger, casting its evil eye on the elevation or supposed happiness of others. The bitterness of it is not simply that it really wants what others have, but that the soul, gnawed by a deep spiritual hunger which it thinks not of, is so profoundly embittered that every kind of good it looks upon rasps it with a feeling of torment, and rouses a degree of impatience and ill nature, out of all terms of reason. It is the feeling of a prodigal, or spendthrift, who, after he has spent all, vents his ill nature on everybody but himself, and hates the good possessed by others because it is not his own. How many human souls are gnawed through and through, all their lives long, by this devilish hunger, envy! H. B.

6. Giveth more grace. The world gives a little, that it may give no more; but Christ gives “that he may give.” He gives a little grace, that he may give grace upon grace. He gives a little comfort, that he may give fullness of joy. Souls that are rich in grace, labor after greater measures of grace out of love to grace, and because of an excellency that they see in grace. Grace is a very sparkling jewel, and he who loves it and pursues after it for its own native beauty has much of it within him. Brooks.

Resisteth the proud. Of all the evils of our nature, there is none more natural and universal than pride; the grand wickedness, self-exalting in our own and others opinion. Of that complicated first sin, certainly pride was a main ingredient—that which the unbelief going before and the disobedience following after were both servants to—and ever since it sticks still deep in our nature. So that Augustine says truly, “That which first overcame man is the last thing he overcomes.” Some sins, comparatively, may die before us, but this hath life in it, sensibly, as long as we. It is as the heart of all, the first living and the last dying; and hath this advantage that, whereas other sins are fomented by one another, this feeds even on virtues and graces, as a moth that breeds in them and consumes them; even in the finest of them, if it be not carefully looked to. This hydra, as one head of it is cut off, another rises up. It will secretly cleave to the best actions and prey upon them. And therefore is there so much need that we continually watch and fight and pray against it, and be restless in the pursuit of real and deep humiliation, daily seeking to advance further in it; to be nothing, and desire to be nothing. L.—God abhors other sinners, but against the proud he professes open defiance and hostility. This was the sin that turned angels into devils. You may trace the story of pride from paradise to this day. Other sins are more hateful to man, because they bring disgrace and have more of baseness and turpitude in them; whereas pride seems to have a kind of bravery in it. But the Lord hates it, because it is a sin that sets itself most against him. Other sins are against God’s laws, but pride is against God’s sovereignty. Pride does not only withdraw the heart from God, but lifts it up against God. Other sins are more patient of reproof, for conscience will frequently consent to the reproofs of God’s word, but pride first blinds the mind, and then arms the affections—it lays the judgment asleep, and then awakens anger. T. M.

Those showers of grace that slide off from the lofty mountains rest on the valleys and make them fruitful. He giveth grace to the lowly; loves to bestow it where there is most room to receive it, and most return of ingenuous and entire praises upon the receipt. And such is the humble heart; and truly, as much humility gains much grace, so it grows by it. He whom the Lord loads most with his richest gifts stoops lowest, as pressed down with the weight of them; the free love of God humbles that heart most to which it is most manifested. L.

7. There is a threefold submission to God: of our carnal hearts to his holiness; of our proud hearts to his mercy; and of our revolting hearts to his sovereignty; and all this that we may be pure, humble, and obedient! T. M.—The submission that makes no merit of its cross; that does not venture to choose one lighter than the Lord lays on us; that does not seek the ability to bear it in the delirium of pleasure, or the drugs of the world, or the deadening influence of time and change; that does not compare your cross with those borne by others, or ask an explanation of it till the day break and the shadows flee away, but bears it all with a child’s love for His sake who did not impose it till He had borne all the might and sharpness of all the world’s crosses together—this is the victory. The earth has no fatal fear and no insupportable sorrow in it after you have come to this; you are free in a boundless liberty, strong in immortal strength, and at peace in a peace too deep for the understanding to explain, or any sufferings to disturb. F. D. H.

