James 5:7–11

Original Meaning

The Call to Patience (5:7–8)

AS FRANCIS HAS convincingly argued, these verses begin the closing section of the letter.1 Yet there is much that binds it with previous ones, especially the return of the term “brothers,” which James here as elsewhere uses to remind his readers that although he has offered them strong rebuke, he is their brother and they are all one in Christ. While in 5:1–6 the emphasis is on the wealthy, here the lion’s share of James’s thought is directed to the poor.

Christians are enjoined to be patient until the Lord comes (parousia tou kuriou; lit., “coming of the Lord”). The use of parousia here signals the expected return of Jesus, and so “Lord,” a term often and most recently used in James (5:4) to refer to God, here refers to Jesus. While we are on ground too infirm to build a grand Christological edifice, the implication should not be missed. Many argue that James is wholly without Christology. While it is an accurate assessment that Christological concerns and language are largely absent from James, here a statement of high Christology is present. This parousia will include Jesus Christ’s setting the oppressed free (cf. Luke 4:16–21). But the waiting is a long process, and in its difficult shoals the temptation to criticize will be overpowering. For this reason James offers for consideration a series of illustrations.

As a practical illustration of such patience, James refers to a farmer who waits patiently for harvest time and for the autumn and spring rains. In the eastern Mediterranean two seasons of rain are normal and necessary for a successful crop.2 The emphasis here is double, not only on patience, but also on the surety of the farmer that the rains and the harvest will indeed come, each in its due season. This waiting is hard psychologically, for in the presence of the vagaries of weather that determine the success of the crop, the farmer is helpless. But the waiting also involves a good deal of hard work and encounters with the vicissitudes of normal existence.

In a similar manner the Christian and the Christian community must wait patiently for the coming of the Lord, for nothing can be done to speed the parousia on its way. The waiting is often hard. Difficulties within the community must be dealt with, and the correct understanding and practice of the faith and works dynamic must be taught and maintained. It is easily misunderstood, as the letter itself demonstrates. Certainly James is calling on Christians to allow God to judge the wicked. To arrogate to ourselves this task is to call down God’s judgment on ourselves.

Verse 8 recalls the Markan account of the opening of Jesus’ ministry, as both use the same verb, engizo. The perfect tense of this verb, engiken, is ambiguous, in part because the language of nearness involves ambiguity. When Judas “drew near” to kiss Jesus, he made contact with Jesus. So engiken can mean “is coming shortly” (as it does here), or it can mean “has arrived.” This ambiguity is intentional in Mark 1:15, where Jesus announces: “The time has come…. The kingdom of God is near.” Of course parousia in James 5:7 is a technical term indicating the coming of Christ. Although the evidence is mounting that the early church did not anticipate the imminent return of Christ,3 it must be admitted that this conclusion cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Furthermore, in the phrase “until the Lord comes,” the word “until” (eos) can carry not only the nuance of time, but also of purpose. Whether or not James envisioned an imminent return of Christ, perhaps the point here is that as Christians we are to live in community one with another as if the new day has already dawned. This second reading is not inconsistent with the general sweep of the New Testament.4 This idea reminds James’s readers that every day ought to be lived with the same devotion to Christian principles and morals as if it were the last day. Otherwise, we will be guilty of sloth “in the day of slaughter” (5:5).

Bridging Contexts

JAMES FOCUSES HERE on patience in the context of adversity and on the need to avoid judging others, specifically the ones causing the adversity. The picture is made both more interesting and more difficult in that he has chosen to employ the language of eschatology to make his point: “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming” (5:7). This introduces the question of the role that eschatological language plays in this passage.

The question of the imminent parousia (“appearance”) or return of Christ is one of the thorniest in the New Testament. On the one hand, a number of passages seem to suggest that Jesus and the early Christians believed in an imminent parousia. Some scholars argue that Paul in 1 Thessalonians clearly believes that the parousia is about to occur, and that therefore 2 Thessalonians must not be Pauline, since it posits a different eschatological scheme.15 On the other hand, there is the incontrovertible fact that the parousia has yet to take place. What does the New Testament teach on this issue?

