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).