James Chapter 4 — Commentary and Notes on Verse 9

    Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

    He now prescribes another remedy against their worldly affections and practices; it is proposed with all the more earnestness because of the calamity then ready to fall on the Jewish nation.

    Grieve [Beafflicted, KJV]. What is the meaning? Must we draw affliction and unnecessary troubles on ourselves? I answer:

    (1)      It must be understood to refer to afflicting ourselves in some commendable way. It may, therefore, imply that our bodily distresses ought to be borne patiently; that is, if God brings affliction on you, bear it, be content to be afflicted, for it is our duty to be what God would have us be; let your will be done when the Lord’s is. Or else,

    (2)      Know your misery, be aware of it; it is some happiness to know our misery. Man, in proud obstinacy, chokes his grief and stifles conviction. Or else,

    (3)      It indicates compassion and fellow-feeling for other people’s sorrows. A part of our body is capable of feeling pain as long as it is part of the body (see Hebrews 13:3). A wound in the arm affects the whole body; parts of the body must care for one another. Or else,

    (4)      Humbling and afflicting the soul for sin. This is most appropriate to the context. Sorrow seems to be made for that purpose.

    If we do not want to be afflicted by God, we should afflict ourselves for sin. Voluntary humiliations are always the best; they please God the most, and they do us the most good. God is most pleased then. The angels rejoice at the creatures’ repentance (Luke 15:7). Holy tears are the sponge of sin; a hard heart must be soaked, and a filthy heart must be washed in this water. We are most considerate when we are most pensive. Besides all this, the final outcome of it is very sweet. God will “revive the spirit of the lowly” and “revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15). So then, be afflicted; it is a hard duty but of great profit. Make your sorrow draw water for the sanctuary; affections, like the Gibeonites, must not be abolished but kept for temple use.

    Mournandwail. Why so many words to one purpose? The whole verse and the next say much the same. I answer: it is a hard duty and needs to be reinforced.

    Note1. Flesh and blood must be urged to acts of sorrow, for they are painful to the body and burdensome to the mind. Frothy spirits love their pleasure and ease. How many of the poor ministers of the Gospel go to God and say, as Moses did, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me?” (Exodus 6:12). Lord,thepeoplewhoclaimtobeChristianswillnotputup withthissortofteaching;sohowshallwehopetoprevailwiththepoor,blindworld? Certainly it is very sad that people adopt into their religion something that used to be a badge of profanity—namely, scoffing at doctrines of repentance and humiliation.

    Note2. It is a necessary duty; those who want to be Christians must expect to mourn. The Spirit descended in the form of a dove, to indicate both meekness and mourning. Christian affections will be tender. God’s glory cannot be violated without your heart bleeding if it is right: “Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed” (Psalm 119:136). When sins are common, your souls will “weep in secret” (Jeremiah 13:17). If God’s heirs are afflicted, you will have a fellow-feeling (Romans 12:15). Indeed, there will not only be occasions externally but internally—your own sins, your own lack. Your sins: “Woe to us, for we have sinned!” (Lamentations 5:16). Times will come when you will have occasion to mourn like the doves of the valleys. Oh, woe the time that ever I sinned against God! Your lack and your need: all supplies of grace are to be obtained this way. The disciple is not above his Lord. “He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). His requests were uttered with deep sighs. Christ, who shed his blood, also shed tears; and if he was “a man of sorrows,” certainly we must not be men and women of pleasures.

    Note3. The next reason for this multiplicity of words is to show that we must continue and persevere in it. We would soon abandon our hard lesson, and we love to not dwell on sad thoughts; therefore the apostle brings us back again and again to our duty: Grieve, and then mournandwail. Sorrow does not work until it is deep and constant, and the arrows stick fast in the soul. David says, “my sin is always before me” (Psalm 51:3). We must be held to it; slight sorrows are soon cured. Mourning is a holy exercise by which the soul is weaned from sin more and more every day and drawn out to reach for God. So it checks those who content themselves with a hasty sigh, dismissing the matter. Do you really think this is grieving and mourning and wailing? Call to account the heart that is so shallow it wants to run out into the house of mirth again straightaway. But you will say, “Would you have us to be weeping all the time?” I answer:

    (1)      It is true that sorrow befits this life rather than joy. Now we are “away from the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6), under the burden of “lowly bodies” (Philippians 3:21) and vicious affections. This is our pilgrimage; we have only a few songs, God’s “decrees” (Psalm 119:54). The communion we have with God in ordinances is only a little. Grace is mixed with sin, faith with doubts, knowledge with ignorance, and peace with troubles. Now we “groan” (Romans 8:23); we are waiting and groaning for a full and final deliverance.

