Studies in the
Epistle of James

First published as
PRACTICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS
OF CHRISTIANITY

A. T. ROBERTSON
Late Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

Revised and Edited by
Heber F. Peacock

BROADMAN PRESS
Nashville, Tennessee

421-06232

Library of Congress catalog card number: 59-5861
Printed in the United States of America
5.AT58K.S.P.

Preface

In August, 1912, it was my privilege to deliver a course of lectures at the Northfield Bible Conference. There were many requests for the publication of the addresses. I shall never forget the bright faces of the hundreds who gathered in beautiful Sage Chapel at 8:30 on those August mornings. In August, 1913, the lectures were repeated at the New York Chautauqua and at the Winona Bible Conference. There were renewed appeals for publication, but it was not possible to put the material into shape because of my work on A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research.

I have expanded the lectures a good deal and have added some introductory discussion about James himself. I have in mind ministers, social workers, students of the Bible, Sunday school teachers, and all lovers of the Word of God and of rightness of life. Technical matters are placed in parentheses or in footnotes so that the reader may go on without these if he cares to do so. There is a freshness in the Greek text not possible in the English, but those who do not know Greek may still read this book with entire ease.

I do not claim that these addresses are a detailed commentary on the Epistle of James. They are expository talks based, I trust, on sober, up-to-date scholarship and applied to modern life. It is the old gospel in the new age that we need and must know how to use. There is a wondrous charm in these words of the long ago from one who walked so close by the side of the Son of man, who misunderstood him at first but who came at last to rejoice in his Brother in the flesh as the Lord Jesus Christ. It is immensely worthwhile to listen to what James has to say about Christianity and the problems of everyday life. His words throb with power today and strike a peculiarly modern note in the emphasis upon social problems and reality in religion. They have the breath of heaven and the warmth of human sympathy and love. Except for a few quotations from the King James Version, Scripture quotations follow the American Standard Version.

Preface to Second Edition

The welcome accorded this interpretation of the Epistle of James makes a new edition necessary. Opportunity is thus afforded for weeding out misprints. Prof. S. L. Watson, of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has kindly verified all the references in the book. The words of James strike a peculiarly modern note during these days of war.

A. T. R.

Contents

I. James, a Servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ 1

II. To the Twelve Tribes Which Are of the Dispersion 28

III. Joy in Trial 33

IV. The Way of Temptation 48

V. The Practice of the Word of God 60

VI. Class Prejudice 75

VII. The Appeal to Life 91

VIII. The Tongues of Teachers 104

IX. The True Wise Man 124

X. The Outer and the Inner Life 140

XI. God and Business 158

XII. Perseverance and Prayer 177

I
James, a Servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ

The Brother of the Lord

It will be well to put together the bits of information about James, or Jacob,[1] as he is called in the Greek. They are not very numerous, and yet it is possible to form a reasonably clear picture of his personality.

It is here assumed that James the author of the epistle is James the brother of the Lord (Gal. 1:19). It is hardly conceivable that James the brother of John could have written the epistle, since he was put to death as early as A.D. 44 by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:2). The matters presented in the epistle were hardly acute in the Jewish Christian world by that date, and there is no evidence that this James had attained a special position of leadership that justified a general appeal to Jewish Christians.[2]

The epistle belongs to the five “disputed” epistles (James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter) and it circulated in the East before it did in the West. It occurs in the Peshitta Syriac Version. Origen (in Johan. xix. 6) knows it as “the Epistle current as that of James” and Eusebius (H. E. III. xxv. 3) describes it with the other four as “nevertheless well-known to most people.”

There are many proofs