James writes to people who have been driven out of somewhere.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.James 1:1, King James Version
Scattered abroad. That is the address. Not a congregation in a city. People spread out, displaced, living where they had not planned to live.
And here is what was happening to them, in the letter's own words later on. In chapter two, do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats? In chapter five, behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth.
Wages held back. Court cases they were losing. Poverty severe enough that James has to tell the congregation to stop seating a well dressed visitor better than a poor one.
That is who is being written to when the letter's second sentence says this.
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptationsJames 1:2, King James Version
If that verse has ever landed on you as cheerfulness demanded by somebody comfortable, it has never landed on the people it was written to either. They were not comfortable.
Count is an accounting word
Start with the verb, because almost everything turns on it.
Count.
That is a reckoning word. It is what a person does with a ledger: to consider, to reckon, to work out the total. It is not a word about feeling and it never was.
And notice the second verb: when ye fall into. Fall into. It happens to you. Nobody in this verse chose the trial, arranged it, or is being commended for seeking it out.
So the sentence is not feel happy about the thing that is happening to you. It is do the arithmetic on it, and the next verse tells you which arithmetic.
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.James 1:3, King James Version
Knowing this. The reckoning stands on a known fact rather than on a mood.
You are not being told how to feel. James 1:2 uses a word about reckoning and James 1:3 attaches it to something known, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that from being turned into an emotional requirement.
Now verse four, and there is a permission in it that people miss because it reads like an instruction.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.James 1:4, King James Version
Let patience have her perfect work. The verb is let. Allow. Do not cut it short.
Which means the thing being asked for here is not effort. It is the absence of interference. James is asking people not to force an early end to something that is still working.
You have been asked to allow rather than to achieve, and the verb in James 1:4 is a permission. The written word says let rather than do, and the same Spirit who kept that verb is the reason a tired person is not being handed another task.
And then verse five, which is the one I would put in every hand.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James 1:5, King James Version
Upbraideth not.
That is the old word for scolding, reproaching, throwing something back in a person's face. And it is in there because James knows exactly what stops people asking: the expectation of being told off for needing to ask at all.
He does not say God gives reluctantly. He says God gives liberally, which is generously and without holding back, and then he adds, specifically, that there is no telling off attached.
You have been promised an answer with no reproach in it. James 1:5 says upbraideth not in the same breath as liberally, and it is His Spirit who makes that clause land on somebody who has been bracing for a lecture.
Now, verse six says let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, and I am not going to use that against you, because it does not work the way it is usually deployed.
Read on: the wavering man is described as a double minded man, which in the next verses is somebody who is genuinely divided between two directions, not somebody who is frightened. There is a difference between a person who does not know whether they want what they are asking for and a person who is asking with a shake in their voice. James 1:5 has already told you God does not scold, and verse six does not take that back three lines later.
You were told what God is like before you were told anything about how to ask. James 1:5 comes before James 1:6 in every copy, and the same Spirit who fixed that order is the reason the character comes first.
So stop trying to feel it.
You have been failing at an instruction that was never issued, and the failing has cost you more than the trial in some weeks. The verse asks for a reckoning about what is happening, made from a known fact, by a person who fell into something they did not choose.
You are doing arithmetic and not performing gladness, and James 1:2 has always been the first of those. The written word uses the reckoning verb, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the reason that reaches a parked car rather than staying a point about grammar.
You have been told what God is like before you were told anything about your asking. James 1:5 says He gives liberally and upbraideth not, and the same Spirit who put that ahead of verse six is the reason the character of the Giver is the thing standing under the request.
And I will not lay one gram on you: what you feel about this is not being scored. James does not tell anybody in that letter that their grief was a failure, and he is writing to people who were being defrauded of their wages. What God does not scold, nobody may scold, and He has never once required a person to feel joyful before He would give wisdom liberally.
Declare this over yourself
- Instruction to feel joyful about it, you were never issued. James 1:2 uses a reckoning word and James 1:3 grounds it in something known, and His Spirit keeps them in that order. I am not being told how to feel.
- Bracing for a telling off when I ask, get out, in the name of Jesus. You have kept the question in my mouth for years, and the written word says giveth liberally and upbraideth not in the very same line, which ends you, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding that verse open in front of me. What God gives without reproach, I can ask for out loud.
- Lord, You are the God who said let patience have her perfect work, which is a permission and not a task, and You are doing that here. Scripture tells me what You are like in verse five before it says one word about how I ask in verse six, and Your Spirit fixed that order. I am saying the thing out loud, and I am saying the second half after it.
James 1:5
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