    (2)      There are some special times for mourning—chiefly, for example, in times of God’s absence: “when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15)—when we have not the support and refreshing of God’s presence or the quickenings of his Spirit. The absence of the sun makes the earth languish; when you have lost the shine of his face, you should cry for him. The people to whom the apostle is speaking were envious, proud, covetous, ambitious, and he tells them to mournandwail. Saltwater and bitter potions kill worms. In the same way weeping kills worldly desires; the exercises of repentance are the best way to mortify worldly desires. It is the same in times when judgments are threatened. Thunder usually causes rain; and threats should draw tears from us. So it should be, too, in times of calamity, when judgments are actually inflicted: “The Lord … called on you that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth” (Isaiah 22:12). So also times of great mercies are appropriate times to remember our unkindness. The warm sun melts things; she wept much who was pardoned much (see Luke 7:38, 47). When Christ had washed her soul with his blood, she washed his feet with her tears.

    Change your laughter to mourning. He means their worldly rejoicing in their external comforts and possessions, which they had gotten by rapine and violence, as seen in the context.

    Note4. It is good to exchange fleshly joy for godly sorrow. In sorrow God will give us what the world cannot find in pleasure: serenity and contentment of mind. While worldly people repent of their joy, you will never repent of your sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Worldly comforts grow burdensome in the end; but who was ever the sadder for the hours of repentance? Job cursed the day of his birth, but who ever cursed the day of his new birth? When we turn our laughter into mourning, God will turn our mourning into laughter: “You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy” (John 16:20). Out of these saltwaters God brews the wine of spiritual consolation. So then, do not be prejudiced against godly sorrow. The saddest duties are sweeter than the greatest triumphs, and the worst and most afflicted part of godliness is better than all the joys and comforts of the world. It is better to have good things to come than to have them here. The man in Luke 16:23 had lived in jollity, but his good days were past. Do not measure things by the present sweetness but by the future profit. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25).

    Note5. An excellent way to moderate the excess of joy is to mix it with some weeping. He is speaking to men drunk with their present happiness, and his drift is to awaken them out of their senseless stupor. The way to lessen one passion is to let in the contrary one. There is danger in abundance; therefore in your jollity think of some mournful subjects. Nazianzen reports of himself that when his mind was likely to be corrupted with happiness it was his practice to read the Lamentations of Jeremiah and to inure his soul to the consideration of sad matters. It was God’s own medicine for Belshazzar, in the midst of his cups, to bring him to think of his ruin by some handwriting on the wall. So then, when your mountain stands firmly, think of changes; evils come upon us unawares when we give up our hearts to joy.

    Andyourjoytogloom. In this context he describes them as being worldly and as glorying in oppressing one another; he means here the sort of joy and laughter by which complacent sinners please themselves in their present success, putting off all thoughts of imminent judgment.

    Note6. Prosperous oppression is rather a matter of sorrow than joy to us. You laugh now, but God will laugh hereafter when your calamities and fears come (Proverbs 1:26; Psalm 37:12-13). Wicked people have never so much cause to be humbled as when they are prosperous; it is a sure pledge of their speedy ruin. Now you despise others and scoff at God’s servants and ways; how you will hang your head when the scene is changed and you become objects of public scorn and contempt! Oh, that people would awaken their conscience and say, “I am laughing and triumphing; have I not cause to howl and mourn?”

    Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

    The apostle goes on inculcating and pressing the same duty upon them; and lest they should rest content with externals, he uses a word that particularly implies the internal acts of the soul.

    Note from the context that it is not the outward expressions that God looks for in mourning, but the humble heart. God, who is a spirit, does not count bodily actions so much. Tears and wailing and beating the body may all be counterfeit, or else done without a principle of grace; and there may often be inward humiliation though an unemotional person does not yield tears. Godly sorrow does not always vent itself through the eyes. Roman Catholics place much importance on tears and afflicting the body. The spirit-work is the more difficult. Duties require much spirit, and soul-acts are too strong for weak people. I allude to Christ’s expression concerning spiritual fasting in Matthew 9:15-16. Old worldly hearts cannot endure the rigor of such spiritual duties.

