EXPLODING BOMBS
By
D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The
Epistle of James can truthfully be described as a succession of exploding
bombs; a fact which may explain why it is so rarely quoted: its drastic
commands are, for conventional religion, nothing short of a revolution. But in this very fact we find a priceless
diamond. The shock of disagreeable and
costly truth is God’s challenge to us all, a dynamic of heaven on the soul for
translating truth into life. God’s ideal
for His Church is a much more wonderful life than we may have ever realized, or
than we may ever have attained.
CLASS
We
take some of the most prominent, and the first relates to class. All class distinction is forbidden in
the Church of Christ. "Ye have regard to him that weareth the fine clothing, and say, Sit thou here in a good
place; and ye say to the poor man, Stand thou there, or sit under my footstool”
(Jas. 2: 3). Bishop Gobat writes:- “The
WORKS
Our
second tremendous danger is the neglect or denial of works. “Wilt thou know, O
vain man, that faith without works is barren?” (2:
20). The danger is wonderfully
illustrated by the fact that it is the great re-discoverer of justification by
faith whom James completely stumbles. Martin
Luther not only denied all Divine authority in the Apostle’s letter, and said
it had no inspiration, but he pronounced it ‘an
epistle of straw’, or, as we should say, trash. He expresses exactly the revolt of many
evangelicals [today]
against the truths of Christian
responsibility. Luther says, “The Epistle lacks all evangelical character.” But faith must be proved by some test, and the test that Scripture propounds is
holy works: our root is in Christ, but our fruits are a thousand activities
for Him: if we have no fruit whatever, there can be no root; and
if we have but little fruit, we are barren. The Apostle states both: (1) “Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself”,
(2) “Faith, apart from works, is barren."
If a man is without saving faith, he
is a corpse: if a [regenerate] believer is
without working faith, he is a barren fruit-tree; and our Lord enforces this truth of no justification for reward without
works with terrible emphasis. “Every branch in me” - that is, every living
branch, every [eternally] saved soul - “that beareth not fruit, he
taketh it away" (John 15:: 2): it is not pruned, for fruit; but removed altogether - by death.
CRITICISM
The
Apostle so ignites our third danger that it flames in a spiritual blitz. “The tongue is a fire,
and is set on fire by hell: it is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison”
(3: 6).* As one writer says:- “The spoken word, like an arrow from the quiver, has its
mark. Nothing is more unaccountable than
the spell that lurks in the spoken word. A kind word will give courage to a despondent
heart; and, struck by a cruel word, a gentle spirit has sobbed itself into the
grave.” We are what
we speak; Christ Himself is summed up as ‘the Word‘; and the spoken, written, or printed word
can be just as powerful after we are dead. A cobra entered a West Indian church during
the service. A person present slipped
out, procured a weapon, and cut off the snake’s head. After the service, in the crowd that gathered,
a native touched the dead snake’s head with his foot. He drew back his foot with a cry of pain; and
in an hour he was dead. Poison from the
tongue can survive death. So the Apostle
says:- “Speak not one against
another, brethren” (4: 11). One writer puts it thus:-
“Calumnies and reproaches are a fire blown up by the
breath of hell. The Devil ‘hath been a
liar from the beginning’ (John 8: 44), and an accuser of the brethren, and he loveth to make
others like himself. Learn, then, to
abhor revilings, contentions, and reproaches, as hell
flames: these are but the eruptions of an infernal fire” (J. Bolton). In
the beautiful words of David:- “I said, I will take heed of my ways, that I offend not with
my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a bridle, when the wicked is before me.”
[* The extraordinarily vivid images and graphic
language of this Apostle prove that such language is perfectly permissible,
even having (as here) the Holy Spirit’s inspiration: each author is to write in
the character and with the gifts that God has given him.]
WORLDLINESS
The
language of our fourth peril is no less dynamic. “Ye
adulteresses” - become such because he is speaking of the Bride of
Christ - “know ye not that the friendship of the world
is enmity with God?” (4: 4). Not delight in God’s lovely world, which He
has Himself pronounced ‘very good’; but
friendship with the fallen, evil, human world: worldly interests - politics, art, science, war; worldly pursuits -
wealth, fame, power, rank; worldly pleasures - the theatre, the cinema, the
dance, the public-house. The Apostle
John puts it negatively:- “Love not the
world, neither the things that are in
the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2: 15). Love of the world creates, spiritually, a
drug-addict. The Bible becomes dull:
prayer becomes irksome: worship is abandoned: apostasy is on the doorstep. The words are unutterably solemn:- “Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh
himself an enemy of God."
WEALTH
Our
final danger among those we have selected is named as specially a latter-day
peril. “Go to
now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are
coming upon you: ye have laid up your treasure in the last days”
(5: 1). How intensely true it is at this moment in the
Apostle’s description of the epoch:- “Ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter."
One of the most drastic words our
Lord ever uttered enforces this truth:- “I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a
needle’s eye, than for a rich man to
enter into the
INTERSESSION
One
word of the Apostle exceedingly fits the whole situation. “Confess your sins
therefore one to another, and pray one for another, that
ye may be healed. The supplication of a
righteous man availeth much in its working” -
in its effectiveness, its answers (5: 16). In the lovely words of Ambrose:- “Let thy mother the Church weep
for thee; let her wash and bathe thy faults with her tears: our Lord doth love
that many should become supplicants for one.” This is the golden sequel of it all: we each
need the prayers, of us all; and we can all agree to pray for each. And it is James himself
who says, “He giveth more grace”
(4: 6). Beautifully is the truth put by Archbishop
Trench: “The fountain of God’s grace is not a scanty
little spring in the desert, round which thirsty travellers meet to strive and
struggle, muddying the waters with their feet, pushing one another away, lest
those waters be drawn dry by others before they come to partake of them
themselves; but a mighty inexhaustible river, on the banks of which all may
stand, and of which none may grudge, lest, if others drink largely and freely,
there will not remain enough for themselves.”
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