James 5:1–6 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

Condemning Introduction (5:1)

JAMES BEGINS BY condemning the unfeeling and selfish attitude of the wealthy landowners. As in 4:13, he uses the rare phrase age nun (“Now listen”). In spite of this similarity, however, this group is not the same as the “you who say” of 4:13 (i.e., the merchants). On the other hand, though members of these two groups would themselves be keenly aware of the differences between them, to the common people they are essentially alike, for both have the same malady: an irrational desire for and trust in wealth.

Laws3 observes that “the rich” is unqualified. James apparently makes no allowance for the possibility of a rich landowner who does not oppress the poor. He calls for a sudden opening of the eyes for the rich, to see that they are, in fact, oppressing the poor.

These wealthy people must “weep and wail.” “Weep” (klaio) means to respond to disaster in a rightful manner—to weep from the depths of one’s being in grief and remorse. “Wail” (ololuzo) means to howl, especially as a result of sudden and unexpected evil and regret (see Isa. 15:2–3, 5; Jer. 13:7; Lam. 1:1–2 as Old Testament parallels). This remorse is justified because the lot of these rich is “misery” (talaiporia, a word used only here and in Rom. 3:16 in the New Testament). James may indeed have Jeremiah 12:3 within view: “Set them apart for the day of slaughter.” The reason is not their wealth per se, but the fact that they have not sought to use their wealth to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. In fact, their desire for wealth is the cause of much of this suffering in a direct fashion, for the poor work for the landowners.

Bridging Contexts

THIS SECTION IS a warning of judgment to wealthy landowners, whom James charges with insensitivity and even murder because of their lives of luxurious excess. Today’s farmer uses complex and expensive machinery. But in the ancient world there were no such options. Instead, wealthy landowners who fancied themselves “farmers” employed slaves and poor free persons on their land. Such persons were among the wealthiest in the empire. Today the superrich rarely make their money in agricultural production. For this reason we must investigate both ancient patterns of wealth and land ownership as well as contemporary parallels in order to understand the contemporary significance of the passage.

James threatens the wealthy with judgment prior to his describing their sins. To the traders in 4:13–17 James had pronounced judgment only after their sins were recounted. What accounts for this curious change? The answer to this question is that in the ancient world, rural land holdings and their produce were the source of real wealth.

A wealthy landowner was, by definition, an exploiter of the poor. The parables of Jesus indicate that wealth was associated with the production of olive oil, grain, ownership of land, and lending money at interest (Matt. 20:1–16; 25:14–30; Luke 7:41–43; 12:16–21). Cato had definite advice on running a successful farm: Sell surplus grain and wine, sell olive oil (but only if the price is right), and sell old and worn-out oxen and slaves.12 Plutarch relates that he made money not only in cash crops, but also in land speculation, being careful to buy from distressed sellers and to pick property which “could not be ruined by Jupiter.”13 Cicero knew that

the professions which require either a higher degree of intelligence or which no small benefit to society is given, for instance medicine and architecture and teaching, these are acceptable for those whose social position makes them appropriate. Trade, if on a small scale, is vulgar; but if wholesale and on a large scale … it even seems to deserve the highest respect…. But of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is more profitable or more delightful than agriculture.14

Of course, Cicero had in mind not farmers as we understand the term, but only those wealthy enough to own estates. Pliny agreed, offering his advice that a fortune was waiting to be made in the production of wine!15 Modern scholarship has proven Pliny right.16

Varro tells us that agriculture was carried out by three types of means: articulate (people), inarticulate (cattle), and mute (farm implements).17 “All agriculture,” he wrote, “is carried on by human beings—either slaves, freemen, or both.” The only freemen who farmed were either the very poor or those hired to work off debt. Slaves were the usual source of labor, but he preferred free peasant coloni. His discussion presupposes large estates owned by absentee landlords and overseen by foremen, either slave or liberti, and worked by slaves, liberti, and free poor. Every aspect of the lives of these human machines (Varro called such workers “equipment”18) was dictated by the landlord through the agency of the foreman: whom they married, how they were paid, how they were punished. Although agriculture and especially the cultivation of cash crops were regarded as the surest route to wealth, none of the elite wanted to do the work themselves.19

According to James, the wealthy landowners were not paying their laborers their due. We have already seen how the wealthy made their money by cultivation of cash crops. Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius, relates an unnerving account of the selfishness and indifference of the wealthy:

Bread riots are no such easy matter … but Apollonius was able … to cope with people in this temper…. [In Aspendus] the price of even vetch was high, the people were living on siege rations, because the ruling class had put the entire supply of grain under lock and key so that they could export it at an ever greater profit!20

James has accused the wealthy landowners with murder. This passage from Philostratus confirms that James could very well be speaking literally. Such was the indifference of the wealthy and the strength of their addiction to money.

