NOTES for Jam 3:11-18; Jam 4:1-6

It seems that an intelligent person can be either evil or good—what connection is there between intelligence and moral and ethical categories? But the Apostle James distinguishes wisdom from above from demonic wisdom. And the first sign of demonic "wisdom" is envy and quarrelsomeness... Painful as it is to admit, these are the hardest things to free ourselves from. We have become far too accustomed to expressing all our grievances to everyone around us in the clearest possible terms—in short, to making scenes and grumbling at every opportunity. And it seems to us that this will help: if I just explain to this idiot that he is an idiot, the world will become a better place... But the wisdom that comes down from above, from God, teaches meekness. A truly wise person knows how to remain silent when necessary and, when possible, to correct the person who has gone astray with meekness and love.

The Letter of James contains many such deep sayings and aphorisms that need to be pondered. "The fruit... is sown": that is, it speaks about the very beginning of the action of righteousness, about the conditions in which righteousness can begin to act. "Righteousness" here also carries the senses of "justice," "truth," and "rightness." How natural it is for us, as human beings, to struggle, even to fight, in order to prove that we are right, to achieve what we consider justice. And here Scripture restrains us: righteousness acts only through those who keep peace.

Peace is not simply the absence of war, hatred, or fighting; peace is a very positive state of thoughts, feelings, and relationships that find harmony and balance by relying on the constant and unchanging love of God.

At the end of the third chapter of his General Epistle, the apostle James speaks about the difference between human and divine wisdom. In this case the issue is wisdom in the ancient sense of the word: following the way of life, the right choice of path. Several decades after the apostle James, the Didache, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, would formulate the general biblical idea of wisdom, accepted by Christians as well, in these words: "There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and the difference between the two is great." For the apostle James, wisdom first of all makes it possible to choose the way of life. The apostle says that such wisdom is given only by God; the rest he calls earthly, merely natural, and demonic wisdom, distinguishing, as the Didache does, only two ways.

Divine wisdom, given to people, according to the apostle's word, bears in a person's life good fruit, which he calls the fruit of righteousness. The apostle uses this term after the Lord Jesus Christ, who more than once spoke about the fruits borne in our life by the seed sown by God. This fruit of righteousness, "truth" in the Synodal translation, is in essence a synonym for eternal life, because it implies freedom from sin, unity with God, and therefore freedom from death.

The apostle James gives his addressees the most practical possible instructions about how the fruit of righteousness, the good fruit of life, is attained. He devotes a significant part of the whole Epistle to this, but his thought is expressed most briefly in these words: "And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." Here we encounter a certain feature of the Synodal translation. The Greek text of the Epistle literally says that "the fruit of righteousness is sown peacefully among those who make peace." The issue, therefore, is more than preserving peace in one's own heart. The apostle speaks of building peace within ourselves and, of course, around ourselves: the whole third chapter is devoted to this. Building peace, the ministry of reconciliation, is the chief thing that leads a person to life. All other ways the apostle calls demonic.

The words of the catholic Epistle of the Apostle James, that the same spring cannot pour forth both salt water and fresh, are unfortunately very convicting. The apostle says that if, while claiming to know the truth, you harbor bitter envy and contentiousness in your heart, then you are a liar. “Do not boast and lie against the truth,” says the apostle. The boasting in question is precisely the claim to the name of Christian made by a contentious person.

The Apostle James explains in detail what characterizes a person who lives by true divine wisdom. He says that this wisdom is pure, which means it is not directed toward one’s own exaltation. Heavenly wisdom is peaceable: it seeks peace above all else. It is gentle and open to reason, because it values peace more than one’s own human sense of being right. Heavenly wisdom is full of mercy and good fruits, because it seeks to fulfil the will of Christ. It is free from divisions (“impartial” in the Synodal text) and without hypocrisy, because it acknowledges that the divine law is one and the same for everyone.

The apostle’s words in the concluding part of today’s passage, “Where do wars and quarrels among you come from?” can be applied equally to individual Christians and to the large “divisions” of the Christian people. We display the contentiousness of which the Apostle James speaks when we grumble at Christians standing beside us and arrogantly lecture them, even though we ourselves are no different from them. And when we reproach others for dioceses opened on our territory (ours, not God’s), although we ourselves have plenty of dioceses in foreign lands, that is the same contentiousness. Alas.

