James Chapter 4 — Commentary and Notes on Verse 11

    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.