Resist the devil. It is not more Satan who destroys us than we who destroy ourselves at his bidding. Even in his boldest achievements he still does not create but pervert; he is to the last a subordinate and permissive agent in the territory of God. It is not to infuse new powers that he labors, but by every art to corrupt and poison the old to ruin! W. A. B.—God draws; Satan only tempts. Satan is powerful, but not omnipotent; he is cunning, but neither omniscient nor wise. He has an ally within us, but he has never yet understood a human heart. God alone can search the heart; he alone can draw it, can open, can melt, can fill it. Satan can not draw; he can not reach the inmost depth of yourself; he has no right over you; he has no power except the power you give him. Only resist, only show your face as conscious of your divine origin, only adore God, and Satan, powerless and abashed, will flee from you. There is no real connection between us and Satan. A. S.—Whenever one of us, wearied and grieved with the burden of his sins, comes to Christ for salvation; whenever one of us, feeling the yoke upon him of some inveterate evil habit, wicked temper, or deadly lust, kneels down seriously and humbly before God, and asks him for Jesus Christ’s sake to forgive and to cleanse him; to pardon all that is past, and to send into his heart that Holy Spirit who is all liberty, and love, and peace, and strength; and when, in answer to this prayer (as will be the case if he only prays on and faints not) he is set free—gradually, tardily it may be, but really, decisively, and at last completely—then does Christ conquer Satan. V.

8. There is no exhortation more solemn and profound, more fundamental, reaching into the very beginnings of spiritual life, and more comprehensive, embracing the deepest experience of divine grace, than these words: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” No frequency of repetition can weaken their force or exhaust their meaning; but they grow in power and sweetness as we obey the command and test the truth of the promise. A. S.—Draw nigh, oh, every solitary soul, to Mary’s Son! Let him draw nigh to you; he understands the most reserved. He knows your unutterable secret without the telling, inflate in tenderness. He has watched your silent war, and waited with your waiting, and carried griefs just like yours. “If any heart will open the door to me, I will come in, and my Father will come.” F. D. H.—He will draw nigh to you. He himself, although he may use various channels and instruments—it may be affliction or prosperity; it may be through the voice of Nature or of Providence; it may be through the word or the example of a Christian—yet it is God himself. But, of all instruments and channels, the written word is of the utmost importance; it stands supreme. It is through Scripture, eminently, that God draws nigh to the soul. But let us never mistake the reading of the Scripture for that real drawing nigh of the living God, toward which it is the great help, and of which it is the great witness. Scripture is not the substitute for God’s drawing nigh to us, it is only the channel; the written word of the past must become the living word of the present. A. S.

9. When James says, “Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into heaviness,” he means that it is a good exchange to put away carnal joy for godly sorrow; for then we have that in the duty which we expected in the sin, and in a more pure, full, and sweet way. When the world repents of its joy, the Christian will never repent of his sorrow. T. M.

10. No humility is perfect and proportioned but that which makes us hate ourselves as corrupt, but respect ourselves as immortal—the humility that kneels in the dust, but gazes on the skies! W. A. B.—Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Order thy life according to the life of Jesus, after Jesus hath put his life within thee. Humble thyself, so shalt thou be exalted. Be poor, so shalt thou be rich. Have nothing, so canst thou receive all things. A. C.—Seek here to be humble with the humble Jesus, and he will exalt thee. Seek humility, and thou wilt find it, and when thou hast found it thou wilt love it, and by God’s grace wilt not part with it; with it thou canst not perish. Yea, thou wilt reign for ever with Jesus, who was humbled for thee, and with the choirs in the heavenly dwellings. For there, too, thou wilt be humble, not as now in the need of all things, but in the possession of all things, in glory, and honor, and power, and beauty, and knowledge, and wisdom, of which we have but the faintest shadow here; and all from God and in God. Pusey

11. Speak not evil.** The bitter root of this iniquity is that wicked self-love that dwells in us. Every man is naturally his own grand idol, would be esteemed and honored by any means; and to magnify that idol self kills the good name and esteem of others in sacrifice to it. Hence is the narrow, observing eye and broad, speaking tongue upon anything that tends to the dishonor of others. One of another. All of you that desire to walk as Christians, be very wary that you wrong not one another, and help not the wicked against you by your mutual misconstructions and misconstrucions one of another. Far be it from you to take pleasure in hearing others evil spoken of, whether unjustly or though it be some way deservedly; yet let it be always grievous to you and no way pleasing to hear such things, much less to speak of them. It is the devil’s delight to be pleased with evil speakings. The Syrian calls him an eater of slanders or calumnies. L.

