Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial, for when he has stood the take a look at he’ll obtain the crown of life, which God has promised to those that love him.
Let nobody say when he’s tempted [or “tested,” as in verse 12], “I’m being tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts nobody. However every individual is tempted when he’s lured and enticed by his personal need. Then need when it has conceived provides beginning to sin, and sin when it’s totally grown brings forth loss of life.
Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers. Each good reward and each good reward is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no such thing as a variation or shadow as a consequence of change.
Of his personal will he introduced us forth by the phrase of reality, that we ought to be a type of firstfruits of his creatures. (James 1:12–18)
If you hear the phrases of verse 12, “Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial [testing],” you might be listening to an echo of what it was prefer to be a Jewish Christian within the church buildings to whom James was writing. Testing, testing, testing.
Some had been poor and wore shabby garments and lacked every day meals (2:16). Some had been humiliated after they got here to church dressed like that and had been advised to “stand over there” (2:3). Some had been dragged into courtroom by the wealthy (2:6). There have been fights and quarrels (4:1). Individuals spoke evil in opposition to them (4:11). Some had been defrauded of their wages (5:4). Some had been condemned and murdered (5:6). Some had been sick (5:15). And all of them had been advised to be affected person in struggling (5:7, 10).
We normally consider the e book of James because the e book of doing. And it’s at the least that. “Be doers of the phrase, and never hearers solely” (1:22). Put away anger (1:19). Be achieved with filthiness and wickedness (1:21). Go to orphans and widows (1:27). Don’t observe any partiality (2:1). Shun adultery and homicide (2:11). Give to the needy (2:16). Tame your tongue, and use it for blessing, not cursing (3:8, 10). Forsake jealousy and egocentric ambition (3:16). Be peaceful and mild and open to cause, neutral, stuffed with mercy and good fruits, bearing a harvest of righteousness (3:17–18). Learn to pray like a spouse who loves her husband (God), not like an adulterous spouse who makes use of her husband’s generosity to rent lovers (4:3–4). Love your neighbor as you like your self (2:8). Sure, it’s the e book of doing the phrase. Religion with out doing is useless.
However what this textual content in chapter 1, and I believe the entire e book, presses on us is that every one of James’s exhortations are written to individuals whose lives are characterised by struggling.
Painful Path to Pleasure
He begins with it in 1:2: “Rely all of it pleasure, my brothers, whenever you meet trials of varied sorts.” He spends nearly the entire first chapter on it. And he ends with it in 5:10: “For example of struggling and endurance, brothers, take the prophets who spoke within the identify of the Lord.” And he soberly implies that it is going to be this fashion until Jesus comes: “Be affected person, subsequently, brothers, till the approaching of the Lord” (5:7).
Subsequently, in case you are a trustworthy Christian, that is going be your life — a life stuffed with faith-filled good deeds clothed with hardships and struggling, which James calls “checks.”
Rely all of it pleasure, my brothers, whenever you meet trials [or tests] of varied sorts, for you recognize that the testing of your religion produces steadfastness. (1:2–3)
Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial [testing], for when he has stood the take a look at [i.e., when he has been proven and found genuine] he’ll obtain the crown of life. (1:12)
James calls them checks as a result of they’re from God. Neither nature nor Devil provides checks. They assault religion; they don’t take a look at religion. They don’t put you thru fireplace to show the gold of your religion is real. Devil goals to devour, not refine.
We all know that is the best way James thinks about struggling as a result of in 4:13–15 he says,
Come now, you who say, “As we speak or tomorrow we are going to go into such and such a city and spend a yr there and commerce and make a revenue.” . . . As a substitute you should say, “If the Lord wills, we are going to reside and do that or that.”
If I reside to the top of this chapel, it’s as a result of the Lord willed it. If I die earlier than the top of this chapel, it’s as a result of the Lord willed it — and thus it is going to be an all-wise take a look at for my spouse. And he goes additional. If I “do that or that,” it’s as a result of the Lord willed it. If I completely clean out whereas preaching and might’t end the message, that can be from the Lord, and it is going to be a take a look at for my religion within the goodness and kindness of the Lord for me.
Or we may make the identical level — that God governs our struggling — from James 5:10–11:
For example of struggling and endurance . . . you will have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you’ve got seen the aim of the Lord [telos kyriou], how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
All Job’s sufferings had been purposeful. And the aim was God’s (see Job 42:11). And the aim was a compassionate and merciful testing.
