Speaking of Christian life, James mentions the “free fullness of the Torah” or the “fullness of the Torah in freedom”; the corresponding Greek expression allows both interpretations, while the Russian Synodal translation offers “the perfect law of liberty.” This is, of course, not only or even primarily about...
Speaking of Christian life, James mentions the “free fullness of the Torah” or the “fullness of the Torah in freedom”; the corresponding Greek expression allows both interpretations, while the Russian Synodal translation offers “the perfect law of liberty.” This is, of course, not only or even primarily about the Torah as legislation or a moral code, but about what was called the inner Torah in Gospel times. The Torah was then viewed not only as an external law but also as an inner spiritual and moral imperative, as God's will addressed directly to the person. Each commandment became for that person an intention of God Himself addressed directly to them, which they were free to accept or ignore.
Such a Torah became the word of God, God's call addressed directly to the person. It was this inner Torah that the learned rabbis of those times had in mind when they spoke of the “easy yoke of the Torah,” which one voluntarily takes upon oneself in order to set out on the path of righteousness and be freed from the burden of sin weighing upon one. Yet freedom from sin's power was possible only by receiving the Torah in all its fullness, submitting one's life to it completely, and becoming what was called a “living Torah” in Gospel times. Only then did the Torah become the “Torah of freedom,” freeing a person from sin's power.
Before Christ, no one had achieved this, and the first and second generations of Christians saw Christ as the sole example of this living Torah: He had indeed been free from the power of evil and sin from the very beginning. In following Christ, however, His disciples hoped that with their Teacher's help they too could be freed from sin's power and become a living Torah like Him. This is what the apostle reminds the recipients of his epistle of.
He urges them not to stop at outward things alone, as probably often happened in the church communities of the time, where merely being present at the assembly, listening to the reading and preaching, and taking part in the breaking of bread was considered sufficient. All this may touch a person outwardly, but without corresponding inner work nothing will come of it. The person will remain as they are and, once they have left the church assembly, will soon forget the beautiful words and lofty ideals. This is not Christian life, but only its illusion, as the apostle reminds his readers.
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1:16 Do not err - It is a grievous error to ascribe the evil and not the good which we receive to God.
1:17 No evil, but every good gift - Whatever tends toholiness. And every perfect gift - Whatever tends to glory.Descendeth from the Father of lights - The appellation of Father is here used with peculiar propriety. It follows, "he begat us." He is the Father of all light, material or spiritual, in the kingdom of grace and of glory. With whom is no variableness - No change in his understanding. Or shadow of turning - in his will. He infallibly discerns all good and evil; and invariably loves one, and hates the other. There is, in both the Greek words, a metaphor taken from the stars, particularly proper where the Father of lights is mentioned.Both are applicable to any celestial body, which has a daily vicissitude of day and night, and sometimes longer days, sometimes longer nights. In God is nothing of this kind.He is mere light. If there Is any such vicissitude, it is in ourselves, not in him.
1:18 Of his own will - Most loving, most free, most pure, just opposite to our evil desire, Jam 1:15.Begat he us - Who believe. By the word of truth - The true word, emphatically so termed; the gospel. That we might be a kind of first - fruits of his creatures - Christians are the chief and most excellent of his visible creatures; and sanctify the rest. Yet he says, A kind of - For Christ alone is absolutely the first - fruits.
1:19 Let every man be swift to hear - This is treated of from Jam 1:21 to the end of the next chapter. Slow to speak - Which is treated of in he third chapter.Slow to wrath - Neither murmuring at God, nor angry at his neighbour. This is treated of in the third, and throughout the fourth and fifth chapters.
1:20 The righteousness of God here includes all duties prescribed by him, and pleasing to him.
1:21 Therefore laying aside - As a dirty garment. All the filthiness and superfluity of wickedness - For however specious or necessary it may appear to worldly wisdom, all wickedness is both vile, hateful, contemptible, and really superfluous.Every reasonable end may be effectually answered without any kind or degree of it. Lay this, every known sin, aside, or all your hearing is vain. With meekness - Constant evenness and serenity of mind. Receive - Into your ears, your heart, your life. The word - Of the gospel. Ingrafted - In believers, by regeneration, Jam 1:18 and by habit, Heb 5:14.Which is able to save your souls - The hope of salvation nourishes meekness.
1:23 Beholding his face in a glass - How exactly does the scripture glass show a man the face of his soul!
1:24 He beheld himself, and went away - To other business.And forgot - But such forgetting does not excuse.
1:25 But he that looketh diligently - Not with a transient glance, but bending down, fixing his eyes, and searching all to the bottom. Into the perfect law - Of love as established by faith. St. James here guards us against misunderstanding what St. Paul says concerning the "yoke and bondage of the law." He who keeps the law of love is free, Joh 8:31, etc He that does not, is not free, but a slave to sin, and a criminal before God, Jam 2:10.And continueth therein - Not like him who forgot it, and went away. This man - There is a peculiar force in the repetition of the word. Shall be happy - Not barely in hearing, but doing the will of God.
1:26 If any one be ever so religious - Exact in the outward offices of religion. And bridleth not his tongue - From backbiting, talebearing, evilspeaking, he only deceiveth his own heart, if he fancies he has any true religion at all.
1:27 The only true religion in the sight of God, is this, to visit - With counsel, comfort, and relief. The fatherless and widows - Those who need it most. In their affliction - In their most helpless and hopeless state. And to keep himself unspotted from the world - From the maxims, tempers, and customs of it. But this cannot be done, till we have given our hearts to God, and love our neighbour as ourselves.