James lesson # 21

21
Pitfalls of wealth
4/19/10: vv 5: 1-6

X.The Test of Patient Endurance (5:1-11)


James 5
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

This harsh criticism of the sins of the rich, with which he opens, is by far the strongest of any in the NT writings – matched only by some of the OT Prophets, how could Christians fall in to such a state? As we have discussed, this letter is written to fellow Christians, not to unbelievers; yet, here does not address them as “brethren” but as “rich men”, used as a harsh pejorative… he continues describing the terrible condition they have fallen into; offering no hope, or recommendation of how they might extricate themselves.

Throughout this letter James has repeatedly warned against the selfish lack of compassion, declaring that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” all of which generally goes along with the pursuit and accumulation of more material things than necessary. Envy, greed, and selfishness, demonstrated by a passion for “me/more, me/more, me/more,” reflects a world view that is clearly non-Christian. Such a world view rationalizes the negative consequences which others suffer from such acts of greedy self interest – completely contrary to the commandment to “Love your neighbor”… The horrific picture James presents here is more than just a warning: though short of an outright condemnation, he offers no hope for the wickedness of these un-just rich. They are committed to their greedy, cruel ways and God is committed to oppose them.

A few years later, Matthew quotes Jesus instruction on how we are to regard “wealth” in his “Sermon On The Mount”:
Matthew 6:25-34 ( KJV )
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Though written before Mathews Gospel, James rebuke of the selfish rich anticipates and closely parallels Jesus teaching

1.the futility of hoarding

• vv5: 1 James returns to his warnings to the rich (cf: 10 – 11; 2: 3 – 6)., starting off with the same harsh exclamation as he used in 4: 13: “now listen” comparable to “shut up and listen!” their faith is “dead” in this sinful condition and they are knowingly, like the illustration James used (1: 24) of a person looking at themselves in a mirror, dismissing the sinful corrupt person they see, deliberately oblivious of their coming judgment; choosing to live in pleasure in the now, disregarding and exploiting those weaker or at a disadvantage to themselves; as a result of this sinful greed – they should be whooping and wailing; weeping and howling; in fear and trembling for the judgment that is surely coming upon them. James is much harsher here than the classic condemnation of the love of money described in 1Tim. 6: 10. James addresses them as “you rich men” rather than brother, further showing his disapproval of them and distancing himself from them. Do they claim to be Christians? Their selfish actions demonstrate that they are not – they are completely lacking in “faith that works”.

• vv5: 2. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten; vv5:3. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. . The end of selfish greed and miserly hoarding is described here: the “stuff” you love so much and have given your life for rots, rusts…decays…proving how transient and temporary all material things are. As the writer of proverbs put it:

Proverbs 23:1When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: 2And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. 3Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.
4Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. 5Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
Or, again, as the Preacher writes in Ecclesiastes 1
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? and 12: Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
The deceptiveness of riches is a deadly danger, not only a threat to the person pursuing it but to others as well. There is an echo here of the rich persons fine clothes in vv 2:2and the moth eaten ones here. All wealth is perishable, none of it will survive the judgment; its perishability is a warning to the coming judgment of one who puts his hope on wealth.

2, the injustice rendered on the innocent by the “rich men”

• vv5:4 – 6 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

James commands the attention of the un-just rich with the forceful behold “look”, pointing out the evidence against them of their cheating the poor of what was rightfully theirs, making a very strong eschatological statement, pointing on to the inevitable judgment coming at them. Just as the rusted metals had a voice in the previous verses, the voice of the defrauded laborers now make their accusation against the rich.

• vv5:5, 6. Now James sums up his description of the Un-just rich, the writers of the New American commentary make some excellent comments here: 5:5 James’s third indictment was against the heartlessness of the rich. Their callousness was rooted in their self-centered pleasure and luxury at the expense of their laborers. Self-indulgence,42 reveling in earthly pleasures, was universally condemned by all the sages of the ancient world. Its offensiveness here stems not only from the unseemliness of self-indulgence but more from the indifference to others’ needs and sufferings that a life of pleasure always entails. Living luxuriously was regarded by the ancient moralists as a source of moral laxity and indecision in precisely those situations in which ethical firmness is required. All Christians are to resist revelry and to move out from a satisfied life to encounter the lives of those who barely survive so that they too might achieve a level of well-being.

