《The Sermon Bible Commentary – James》(William R. Nicoll)
Editor
Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH (October 10, 1851 - May 4, 1923) was a Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church minister. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of The Expositor for Hodder & Stoughton, a position he held until his death.
In 1885 Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886 he moved south to London, which became the base for the rest of his life. With the support of Hodder and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper, which also gained great influence over opinion in the churches in Scotland.
Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander Maclaren, and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891, and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton.
Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible and The Theological Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897), and a series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from 1904).
He projected but never wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted in 1909, ostensibly for his literrary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.
01 Chapter 1
Verse 4
James 1:4
The Perfect Work of Patience.
I. We can all attain to a certain amount of proficiency at most things we attempt; but there are few who have patience to go on to perfection. In the lives of almost every one there has been at some time an attempt at welldoing. It may have been as the morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away, but there was at least a desire to do right, and good resolutions were formed. What was wanted? Staying power. "The gift of continuance," that is what so many of us want. If genius may be described as long patience or the art of taking pains, even so those who have done for a time the will of God have need of patience that they may receive the blessings promised to them who know how to wait. Saints are those who let patience have its perfect work, who by patient continuance in welldoing seek eternal life.
II. As a rule, the time required for the production of an effect measures the value of that effect. The things that can be developed quickly are of less value than those which require longer time. You can weed a garden or build a house in a much shorter time than you can educate a mind or build up a soul. The training of our reasoning faculties requires a much longer time than the training of our hands. And moral qualities, being higher than intellectual, make an even greater demand upon the patience of their cultivator.
III. Let us remember where it is that we are to get patience in the presence of temptations and sorrows. We must go in prayer, as our Master did in the garden of Gethsemane, to the source of all strength. If He would not go to His trial unprepared, it certainly is not safe for us to do so. By a stroke from the sword the warrior was knighted, small matter if the monarch's hand was heavy. Even so God gives His servants blows of trial when He desires to advance them to a higher stage of spiritual life. Jacobs become prevailing princes, but not until they have wrestled with temptations and prevailed.
E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing, p. 47.
I. Her perfect work patience ever has. Have you ever thought how this is exemplified both in the Divine guidance of the world and in the Divine care under which we all pass in the earliest years of our life? Our young life was hid with God. Our earliest years were Divinely guided. The Lord's protecting care encircled us. He watched over the throbbings of that new life which were the commencement of an immortality of existence. He in every way encircles the young life with Divine care, with a care which is inexpressibly loving and inexpressibly patient. And when the years of infancy have passed by, it may be said of the prattling, observant, eager-eyed, quick-eared little one that patience has done her perfect work.
II. All through the Christian centuries has patience been slowly doing her perfect work. Humanity has been slowly advancing under Divine guidance. Our attitude towards the past should be one of deepest reverence. We should look upon the whole field of past history as the sacred ground of humanity. God's dealings with our forefathers ought to have an undying interest for us. In our inquiries into past history, we should be animated by a desire to discern the traces of God's patience doing her perfect work. We find in reading the life of St. Bernard that he, though ofttimes passing through the midst of the grandest scenery of Europe, though he often passed by the side of that glorious water the lake of Geneva, has left no record of being at all influenced by what strikes the traveller now as being a succession of scenes of marvellous beauty. The Divine Inspirer of humanity with all that is good and noble was revealing to His servant Bernard truths upon which his thought-laden mind pondered as he moved through the heavenly beauty with which the earth is radiant to us. This beauty is discerned by us because God has opened our eyes to see it. This surely is an exemplification in the Divine education of the world of patience having her perfect work.
H. N. Grimley, Tremadoc Sermons, p. 254.
References: James 1:5.—J. Keble, Sermons from Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 321; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 735; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 92. James 1:5-7.—T. Stephenson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 81. James 1:6.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 219. James 1:6, James 1:7.—Church of England Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 41. James 1:9, James 1:10.—Homilist, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 150.
Verse 12
James 1:12
Temptation Treated as Opportunity.