The difficulty begins with the meaning of the word “eschatology” itself.16 The Oxford English Dictionary of 1891 and 1933 defines it as “the department of theological science concerned with the four last things, death, judgement, heaven, and hell.” This classic definition is essentially concerned with the fate of the individual. In more recent years the word has come to refer to the destiny of the world. The difficulty, then, is that we employ one word to describe two very different forms of understanding the future: the one individual and the other cosmic.

This difficulty is further compounded by two other matters: the uses of eschatological language and the eschatological beliefs of Jesus. Eschatological language is enormously flexible and is often used to describe a variety of other doctrines, much as an overnight envelope can carry a wide variety of types of correspondence. Isaiah, for instance, had a vision of the restoration of Paradise, in which the wolf and the lamb will live together, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the cow will feed the bear and their young will lie down together, the lion will eat straw, and a child will play with a cobra (Isa. 11:1–9). The vision is cast in what we would call eschatological language; but it is not about eschatology, but rather about an ideal earthly kingdom. Eschatological language is here used to describe a future historical hope.

An even more clear example is found in Isaiah 13, a passage that contains a description of the Day of the Lord and employs eschatological language:

See, the day of the LORD is coming

—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—

to make the land desolate

and destroy the sinners within it.

The stars of heaven and their constellations

will not show their light.

The rising sun will be darkened

and the moon will not give its light.

I will punish the world for its evil,

the wicked for their sins.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty

and will humble the pride of the ruthless. (Isa. 13:9–11)

Although cast in typically eschatological language, the wider context makes clear that Isaiah is speaking of the coming invasion of the Medes. The prophets, then, were able to picture historical crises in the language of eschatology, because each crisis was a dress rehearsal for the ultimate crisis, when the nation faced the questions of life and death.

Jesus also spoke in these terms. In Luke 17:20–24 he said:

The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you.

… The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, “There he is!” or “Here he is!” Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.

On the one hand, Jesus said that there will be no signs; yet on the other, there will be signs across the heavens. The conundrum is resolved when we realize that Jesus was speaking of two different realities—one historical, the other that of eschatological hope.

Luke 21 makes this even more explicit. In this chapter Jesus predicts wars and rumors of wars, and armies surrounding Jerusalem. The chapter ends with the prediction of the coming of the Son of Man and the saying that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (21:32). But Jesus also counsels his followers to attempt to “escape all that is about to happen” (21:36). He could not have been so naive as to suggest that his followers could escape the final consummation of the kingdom, for there is no escape from this. The answer, of course, is that like the Old Testament prophets, Jesus is using eschatological language to discuss both historical events and the final denouement of history—that is, the coming destruction of Jerusalem and his parousia.

This means that, Schweitzer to the contrary, Jesus did not envision an imminent parousia. Schweitzer’s misguided picture of an “end-of-the-world” Jesus led him to believe that Jesus preached an impractical ethical system for this brief interim (Interimsethik), which could never serve for an extended period.17 While Schweitzer was wrong about the return of Christ, his recognition that the ethic preached by Christ was to be in force is sound. Those who follow Jesus are to live as if the kingdom were already fully realized.

In the present case the reference to the Lord’s return is not so much about the parousia as it serves the interests of the spiritual life. James knows that the promise of the return of the Lord gives hope to those who are suffering. The spirituals of African-American slaves betray this same spirit. Songs like “I Am Bound for the Promised Land”18 and “Steal Away”19 emphasize the expectation of heaven in order to divert attention from the hell of earthly existence.20 James wishes the poor to do more than wait expectantly for the Lord’s coming. He wants them to take advantage of this time of suffering. For this reason he uses the image of the farmer, who waits patiently during the growing season, knowing that this is the only sure route to harvest.

