NOTES for Jam 1:5
James's mention of wisdom in connection with endurance can at first seem somewhat strange. It can seem that way to us today because wisdom is often associated for us with something bookish, philosophical, and abstract. But wisdom, as the Bible understands it, has always been something practical rather than abstractly speculative. The corresponding Hebrew word, like its Greek equivalent, means above all art, skill, and first of all practical skill. A wise person could be, for example, a skilled craftsman able to make a beautiful thing from stone, wood, or metal: this required both the practical skill of a worker and the sense of beauty proper to an artist. A person able to govern, whether his own house or a whole country, was also called wise.
Here the skill was connected not with a craftsman's trade, but with the experience that makes it possible to build relationships with people, take each person's interests into account, and see that the task is done, not by infringing on someone's interests, but for the common good. But the highest form of wisdom was the wisdom of the righteous person, the experience and skill of righteous life. Righteousness would seem to be God's gift, with little depending on the person. But every gift has to be received, and the skill of righteous life is connected precisely with this ability. How can one follow God despite one's own sinfulness, and walk so as to stumble less?
The wisdom of one seeking righteous life was connected with the answer to this question. James is speaking about this wisdom. And the steadfastness he mentions, which would be a more exact translation of the Greek word rendered "patience" in the Synodal translation, plays a large role in acquiring it. The spiritual core on which a person's whole life, inner and outer, rests can be firm only when outward events do not erode or destroy it. And James advises us to ask God how to make it so. This is understandable: it is God who makes a person righteous, opening the road into the Kingdom to him.