The apostle's discourse on the need to bridle the tongue is one of the most eloquent passages in his epistle. From antiquity there has come down to us a story about Aesop, whose master twice sent him to the market with orders to bring back the best and the worst thing in the world. Both times Aesop brought back a tongue—the instrument of both evil and good. But while Aesop merely bore witness to the actual state of affairs, James, acknowledging that reality when blessing and cursing come from the same mouth, concludes: my brothers, this should not be so.

These words of James seem to be contradicted by his own statement that no human being can tame the tongue. This thought might be called excessively pessimistic; yet it is not difficult to understand that James had grounds for such a claim, for he is speaking about purely human efforts. But if we rely not on them but on the wisdom that comes from above, much changes.

How often we are afraid... How often we say, “Oh, I am so weak; there is nothing I can do...” And we surrender without a fight, giving the devil an opportunity to act through our inaction. Yet the Apostle James tells us that we can free ourselves and, moreover, that it is not so difficult! Simply resist the devil, and he will flee from you! But it is we who flee... Why? Why does it seem to us that nothing can be done? Perhaps it is easier for us that way? But if we sincerely desire to draw near to God so that He will draw near to us, there will be no choice: unless we resist the devil, we will not be able to draw near to Him.

Continuing his discussion of spiritual life, James speaks of humility as its unshakable foundation. Modern usage has completely distorted the meaning of this concept. Today, humility is most often understood as something between nonresistance to evil and an indifferent fatalism: “freedom or captivity—it is all the same.” In religious circles, humility also implies a particular manner of behavior that would more accurately be called an affectation of humility: lowered eyes, a quiet voice, constrained movements…

Yet the biblical books mean nothing of the kind by humility. A meek or humble person may look very different indeed from a humble person as we understand the term today.

One might recall Moses, for example, who is called “the meekest of men” in the Book of Exodus. Clearly, humility in the Bible means neither indifference nor some special manner of behavior. It is plainly something else. If we look at Moses, for instance, or at other people whom the biblical writers call humble, it becomes clear what they all have in common and what precisely the Bible calls humility. Above all, each of them has surrendered himself entirely to God's will.

Outwardly, the lives of these people may differ greatly from one another, but none of them lived merely as he pleased. Of course, God forces no one to obey Him. He simply offers to take part in a person's life. The person is free. But if someone wants a full relationship with God, the simplest course is to place their life at the disposal of the One who gave it, and henceforth to act only with His knowledge.

Of course, God may well leave certain things to a person's discretion. But it matters that permission to act at one's own discretion should come from Him, not from oneself. In the apostle's words, not “we will go and do this,” but “if God wills, we will go and do this.” This is not a formality or an empty qualification.

Here two wills are brought into accord: God's and the human will. It is precisely this accord which, if it becomes complete, will in itself rule out all inner wavering and vacillation, let alone the inner division James calls double-mindedness. Otherwise, there is only futility, an illusion of life, attempts to reach a goal that never succeed, and surprise that God does not answer prayers or listen to requests. A semblance of life instead of real life. Outer darkness instead of the Kingdom.

James does not specify from whom those who ask wrongly ask and do not receive, but we may compare these words with what he wrote at the beginning of his epistle about people who turn to the Lord not with complete faith, but with divided minds. Even today one may hear the question: why do we not receive what we pray for? James’s answer is simple: consider whether you ask in faith and whether you always ask for what is good for you. Is your prayer divided and weakened by lack of faith? Of course, much that belongs to the higher world cannot be explained “in human terms,” and we should not imitate Job’s friends, whose reasoning was logical and plausible but wrong. Yet sometimes we must still reflect on James’s words.

James also speaks of the inadmissibility of friendship with the world, and these words have often been understood literally. But we must withdraw not from the world that the Lord created and loved, and into which He sent His Son, but from the sin that has afflicted and enslaved the world. It turns out to be simple to resist sin: one need only submit to God and, with His help, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. This is true, yet for some reason what is simplest and most accessible to us proves very difficult. Perhaps this is because we are afraid to draw near to God, since doing so requires us to reject many tendencies that He hates and that bind us to the sinful world...