If this is its meaning here, James is saying that there is an instinctive knowledge of good and evil in the human heart whose guidance we should at all times obey.
(2) It can mean inborn in the sense of implanted, as a seed is planted in the ground. In 2 Esdras [4 Ezra] 9:31, we read of God saying: ‘For I sow my law in you . . . and you shall be glorified in it forever.’ If James is using the word in this sense, the idea may well go back to the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–8), which tells how the seed of the word is sown into the hearts of men and women. Through his prophets and his preachers, and above all through Jesus Christ, God sows his truth into our hearts, and those who are wise will receive it and welcome it.
It may well be that we are not required to make a choice between these two meanings. It may well be that James is implying that knowledge of the true word of God comes to us from two sources, from the depths of our own being, and from the Spirit of God and the teaching of Christ and human preaching. From inside and from outside come voices telling us the right way; and those who are wise will listen and obey.
They will receive the word with gentleness. Gentleness is an attempt to translate the untranslatable word prautēs. This is a great Greek word which has no precise English equivalent. Aristotle defined it as the mid-point between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness; it is the quality of the person whose feelings and emotions are under perfect control. Andronicus Rhodius, the Greek philosopher, commenting on Aristotle, writes: ‘Prautēs is moderation in regard to anger . . . You might define prautēs as serenity and the power, not to be led away by emotion, but to control emotion as right reason dictates.’ The Platonic definitions say that prautēs is the regulation of the movement of the soul caused by anger. It is the temperament (krasis ) of a soul in which everything is mixed in the right proportions.
No one can ever find one English word to translate what is a one-word summary of the truly teachable spirit. The teachable spirit is docile and tractable, and therefore humble enough to learn. The teachable spirit is without resentment and without anger and is, therefore, able to face the truth, even when it hurts and condemns. The teachable spirit is not blinded by its own overriding prejudices but is clear-eyed to the truth. The teachable spirit is not seduced by laziness but is so self-controlled that it can willingly and faithfully accept the discipline of learning. Prautēs describes the perfect conquest and control of everything in a person’s nature which would be a hindrance to seeing, learning and obeying the truth.
HEARING AND DOING
James 1:22–4
Prove yourselves to be doers of the word, and not only hearers, for those who think that hearing is enough deceive themselves. For, if a man is a hearer of the word and not a doer of it, he is like a man who looks in a mirror at the face which nature gave him. A glance and he is gone; and he immediately forgets what kind of man he is.
AGAIN James presents us with two of the vivid pictures of which he is such a master. First of all, he speaks of those who go to the church meeting and listen to the reading and expounding of the word, and who think that that listening has made them Christians. They have shut their eyes to the fact that what is read and heard in church must then be lived out. It is still possible to identify church attendance and Bible-reading with Christianity, but this is to take ourselves less than half the way; the really important thing is to turn that to which we have listened into action.
Second, James says such people are like those who look at themselves in a mirror – ancient mirrors were made not of glass but of highly polished metal – see the smuts which disfigure their faces and the dishevelment of their hair, and go away and forget what they actually look like, and so fail to do anything about it. Listening to the true word reveals to individuals what they are and what they ought to be. They see what is wrong and what must be done to put it right; but, if they are only hearers, they remain just as they are, and all the hearing has been to no avail.
James does well to remind us that what is heard in the holy place must be lived in the market place – or there is no point in hearing at all.
THE TRUE LAW
James 1:25
He who looks into the perfect law, which is the law in the observance of which a man finds freedom, and who abides in it and shows himself not a forgetful hearer but an active doer of the word, will be blessed in all his action.
THIS is the kind of passage in James which Martin Luther disliked so much. He disliked the idea of law altogether, for with Paul he would have said: ‘Christ is the end of the law’ (Romans 10:4). ‘James’, said Luther, ‘drives us to law and works.’ And yet beyond all doubt there is a sense in which James is right. There is an ethical law which Christians must seek to put into action. That law is to be found first in the Ten Commandments and then in the teaching of Jesus.
James calls that law two things.
(1) He calls it the perfect law. There are three reasons why the law is perfect. (a) It is God’s law, given and revealed by him. The way of life which Jesus laid down for his followers is in accordance with the will of God. (b) It is perfect in that it cannot be bettered. The Christian law is the law of love, and the demand of love can never be satisfied. We know well, when we love someone, that even if we gave them all the world and served them for a lifetime, we still could not satisfy or deserve their love, (c) But there is still another sense in which the Christian law is perfect. The Greek word is teleios, which nearly always describes perfection towards some given end. Now, if men and women obey the law of Christ, they will fulfil the purpose for which God sent them into the world; they will be the people they ought to be and will make the contribution to the world they ought to make. They will be perfect in the sense that they will, by obeying the law of God, achieve their God-given destiny.
(2) He calls it the law of liberty; that is, the law in the keeping of which people find their true liberty. All the great philosophers and scholars have agreed that it is only in obeying the law of God that an individual becomes truly free. ‘To obey God’, said Seneca, ‘is liberty’ ‘The wise man alone is free,’ said the Stoics, ‘and every foolish man is a slave.’ Philo said: ‘All who are under the tyranny of anger or desire or any other passion are altogether slaves; all who live with the law are free.’ As long as human beings have to obey their own passions and emotions and desires, they are nothing less than slaves. It is when we accept the will of God that we become really free – for then we are free to be what we ought to be. God’s service is perfect freedom, and in doing his will is our peace.
TRUE WORSHIP
James 1:26–7
If anyone thinks that he is a worshipper of God and yet does not bridle his tongue, his worship is an empty thing. This is pure and undefiled worship, as God the Father sees it, to visit the orphans and the widows, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
WE must be careful to understand what James is saying here. The Revised Standard Version translates the phrases at the beginning of verse 27: ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled is . . .’ The word translated as religion is thrēskeia, and its meaning is not so much religion as worship in the sense of the outward expression of religion in ritual and liturgy and ceremony. What James is saying is: ‘The finest ritual and the finest liturgy you can offer to God is service of the poor and personal purity’ To James, real worship did not lie in elaborate vestments or in
