§ 4. THE POSITION OF GOD TOWARDS SINFUL MEN

The position of God towards man as sinful is described in accordance with His nature as the simply good, His nature as light. His moral perfection has necessarily the two sides, that He demands everything good, and that He grants everything good. In respect of the first, He has revealed His perfect goodness in His law (i. 25, ii. 8-12). That the Mosaic law is meant by this vóμos is shown by the reference to the Ten Commandments in ii. 11; but a different view of this law is taken from that which was fostered by the scribes and Pharisees among the Jews, though such a view as might be expected from a deeper and more genuine Judaism even before Christ. For while the Pharisaic-Rabbinic doctrine of the law was split up into a thousand particular maxims, James conceived it as a living and inviolable unity. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law," he says (ii. 10, 11), "and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all. For He who said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill. Now, if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." In other words, the holy will of God which is expressed in the law is in itself an undivided indissoluble whole. The satisfaction of all its demands is required in order to give a truly righteous man, and whoever violates it in one point has violated its collective demand, and is not righteous in the sight of God, but sinful and guilty. But although the one Lawgiver and Judge, "who is able to save and to destroy" (iv. 12), appears so infinitely strict in this view, yet His desire is—and this leads us over to the beneficent side of His goodness-not to destroy, but to save, for He is very pitiful and of tender mercy (v. 11). He giveth willingly and dλws, simply, without upbraiding the petitioner, or reproaching him beforehand, as a half merciful man does (i. 5). He gives readily, especially to him who asks for wisdom. For the wisdom, the Old Testament notion of which approximates in James to the New Testament notion of the Holy Spirit (cf. iii. 17), is the one true means of help in attaining the moral goal, the divine power for becoming perfect (i. 4, 5). But God also forgives sin (v. 15); wherever a sinner is converted a multitude of sins

are covered, that is, forgiven (v. 20), and mercy rejoices against judgment (ii. 13), that is, it has not to fear judgment -the merciful will obtain mercy (Matt. v. 7). Thus the rigour of the divine judgment is modified as regards those who turn themselves to His mercy. If he who transgresses only one commandment is guilty of all, and he only who offends not in word a perfect man (iii. 2), yet even in the Old Testament God pardoned sinful men, not only an Abraham, but also a Rahab, the forerunner of publicans and sinners (ii. 25), and prepared a glorious end for Job, who certainly was not a man who offended not in word (v. 11). James does not tell us how those inviolable demands of the law for righteousness are reconciled with such gracious procedure on God's part. But this is certain, that he has put no gulf, which must be mediated by some deed of expiation, embracing the world, between divine righteousness and grace. But just as we have already found in the teaching of Jesus, and as corresponds to the faith of prophets and psalmists, he thinks rather of a righteous conduct of God which gives suum cuique, in the sense of love which renders help where one will let himself be helped, and only denies itself where one denies himself to it. "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you" (iv. 18). "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble" (iv. 6). To him who prays aright in believing surrender He gives His divine wisdom, but the doubting who waver between Him and the world will receive nothing (i. 5, 7). Judgment without mercy will be passed on him who does not exercise mercy; on the other hand, mercy rejoiceth against judgment (ii. 13). All these sayings, reminding us of well-known synoptic sayings of Jesus, rest upon the idea of that righteousness of love, that holy goodness, which comes to meet all those who seek it, and will confront with the full strictness of judgment only those who will not allow themselves to be helped by it into goodness. From this it is clear that the righteous and good God will reach His hand to the sinful man, especially with the view to his becoming righteous and good; and that leads us over to the experience and preaching of salvation peculiar to James.

CHAPTER III

THE SALVATION THAT IS IN CHRIST

§ 1. THE SECOND BIRTH

James represents the fundamental Christian experience in one great, simple declaration: "He, that is, God, of His own will begat us through the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures "-you know it, my beloved brethren (i. 18, 19). It it is almost the only direct declaration of the Epistle concerning the salvation experienced in Christ; but it is significant enough. It is the fact of a

