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 Looking at James 3:5-6 (Bible Study Notes)

Paul emphasised Christianity as the spiritual law of liberty: faith as the most strongest dynamic. John emphasised that the deepest quality in God is love; and the life of God in man is love. But James? James stood for rightness; his very name marked him out as “the Just:” integrity was his peculiar characteristic. He was honest, earnest, real. And if you read through this letter, you find from first to last, one continued vindication of the first principles of morality against the make-believe  -the smoke and mirrors- of religion.

  1. He protested against double-standards and all that nit-picking “If any one among you seems to be religious and yet can’t hold his tongue… that person’s religion is vain.”
  2. He protested against that wheedling way of groveling to the rich and second-classing the poor. “If you show favouritism you commit sin.”
  3. He protested against that que sera sera type of fatalism which suggests we blame God for our passions. “Let no one say, when tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot tempt to evil; neither does he tempt any man.”
  4. He protested against that unreality of excitement which turns the earnestness of authentic spirituality  into the enjoyment of listening. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only; deceiving your own souls.”
  5. He protested against that trust in the correctness of theological doctrine which neglected the cultivation of character. “What does it profit, if one say that he has faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?”

Read  James’s epistle through, this is the one point behind it all: all this talk about religion, and spirituality-words, words, words-no, let us have reality. Let us have real living. The Gospel! how can we speak of the Gospel when we excuse ourselves and slander one another? Love and faith are to be expressed in a matrix of justice, mercy, truth.

God give us the grace to shut up. And to recognize the folly and the guilt of the things we say. 

Slander (not a legal discussion, but a spiritual one) is compared in the text to poison-“the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” There are poisons so destructive that a single drop in the veins produces death in three seconds flat

Many poisons indetectable. Can’t even be identified under microscope.

What is the Spirit saying? In  James’s day, as now, it would appear that there were idle men and idle women, who went about from house to house, dropping slander as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect it as poison. Slander generally deals with half-truths. Maybe not even a word, just a raised eyebrow, a significant look…and the job is done. And the venom is left behind, to work and rankle, to inflame your heart and brain and rob you of sleep like a fever.


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