I spent a part of my childhood on my uncle’s grain farm in the Sacramento Valley of California. Each October my uncle planted wheat and oats, and through the long winter he watched as the plants sprouted, and then grew strong and tall. Finally, in the heat of June, he began harvest. The end result was the harvest, but the harvest was not possible without the growth accomplished during the long hard months of winter. So it is with the spiritual life. Our destiny is to be with Christ, but it is often in the crucible of difficulty that God prepares us for that day. James uses the example of the prophets and of Job, persons whose lives were marked by difficult circumstances they often did not understand, but in which God forged their spiritual character. James, as my wife says, desires us to shift our attention from what is happening to us to what God is forming in us.

But the language of eschatology may serve another correlative function in this passage. James has here discussed judgment. The New Testament generally links ethics with a positive image—for instance, when Paul says that God desires that we be “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). But here James is not reticent to apply the image of the Judge who is about to arrive. He has already given similar warnings of sudden reckoning unlooked for, employing the image of a fragile flower that withers in the heat of the day (James 1:11) or of wealth that has become worthless in the storehouse (5:2–3).

Nor is James alone in this. Jesus uttered a stern warning of eschatological judgment based on acts of compassion (Matt. 25:31–46), and he could offer a more positive inducement: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). James hopes that the believers to whom he writes will remember the generosity of God (James 1:5), in whose name they belong (2:7), and will live lives of humility and compassion, just as did Jesus. But he is not afraid to remind them, when necessary, that God is also the Judge. Given the consequences, this is less a threat than it is the warning shout of a dear friend. Nor should it be forgotten that eschatological judgment is two-sided, comprised of both damnation and the promised reward.

Contemporary Significance

JAMES CONCENTRATES ON two teachings here. (1) Patience is important because it allows for Christian growth in the midst of difficult times. (2) We should not judge others, even if they are the source of the difficulties we face. Both of these have applications in our lives.

Patience. James argues for patience because he wants us to wait for the Lord’s coming, and as was the case with Job and the prophets, our character is forged on the anvil of difficulty. It is not surprising that eschatological teaching should be found in close correspondence with teaching concerning patience during difficulties, because “eschatology arises out of the clash between faith in a benevolent purpose of God and the harsh facts of a ruthless world.”21

People in times of trouble naturally hope for release, and there is no doubt that many of the early Christians hoped for release from this world in the form of Christ’s return. Certainly a variety of events in that first century created a burgeoning of eschatological excitement in each weary breast. Palestine knew “wars and rumors of wars,” as Jesus had predicted (Mark 13:7), which had their devastating appearance in the Jewish war of A.D. 66–70. Caligula declared his intention to erect a statue of himself in the temple in Jerusalem, which must have seemed a fulfillment of “the abomination that causes desolation” (cf. 13:14). But James uses the language of eschatology in order to prepare his readers for spiritual growth. Within the history of Christian spirituality, difficult circumstances (a) are considered a normal and necessary part of the process of spiritual growth, (b) require a certain attitude in order to be dealt with most effectively, and (c) bear certain results.

Difficulties are normal and necessary. John of the Cross and Theophan the Recluse are examples of the widespread belief that suffering is a normal and even necessary part of the spiritual lives of Christians. John of the Cross was born in Castille in 1542 and became a Carmelite monk in 1564. Theresa of Avila placed him in charge of the order, and through this position as well as his writings, he became prominent in the Catholic reform movement. He was later arrested and put in confinement by those who opposed him, and during this period he wrote his The Dark Night of the Soul. The book describes the fashion in which God works on the human soul, through sorrow and darkness, not only through joy and light. He wrote:

Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth from the state of beginners—which is the state of those that meditate on the spiritual road—and begins to set them in the state of progressives—which is that of those who are already contemplatives … to the end that we may better understand and explain what night is this through which the soul passes, and for what cause God sets it therein, it will be well here to touch first of all upon certain characteristics of beginners…. it must be known, then, that the soul, after it has been definitely converted to the service of God, is, as a rule, spiritually nurtured and caressed by God, even as is the tender child by its loving mother, who warms it with the heart of her bosom and nurtures it with sweet milk and soft and pleasant food, and carries it and caresses it in her arms; but, as the child grows bigger, the mother gradually ceases caressing it, and, hiding her tender love, puts bitter aloes upon her sweet breast, sets down the child from her arms and makes it walk upon its feet, so that it may lose the habits of a child and betake itself to more important and substantial occupations. The loving mother is like the grace of God, for, as soon as the soul is regenerated by its new warmth and fervour for the service of God … it will be seen how many blessings the dark night of which we shall afterwards treat brings with it, since it cleanses the soul and purifies it from all these imperfections.22

John clearly understood that what we perceive as difficulty and trial God can and does use for his purposes and our spiritual growth, even if we find the experience painful and distressing. This is a theme James introduced in chapter 1.

For Theophan the Recluse, suffering was a necessity and should be expected.

It must be realized that the true sign of spiritual endeavour and the price of success in it is suffering. One who proceeds without suffering will bear no fruit…. Every struggle in the soul’s training, whether physical or mental, that is not accompanied by suffering, that does not require the utmost effort, will bear no fruit…. Many people have worked and continue to work without pain, but because of its absence they are strangers to purity….23

The proper attitudes. Among the several attitudes necessary for correctly perceiving adversity as an opportunity for spiritual growth are three represented by Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Catherine of Genoa.

One of the difficulties we moderns have with the spiritual disciplines is our addiction to ease and to “feeling good.” But how we “feel” has little, if anything, to do with the spiritual benefit of a situation. Thomas Merton makes this point well in his Contemplative Prayer:

If we bear with hardship in prayer and wait patiently for the time of grace, we may well discover that meditation and prayer are very joyful experiences. We should not, however, judge the value of our meditation by “how we feel.” A hard and apparently fruitless meditation may in fact be much more valuable than one that is easy, happy, enlightened, and apparently a big success.24

Another deadly force relative to spiritual maturity is the allure of our world. Henri Nouwen argues that great determination is needed in order to overcome this peril. Nouwen was a Catholic priest, and until his death in 1997 was loved by Catholics and evangelicals alike for his writings on and example of the spiritual life. In his book Making All Things New, Nouwen argues that God gets our attention and saves us from the allure of the world by encouraging us to deny the priorities of the world and to summon up our stern resolve and determined effort:

The spiritual life is a gift. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God’s love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait patiently until the gift is offered to us.

Jesus tells us to set our hearts on the kingdom. Setting our hearts on something involves not only our serious aspiration but also strong determination. A spiritual life requires human effort. The forces that keep pulling us back into a worry-filled life are far from easy to overcome.

“How hard it is,” Jesus exclaims, “to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23, JB). And to convince us of the need for hard work, he says, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24, JB).25

Nouwen, like James, tells us that active patience is needed.

Similarly, Catherine of Genoa encourages us to throw ourselves into the arms of God and not to rely on worldly possessions. Her biography bears out the truth of her words. Catherine was born into a prosperous and important religious family in 1447. In 1463 she married a man committed to wealth and its increase, and this was the source of no little tension. But when her husband lost the bulk of his fortune, the two of them decided to live and work among the poor in Genoa. In this life she found greater joy and fulfillment than when she enjoyed wealth and ease. Her main work is called Life and Teachings, and in it she writes:

I … saw others who were fighting against their evil inclinations and forcing themselves to resist them. But I saw that the more they struggled against them, the more they committed them. So I said to them, “You are right in lamenting your sins and imperfections, and I would be lamenting with you if it were not for the fact that God is holding me. You cannot defend yourself and I cannot defend myself. The thing we must do is renounce the care of ourselves unto God, who can defend our true self. Only then can God do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”

As to the renouncing of ourselves, I told them, “Take a piece of bread and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance goes into you to nourish the body and the rest is eliminated because your body no longer needs it. For the body is more important than the bread; it was created as a means, but it is not to remain forever with us. Likewise, we must remove all evil inclinations from our bodies; they cannot live on within us, lest we die.”26

According to Catherine, the world and material goods cannot compare with joy that comes with spiritual growth. This is a lesson that cuts with keen and sharp agility, piercing to the heart of the materialistic American ethos.