I. The Bible teaches us, and as Christians we believe, that there is a regular course of temptations for us in this life; that there are a number of objects and wishes constantly presenting themselves to us in the natural course of things here that we should not give way to, but resist, although they do present themselves. We see a vast number in the world who seem practically to believe that there are no such things as temptations in the world at all. Scripture is sharp and mistrustful about everything which the world offers. Distrust everything, it would seem to say, till it is proved to be safe. Think everything dangerous and deceitful. The world within you and the world without are evil, and they are placed in you and near you in order that you may have nothing to do with them, in order that by having nothing to do with them, though they are so near, you may gain a more entire and remote distance from them.
II. On the whole it depends entirely on the principle we have in our minds to begin with whether we regard a number of impulses and incitements which surround us every day as calls to induce us or as temptations to try us. In one way of looking at our state here the world is full of temptations; in another it has none. Whether the temptation be to pleasure, or to money-getting, or to hasty speech, or to presumption, there are many who will never see it in any of these cases; that is to say, they see it, but they do not see it as a temptation, but as an opportunity. It never occurs to them to take the contradictory side in the course of things here. If there is anything certain in Scripture it is that we are here in a state of warfare, and we must act as if we were. We must take the severer view of the invitations which we meet with in our course. We must look hostilely upon them, and take them at once for what they are—our foes and opponents—and then we shall have that succour which God has promised.
J. B. Mozley, Parochial and Occasional Sermons, p. 14.
References: James 1:12.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 95; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1834; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. viii., p. 209. James 1:13, James 1:14.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. vi., p. 102; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 94; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 19. James 1:13-15.—Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 339; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 156. James 1:15.—A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 104; J. G. Horder, Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 141. James 1:16, James 1:17.—C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 25. James 1:16-19.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 375.
Verse 17
James 1:17
The Uniformity of Nature.
I. The uniformity of nature rebukes man's faint-heartedness. When we are crushed with many a bereavement, ought it to be a matter of complaint to us that nature, which has, perhaps, caused our transient anguish, should appear to treat us with total disregard? It is a salutary reminder that we make too much of our individual sorrows; that we are but parts of a vast whole; that our days on earth are but a setting forth and a beginning, not a finishing.
II. Uniformity rewards man's efforts. If we could not absolutely rely on the steady unvarying laws of nature, no knowledge could be attained, no triumphs won. The world would have been not a cosmos, but a chaos. It would have been to mankind an intolerable source of terror to live under the reign of the exceptional. But as it is, nature seems to welcome those triumphs over her which are won by obedience to her laws. If man, to his own comfort and advantage, has gained from the universe an almost illimitable power, is not that power due simply and solely to the uniformity of law?
III. This steady uniformity is our pledge of the impartial fidelity of God. So far as the management of the material universe is concerned, God has declared unmistakably that He has no favourites. He has given to material forces a law which cannot be broken. We trust Him more because there is no devilish element in nature, no wild impulse rushing with eruptions of curse and blessing into space. We begin to see that nature is but a word, is but a figure of speech, is but a fiction of imagination, is nothing in the world but a reverent synonym for the sum total of the laws which God has impressed upon His universe.
F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 337.
Collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity.
God is pronounced in the collect to be the Author and Giver of all good things. Whether this was intended or not, the phrase is a most exact echo of the words of St. James in the text. There is a splendid movement in the preamble of the collect, where God is described not only as the Author and Giver of all good things, but the "Lord of all power and might." It is impossible not to feel how much we owe to Cranmer and his associates for this preamble. It is true that for this magnificent language there is a small Latin basis, but the change which has been made in it amounts to transformation.
I. What distinction can we properly draw between power and might? The terms are not really identical in meaning, and the distinction to be drawn between them is properly this, that power is the more abstract term, might or strength the more concrete. There may be power that is not excited. A man may have the power to speak, and yet may be silent. In the collect we attribute to God the perfection of power, in that He is almighty, and the perfection of might, because that omnipotence is ready to be used on our behalf without the risk of failure.