So, once we learn James 1:12, “Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial [testing],” James means for us to know that the testing is from the Lord, not Devil and never nature. And I’m going to argue now that every one of verses 12–18 are meant by James (and by God!) to assist us see our lives as blessed (with the deepest and longest happiness) due to this testing.
Blessing By way of Testing
In different phrases, James says, I’m about to exhort you 5 dozen instances (there are 62 imperatives within the Greek of this letter) to be doers of the phrase (1:22). And I’m totally conscious that I’m calling upon you to reside this unselfish, other-person-oriented, loving, sacrificial lifestyle within the midst of many God-given miseries known as checks. And since I’m conscious of that, I’m devoting a lot of the first chapter to persuading you that these painful checks are designed by God to make you blessed (makarios) — that’s, deeply and lastingly blissful. I consider that’s the primary level of my textual content (James 1:12–18), and it’s the primary level of this message. Every little thing after 1:12a (“Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath [testing]”) is argument.
The textual content is constructed round 4 arguments that assist this primary level — particularly, that God’s checks are designed to guide us to deep and lasting happiness (our blessedness), not designed to make us sin and lead us to loss of life.
Argument 1
Blessed [deeply and lastingly happy] is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial [testing], for when he has stood the take a look at [been proven like gold through fire] he’ll obtain the crown of life, which God has promised to those that love him. (verse 12)
So, the explanation that God-given checks of affliction make you extra deeply and lastingly blissful is that they supply the circumstances, the events, the means by which God matches us to put on the crown of life — to have everlasting life. Painful checks and affected person endurance and provenness result in life. If we actually consider that is how God is becoming us for everlasting life — for everlasting pleasure — would we not say, “I’m blessed”? These are causes for me to be deeply and lastingly blissful.
However right here’s a key query on your real-life expertise of this: What’s being examined by hardship? James mentions just one factor. He doesn’t point out religion (which might be my first thought). He doesn’t point out hope. What he mentions is love — love for God.
Blessed is the person who stays steadfast beneath trial, for when he has stood the take a look at he’ll obtain the crown of life, which God has promised to these who love him. (1:12)
Who will get the crown of life? Those that love God. So, those that are examined and endure and are confirmed as actual get the crown, and people who love him get the crown. Absolutely these two methods of describing how we get the crown of life aren’t options! Absolutely James is saying, “If you stroll via the hearth of testing, will you come out on the opposite facet extra deeply loving God, or not? Should you do, you get the crown.” What’s being examined and refined and confirmed is love. Love for God. Valuing God. Having fun with God. Treasuring God. Being happy in God.
So, what’s that? Do you like God? What are you feeling or keen or doing if you end up loving God? Your eternity hangs on this. Right here’s an image of it in James 4:2–4:
You need and don’t have, so that you homicide. You covet and can’t get hold of, so that you combat and quarrel. You don’t have, as a result of you don’t ask [God]. You ask [God] and don’t obtain, since you ask wrongly, to spend it in your passions. You [adulteresses]! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
The phrase actually is “adulteresses,” not “adulterous individuals.” Why? As a result of the image is of God as our husband and we as his bride — the church. And James presents us praying — going to our beneficiant husband (God) and asking him if we are able to have some cash to go rent a prostitute as a result of he doesn’t fulfill anymore. That’s the image: “You ask and don’t obtain, since you ask wrongly, to spend it in your passions. You adulteresses!”
To like God means you discover God to be so satisfying as your husband, shepherd, Father, King, Savior, treasure that you’ll not flip him right into a cuckold and use his items to go get your satisfaction from one other. That’s adultery.
“Take coronary heart, struggling Christian. All of your hardships are God’s checks.”
And the fires of affliction are designed by God to check and refine and show the truth of that. Do you like God greater than the partner you simply misplaced? Do you like him greater than the well being you simply misplaced? Do you like God greater than the life the physician simply mentioned you’ll lose in six months? Struggling checks and refines and proves our love for God — that God is our supreme treasure, the deepest need of our souls. And people who love God like this, verse 12 says, obtain the crown of life.
Subsequently, argument 1 that God’s painful checks result in deep and lasting happiness (blessedness) is that God’s checks are designed to refine and show our love for God, which in flip is how we inherit the crown of life.