The results of perseverance through adversity. Patience in adversity brings benefits, argues James. Many of the giants of Christian spirituality agree. Thomas à Kempis notes that perseverance in adversity cleanses us, Benedict of Nursia shows that it creates humility, and Malcolm Muggeridge argues that it allows us to minister to others.

Thomas à Kempis became a monk at the age of nineteen in 1399. His great spiritual treatise, The Imitation of Christ, is his most significant work (though some believe that it was written by Gerhard Groote and edited by Thomas). In the following passage Thomas discusses the usefulness of difficulties:

And yet, temptations can be useful to us even though they seem to cause us nothing but pain. They are useful because they can make us humble, they can cleanse us, and they can teach us. All of the saints passed through times of temptation and tribulation, and they used them to make progress in the spiritual life…. No one is completely free of temptations because the source of temptation is in ourselves…. We cannot win this battle by running away alone; the key to victory is true humility and patience; in them we overcome the enemy.27

Benedict of Nursia was born in A.D. 480, and in 529 he founded a monastery at Monte Cassino. Christianity had been made the favored religion of the empire by Constantine more than a century earlier, and Benedict saw that already the faith had begun to be mixed with the secular. In this context Benedict wrote The Rule, a justly famous set of disciplines for the spiritual life. In the following passage Benedict writes on the spiritual fruit of humility. He sees affliction and difficulty as one of the tools God uses to develop this trait in our lives:

The fourth step of humility is accepting the hardships of the commandments and enduring with patience the injuries and afflictions we face. We are called to endure and not grow weary or give up, but to hold fast. The Scriptures teach us, “They that persevere unto the end shall be saved.”

Those who have faith must bear every disagreeable thing for the Lord, keeping in mind the promise, “But in all these things we shall overcome because of Him who loves us.” God shall try us by fire just as silver is tried and purified. Our Lord teaches us that when we are struck on one cheek, we must turn the other; when asked for a piece of our clothing, give the whole thing; when asked to go one mile, go two; when we are cursed by others, we must bless them.28

How different are we, who wish to see justice rendered unto our enemies, and how weak is our will to forgive.

In a poignantly honest passage Malcolm Muggeridge reflects on the choices he made in life and points out that choosing to remain in conditions that our culture would label crazy allows one to grow in spiritual stature. He writes:

I ran away and stayed away; Mother Teresa moved in and stayed. That was the difference. She, a nun, rather slightly built, with a few rupees in her pocket; not particularly clever, or particularly gifted in the arts of persuasion. Just with this Christian love shining about her; in her heart and on her lips. Just prepared to follow her Lord, and in accordance with his instructions regard every derelict left to die in the streets as him, to hear in the cry of every abandoned child, even in the tiny squeak of the discarded fetus, the cry of the Bethlehem child; to recognize in every leper’s stumps the hands which once touched heads and made them calm, brought back health to sick flesh and twisted limbs. As for my expiations on Bengal’s wretched social conditions—I regret to say that I doubt whether, in any divine accounting, they will equal one single quizzical half smile bestowed by Mother Teresa on a street urchin who happened to catch her eye.29

Muggeridge points out that one benefit from patient endurance of affliction is that we are granted the opportunity to minister to others who are similarly afflicted. These are hard words, but true. My wife and I have been married for fifteen years and are without children. The physicians say that we will never be able to have children. The manic and unexpected emotions of this painful want are difficult to describe. But my wife and I have been able to come alongside others who face similar pain—the pain of a mother whose child died in childbirth, or that of couples who, like ourselves, are without children. I cannot say that we take great comfort in this role, but we have found it to be a role that we can play.