The Roman historian Sallust decried this crass desire for money, which, in his view, had infected and destroyed his beloved Rome. Speaking of generations of Romans only recently dead he writes:

But when our nation had become great because of toil and justice … the lust for money, and then for power overcame them, these were, I think, the root of all evils. For avarice destroyed honor, and integrity … and taught instead insolence and cruelty.21

Ganymede, one of the guests at Trimalchio’s dinner party in The Satyricon of Petronius, complained that prices were so high even he could not afford bread. “And so,” he said, “the little people suffer.”22 Juvenal said that Pecunia (“money”) was a goddess that was worshiped:

Let money carry the day, let the sacred office be given to one who came but yesterday with white feet into our city. For no god is held in such reverence among us as wealth, even though you, evil money, have no temple of your own, as yet we have raised no altars to money in the fashion that we worship Peace and Honor, Victory and Virtue, or Concord.23

Peasants bore the brunt of severe circumstances,24 including taxation. Peasants in Judea carried the burden of the temple tax, Roman tribute,25 special taxes,26 and the tax for the building programs of Herod, which, said Josephus, “bled the country dry.”27 Estimates of a 40 percent tax rate on these peasants are not unreasonable.28 The devastating famine of A.D. 46–48 only exacerbated these conditions.

James has offered us a warning concerning wealth, its power, and its peril. The ancients knew the acidic power of money. Seneca said, “Unfortunately, we esteem a man for his wealth, and not his soul.”29 James calls us to a sudden opening of our eyes, to see that as evangelicals in the wealthiest nation in human history, we bear a responsibility to understand the power and peril of our wealth and to use it responsibly. Like the Romans, we esteem people for their wealth, and not so often for their souls. Popular magazines glamorize the glitterati and their money, whether the source of this wealth is business (Donald Trump or Bill Gates), Hollywood (Liz Taylor or Arnold Schwarzenegger), or music (Michael Jackson or Madonna).

In spite of the fact that wealth does not bring happiness,30 American newsstands are glutted with periodicals devoted to wealth and its acquisition. They bear titles such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and astonishingly, Money.31 Like Roman society, we as individuals and as a culture are fascinated with money. Seeker-sensitive churches often make it a creed to refrain from speaking of money, lest the congregation be “offended.” In the American evangelical subculture we regularly bow to the goddess Pecunia, whether in the money we spend on church buildings, or in the selection of church officers based on wealth and status.

Recently I spoke at a gathering of church leaders in the Detroit area, where I shared lunch with a denominational administrator. As we enjoyed our meal in the cafeteria of a lovely church, he paused, cast his gaze around the room, and spoke in low tones, “Sometimes I worry about the money we spend on ourselves. How many starving children could be fed for a year with the money spent making this facility beautiful, as opposed to merely functional?” James calls us to open our eyes. The first step to integrity in this issue is, as my friend has done, to wonder and to ask the question.

Ronald J. Sider, in his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study, quotes from a sermon by Paul E. Toms, former President of the National Association of Evangelicals: “I read sometime ago that Upton Sinclair, the author, read this passage (James 5:1–7) to a group of ministers. Then he attributed the passage to Emma Goldman, who at the time was an anarchist agitator. The ministers were indignant, and their response was, ‘This woman ought to be deported at once!’ ” Sider responds trenchantly:

Most Christians in the Northern Hemisphere simply do not believe Jesus’ teaching about the deadly danger of possessions. We all know that Jesus warned that possessions are highly dangerous—so dangerous in fact that it is extremely difficult for a rich person to be a Christian at all. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” [Luke 18:24–25]…. But we do not believe Jesus. Christians in the United States live in the richest society in the history of the world surrounded by a billion hungry neighbors. Yet … we insist on more and more. If Jesus was so un-American that he considered riches dangerous, then we must ignore or reinterpret his message.32