All of this self-directedness, overindulgence of the appetites, and pleasure taking amounts to special preparations for destruction. These wealthy ones had fattened themselves (lit. their “hearts”; cf. 1:26; 3:14; 4:8; 5:8) for the slaughter. The concept that the judgment will be like a great slaughtering of animals is a frequent Old Testament apocalyptic image (Isa 34:2; 65:12; Jer 15:3; 19:6; 32:34; Zech 11:4). Indeed, the oppressive rich, like senseless sheep, will be slaughtered. Whether the sheep was slaughtered for a meal or for sacrifice, the best was sought out and overfed in order to make the meal that much larger and richer or the sacrifice that much more pleasant to God. Thus the self-indulgence also had a utility, but not as the rich had imagined: it had served their own self-destruction. Instead of making sure that a hungry brother or sister was indeed “well fed” (2:16), the rich “fattened” themselves; soon they would find that their own bodies would “feed” the all-consuming wrath of “the day of slaughter.”43 Based on the unsightly dismemberment of human bodies common in warfare, this metaphor of butchery for the ancients suggested the preparation of meat for a great victory feast at the end of battle. The slaughter of the battle can then be regarded as a preliminary part of the celebration and, therefore, the “glory” of war—from the victor’s perspective. In this case the enemy turned out to be the unjust rich, something already alluded to in James (cf. 2:6).
This section of James should send tremors through many American Christians, for the culture in which we live is fundamentally oriented toward leisure. Whether people say they live to “play” or that they “worship the game,” all such living represents a massive investment of one’s worldly possessions primarily for pleasure. Some may swoon, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful,” but there are always real evils involved with such a self-indulgent attitude and this motivation for living. These selfish tendencies in every culture must be fiercely assaulted with the Word of God in order to expose their gross sinfulness and harm to others.

• 5:6 The question of the guilt of the unjust rich is decided by James in this verse, declaring the final ground for the punishment of the rich on the last day: they have “condemned and murdered innocent men.” The laborers whose Christian character had restrained them from rebelliousness are innocent of any crime, certainly of any against the rich. But rather than being rewarded for their worthwhile labor they supplied to the rich, these day laborers had been made to suffer for applying their faith to their work. Such suffering is the basic reason God has elected the poor to be rich in his grace (cf. 2:5). God selects the poor and converts them to serve as a sign of his glory, nullifying what the world has taken for glory and wealth (cf. 1 Cor 1:28–29).

But these working poor are the very ones that the rich had condemned,44 these poor, who as fellow believers should have been treated with honor and respect out of duty. Instead, the rich had acted like judges of their fellow believers (in spite of James’s question, “Who are you to judge your neighbor?” in 4:12). The righteous poor had become like the servant thrown into prison by his unmerciful fellow servant in Jesus’ parable. In that parable both servants are debtors, and the unmerciful one is shown the greater mercy (Matt 18:21–35). The first servant, who had borrowed a vastly greater sum of money (like the rich who posses nothing but have received an extraordinarily large “loan” from God) had lived a much more luxurious life than his poor fellow servant. His greater debt had been forgiven, but the mercy he received did not transform him into a merciful person. And so the words of the rich will be used against them, much as in Jesus’ teaching against the proud: “For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt 12:37). And again: “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” (Matt 12:7). So by their own condemning words the rich were voicing their own condemnation.
James declared, however, that these rich had not only condemned the righteous but had committed acts of murder.45 If the earlier reference to breaking the law by the sin of adultery (2:11) was at first puzzling, it was fully substantiated by revealing the idolatry of their friendship with the world (4:4). Next to the rehearsal of the commandment against adultery was that of the commandment against murder—James forcefully alluded to this in 4:2, “You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.” The connection between covetousness and murder is now brought to full light here. The suffering caused to the poor by unjustly withholding wages has caused many of their deaths. This equation of economic injustice and murder is anticipated in intertestamental Jewish literature.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and to deprive them of it is murder.
To rob your neighbour of his livelihood is to kill him,
and he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood.
Sir 34.21–22, REB

Even though the rich may have given thanks to God for their successes, their praises were proven to be a sham if they had neglected the needs of poor laborers.
The vicious connection between idolatry, mercilessness, and murder becomes part of the guiding logic of James as he sternly warned his audience.46 God, who “opposes the proud” (4:6), here does so by slaying them because, as seen earlier, “judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful” (2:13). Not to have done what they knew they should have done was sin (4:17), and God would treat the oppressive rich as he treated all of his enemies: destroying the destroyers of his people. The poor among James’s hearers also should hear this promise, even those in the middle classes, so that they could develop a wiser response to the unjust rich than envying them (3:14) and coveting what was theirs; for finally what was theirs was God’s judgment. The workers were right not to oppose the rich evildoers who had mistreated them (cf. Matt 5:39).47 Their innocence then became the final indisputable piece of evidence against the rich who had brought about many of their deaths by a continual lust for more wealth.