Snared by One’s Own Bait (1:14)

The man himself is responsible for his sin, and he need not seek to place the blame elsewhere. The temptation is not a temptation to him if he refuses to listen to the siren’s voice. The man is not responsible for the efforts of others to allure him to sin but only in case he listens and yields. Then he is really tempted “when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.”

The figure is very bold and impressive. The word for “drawn away” is used in Oppian for drawing the fish out from its original retreat, beguiling it from under the rock. Then the fish is ready to be snared by the bait. The fish bites at the bait and is caught on the hook. So with a man. He is drawn out by his own lust for the sin placed before him. In the case of sexual sin the impulse is not in itself sinful any more than the fish’s hunger for food. The sexual nature is from God and is meant only for blessing for high and holy ends. But the misuse of this impulse is very easy and very dreadful in its results. Satan sets many kinds of bait for unwary boys and girls, men and women, who at first are taken off their guard and then are drawn away by desire stirred within them toward evil. The evil suggestion is entertained, and sin is the outcome.

This very word “entice” is used of hunting (trapping with bait), and then it is used of the harlot who entices to sin. “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not” (Prov. 1:10). Philo speaks of our being “driven by passion or enticed by pleasure.” The pitfalls are many in modern life—in the country, in the village, and in the city. The modern demons of drink, drug, and the brothel are busy in finding victims. But the point made by James is that the one who yields does so because of the sin within his own heart.

A person’s own evil desire plays the part of temptress (Plummer), and he is drawn away by it and enticed. “If thou doest not well, sin coucheth at the door” (Gen. 4:7) like a panther ready to spring upon the intended victim caught for the moment off guard. One is reminded afresh of the opening chapters of Proverbs, which cannot be excelled by any of the modern books on sex instruction, some of which stimulate more immorality than they prevent. Wise warning is needed and plain talk is demanded, but not pruriency any more than prudery. Alas, that the paw of the modern Moloch draws into the fire so many thousands of young men and women from the homes of our land. The best capital of America is the children, and we lose too much of it in the worst of gambles—the traffic in souls.

The Abortion (1:15)

The natural history of sin as the result of temptation to which one yields is given with scientific accuracy and graphic power: “Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death.” Moffatt renders it thus: “Then Desire conceives and breeds Sin, while Sin matures and gives birth to Death.” It is a gruesome picture surely. But who can say that it is overdrawn?

The positivist tries to shut God out of the world and so to banish human responsibility; but alas, he cannot banish human woe and anguish of heart. The agnostic flings up his hands in despair and says he does not know and has nothing to say in the presence of nature, “red in tooth and claw.” The brutal militarist adopts the rule of physical might wrongly claimed by Nietzsche to be the mark of the superman. Spiritual and moral prowess should dominate brute force in man, else he becomes only a brute himself. He drops back to the law of the jungle and rejects the law of love in the kingdom of heaven. The Christian Scientist blandly shuts his eyes to such errors of mortal mind as sin and sickness and sorrow and, ostrich-like, cheerfully denies their reality and seeks to blow them away with a puff. But sin is not to be brushed aside in this way.

The words of this verse call for particular remark. “Then” is here the historical order following the temptation to which one yields. His lust drew him forth to the temptation. He yields, and the result is the conception; the embryo develops into sin. This is the first birth, and sin is the child of desire. Desire is not in itself sinful, but it easily falls into sin. Thus in a true sense desire makes sin where there was no sin and so gives birth to sin. But this is not all. Sin in its turn matures and gives birth to death.[57] This second child is like a child born dead.

When sin is born, death is involved like an embryonic parasite that feeds on sin. Desire, sin, death form the biological line of pedigree. The line is short, for “the wages of sin is death,” as Paul puts it (Rom. 6:23).[58] The picture in James is that of an abnormal birth like a misshapen animal. I have seen a five-legged cow, the fifth leg on the top of the back standing up straight. When sin is born, death begins (conception) and grows in fascinating power till a new birth comes; and lo, this child is death itself. “The birth of death follows of necessity when once sin is fully formed, for sin from its first beginnings carried death within” (Hort, in loco).

The law of death in sin applies to other sins besides the so-called sexual sins which write their history so plainly in the body and the mind and bring a heritage of woe through all the family history. There is here no sowing of wild oats to raise a crop of wheat. The fearful fidelity of modern scientific knowledge throws a lurid light on this passage in James. The sinner makes his bed and lies down in it and drags down with him the helpless ones who are thrown in his care.

As I am writing I receive a copy of Light, a magazine published by the World’s Purity Federation. The issue for November, 1914, contains an article by a woman who has lived “twenty-five years in the underworld.” Her story reads like a commentary on the words of James. She claims to have had the best of that sordid life, but she concludes: “No matter what humiliation a girl has to endure, it is better to endure it than to get into this life. There is nothing in it for any of them. The very best of us get it hard before we die. And, at the best, it is Hell.” The issue of death is seen not merely in the diseases of the body but “also in the deterioration of mind and character which accompanies every kind of sin” (Mayor, in loco). Death and hell then claim their own.

God, the Source of Good (1:16 f.)

