again, James stresses the great truth that every gift that God sends is good. Verse 17 might well be translated: ‘All giving is good.’ That is to say, there is nothing which comes from God which is not good. There is a strange phenomenon here in the Greek. The phrase which we have translated as ‘Every good gift and every perfect boon’ is, in fact, a perfect hexameter line of poetry – that is, a line with six stresses in it. Either James had a rhythmic ear for a fine cadence or he is quoting from some work that we do not know.
What he is stressing is the unchangeableness of God. To do so, he uses two terms from astronomy. The word he uses for changeableness is parallagē, and the word for the turn of the shadow is tropē. Both these words have to do with the variation which the heavenly bodies show, the variation in the length of the day and of the night, the apparent variation in the course of the sun, the phases of waxing and waning, the different brilliance of the stars and the planets at different times. Variability is characteristic of all created things. God is the creator of the lights of heaven – the sun, the moon, the stars. The Jewish morning prayer says: ‘Blessed be the Lord God who has formed the lights.’ The lights change, but the one who created them never changes.
Further, his purpose is altogether gracious. The word of truth is the gospel, and by the sending of that gospel it is God’s purpose that men and women should be reborn into a new life. The shadows are ended and the certain word of truth has come.
That rebirth is a rebirth into the family and the possession of God. In the ancient world, it was the law that all first fruits were sacred to God. They were offered in grateful sacrifice to God because they belonged to him. So, when we are reborn by the true word of the gospel, we become the property of God, just as the first fruits of the harvest did.
James insists that, far from ever proving a temptation, God’s gifts are invariably good. In all the chances and changes of a changing world, they never vary. And God’s supreme object is to re-create life through the truth of the gospel, so that all people should know that they belong by right to him.
WHEN TO BE QUICK AND WHEN TO BE SLOW
James 1:19–20
All this, my dear brothers, you already know. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness which God desires.
THERE are few among the wise who have not been impressed by the dangers of being too quick to speak and too unwilling to listen. A most interesting list could be compiled of the things in which it is best to be quick and the things in which it is best to be slow. In the Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, we read: ‘There are four characters in scholars. Quick to hear and quick to forget; his gain is cancelled by his loss. Slow to hear and slow to forget; his loss is cancelled by his gain. Quick to hear and slow to forget; he is wise. Slow to hear and quick to forget; this is an evil lot.’ The Roman poet Ovid encourages people to be slow to punish, but swift to reward. The Jewish writer Philo tells them to be swift to benefit others and slow to harm them.
In particular, the wise teachers were impressed by the necessity of being slow to speak. Rabbi Simeon said: ‘All my days I have grown up among the wise, and have not found aught good for a man but silence . . . Whoso multiplies words occasions sin’ Jesus, the son of Sirach, writes: ‘Be quick to hear, but deliberate in answering. If you know what to say, answer your neighbour; but if not, put your hand over your mouth’ (Sirach 5:11–12). Proverbs is full of the perils of speech which is too hasty. ‘When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but the prudent are restrained in speech’ (Proverbs 10:19). ‘Those who guard their mouths preserve their lives; those who open wide their lips come to ruin’ (Proverbs 13:3). ‘Even fools who keep silent are considered wise’ (Proverbs 17:28). ‘Do you see someone who is hasty in speech? There is more hope for a fool than for anyone like that’ (Proverbs 29:20).
The scholar F. J. A. Hort says that those who are really good will be much more anxious to listen to God than arrogantly, loudly and stridently to shout their own opinions. The classical writers had the same idea. Zeno of Elea said: ‘We have two ears but only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less.’ When the Cynic philosopher Demonax was asked how anyone might rule best, he answered: ‘Without anger, speaking little, and listening much.’ One of the earliest philosophers of ancient Greece, Bias, said: ‘If you hate quick speaking, you will not fall into error.’ The tribute was once paid to a great linguist that he could be silent in seven different languages. Many of us would do well to listen more and to speak less.
It is James’ advice that we should also be slow to anger. He is probably meeting the arguments of some that there is a place for the blazing anger of rebuke. That is undoubtedly true; the world would be a poorer place without those who blazed against the abuses and the tyrannies of sin. But too often this is made an excuse for petulant and self-centred irritation.
Teachers will be tempted to be angry with slow and backward scholars and pupils, and still more with those who are lazy. But, except on the rarest occasions, they will achieve more by encouragement than by the lash of the tongue. Preachers will be tempted to anger. But ‘don’t scold’ is always good advice to them; they lose their power whenever they do not make it clear by every word and gesture that they love their people. When anger gives the impression of dislike or contempt in the pulpit, it will not convert the souls of men and women. Parents will be tempted to anger. But a parent’s anger is much more likely to produce a still more stubborn resistance than it is to control and direct. The accent of love always has more power than the accent of anger; and when anger becomes constant irritability, petulant annoyance, carping nagging, it always does more harm than good.
To be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen is a good policy for life.
THE TEACHABLE SPIRIT
James 1:21
So then strip yourself of all filthiness and of the excrescence of vice, and in gentleness receive the inborn word which is able to save your souls.
JAMES uses a series of vivid words and pictures.
He tells his readers to strip themselves of all vice and filthiness. The word he uses for strip is the word used for stripping off one’s clothes. He tells his hearers to get rid of all defilement as they would strip off soiled garments or as a snake casts off its skin.
Both the words he uses for defilement are vivid. The word we have translated as filthiness is ruparia, and it can be used for the filth which soils clothes or soils the body. But it has one very interesting connection. It is derived from rupos; and, when rupos is used in a medical sense, it means wax in the ear. It is just possible that it still retains that meaning here, and that James is telling his readers to get rid of everything which would stop their ears to the true word of God. When wax gathers in the ear, it can make us deaf; and our sins can make us deaf to God. Further, James talks of the excrescence (perisseia), the ugly growth, of vice. He thinks of vice as tangled undergrowth or a cancerous tumour which must be cut away.
He bids them receive the inborn word in gentleness. The word for inborn is emphutos, and it has two possible general meanings.
(1) It can mean inborn in the sense of innate as opposed to acquired. If James uses it in that way, he is thinking of much the same thing as Paul was thinking of when he spoke of the Gentiles doing the works of the law by nature because they have a kind of law in their hearts (Romans 2:14–15); it is the same picture as the Old Testament picture of the law ‘very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your