Sider points out too that this message concerning wealth goes beyond Jesus and James. Paul writes, for example in 1 Timothy 6:9–10:

People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The Latin phrase is radix omnium malorum avaritia, and during the Reformation the acrostic ROMA was popular as a symbol of the perceived abuses of the Roman church.33 Here began a sin of pride that marks the Protestant tradition. Protestantism has long been characterized by a barely concealed pride that it is free from the stain of the sin of avarice, but today it is a pride without warrant. There is ample evidence that Protestants are as guilty of this sin as the Catholic hierarchy of the sixteenth century. From the New Testament to Sallust the message is the same: Money has an attractive power that is lethal in its effects.

I used to think, when I was a child, that Christ might have been exaggerating when he warned about the dangers of wealth. Today I know better. I know how hard it is to be rich and still keep the milk of human kindness. Money has a dangerous way of putting scales on one’s eyes, a dangerous way of freezing people’s hands, eyes, lips and hearts.34

Contemporary Significance

MONEY POSES A grave danger that the church ignores at its peril. As James warns us, the love of money will garner judgment from God. Money has the potential to cause us to ignore God and to become callous to the needs of our brothers and sisters, and it will result in judgment if we have used wealth selfishly. The love of money has this power because we are so easily blinded to the strength of its allure, and we ignore it to our peril.

The power and peril of wealth: We ignore God. James asks of us an important question: Has our wealth blinded us to God? Has our desire for security and even excess so significantly dulled our ears that we barely hear God’s voice? Is Ron Sider correct when he says that we are so influenced by our culture that we must either ignore the call of Jesus, or else radically reinterpret it?

Every two years I teach a class called “Christian Studies,” which encourages students to think seriously about the call of Christ on our lives in this increasingly complicated world. The course combines a study of biblical passages; the reading of diverse books on matters of theology, ethics, and contemporary issues; and a variety of presentations by persons whose lives and ministries are marked by a passionate love for God and concern for others. One of my speakers is Erika Carney, a young graduate of North Park College whose vision is to care for, love, and support young people in the community immediately surrounding the school. Ours is an urban campus, and our neighborhood is marked by the usual urban “problems.”

A few years ago Erika felt led to begin an after-school program for the young people in the area. What started out as a one-afternoon-per-week opportunity to play pool in the North Park recreation lounge has expanded to include a full-range of options for junior high and senior high school students, including academic assistance and a youth ministry program. Erika calls it “After Hours,” and the program has been recognized by Senator Paul Simon and President Clinton. In 1996 Erika was invited to fly to Washington to meet with President Clinton, where the “After Hours” program was recognized as one of the best volunteer programs in America. One student who heard Erika address the class was Anji Ecker. This is her account:

I know that I have a desire to find a passion as Erika has found. She has helped me to have a desire to seek out my “passion” so that I can get to the stage where I can live it. Erika pointed out a passage in Compassion35 that she felt summarized the challenge she is confronted with. It relates to the command given to us by Jesus: “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.” This command does not restate the obvious, something we already wanted but had forgotten, an idea in line with our natural aspirations. On the contrary, it is a call that goes right against that grain; that turns us completely around and requires a total conversion of heart and mind. It is indeed a radical call, a call that goes to the roots of our lives.

From what I know about Erika, she could have done anything. She shared how some people back home questioned her judgment because of her choice of occupation and told her she would “grow out of it.” I think she has lived firsthand what this passage is talking about. She has gone against the grain, against that “upward pull” towards fame, riches, and higher positions. I can see what a “radical call” it really is, and as graduation day approaches, it seems all the more radical. My tendencies are to look toward jobs that will make the most money so that I can fill my life with “things.” Erika’s example has challenged me to find something more meaningful, something that “requires a total conversion of heart and mind.”

Society encourages us to go in an upward direction. By “upward direction” I mean striving for things like better salaries and more prestigious positions. The “downward pull” that Compassion refers to is what Jesus’ life reflected. “Instead of striving for a higher position, more power, and more influence, Jesus moves from the heights to the depths, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumphs to suffering, from life to death,” says Karl Barth.