Argument 2
Let nobody say when he’s tempted, “I’m being tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts nobody. However every individual is tempted when he’s lured and enticed by his personal need. Then need when it has conceived provides beginning to sin, and sin when it’s totally grown brings forth loss of life. (verses 13–15)
The primary level of verses 13–15 is that this: No one ought to ever say, “These God-given checks of verse 12 are actually God-given temptations designed to entice and drag us into sin and loss of life.” And the explanation we must always by no means say it’s as a result of it’s not true. And verses 13–15 are the reason for why it’s not true. So, the best way verses 13–15 argue for the principle level (checks are to make us deeply and lastingly blissful) is to show that these checks aren’t designed to entice us into sin and loss of life.
What makes the connection between verse 12 (God is testing us) and verses 13–15 (God is just not tempting us) troublesome for the translators is that these two English phrases, testing and tempting, are the identical phrase in Greek. So, all of us right here at Bethlehem School & Seminary who’re studying Greek need to resolve the place James stops speaking about testing and begins speaking about tempting (if he does), and what that connection means.
Right here’s what I suggest, and I’m not distinctive on this. In verse 13, I might translate it, “Let nobody say when he’s examined, ‘I’m being tempted by God.’” And that’s how the 2 models relate to one another: I’m being examined by God. Verse 12 says so. However I’m not being tempted by God. And that’s what verses 13 and 15 clarify and defend.
To make the argument work, all the things hangs on the which means of tempt. What does James imply by tempt on this textual content? Not, what do you imply by it? Or what do I imply by it? James has a really exact and restricted definition for tempt in verses 13–15.
Verse 13b: “God can’t be tempted [apeirastos] with evil, and he himself tempts nobody.” God can be examined (as he was sinfully examined again and again within the Previous Testomony, as Psalm 78:41 says). And God does take a look at us. That’s the purpose of verse 12. So, James is drawing a agency line between testing and tempting on this textual content. God does take a look at, however he does not tempt.
What’s the distinction? Verse 14 provides James’s definition of tempt and temptation. “However every individual is tempted when he’s lured [literally dragged] and enticed by his personal need.” So, James is drawing a line via the progress of need. On one facet of that line, need is transferring towards an object with out sin. When Jesus had fasted forty days within the wilderness, Matthew says he was hungry (Matthew 4:2). Starvation is a need for meals. After forty days, it might be a powerful one. And as Jesus’s need strikes towards the thing of bread, his need approaches a line. And it doesn’t cross the road. On Jesus’s facet of the road, his need is holy and with out sin.
And James is saying that the road is crossed when need turns into being dragged and enticed by a sinful pleasure. For Jesus, that may have been doing what the satan needed him to do. “Use your superb energy and fulfill your need by abandoning the trail of struggling and sacrifice” (see Matthew 4:3). None of Jesus’s needs ever crossed the road the place they turned sinful enticement.
This understanding of temptation (particularly, being dragged away with sinful enticement) helps clarify verse 13b, the place James says, “God can’t be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts nobody.” God is rarely dragged by or enticed by sinful allurements. He’s by no means the sufferer of his personal passions. That is the which means of the doctrine of God’s impassibility — not that he has no feelings, however relatively that they’re by no means ruled from exterior his personal sovereign will and self-sufficient fullness. God (and Jesus!) can’t be tempted in James’s sense as a result of he’s completely blissful and self-sufficient. Nothing from exterior him can create a controlling craving in him. He by no means says, “I’ve bought to have that!” as a result of he has all the things in himself.
So, James infers from this that God doesn’t tempt anybody. James says in verse 14 that when anybody’s need crosses the road from good needs to being sinfully enticed and dragged towards sinful acts, all that’s wanted to elucidate that is our personal needs.
God doesn’t have to intrude into the dynamic of motion from good need to sinful enticement. He doesn’t want so as to add something from exterior for our needs to cross from holy needs to sinful enticement. Our personal needs make it occur. And we’re answerable for these needs.
If we put this along with absolutely the sovereignty of God over all issues in James 4:15, what we conclude is that this: God governs all issues in such a manner that he doesn’t want to achieve in and drag us throughout the road from holy to unholy needs. Our needs on this fallen state are completely adequate to result in our entanglement in what James calls temptation.
