An Exposition on the Book of James Part 19
If you haven’t yet, please check out part 1 of this series. The ideas of the book of James are all centered around the idea of a perfectly forged faith that makes us perfect.
Money is a strange thing in this epic in which we live. Many people give up a great portion of their life to procure a small amount of it. Most, if not all, currencies around the world are a fiction – they have no substance. Money today is mostly digits on a computer screen, and they have no real value. They are assigned a value based on what the government needs it to be. The government – or a bank that has some national ties – prints money based on the signatures of people. These signatures are basically treated as promises to pay. They turn mortgages and contracts and checks and other negotiable instruments into federal reserve notes. A note is basically a debt instrument. It shows a liability. This has little to do with the book of James as a whole, but I find it interesting that men and women spend their whole life trying to make money, while the whole time they are actually making debt. It is like trying to get out of a hole by digging further down.
James starts of this chapter with a very strong warning to the rich men. In the first century AD wealth was not held in notes – though I think Jame’s point is magnified in today’s economy of paper money. Rich men were those who held substance, usually gold, silver, and precious gems. They also held wealth in clothing, cattle, lands and servants or hired hands. The Bible – especially the book of proverbs – does not condemn wealth. It often relates having real substance to wisdom. Abraham and Lot were very wealthy, and that moved on to Issac and eventually to Jacob and Esau. Soloman was very rich and so was his father, David. With a simple look at the rest of the Bible, it would not make sense of James was just bashing on rich people. We must take the entire book of James, and the entire Bible, into consideration to understand what James is trying to communicate through the Holy Spirits inspiration.
James is not condemning wealth in general here. He says that miseries will come upon those who are wealthy. He says that the riches they have stored are corrupt and will not help them in the last days. They are not using their wealth for good; they are heaping it up for future use. He even gives a situation in which they are committing fraud and not paying their laborers. I believe an unbiased read of James 5:1-3 shows that The Bible is not against the Believer in God having wealth, but it is a faith problem. The entire book of James is centered around this idea of having a perfectly forged faith, and Jesus even said himself that God has chosen the poor rich in faith.
The rich man does not need to trust in God as much as the poor man does. It is the rich man’s temptation to trust in himself or in his money to provide for his wants and desires. If money is your high tower than a little more money should make you even more secure. “Why not cheat the laborers? They are not as smart as I am. I am paying them. They need me” – one rich man might say. But the man – though he be rich or poor – who is trusting in God should be very careful to obey God’s law and not cheat his neighbor. If my faith is in God, I do not care if I have a great deal of money, or none at all. My children do not yet care about money. They get everything they need from me. One day they will start to see that money can do something that they want. They will find money useful to navigate this world. While they are still in my house, their money will not be what they trust in. To some degree they will be placing their faith in me to provide for their needs. They same should be true with us and God.
I see verses 1-6 as not being directly addressed to believing Christians, though it is still applicable to them. The primary purpose of these verses is to serve as a warning to the lost who do not have a saving faith in God, and a secondary purpose is to be a sharp reminder to those believing Christians whose hearts have strayed from seeking first the kingdom of God but have let their own wealth become the object of their faith.
Matthew 6:19-21 KJV
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
It seems that what James is saying in verses 1-6 are basically the same idea found in Matthew 6:19-21. Jesus is not condemning providing for your family or even trying to be wise about how one spends his substance. The idea is simple; there is a temporal and there is an eternal. What kingdom are you seeking? James takes this a step further and says, there is a physical realm and a spiritual realm. What side are you trusting in?
Your actions will show which side you are on. The man who is consumed with the physical realm will be focused on physical things. He will be focused on status, money, power, comfort and pleasing his own desires. The man who is focused on the spiritual realm will be focused on truth, spiritual fruit, caring for others needs and caring for the souls of others. A man can have wealth and be spiritual, but he will not be a miser. He may be a good steward of the things that God has given him, but he will also be very generous, and he will not be anxious about losing his wealth.
Verse 5 here mentions living in pleasure. Pleasure seeking is not exclusively a wealthy person’s endeavor. Many times, pleasure seeking is what makes poor people even more poor. We need to be guarded about not allowing God to move us to an uncomfortable situation merely because we want to satisfy our own pleasures. We must allow our desires to be shaped by his desires for us, even when that seems to take away from our pleasures. “The idea of nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter” reminds me of a phrase “fattened up for the kill.” Basically, he is saying that you will not enjoy the fruit of your wealth, it will go to someone else.
Finally, we see that the rich have killed the just, but the just do not resist them. Simply put, it is often the rich that have sought to kill the righteous – or just – but a just person does not fight for themself. They are not resisting with carnal means. A just man has his faith in God as the ultimate justifier; he has allowed himself to be slain for the cause of Christ. I think of Stephen the first named martyr post Christ. Many of the prophets were killed and suffered, trusting God with their spirits. Christ himself, the just for the unjust, commended his spirit to God.
Our job as Christ followers is to allow God to form in us a perfect faith in himself. Not to allow ourselves to become distracted by the pleasures of this world or the deceitfulness of riches, but to wholly trust him.
James 5:1-6 KJV
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
S.T.
Acts 20:24
"But none of these things move me..."
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