Anji has correctly grasped the message of James. It does not sound sweet to our ears, because, as Anji says, our society encourages the upward direction. But James is not interested in molding the gospel into a shape demanded by society. Instead, he calls us to a sober and steady gaze at our lives as individuals and as the church, urging a sudden “opening of the eyes” concerning wealth.

Money has made us blind, just as Sallust said of his own sisters and brothers. Archbishop Oscar Romero36 commented on the same point when he said:

How many there are that would better not call themselves Christians, because they have no faith. They have more faith in their money and possessions than in the God who fashioned their possessions and their money.37

The power and the peril of wealth: We ignore our sisters and brothers. What would James think of the way American evangelical churches and parishioners spend money? We spend millions on new sanctuaries, sound systems, and Christian conferences for the family. We are generally upper middle class, owning luxury cars, swimming pools, and the latest clothes. Are these wrong, or do they merely indicate that a mid-point can be found and that greater balance is needed?

In 1997 Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute began developing concern for persecuted Christians around the world. In a similar fashion A. M. (Abe) Rosenthal has been using his column in the New York Times to highlight the plight of those persecuted simply because they are Christians, especially in China. Both of these men are Jews, and both are intent on shaming Americans, and (perhaps especially) American Christians, into feeling concern for fellow believers. What does it say of American evangelicalism when we are so obviously myopically self-interested?

Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, in their joint book, Their Blood Cries Out: The Growing Worldwide Persecution of Christians,38 think they know. They point out that more Christians regularly attend worship in China than in all of Western Europe, and that some 75 percent of Christians today are persons of color living in the Third World. American Christians, the authors allege, are either so marked by some vague post-colonial guilt that they refuse to take a moral stand against any other country, especially when the issue is persecution of Christians (after all, Christianity is the epitome of dead white European male hegemony); or else they are so captivated by personal spirituality and anesthetized by the climate-controlled upholstered environment of their worship services that they ignore God and the needs of others.

Surely Marshall and Gilbert are not wholly wrong! The human rights abuses in China constitute a case in point. The conservative Christian magazine World quoted Clinton’s National Security Advisor Samuel Berger as saying, “We cannot say that human rights conditions in China are better today than they were a year ago.”39 Even The Nation, proud of its arch-liberal reputation, finds little redeeming about the Clinton Administration’s attempt to defend its China policy.40

Before Donorgate weakened his hand, President Clinton was planning to push for permanent M.F.N. (Most Favored Nation) trading status and early and easy accession of China into the World Trade Organization. The Administration argues that free markets and growth will generate a middle class and an evolution to democracy—that entangling China in global treaties and laws, from missile nonproliferation to the W.T.O., will foster the rule of law within the country.

The argument lacks only evidence. Chinese repression is worse since the Clinton Administration backed off linking trade and human rights. The Chinese leaders do not share the assumption that capitalism requires democracy. More than 150 million people are officially described as migrant unemployed in China. Inequality is stark; corruption rife. Multinationals want order enforced, property protected, and labor disciplined. They find the authoritarian Chinese regime attractive, not repellent.

Here is a case of astonishing consensus across ideological lines, and yet there is little concern expressed in the American evangelical community. In the interests of money, personal ease, and personal spiritual renewal, we turn a blank stare on sisters and brothers in Christ in China. We are, perhaps, so inoculated and deadened by our culture that we simply do not care, or we believe there is nothing we can do. Our government, as a government, cannot be trusted to be about the work of the church of Jesus Christ. But does not this task involve concern for non-Christians as well as Christians?

James has consistently taught that our relationship with God shapes character, and character influences and even determines our actions, perhaps especially how we treat others.41 The mutually implicatory character of these two dynamics is aptly captured by Oscar Romero in a passage in which he speaks of the liberating power of the gospel:

The church’s social teaching tells everyone that the Christian religion does not have a merely horizontal meaning, or a merely spiritualistic meaning that overlooks the wretchedness that surrounds it. It is a looking at God, and from God at one’s neighbor as a brother or sister, and an awareness that “whatever you did to one of these, you did to me.” … It would be worthless to have economic liberation in which all the poor had their own house, their own money, but were all sinners, their hearts estranged from God. What good would it be? There are nations at present that are economically and socially quite advanced, for example those of northern Europe, and yet how much vice and excess!42

James argues for faith as a “life of the heart,” which unsettles poise and insists on our transformation. Do we use our wealth and influence for peace and justice? Do we care about our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world? Do we allow the Holy Spirit and Scripture to “unsettle” us and pursue the truth wherever it leads? If our eyes were “suddenly to open,” what would we see? James has compared the sin of the landowners to the sin of Cain. It is a sin far more grievous than they had imagined. They were to weep and wail for the misery that was about to befall them.