And he completes his clarification in verse 15 by saying,
Then need when it has conceived provides beginning to sin, and sin when it’s totally grown brings forth loss of life.
So, we now have the image of conception within the womb, beginning out of the womb, and a accomplished lifespan ending in loss of life. The conception occurs in verse 14 with the approaching into being of sinful enticement — that’s the unborn child. So, verse 15 describes need that, having conceived (particularly, again in verse 14 with the awakening of sinful enticement), now provides beginning to this lively youngster of sin. And that sinning youngster grows up, fills up his life with sins, and in consequence dies — perishes.
And James’s level in all of verses 13–15 is that this: When God checks you with struggling (verse 12), he isn’t tempting you. He’s not intruding himself into your needs with a design to result in sin and loss of life. He’s aiming to deepen and refine your love and produce you to the crown of life, and so make you deeply and lastingly blissful — blessed.
Argument 3
Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers. Each good reward and each good reward is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no such thing as a variation or shadow as a consequence of change. (verses 16–17)
Don’t be deceived about what? I don’t see any cause to suppose he has modified his focus from what he’s been saying. So, I take this to be the identical warning he gave in verse 13: “Let nobody say when he’s [tested], ‘I’m being tempted by God.’” Don’t say that. It’s not true. It’s a deception. So, don’t be deceived into considering God is the type of God who’s utilizing checks as a method to get you to have sinful needs after which sin your manner into loss of life. That was the deception of verse 13.
So, right here in verse 16 is similar warning: “Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers.” Sure, he sends many painful checks your manner. However in doing that, he isn’t evil. He isn’t whimsical and unpredictable, with darkish intentions. No. He’s the supply of each good reward. Each take a look at that comes down on you comes from the Father of lights. Sure, all of the lights of heaven — the solar and moon and stars — change regularly. Brighter, much less vibrant. Full moon, no moon. Brilliant solar, clouded solar. And shadows run with fixed change all around the floor.
However it’s not so with the Father of lights. He’s the supply of all gentle. And the supply of sunshine is at all times vibrant, at all times unchanging — inexhaustible in goodness and perfection. So, don’t be deceived. Your struggling is just not sinister. Your testing is just not temptation.
Argument 4
Of his personal will he introduced us forth by the phrase of reality, that we ought to be a type of firstfruits of his creatures. (verse 18)
Probably the most putting hyperlink with the previous is the phrase “carry forth,” or “trigger to be born.” He brought on us to be born by the gospel, the phrase of reality. The one different place within the New Testomony the place this phrase “trigger to be born” (apokyeō) happens is in verse 15: “Sin when it’s totally grown brings forth loss of life” — “causes loss of life” to be born.
It’s totally putting. Who talks about giving beginning to loss of life? Delivery results in life. However that’s precisely what James is contrasting. Temptation — the crossing of the road by our needs into sinful enticement — provides beginning to sin, which supplies beginning to loss of life. However God is not like that. He does not tempt, and he does not ship checks to provide beginning to loss of life. He provides beginning to life. And that life is the lifetime of the brand new creation, which has begun with each new creature in Christ. The “firstfruits of his creatures.”
The Coronary heart Behind Each Take a look at
So, the principle level of the textual content and the message is that this: God’s checks are designed to guide us to deep and lasting happiness (our blessedness), not designed to tempt us into sin and lead us to loss of life.
- Argument 1 (verse 12): All God’s checks are designed to deepen our love for him, which ends up in the crown of life.
- Argument 2 (verses 13–15): It’s completely mistaken to say, “When he checks us, he’s tempting us.” He can’t be tempted and tempts no one with sinful enticements that result in loss of life.
- Argument 3 (verses 16–17): To suppose in any other case is deception, as a result of God is the supply of all good and all gentle, not the supply of sinful enticements that result in loss of life.
- Argument 4 (verse 18): Sure, God causes beginning, however it’s not the beginning of loss of life by sin. It’s the beginning of life and new creation.
Subsequently, take coronary heart, struggling Christian. All of your hardships are God’s checks. They don’t come from a fickle coronary heart, or a darkish coronary heart, or a tempting coronary heart. They arrive from the Father of lights, the life-giver, the all-sufficient, untemptable one, whose complete design for you is your unshakable love for him and his crowning you with life — with blessedness, with the deepest and longest happiness.