new life from God on which the Christian consciousness rests; not the mere fact of forgiveness of sin, or justification, but an inner transformation, a spiritual renewal from the bottom of the heart, such as Jesus set before Nicodemus as the fundamental condition of sharing in the kingdom of God (John iii. 3, 5), and such as was already required in the synoptic introduction to the Sermon on the Mount when that is rightly understood, μетаvоeîтe. This fundamental condition is fulfilled in the author and his readers, not by their own doings. and performances, but by God's free goodness: “Bovλnbeis åttekúnσev ýμâs," of His own free will. James immediately before had reminded them that none but good and perfect gifts could come down from the Father of lights, the pure goodness of heaven; and of that, this the best and the most perfect gift which he or his readers could receive is the full and sufficient proof. And this greatest favour of God is enhanced by the fact that in it they have been privileged above innumerable others—that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. God of His free goodness has chosen them before other nations, before the mass of their own people, and made them an arraρxý, consecrated to Him out of His whole rational creation. In them, as the first-fruits, He has initiated humanity into the kingdom of God. And He has done so by the λóyw ảλŋleías, by the word of truth, by which we are, of course, to think of the gospel as the word of God's perfect revelation. This second birth by the word has some

times been described as a mystic element peculiar to James; but in this the fact is overlooked that the same view, only somewhat more diffusely stated, is repeated in the First Epistle of Peter (1 Pet. i. 23-25), and also that both authors only repeat a fundamental thought of Jesus. When, in the Parable of the Sower, Jesus compares the word preached by Him to good seed which He scatters in the heart, and which, wherever it finds good soil, brings forth a new development of life leading to good fruits, what is that but the new birth through the word of truth? It is quite a cognate image when James (i. 21) describes the word of truth as the Xoyos éμpuтos which is able to save their souls (in the final judgment), as the word implanted in the heart of the readers whose final result is their ultimate σωτηρία.

§ 2. THE ELECTION AND PROMISE

The same fact of salvation is described in another way in ii. 5: "Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world that they may be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?" Redemption is here brought to remembrance more on its objective historical side. Of course, we are not to think of an act of God before the world was in the case of the ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεός; but just as the choice of Abraham or of Israel in the Old Testament is simply the divine thought of love appearing in history and carried out in a divine work for Abraham and Israel, so here also in the first days of the gospel the election is conceived as the divine purpose to make especially the poor and humble in Israel citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We are thus carried back to the days of Jesus and the beginnings of the Church, in which the poor and lowly were the very people who were laid hold of by the gospel, and the rich and mighty were excluded. Their special susceptibility for the glad message was that in them which corresponded to the divine choice, and gave them the advantage over those. This confirms our idea that the word of truth through which God has regenerated the poor was Jesus' preaching of the kingdom of heaven. In the kλnpovóμovs tŷs βασιλείας, ἧς ἐπηγγείλατο, the kingdom of heaven or kingdom

of God, this main theme of Jesus, we recognise an unmistakable echo of the introductory words of the Sermon on the Mount (Luke vi. 20; Matt. v. 3). But we see at the same time that James, like the first apostles, conceives the kingdom as still in the future. It is promised, they are chosen to inherit it, but they have not yet inherited it; they are rich, but only in faith. The predominating tendency of the primitive apostolic Christianity to dwell in the future meets us here again, and will still further meet us. The idea of the kingdom as already present is not yet formally appropriated, though being born again, and rich in faith, the present possession of salvation is fully felt. Besides the idea of the kingdom, there likewise appears that of life, true eternal life, as a designation of salvation, and it is also conceived as in the future, and is described as the very substance of the gospel (cf. i. 12, στέφανον τῆς ζωῆς, ὃν ἐπηγγείλατο τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν with ii. 5, τῆς βασιλείας, ἧς ἐπηγγείλατο τοῖς ȧyаπwσw avтóν); but this corresponds to the kindred meaning of the two words which we have noted in the synoptic teaching of Jesus. As salvation proper is regarded as future, the gospel of Jesus in this aspect appears under the Old Testament idea of the promise (i. 12, ii. 5). On the other hand, which is a still more remarkable evidence of the Old Testament form of his Christian thought, the author conceives it as law, in order to emphasise what value it has for the Christian even now.

§ 3. THE LAW OF LIBERTY

After James has connected the new birth with the act of God through the word of truth, and has exhorted to a fuller reception of this word now planted in the soul, he goes on to remind them that it is not sufficient to be mere hearers, but that they must likewise be doers of the word (i. 22). And in carrying out this idea he changes his phrase, and the word (of truth) becomes a perfect law of liberty (i. 25). The expression recurs once more (ii. 12) in the statement that the Christian shall one day be judged by the law of liberty; and immediately before, the commandment to love our neighbour gets a similar designation, νόμος βασιλικός (ii. 8.) It is