NOTES for Jam 1:13

At times, the very encounter with the word "temptation" in the Bible becomes a temptation. Many times Scripture speaks of certain temptations that God sends to a person, beginning perhaps with Gen. 22:1. At the same time, we read in the Lord's Prayer: "Lead us not into temptation." And today's verse says something else as well. So does God tempt us or not?

The point is that the word has two different meanings, which in modern language can be described as "testing" and "provocation." The difference lies in the goal of the event. Tests can be given to us, and in a certain sense all our life is a test, so that we pass through them and acquire the experience necessary for our maturing and growth in our relationship with God. It is not fitting for us to run away from such "temptations."

The goal of evil provocations is different. It is that we fall, move away from God, and take the path of self-will, lovelessness, and violence. "Temptations" of that kind never come from God; we ask God to deliver us from them. And, as the Lord Jesus says, when you ask, believe that you receive. Then only the tests sent by God will remain in our life, tests for which we can only thank Him.

The word ‘patience’, so important in today's words of the apostle James, is one of the most important concepts in the apostolic Epistles as a whole. In the Epistle to the Romans alone—a key text for the apostle Paul's theology—it occurs no fewer than eight times in a relatively short work. This count includes both God's long-suffering and human patience. Let us recall these wonderful words: and not only this, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces patience, patience proven character, and proven character hope; and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:4). The apostle James says today: let patience have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. In fact, the only reason we have to be patient is that we lack one perfection or another. We must bear with our own imperfection. This is what it is important to understand. And the Lord bears with our imperfection… And who knows whose patience is harder to exercise? Besides, we also bear with the imperfections of the people around us. And any modern psychologist will say that the only factor making a marriage stable is the ability of at least one of the two partners to be patient. Finally, even folk wisdom says: God bore with things and told us to do the same. This word is also of the utmost importance in ascetic literature.

But how can we be patient like that? They are saints; they were placed in exceptional historical circumstances; moreover, they were crowned with glory… Yes, but even in our everyday lives we must remember this patience of theirs, so as to understand how sinful our complaints about life are. Remember that our God is ‘the God of patience and consolation’ Rom 15:5).

In his epistle, James recalls one of the key concepts of the Yahwist and, later, Jewish tradition: wisdom. Its meaning and content changed over time, but one thing remained constant: among Semitic peoples in general and the Jews in particular, wisdom was never associated solely with theory, abstract thought, or abstract knowledge. Wisdom was always seen as something practical, more a skill or ability than theoretical knowledge. After the Babylonian exile, in the Second Temple period, what was meant above all was the skill of righteousness, the practice of spiritual life.

This may seem strange: how can we speak of a skill of righteousness if righteousness is not a human achievement at all, but God's gift? Yet the apostle clearly formulates one of the fundamental requirements of righteous living: a person's inner wholeness. The double-minded person is not firmly established on the path—“A person whose thoughts are divided is unsteady in all their ways”—this is James' central idea. Indeed, from the biblical authors' perspective, the soul is the stream of life given to us by God, which we direct and manage as we see fit. We dwell in it, and it dwells in us.

But we can live fully only when this stream flows in a single channel, without splitting into rivulets constantly threatening to run dry. What our life will be like depends on our spiritual condition, on how undivided our will is. It is in this context that James speaks of steadfastness (“patience”), acquired through trials (“temptations”). Faith is above all trust in God; it presupposes that our life is centered on God's presence, without which no communion with God is possible.

For communion with God to be truly uninterrupted, however, our will must be rooted in it, rather than being “tossed about” by every outside influence. This focusing of the will on the Presence develops as a practical skill through the trials a person undergoes, which distract them from what matters most. If, however, a person uses these trials to strengthen the skill of focusing their attention on God, the trials make them wise—in the sense of that practical wisdom which is the skill of communion with God, opening the path of righteousness to them.

James addresses the twelve tribes in the dispersion. This designation has from ancient times referred to the Jewish people, but should we understand that James is addressing only Christians from among the Jews? Since the content of the letter concerns all Christians, by the twelve tribes we are entitled to understand the brothers who make up the Church, the people of God of the New Covenant.

The call to rejoice in temptations initially makes a strange impression. One can, of course, find a reason for joy in the fact that if the powers of darkness attack you, this means that you do not belong to them. But such awareness can lead to self-satisfaction, then to self-deception and proud self-exaltation, and that is itself a satanic trap.

So it is not temptations themselves that we should rejoice in, but the fact that the Lord gives us strength to cope with them, to stand firm against enticements. We should not fear them and lose our heads out of fear, but we should recognize them in time and be ready to receive help from above.