    So then, in your first duties see that you not only mourn and weep but humble your souls. When you confess sins, it is not words and tears that God looks for, but a deep shame of the evil of your nature, your iniquities of life, and your defects in obedience. When you pray, look not so much at the outward heat and strength—agitated spirits and earnestness of speech; but see that the soul reaches for God by holy ardor and desires. In confessing public sins, it is not the exact enumeration but zeal for God’s glory, compassion for others’ good, and holy desires of promoting righteousness that the Lord looks for. Ashes and sackcloth are nothing to the work of the soul: “Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” (Isaiah 58:5).

    BeforetheLord. There is a similar passage in 1 Peter 5:6; but there it is, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand.” That expression implies a motive or consideration to enforce the duty, but James’s words imply the sincerity of it.

    Note 1. Duties are truly done when they are done as in God’s sight. Fear and reverence of God make the heart more sincere (see 1:27 and 1 Peter 3:21). “I obey your precepts and your statutes, for all my ways are known to you” (Psalm 119:168); that was David’s motive. So then, in all duties of worship remember that you are before God; there is a broad and pure eye of glory fixed on you. You are dealing with God, who tells people his thoughts and who discerns your spirits better than you do yourselves. The right way to speak of this is described in Acts 10:33, “We are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” We come to pray, to hear, to humble ourselves before God. The soul will have a double advantage from such thoughts: the work will be more spiritual, and more pure and upright. It will be more spiritual in that I am not to be humbled before man but before God. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Will this satisfy God? Is it the kind of fast he has chosen (Isaiah 58:5)? It will be more pure and upright in that whatever a person does to God, he will do it for God’s sake; religious duties will be performed for reasons of religion, not because they are customary or to join in what other people are doing, but for God and to God.

    Note2. The sight of God is a special help to humiliation. The soul becomes humble by the true knowledge of God and ourselves: “my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). When Job had a glorious vision of God, he vanished into nothing in his own thoughts. The stars vanish when the sun rises, and our poor candle is so slight that it disappears when the glory of God rises in our thoughts. We see our lack in God’s fullness; the ocean makes us ashamed of our own little drop. We see our vileness in God’s majesty. What is the dust on the scales compared to a mountain, and our wickedness in comparison with God’s holiness? Elijah pulled his cloak over his face when God’s glory passed by him (1 Kings 19:13). Similarly, Isaiah cried out, “Woe to me! … I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips” when God showed him his glory (Isaiah 6:5). Whenever God appeared to the faithful, men were filled with fear because of their own weakness and corruption.

    So then, this tells us how to be humble in our addresses to God: get as large and comprehensive an idea of him as you can; see his glory if you want to know your own baseness. People are feeble in duties because they have low thoughts of God. They offered the Lord a blemished animal because they did not consider he was a great King (Malachi 1:14). The elders who saw God in his glory “fell on their faces” (Revelation 11:16).

    And he will lift you up. What does this promise imply? It means any kind of happiness, including deliverance out of trouble (“You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted,” Psalm 10:17) or promotion to worldly honor or dignity (“A man’s pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor,” Proverbs 29:23). Though promotion brings us to slippery places, the humble will be sustained and upheld. It is the same with advancement in grace or glory: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4); that is, he will have the most grace and glory.

    Learn from this that submission and humility are the true way to exaltation. This is often repeated in the Gospel: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11; see also Matthew 23:12). We are all by nature proud and want to be exalted; but the way to rise is to fall. God gave us a pattern in Jesus Christ: first, he “made himself nothing … he humbled himself and became obedient to death … on a cross! Therefore God exalted him … and gave him the name that is above every name” (see Philippians 2:5-11). So then, do you want deliverance? Humble yourself! Omnipotence will not be your terror but protection. Do you want grace? See more of God.

    Lastly, we may be encouraged from all this to wait upon God with a holy humility and confidence in our lowly state: “When men are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’ then he will save the downcast” (Job 22:29). When all your affairs go to decay, you may rely on these hopes. Peter says, “that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Peter 5:6). Wait for God, and the promise will surely be fulfilled; only be humble. Gracious humiliation is a deep sense of our misery and vileness, with a desire to be reconciled to God on any terms.