Judgeth the law. There are three things exempted from man’s judicatory: God’s counsels, the Holy Scriptures, and the hearts of men. We should not dogmatize and subject men to ordinances of our own making. It is too common for us to condemn everything that does not please us, as if our magisterial dictates were articles of faith. We must judge as the word judges, or else we judge the word!

12. In spiritual things, none else but the Lord can give laws to the conscience; in external policy, the laws and edicts of men are to be observed. But here the apostle speaks of the internal government of the conscience where God alone judges, since God alone can give laws to the conscience. “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king” (Isa. 33: 22). Take these words in a spiritual sense, and they are exclusive. The Lord and none other!

13-15. Having before spoken against those that condemned the law, he now speaks against those that condemned Providence; promising themselves a long time in the world, and a happy accomplishment of their worldly projects, without any sense or thought of their own frailty, or the sudden strokes of God. In this verse the apostle does, as it were, personate them, and gives an accurate representation of their thoughts. T. M.

13. The great Lord of all has no part in this scheme. These little arrogant words, we will, thrust him out at once, and occupy his place. The persons here described undertake, without hesitation, to insure their lives against death, their bodies against sickness, and their effects against every casualty or hazard. They promise themselves that to-morrow they shall not only be alive, but in health to set out on their journey; that they shall meet with no cross accidents by the way, and that in due time they shall arrive at the city where their plan of business is to be carried into execution. What is still more extravagant, they promise upon life for a full year, and not upon life only, but on health of body and soundness of mind during all that time. Nay, more, they assure themselves of success. “We will buy and sell, and get gain.” They undertake that they shall have large profits from those to whom they sell, and cheap bargains from those of whom they buy. In a word, they speak as if everything relating to themselves and others were so dependent on their will that they might command the events which they desired, and dispose of all things according to their own pleasure. R. W.

14. Your life.** The lowest view of life looks out upon it as no scene of the workings and revelations of the divine Spirit, but only as a hostelry where every guest is to seize on so many of the good things exposed as the laws of the place allow—to consume what the senses crave, regarding no other than sensual penalties—to grasp the largest handful of comfort irrespective of rights or services, and to push pleasure to the utmost pitch of intensity consistent with its continuance. Of course, this selfish hunt will take different directions, according to the ruling appetite; proceeding with some men by a cool calculation, and with others by passionate plunges of impulse. But the characteristic mark on all its phases is, that it disowns God. The whole eager race through which it strains its muscles ignores the spiritual presence. Religious accountability is an element foreign to it. Duty is a word without a meaning. Conscience is only one of the furies. Christ is a veiled figure. Stewardship is a visionary fancy. The curtain that drops over the grave is of stone, as immovable as it is impenetrable. F. D. H.

15. If the Lord will.** Not to be fulfilled by the mere use of the words “please God,” or of the letters D. V., when we speak of our future projects, but by a deep inner consciousness that the future is wrapped in utter uncertainty, that we can see no further than to what lies under our hand, and that even the cycle of the present day embraces more time than we have any right to calculate upon. E. M. G.—“We shall live, and do this or that.” It is not enough, then, that God suffers us to live, but he must also by the same will suffer us to do, or act. The point is, that God’s will concurs not only to our lives, but to our actions. It is by his conduct and blessing that all things come to pass. Our very counsels and wills are subject to the divine government, and he can turn them as it pleaseth him; and therefore we must not only commit our ways to his providence, but commend our hearts to the tuition of his Spirit! In short, all things are done by his will, and must be ascribed to his praise.

17. Sins of knowledge are most dangerous. They are more sins than others, as having more malice and contempt in them: contempt both of

the law of God and of God’s kindness. Sins against knowledge have more of God’s vengeance upon them. In the reprobate they are punished with great remorse and horror of conscience, or with hardness of heart, or with madness against the truth. Apostates become the greatest persecutors! Not only sins of commission but sins also of omission are aggravated by knowledge; “to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Foul acts of sinful commission bring more shame and impress more horror upon the mind than bare neg-

lects; yet here we see that every omission of a know duty is sin. The rule, you see, is positive, enforcing duty, as well as prohibitory, forbidding sin; and according to the knowledge of it, so is the obligation. T. M.—The neglect of improving all the means, advantages, and opportunities of doing or receiving good will be a great part of that judgment. The Lord called his servants to an account for the talents committed to their trust, and required profit in proportion to their number and worth. Bates.