By meekness James does not mean effeminacy or weakness (any more than did Jesus). He does mean the absence of pretentiousness and wilfulness. Peter (1 Peter 3:15) uses the expression “with meekness and fear” for the spirit with which one is to defend the faith, the “reason concerning the hope that is in you.” There can be firmness and courage without bumptiousness and bigotry. There are frequent exhortations in the New Testament along this line (cf. Gal. 6:1; 2 Tim. 2:24; 1 Cor. 4:21). The wise man wears the crown of modesty. This spiritual paradox seems absurd to the merely worldly-wise.
The Disproof of the Wise Man (3:14)
“The possession of wisdom was made a claim to teachership” (Hort). So the absence of wisdom is a positive disqualification. One may, no doubt, possess wisdom and yet not be able to teach. But the lack of wisdom is itself a sufficient bar. The wrong spirit shows the lack of wisdom. “But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart,” what then? There were many controversialists who had both of these vices.
Jealousy is not evil per se. It wavers between the good and evil sense and in itself is merely zeal, which may be for good or ill. (For the good use see 2 Cor. 11:2; Gal. 1:14.) Sometimes this zeal was not according to knowledge (Rom. 10:2). Envy is distinguished from zeal (emulation) by Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 11. 1). But in the New Testament the bad sense of this word prevails (James 4:5; 1 Cor. 3:3; Gal. 5:20; Rom. 13:13), and it is listed with the works of the flesh. The bitterness of jealousy is only too well understood by those who give way to this petty vice. It tastes bitter, and the taste lasts a long time. Bitterness is itself punishment enough for the victims of the sin (Eph. 4:31).
The other word, “faction” or “party spirit,” has an uncertain etymology, probably from the word for hireling. At any rate, the word is soon applied to partisans who court and bribe adherents to their candidate. It presents the very quintessence of partisanship and of narrow-mindedness. This is not a mark of wisdom and is not a thing to boast of, at any rate. “Glory not” about it, “do not pride yourselves on that” (Moffatt). And yet this is precisely what many of the Jewish Christians were doing already. Thus they lied against the truth, were “false to the truth,” as Moffatt has it. Such partisan triumph is usually obtained by underhand methods and by the suppression of part of the truth. There is such a thing as “poisoned truth.” So partisan victory often leaves a bitter sting, because those in defeat know that an unfair advantage has been taken of them and of the truth of God.
It is clear that these opening chapters in the Epistle of James reveal a pitiful condition of controversy among some of the Jewish churches, such as Paul has to rebuke in Corinth later (cf. 1 Cor. 1-4). “The whole Christianity of many a devotee consists only, we may say, in a bitter contempt for the sins of sinners, in a proud and loveless contention with what it calls the wicked world” (Stier).
The point of James is precisely this. The very contentiousness which they regarded as supreme proof of their qualifications as exponents of the faith is here urged by James as absolute proof that they are disqualified for the position of teachers. Their bitterness makes it improper for them to talk about love and gentleness. Sometimes the very fierceness of one’s contention for orthodoxy drives some people into heresy. It is a sad outcome when one’s high and holy ambition to teach the things of Christ is frustrated by a Christless spirit of wrangling and personal abuse.
The Wisdom from Below (3:15 f.)
Wisdom is precisely what we all need and desire, but the bitter self-seeking partisans just described “do not cherish the truth except as a possession of their own, or a missile of their own” (Hort). “This wisdom,” claimed by the pompous bigots in verse 14, can only be so described in terms of courtesy or, more exactly, of irony. It is only wisdom so-called and is real folly. It is at best worldly wisdom, “earthly,” not merely in the sense of taking place on earth rather than in heaven (John 3:12) but with the earthly horizon and outlook as opposed to the heavenly, like those who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). Such a wisdom passes for “the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 1:20; 3:19) but is distinctly not “God’s wisdom,” “a wisdom not of this world” (1 Cor. 2:6 f.).
“This wisdom” is not merely earthly but does not come down from above, more exactly, “is not of a kind that cometh down” (Hort)—not such a wisdom, indeed, as God gives (James 1:5). It has the smell of earth in the evil sense of that term. It is not from above but in reality from below. Jesus said to the Pharisees: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). The antithesis is complete both in origin and spirit. The axioms of the selfish, like “look out for Number One,” are the wisdom of the devil: “All that a man hath will he give for his life” (Job 2:4).