Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door. Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. James 5
James starts this off with a list of the wrongs that the rich have committed. Many reading these passages have used texts such as these a ‘proof’ that to be rich you have to be dishonest, but that is not the case. James is trying to bring out two points here. 1. That the misuse of money and the withholding of what is not yours is wrong and it’s sin. 2. That the riches we might gain on this earth are fleeting but that riches in heaven if the rich in this earth were to store up spiritual riches they would be far happier people and would have greater rewards later on.
Patience – do you have patience? I know that patience is not really a virtue that I have. I can be very impatient wanting things now, when I really should wait for them. Yet here we are told to have patience and to work with patience. The Apostle Paul tells us to run the race with patience. In another place in scripture we are told that patience worketh perfection. 1 Corinthians 13 the greatest love chapter and one of the most well known parts of scripture tells us that love is patient and seeks not her own. Is that not part of our problem, we don’t want to be be patient because we want instant gratification. We want to feel good, we want...we want.....we want. Always the same we seek our own rather than anyone elses and rarely what God wants, and yet that is just the thing God asks us to die to self daily and to be patient, not seeking our own lust or own our pleasure. However beyond all of this still James is seeking to emphasize the importance of being established in God, and how the by simple childlike faith we can move mountains. He points out the patience of Job and how Elijah was a man just like you and me, and he says look you too could have this same faith if you would only put away your self seeking. As Jesus said, Take up your cross and follow me. Take up your cross, that is a stumbling block and an offence to so many Christians. They seem to think that once they become Christian it should be the easy road for them, and they wonder why hardship and peril comes upon them, yet that is precisely what is promised. The cross was a instrument of torture, but it was also one of shame. The pictures that you and I see of them hanging on these crosses fully clothed or in loin cloths is an idealized prettied up picture. No every article of clothing was removed from the criminal and divided between the soldiers as booty. The criminal was crucified next to the road where all would see them, and would hang there for days, before eventually suffocating to death. If the Romans wanted to expedite the death they would break the legs of the criminals so that they could no longer use their legs to shift their weight and easy the pressure on their lungs. Yet there they were crucified in a public place naked and on show to the whole world. Absolutely all dignity stripped away from them in their last few hours or days, and even a simple thing such as passing water was done in front of a leering gawping crowd. Yet this is the picture that Christ gives of the Christian walk – take up your cross. Be humiliated, be leered at and cursed at, be shamed and an object of derision in the worlds eyes. You have something far more important in the spiritual word – your reward is in heaven. James is taking Christ’s theme and telling us to be right with God and put up with the hardships, your reward is great.
James also bring up an issue that Jesus said. In the words of Jesus ‘let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, for anything other than these cometh of evil’ and ‘Swear not at all, neither by heaven, nor by earth nor by the things under the earth’ . Swearing it is something that is so easy to do, and as humans we want to find ways of expressing what we feel. Sometimes words can feel so inadequate. Yet Swearing is one thing that is expressly forbidden by Jesus and James continues the theme. What is swearing? It is basically when you don’t use something in and manner to which it should not be used, in particular using something as a curse word.
Confess your faults one to another – what is the difference between faults and sins? Faults are weaknesses and or things that have been done wrong against each other, where as sins are things we have done wrong against God. Many modern translations will translate this verse as confess your sins to one another- can you forgive my sins? Can I forgive yours? No, so then why do I need to fill your mind up with my sins, which often are details that no other human being needs in their heads. Yet if I have done wrong against you can in fact forgive that, though that wrong may also need God to forgive it as well (if it is also sin). If I confess my weaknesses and my failings you might have an experience that will lift me out of that quagmire I find myself in. So confess your faults one to another, but confess your sins to God, for only God can forgive sin.
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