James opens with “Faith Without Works Is Dead” and carries its history toward “Ye Have Heaped Treasure Together.” Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because the testing works patience. He turns on employers who held back the wages of the men who mowed their fields, and says the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
A clear path through the book’s major scenes, turning points, teachings, and lasting themes.
01
James 1–2
Faith Without Works Is Dead
Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because the testing works patience. Ask for wisdom and do not waver. Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, and be doers of the word and not hearers only, like a man who looks in a mirror and forgets what he looked like. Then the example that gives the book its edge: if a rich man and a poor man walk into your assembly and you seat them differently, you have become judges with evil thoughts.
Be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Then the images pile up: a bit in a horse’s mouth, a rudder on a great ship, a spark that sets a forest alight. With the same mouth we bless God and curse men made in his likeness. A fountain does not send sweet water and bitter out of the same opening. The wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated.
Where do wars and fightings among you come from? From the desires that war inside you. You ask and receive not because you ask amiss, to spend it on your own pleasures. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Then a word about business plans: you do not know what will be on the morrow, for your life is a vapour.
He turns on employers who held back the wages of the men who mowed their fields, and says the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Be patient like a farmer waiting for rain. Swear not, but let your yea be yea. Pray when afflicted, sing when merry, call the elders when sick, and confess your faults one to another. Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed.
