There is no other way than the slow way of life. The mushroom springs up in a night and goes as quickly away. The oak grows a few inches a year and lasts for centuries. The finest product in God’s garden is the soul of man, ripe with the long years of toil and sorrow. Luther Burbank learned some of the witchery of nature by watching her ways with plant life. He showed great patience and has much to show for it. Give patience a chance to do its work and keep on giving it a fair show. Ole Bull said that if he missed practicing on his violin one day, he noticed the difference in his playing. If he missed two days, other musicians noticed it. If he skipped three days, all the world knew it.
“Only, let your endurance be a finished product” (Moffatt). It comes to that in all great achievements, for the test is endurance. The goal is at the end of the race, where Jesus is the author and finisher of the faith which we possess (Heb. 12:2). “We are become partakers of Christ, if we hold ... firm unto the end” (Heb. 3:14). “But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).
Patience calls for courage; discouragement leads to impatience and failure. There is need of long-suffering (Col. 1:11), if we get the “finished product.” The word for perfect here occurs also in James 1:17, 25; 3:2. The word, like the substantive, has a double usage (cf. finis and our end), either limit or aim. So the perfect man may be regarded in the absolute sense, the limit, as the perfect Man Christ Jesus (Eph. 4:13), or as on the way to the goal (no longer a child but a developed man, as in 1 Cor. 2:6; Phil. 3:15). “The perfect” (1 Cor. 13:10) is still to come, but there is “perfect love” (1 John 4:18). We are to aim after the perfection of God himself (Matt. 5:48). Paul’s ambition was to present each one “perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28). Compare also Colossians 4:12. Here James has his eye on the goal which is at the end of the long road. He knows full well (3:2) that in many things we all stumble, but we must persevere. Patience must do its “perfect work,” that ye may be “perfect.”
But James takes a latitudinal look at the work of patience, not merely the longitudinal view—the view that ye may be “entire, lacking nothing,” “complete, with never a defect” (Moffatt). This word for entire (cf. integer) means complete in all its parts, whole, not unsound anywhere. At the end of the race we are to be fully developed and sound to the core in heart and limb. The word is used of stones untouched by a tool (Deut. 27:6), of a body without blemish. Epictetus (bk. III, chap. xxvi, § 25) uses the word of a vessel which one finds whole, unbroken, and useful. It is used of a complete or unbroken household. In the papyri Philo uses both words together, as James does here.
The substantive is used of the “perfect soundness” of the man just healed by Peter and John (Acts 3:16). This adjective occurs with “righteousness” (Wisd. 15:13) and “worship” or “religion” (4 Macc. 17). The adjective is used by Paul in his prayer for the Thessalonians, “preserved entire, without blame” (1 Thess. 5:23). This is what Jesus does for his glorious church, which is to be without “spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph. 5:27). Jesus, our High Priest, “has perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Alas, Isaiah (1:6) found Israel wholly wanting in this soundness. James’s ideal is that we shall fall short in nothing. Our destiny is to dwell in the family of God and to be like Jesus, our elder Brother (1 John 3:2). This ultimate divine fulness is not the self-sufficiency of the stoics.
Shortage in Wisdom (1:5)
“Defective in wisdom,” Moffatt puts it. It is the same word that occurs at the end of verse 4. James is fond of catching up a preceding word and going on with it, even if, as here, in a new sense. “If any of you lacketh wisdom,” James gently hints. Who is it that does not feel his shortcoming here, at times with painful intensity?
What does James mean by wisdom? It is more than knowledge. It is more than mere intelligent apprehension of acquired knowledge. Tennyson says: “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” James shows familiarity with the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach (Ecclus.)[50] and possibly also the so-called Wisdom of Solomon. Certainly he knows the book of Proverbs. But here he does not use wisdom in a philosophical or mystical sense.
With James wisdom is the right use of one’s opportunities in holy living. It is living like Christ in accord with the will of God. In 3:13-17 he gives a formal discussion of the two sorts of wisdom. Bede suggests that we need wisdom to know how to look at trial in the true light. Yes, and we need it to give patience the chance to do its perfect work. Paul uses wisdom in the special sense of God’s wisdom as shown in the gospel as infinitely superior to the wisdom of the world which scouted the cross of Christ. “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect” (the mature, 1 Cor. 2:6, AV).
In the Old Testament wisdom is sometimes the intelligence of God (Prov. 8:22-30). “Ten measures of wisdom came down from heaven, and nine of them fell to the lot of the Holy Land” (Kiddushim, 49b). With James the source of wisdom is God, not the Jews. So then, when our supply runs short, ask of God. It is like a bank to which we go to get our money. God is the banker whose supply of wisdom never gives out. Unlike other bankers, he asks no security save the name of Jesus.[51] That name gives us full credit at the bank of heaven.