    Brothers,donotslanderoneanother.Anyonewhospeaksagainsthisbrotherorjudgeshimspeaks against the law and judges it.

    Here the apostle comes to dissuade them from another sin, of which he had previously accused them, and that is detraction and speaking evil of one another.

    Brothers,donotslanderoneanother. This word implies any speaking that is prejudicial to someone else, whether it is true or false. Scripture requires our words to be appropriate to love as well as truth.

    Speaking evil of one another is not appropriate for brothers and Christians. A citizen of Zion is described as one who “has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellow man” (Psalm 15:3). And there is an express law in Leviticus 19:16—“Do not go about spreading slander among your people.” There are several kinds of evil-speaking. They may all be ranked under two heads—whispering and backbiting. Whispering is a private defamation of our brother among those who think well of him; backbiting is more public, in view of everyone without discrimination. Both may be done in many ways, not only by false accusations, but also by divulging others’ secret evils, by extenuating their graces, by increasing or aggravating their faults, and by defrauding them of their necessary excuse and mitigation, by depraving their good actions by supposing they have sinister aims, by mentioning what is culpable, and by enviously suppressing their worth. So then, if all this is inappropriate for brothers, do not give way to it in yourselves or listen to it in other people.

    (1)      Do not give way to it yourselves. Nature is marvelously prone to offend in this way, and so you must restrain it all the more, especially when the people you seek to blemish are Christians: “Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:8). You should be afraid to speak against anyone, and much more against those whom God wants to honor. This is the devil’s own sin; he is “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10). He does not commit adultery or break the Sabbath—these are not laws to him; but he can bear false witness and accuse the brothers. And yet, what is more common among us? John the Baptist’s head on a platter is a usual dish at our meals. When people’s hearts are warm with food and good cheer, then God’s children are brought in, like Samson among the Philistines, to amuse them. God will surely reward this in our hearts, either in this life (“Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” Matthew 7:1) or else in the life to come, apart from repentance. It is said of the wicked that “He will turn their own tongues against them” (Psalm 64:8). How insupportable is the weight of the sins of this one part of the body!

    (2)      Do not give way to it in others. Your ears may be as guilty as their tongues; therefore such whisperings should never be heard without some expression of dislike. Solomon commends a frown and a severe expression: “As a north wind brings rain, so a sly tongue brings angry looks” (Proverbs 25:23). Such persons are discouraged when they do not meet with acceptance. David would not have such people living in his house (Psalm 101:5). Certainly our countenancing them draws us into the guilty fellowship. Now if we must not receive these whispers against an ordinary brother, much less may we do so against a minister; there is express provision for the safety of their reputation (see 1 Timothy 5:19), partly because people are apt to hate anyone who reproves publicly, and partly because people in office are most closely watched (see Jeremiah 20:12 and Ezekiel 33:30), and partly because their reputation most concerns the honor of the Gospel.

    Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him. In that word judges the apostle shows what their criticism amounted to—usurping God’s function and passing sentence on their brothers; and also what kind of evil-speaking he principally means—i.e., things that do not matter one way or the other, such as observing festivals, avoiding certain food, and so on (see Romans 14:3-4).

    Censuring is judging; you arrogate to yourself an act of power that does not belong to you. When you are promoted to the chair of arrogance and censure, check yourself by this thought: “Who gave me this superiority?” The question put to Moses may well be asked of our souls, on behalf of our wronged brothers: “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14). Paul uses the same sort of question: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant?” (Romans 14:4).

    Speaksagainstthelawandjudgesit. How can this be? There are several ways of making sense of this sentence. I will name the principal ones.

    Firstly, every sin is a kind of affront to the law that forbids it; for by doing quite the contrary we in effect judge the law to be not fit or worthy of being obeyed. For instance, in the present case the law forbids rash judgment and speaking evil of one another; but the person who detracts from someone else approves what the law condemns, and so in effect judges that law to be not good.

