first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
3:6 The tongue weighs practically nothing, but so few people are able to hold it. Here we are told that the tongue is set on fire by hell.
At Pentecost, God gave man a new tongue— set on fire by heaven. The mouths of men reveal their wicked hearts. See Romans 3:13,14.
3:17 This is the spirit in which we should share our faith. See Proverbs 15:1. Beware of "religious" types. They tend to gravitate toward the evangelistic enterprise. They will contend with you about doctrine and steal your time from the work of evangelism. You will recognize them by their lack of gentleness, mercy, and willingness to yield to reason.
CHAPTER 4 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 You lust, and have not: you kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: you fight and war, yet you have not, because you ask not.
3 You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts.
4 You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
5 Do you think that the scripture said in vain, The spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy?
6 But he gives more grace. Wherefore he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double minded.
9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren.
He that speaks evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law, and judges the law: but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
12 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who are you that judge another?
1 3 Go to now, you that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
14 Whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
15 For that you ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
16 But now you rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
17 Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.
4:2–4 Using the Law in evangelism.
James here uses the Law once again to bring the knowledge of sin—speaking of lust, adultery, murder, and covetousness.
4:6 Biblical evangelism is always "Law to the proud and grace to the humble." With the Law we break the hard heart; with the gospel we heal the broken one. See Matthew 19:17–
4:9,10 These are the inner workings of a genuinely repentant heart—affliction, mourning, weeping (contrition), heaviness, and humility. These are the ones the Lord lifts up. See Psalm 147:6.
4:12 The idea for the American government's divided powers came directly from Scripture. Isaiah 33:22 says, "For the Lord is our Judge [the judicial branch], the Lord is our Lawgiver [the legislative branch], the Lord is our King [the executive branch]."
Our Founding Fathers knew that separated powers were needed because of man's inherent sinfulness and desire for control— and what better model could there be for a government than the Lord who governs the universe!
"The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally
—I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally —impossible for us to figure to ourselves what life would be if these teachings were removed." Theodore Roosevelt 4:17 "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men." Abraham