Do not judge. James has already provided teaching on the question of passing judgment (4:11–12), but he does so here again. He warns the poor against taking judgment, even righteous judgment, into their own hands, because the wealthy who have been their oppressors are also their brothers and sisters in Christ. The call of James is to love these brothers and sisters in the concrete, not just in the abstract. This is no light task. Eric Hoffer, the San Francisco longshoreman-philosopher made famous in the 1960s, once observed, “It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor.”30

One of the striking issues in this passage is that the wealthy who have exploited the poor have not even asked for forgiveness, and yet James urges the poor to forgive. This is one of the most difficult issues that faces a human being. In her remarkable novel The River Beyond the World, Janet Peery touches on this theme. The novel is the story of Luisa, who as a young girl lives with her mother and with Chavela, her aunt. Chavela is often cruel, especially to Luisa.

Once, when her mother was grinding corn, Luisa asked why Chavela was so mean. “Hearts are made two ways,” her mother said. “Some are full with what they’re given, no matter how small, and others can’t forget what they can’t have.”

“She’s mean,” Luisa insisted. “And that’s a sin.”

Her mother stopped to cool the mano, then sprinkled kernels onto the metate and blew on them to give them courage. She shook her head. “Forgive her.”

“She never asks.”

Her mother shook her arms, then resumed rolling. The corn crunched between the stones. “All the more reason.”31

There is great wisdom in this passage. Yeats once said that a life of such compassion and denial eventually deadens the spirit—“Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart”32—but Yeats had not considered the heart that is full of service to God. Luisa is justified in her anger and condemnation of Chavela, for she is a cruel and undeserving aunt. It would be unnatural for Luisa to forgive her aunt, yet her mother wisely offers such counsel.

A murderer who confesses and seems to display signs of remorse moves us, generally, to the serious consideration of leniency. After all, we all have erred, we all have had irrational impulses, and we all can, perhaps, imagine ourselves in a similar position. But a remorseless criminal earns our hatred and our irrational fear, for we cannot conceive of such a brazen and indifferent attitude. So it is with these wealthy in James 5. They may be vaguely aware that some of their poor employees have died as a result of their demand for luxurious ease (as 5:6 suggests). But they have no notion of the individuals they have harmed. In such cases it is usual for the wronged and maligned to desire some measure of vengeance, but James forbids it. To demand vengeance is to be guilty of the very crime committed against them. “The Judge,” James says, “is standing at the door!” (5:9).

James says that God does not wish us to condemn one another. Behind this statement stands another reason, namely, that we can too easily become guilty of the same sins ourselves. We are to be patient and refrain from condemnation, for each is a necessary ingredient for the spiritual journey to which James calls us. To condemn is to sink to the level of those who perpetrate wrong. To endure with patience is to set one’s feet on the path to spiritual maturity.

Original Meaning

Avoid Complaining (5:9)

IF WE ARE correct in seeing that this section has as its primary audience the poor, who suffer the darts and lethal indifference of the merchants (cf. 4:13–17) and the landed gentry (cf. 5:1–6), then in verse 9 James has a warning for them as well: In spite of the abuse you have enured, do not grumble. The key term here, as Davids notes,5 is kat’ allelon (“against each other”). James reminds the poor that the wealthy, so often the self-imposed enemies of the poor, are sisters and brothers, fellow believers in Christ. Even understandable feelings of enmity for what they may have suffered at the hands of the indifferent wealthy lays the poor open to judgment. Only Christ, the Judge, has the right so to criticize. Internal bickering is an evil that can easily beset and occupy the church, thereby preventing it from its primary task.

Life does bring trials, of course, but no one is served by the cultivation of a spirit of complaining. James would have us remember 3:16 and 4:2, that complaining leads not to peace but to disorder, nor does it do anything to alleviate the real problem. James buttresses his point by reminding his readers that judgment is coming and that he has already enjoined them in the name of the Judge from speaking any kind of evil one against another (4:11).