    Sin is judging the law. David was asked, “Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes?” (2 Samuel 12:9). In the heat of his desire, David looked on it as a slight law. Wherever you see it, you will find that in sinning there are some implicit evil thoughts by which the law of God is devalued and disapproved; we think it unworthy, hard, or unfair. And it is still Satan’s great policy to represent God as a hard taskmaster and to make us think evil of the law. That is why Paul sought to prevent such thoughts when the law checked his lusts and brought him to a sense of misery: “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). But was it good even though it caused death to him? Yes, he says, I still look upon it as a rule of right; it is I who am worldly, my heart that is wicked, etc. So you see how to make sin odious. Sin is despising the law, speaking evil of the law; it slights the rule that it violates.

    Secondly, they used at that time to condemn one another for things that did not matter, merely on their own will and sense, without any warrant from the Word (as you can see in Romans 14). Now this was a kind of condemning of the law, as if it were not full and exact enough but needed to be completed by human rules.

    To make more sins than God has made is to judge the law. You imply that it is an imperfect rule; people want to be wiser than God and bind others in chains of their own making. It is true there is an “obedience of faith,” by which the understanding must be captive to God but not to men; to the Word, not to every fancy. There is a double superstition, positive and negative: one is when people count holy something that God never made holy; the other is when they condemn what God never condemned. Both are equally faulty. We are not in the place of God; it is not in our power to make sins or duties. “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” were the regulations of false teachers (Colossians 2:21). Three things are exempted from human jurisdiction: God’s counsels, the holy Scripture, and the human heart. We should not dogmatize and subject people to ordinances of our own making, pressing our own austerities and rigorous observances as duties. Justice and wisdom are good, but to be “overrighteous” or “overwise” is quite wrong (Ecclesiastes 7:15-16). Man is a proud creature and would like to make his moroseness a law for other people and put forward his own private ideas as doctrine. It is usual to condemn everything that does not please us, as if our magisterial dictates were articles of faith. We must not come in our own name and judge as the world judges, or else we judge the Word. Lord,grantthatwewillconsiderthisinthis dogmatizingagewheneveryonedeclaresthathisownideasarelaw,andpeoplemakesinsrather than find them!

    Thirdly, you may think of it like this: they might censure other people for things the Word allowed and approved, and in this way they condemned not private individuals so much as the law itself. If you think about it in this way, then:

    To plead for sins, or to cast aspersions on grace, is to judge the Word itself. Thus you set the pride of corrupted wit against the wisdom of God in the Scriptures: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). Usually it is like this in the world; grace meets with calumny and sin with flattery. Open and gross sins are all the more gently rebuked because they happen to go under a good name: drunkenness is good fellowship, censure is discussion, error is new light, rebellion is zeal for public welfare; but grace suffers because it looks bad. Just as in the early days they used to put Christians in bearskins and then bait them, so graces are called by other names and are misrepresented and then hooted at. The law says we are to be zealous, peace-loving, etc.; but in the world’s reckoning zeal is fury, peace-loving and holy moderation is time-serving and servility, teaching humbling doctrine is legalism, etc. Many people deceive themselves with names like these, but do they not judge the law in all this? The law says that sitting drinking all day is drunkenness, but men call it good fellowship, and so on.

    Whenyoujudgethelaw,youarenotkeepingit,butsittinginjudgmentonit. That is, when you exercise such a rash superiority over the law, you clearly exempt yourself from obedience and subjection to it.

    It is no wonder if those who judge the Word are given over to disobedience. This is done grossly by those who either deny the divine authority of the Scriptures or accuse it of being an uncertain rule or examine all its teaching by their own private reason or by the writings and teachings of men, etc. And this is done less obviously by those who come to judge the Word rather than to be judged by it. It is true that we have liberty to examine, but we should not come intending to cavil and criticize. The pulpit, which in a sense is God’s tribunal, should not be our bar. What we say must be examined by Scripture modestly and humbly; but we must not despise and slight God’s ordinance and come merely to sit as judges of people’s abilities or weaknesses. This is the best way to beget an irreverent and fearless spirit. And then when people lose their awe and reverence, their restraint is gone, and they become loose or desperately in error. God will punish their pride with some sudden fall.

    Look to your ends, Christians; you will find a great deal of difference between coming to hear and coming to criticize. If you come with such a vain aim, see if you get anything by a sermon but something to carp at, and see if that does not bring you to looseness, and that to atheism. Usually this is the sad progress of proud spirits. First, preaching is criticized, not examined;, then the manners are tainted; then the Word itself is questioned; and then people lose all fear of God and man.