Just who is this James character? Jesus had a brother called James. But so did John. Is it either of them? He doesn't really give any hints in his letter. Most scholars (who aren't trying to deliberately make things difficult or "discover"
Anyway, he's fairly well known for being pretty jewish (look at other places he is mentioned, like Galatians). So we might not be surprised when he writes his letter to "the twelve tribes scattered across the nations". Now it might just be that James carpet-bombed the known world with this tract in the hope of hitting those people who long ago were Jews but had hundreds of years ago assimilated. More likely, though, this is a turn of phrase which means "the churches" or "you bunches of Christians everywhere".
vs 2
This is one of those books where the verse-numberer went nuts early on and numbered every12 words or so. But that aside, James skips the typical Pauline "been praying for you, how's your stuff" letter intro, and gets straight into it. When you are persecuted, you should be full of pure joy. Huzzah! Why?
vs 3
One thing I will say is that just because we should be purely joyful because such suffering produces a fruit of perseverance, I don't think that means we're not allowed to be bummed about the suffering. Some suffering is completely dehumanising. Some suffering is the consequence of living in a fallen world. But God can make good come out of all suffering, and we should be joyful that our God can do that.
However, we should also be aware at just how much value James is putting on perseverance here, and the fact that we can get our hands on it, even through suffering or tests to our faith, is to be praised.
vs 4
That's why we need perseverance. If we don't have it, something is lacking in our faith. This is a pretty simple lesson from the parable of the sower. But it's powerful to us - that if we can't persevere (and that comes through tests to our faith) then we are missing something from our faith, our faith isn't complete. We were challenged in church history recently to read a certain book because it would "challenge our faith". Bible college does a lot of faith challenging. And yes, I know some people can't cope with it. But everyone needs to be able to persevere. And yet time and again, as church history shows us, the majority of Christians rationalise away the need for perseverance. It doesn't make them not Christians - but it probably does separate the mature from the not-so-mature. Those guys that stood up to Hitler (it was a bunch of protestant pastors), they knew what it meant. But there were heaps of other Christian leaders (Catholic and Protestant) who just sat by and watched Hitler turn the churches into Reich churches preaching Hitler worship.
vs 5
God might simply give you a forehead slap and say "read Proverbs!", but in fact all the wisdom literature is priceless. I heard Don Carson (or David Cook, or some important Christian guy) once say that Ecclesiastes is the most important book of the Bible for the post-modern age. And in a lot of ways, I agree with him (whoever said it).
But wisdom isn't just the purview of the wisdom literature. And "God giving you wisdom" isn't some secret code for "he'll make you read the right bit of the Bible as if by magic". Sure, he might. But he can just unlock your brain too if need be.
Also remember the context this verse is in. It's not talking about "if you need wisdom choosing a new job, or deciding what flavour ice cream to choose". It's talking about perseverance and the strengthening of faith. God doesn't give everyone shrewd business sense because they ask for it. Wisdom is more (and sort of less) than that - it is the knowledge of God's will and how he unfolds it in this world. Sometimes that means making decisions completely contrary to good business sense. But it depends what you value more - and here, James is putting the high value on maturity in faith, and perseverance.
vs 6
Don't ask God for stuff if you don't really believe it's going to happen. If you're not really a Christian, then good luck squeezing anything out of God unless, like those people who came to Jesus, you're prepared to have some faith. Even a simple faith is enough. If you are a Christian and you don't think God's going to answer, then think seriously about what you're asking for - because if you don't think God's gonna do it, then does that mean you deep down know that you don't need it? Or that you've already got it?
Wisdom's a doosy. People read this verse and go "That's why I don't have enough wisdom, because I don't pray for it!" Bullcrap. If you can't find the answer to your question somewhere in the Bible, then it's most probably not because you haven't prayed for it, but because you haven't made good with God's time and become familiar enough with the Bible to know where the stuff you need is at! And I'm not going to lay down the "if I can do it (go to Bible college, read my Bible regularly with the purpose of actually understanding what it means etc), then anyone can do it" because that's illogical. An illiterate person can't do those things. But you can do as much as you can with what you've got. And one of the things you've got is other, more mature people who've been down this road already! So just pick their brains about it! That's probably one of the few reasons they're still here on earth, just for you to make use of them.
I would concentrate more on what James means with his wave metaphor here, but I think he explains it by verse 8.
vs 7
If you're the person I described above who has a Bible but isn't prepared to actually treat it as if it were words of God and therefore worth more than all the gold in wherever, then what I said above applies in this verse - you've probably already got it, so don't think you're going to get anything.
vs 8
This is what a man like a wave is like. Unstable and of two minds. Double-minded basically means uncertain, doubting. It literally means "double-souled", but I'm sure you get the idea. And they are unstable, unsettled. The word in greek is the negative of "to set something somewhere" - so it's like balancing a plate on a windowsill, but it being unstable and perhaps falling off. These people are like that in everything. They are probably the people who need to get wisdom the most, but also need to learn to persevere a bit too.
vs 9
James is sticking right down the line to Jesus' theology here - that the humble person is highly exalted. But this whole passage about humility reads funny, don't you think? It's almost like verse 10 is somewhat sarcastic.
vs 10
You could probably make a fairly sustainable argument here that while the humble guy boasts in his low position because it means he'll have a high eternal position (the correct way of thinking), the rich guy can boast all he wants about his current position, because it's not going to mean diddly-squat in the end. Probably the whole idea is that you don't see humble people boasting about their high position in heaven (when they could do that), but hey, everybody's heard a rich guy boasting about his wealth, and that's just going to disappear.
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