The power and peril of wealth: judgment. James pronounces a stern warning to the wealthy. He does not condemn wealth as such. Rather, he condemns an attitude toward wealth that deadens the wealthy towards others and causes them to live in excess even as their brothers and sisters are in need. Jesus offered a similar warning of judgment when he spoke of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31–46. Ezekiel spoke of the judgment and destruction of Sodom:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. (Ezek. 16:49–50)

James warns us that our bent to ignore God and others while enjoying material goods and that our desire for money render us open to misery and judgment. The idea of judgment in the New Testament is enormously complex; it includes both chastening judgment, which has as its aim restoration (1 Cor. 11:32), and separation from God and eternal destruction (John 3:19; Heb. 10:27). It is unclear which James has in mind, but neither is to be coveted. At the very least the “misery” he imagines is the realization that the wealth and the material goods in which we have trusted have turned; they have proved untrustworthy, having rotted before our eyes.

But we should not forget that Jesus taught a lesson as hard and difficult as flint. Some who call him “Lord, Lord” he will not recognize on the Day of Judgment, because they did not offer the cup of cool water to another person in need (Matt. 25:31–46). To those whom he does not recognize the King will say, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (v. 41).

James does not condemn riches per se, but rather the fact that the wealthy have not sought to use their wealth to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. American evangelicals are wealthy, satiated, and at ease. So the appeal of James resounds across the centuries to our ears. We must open our eyes to the Scriptures and our ears to God, and we must prayerfully consider how best to use our money. Our failure to act, says James, is a sin more grievous than we have imagined.

Original Meaning

A Catalogue of Futility (5:2–3)

HAVING CONDEMNED THE wealthy landowners for their indifference, James next points out that riches are worthless when it comes to eternal salvation. The terms used here (“wealth,” “clothes,” “gold and silver”) comprise a standard catalogue of riches in the ancient world, especially if “wealth” refers to land and its produce. The produce of the land has “rotted,” and the clothing has been eaten by moths (cf. Job 13:28: “So man wastes away like something rotten, like a garment eaten by moths”). The gold and silver have corroded or rusted. Technically these metals do not rust, but James is painting with the eye of a prophet.

It is both a measure of his skill as a stylist and his indebtedness to the prophetic tradition that James uses these three verbs in the perfect tense. The decay has not yet taken place, but the eye of a prophet sees the result as clear as the daybreak is to the watchers on the wall. The wealthy still enjoy the benefit of their wealth and station; but unless they repent, their destiny is set, and James can see it.

The corrosion of the precious metals is called into the dock as a witness against the wealthy. In Matthew 6:20 Jesus said, “But store up for yourself treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy.” This corrosion acts not only on the metals, but with far more serious import on the flesh of the wealthy, just as a fire ravages all before it. The idea, of course, is that their wealth will accuse these landowners, especially since in spite of the signs, they have continued to hoard “wealth” even though these are “the last days” (v. 3).

This is not to say that James is imagining an imminent Parousia. Rather, just as it would be criminally ridiculous to hoard wealth when the Parousia is imminent, so Christians who have heard Jesus’ message and yet shortchange needy workers and hoard wealth are morally liable. The treasure awaiting them is not fine clothing or gold, but “misery.” Like the citizens of Carthage who reveled in the circus while their city was under siege and then was stormed by Genseric in A.D. 439,4 the wealthy landowners have been about a task that seemed important to them at the time, but which on further reflection can only be judged idiotic. Alternatively, the idea can be taken figuratively, that this behavior stores up a “treasure” of punishment soon to be delivered.

James provides four reasons for the wealthy landowners to weep: Their wealth is temporal and subject to the ravages of time; they are guilty of a crime against their sisters and brothers; they will be judged and condemned for this selfish use of temporal goods; and they have been adding to their material treasure as if the world will go on forever.