The contrast is sharp. “Be not deceived”; do not wander so in your minds as to think that temptation and sin and death come from God. He is not the source of evil. Rabbi Chaninah says: “No evil thing cometh down from above.” Note Jesus in John 8:23 on “above” and “below.” James is tenderly affectionate in his appeal on this point—“my beloved brethren.” On the contrary, only good comes from God. God is good, and he alone is absolutely good (Mark 10:18).[59] In the Greek the next sentence runs like a hexameter line if one short syllable is considered long by stress of the meter.[60] We need not tarry over a fanciful straining after poetical lines in prose. Oesterley agrees with Ewald in seeing here a quotation from a Hellenistic poem. It is far more likely just accidental rhythm common enough in good prose. The scholars differ also as to how to translate the sentence. Moffatt has it: “All we are given is good, and all our endowments are faultless.”

“The Father of lights” sets God over against the worship of the sun so common among the ancients. Plato (Repub. vi. 505 ff.) compares the sun to the idea of the good. Modern science powerfully illustrates this comparison of James in bringing out what we owe to the sun in the way of light, heat, and life itself. Philo calls God “the Father of the all,” the lights (the moon and the stars) and all else in the universe. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:3 f.). Compare Philippians 2:15. God is not only light (1 John 1:5), but all true light comes from him—all the light that lights every man coming into the world (John 1:9).

But the sun appears to move rapidly. Watch the sun drop like a ball of fire at sunset and thus cast a deepening shadow over the earth. The sundial is one of the oldest ways to mark “the shadow that is cast by turning.” Mayor quotes Plutarch (Percl. 7) for the use of this figure for shadows cast on the dial. James is here, of course, using popular language, as we still do when we say that the sun rises and sets. But with our Father of lights there is “no change of rising and setting” (Moffatt). He “casts no shadow on the earth.” Even the polestar, we now know, whirls on in space, carrying the worlds along with it. But our God is not changeable or whimsical. He does not send now good, now ill. He knows how to give good gifts to those that ask him, yea, the best of all gifts, the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13). What seems ill is really good if it comes from God. If one takes his stand by God’s side and looks at his life, he sees God’s plan as a whole for his own life and for God’s glory.

The New Birth (1:18)

“So far from God tempting us to evil, his will is the cause of our regeneration” (Mayor). He is our Father in a double sense. We owe our original birth to God, in whose image we are made (Gen. 2:7). We owe our spiritual birth likewise to God, who begat us again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3). The Mishnah (Surenh., iv. 116) says: “A man’s father only brought him forth into this world: his teacher, who taught him wisdom, brings him into the life of the world to come.” Happy is the father who leads his child also to Christ. But while the word of truth is the instrument used in the instruction (a pointed lesson for parents, teachers, preachers), the actual work of regeneration is due to God as Father, yes, and as Mother also, for the word “brought forth” is the one used of the mother (see by contrast v. 15).

The doctrine of grace here set forth is of a piece with that in Paul’s writings (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 1:5), those of Peter (1 Peter 1:3), and of John (1:13). Indeed, Jesus himself is quoted as saying: “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). As the seed of sin produces death, so the seed of God produces life (1 John 3:9). It is interesting to note this piece of fundamental theology in so practical a writer as James, who lays special emphasis on works as proof of life. But James has no such idea as some careless and shallow theologians who think that a man can galvanize himself into spiritual life by imitative ethics. The man must be born again, as Jesus said so impressively to Nicodemus (John 3:3). The miracle of birth must precede growth and development.

We are not to puzzle ourselves too much over the mysteries of spiritual biology. We know that the impulse and purpose[61] come from God (John 1:13). What we do know is that God honors and uses the word of truth, both spoken and written. If this is true, what a responsibility belongs to us for diligence and urgency in the use of the word of truth.

By the truth we are set free from sin and error (John 8:31 f.). The word of truth is the gospel of salvation (Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5), the word of life (1 John 1:1). God’s word is truth (John 17:17), and the words of Jesus are spirit and life (John 6:63). The word of truth, when combined with the power of God (2 Cor. 6:7), quickens into life. So James emphasizes the importance of the human element in the new birth, while rightly making God supreme in the act of regeneration. We must reach men with the word of God. We must pass it on to the thirsty, the hungry, the dying. Every church is, or ought to be, a lifesaving station, a rescue mission, a teaching center, a powerhouse, a lighthouse radiating knowledge of God in Christ.

The purpose of God in renewing us by the word of truth is that we in turn should win others. We are not an end in ourselves, though God does save us. He saves us that we may serve. We are to be a sort of first fruits,[62] not the full harvest. There are fields upon fields beyond us ready for the reaper. We are just a beginning, just a foretaste. We whet the appetite for larger, richer blessings. “The trees that are a fortnight to the fore are the talk and delight of the town.”[63] One spring my baby boy noticed a tree without leaves when all the rest were in leaf. “What is the matter with this tree?” he asked.

Christ has introduced a new order into the world. He himself is the real first fruits (1 Cor. 15:20). But there are others through all the ages—those that ripen first and fast, show the way, give promise of the future. So Epaenetus was a first fruits of Asia for Christ (Rom. 16:5); the household of Stephanas was in Corinth (1 Cor. 16:15). Blessings rest on the first fruits for salvation in any church, any town, any family. They are the chosen of God, like the 144,000 in the book of Revelation (14:3), the church of the firstborn (Heb. 12:23). The Jews consecrated their first fruits to God as his in a special sense. All Christians are meant to be first fruits, the promise and earnest of better work (Rom. 8:23). God has in store great things for his people. The least that we can do is to bring our first and our best, our all, and lay it at the feet of Jesus. The new heaven and the new earth may not come while we live on earth, but we may help heaven to come upon earth by living the life of God.