II. The name of God is His character as revealed to us. His name describes to us what He is. We have reason to pray that our nature may be so corrected that the revelation of the Deity above us may be welcome and dear. But implanting is not enough, whether it be of a seed or a graft. There must be growth. The word "increase" is familiar to us elsewhere in Scripture, as denoting an essential feature in the Christian life. Fostering care also is required, and provision for safety. We ask that we may be nourished with all goodness, and kept in the same. In reflecting on this part of the collect, the devout mind inevitably reverts to familiar passages of the Old Testament, and finds there abundant material for wholesome thought. When the Lord planted His vineyard with the choicest vine, He likewise fenced it. No one who has travelled in Palestine can have failed to observe the vast importance of the fence to the vineyard.
J. S. Howson, The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, p. 98.
References: James 1:17.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. i., p. 235; Homilist, vol. vii., p. 179; Preacher's Monthly, vol. i., p. 356; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 532; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 215; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. vi., p. 273.
Verse 18
James 1:18
The First-fruits of God's Creatures.
I. "Of His own will," or because He willed it, is given as the reason why God bestowed on us a new life. We are to receive this assurance with the effort to profit by it, and to derive practical good from it, not with vain speculation as to the nature of God's decrees, still less with any profane and worldly thought that He distributes His blessings, like a self-willed human ruler, in an arbitrary and capricious spirit, but with a devout acknowledgment that our baptism, our knowledge of Christianity, our education, our opportunities, any progress or improvement which we have made in holiness, are not the results of our own merit, but of God's goodness. Our feeling should be one of humble gratitude, leading to more earnest efforts to deserve God's favour and to fulfil the responsibilities which He has put upon us.
II. "Begat He us." Here again St. James, no less clearly than St. Paul or St. John or than He who was the common Teacher of them all, speaks to us of that radical change of heart and principle, that conversion to God, that resurrection to righteousness, which may well be called a new birth. And this great change is here declared to be the gift of God.
III. We were begotten by the word of truth, that is, by the Gospel. We learn from this that it is only through Christianity that we can escape from sin. In Christ, and Christ alone, we shall find the new life after which we were striving.
IV. "That we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." Here St. James tells his readers of God's purpose in thus calling them to a new life through the Gospel of His Son, that they might be the first-born of the great Christian household, consecrated to God. They were the beginning of the great spiritual harvest soon to be gathered in from the whitening fields, the elder brethren who were to be examples and patterns to those who were still to be born into God's family.
G. E. L. Cotton, Expository Sermons on the Epistles, vol. ii., p. 15.
Reference: James 1:18.—J. Keble, Sermons for Saints' Days, p. 224.
Verse 19
James 1:19
The Judicial Temper.
This is one of the wisest and most difficult sayings in Holy Scripture. It commends itself to our good sense, and yet it is one of the hardest to be observed, for in one line we are bidden to be both swift and slow. Some Christian precepts can be obeyed deliberately. The propriety of obedience to them is not only felt beforehand, but can be realised at leisure, as when we resolve to help a friend, or enter some course of procedure the entry into which is made without agitation. But in the command before us the call is likely to arrive when we are least in the mood to listen to it. Thus, however plain the precept is, it is one of the hardest to be kept. And yet it concerns all, and intimately affects the happiness and usefulness of each. Note two or three of the chief ways in which we are called to the observance of St. James's command.
I. One is seen in the formation of opinions, specially in regard to religion and the spiritual condition of our neighbour. A common fault of religious people is impatience of instruction and a readiness to pass judgment upon others. When we think that we have got hold of great truths, we are tempted to assert ourselves confidently, to behave as if there were only insignificant details left for us to learn. We are apt to show indignation at what we believe to be human blindness or ignorance. We are tempted to reverse the order of Divine precept and to become slow to hear and swift to wrath. But in truth, as we are near God, so we realise our ignorance and His tolerance. Thus, instead of being eager to deliver our verdicts and to define His will, we hold back, lest our meddling interference and shortsighted decisions should mar the working of the Divine will, if not in larger ways, yet at least in our small circle and surroundings. We check our indignation in the presence of the great tide or stream of justice which is ever fulfilling itself.