(3) The Development of James’s Thought in 1:21-2:26

It is best to regard James 1:21-2:26 as a single large section in the development of the epistle. James 1:21 sets the theme. The readers, who are born-again Christians (1:18), need to lay wickedness aside and receive the Word of God as the agent capable of saving their lives. But they must understand (1:22-25) that this will only occur if they are doers of the Word and not mere hearers. To be a mere hearer is to commit the folly of looking into the divine mirror of truth and forgetting what it tells us about ourselves. Only the man who is a “doer of work” (1:25, Greek) can expect God’s blessing on his life.

There follows in 1:26-2:13 some specific information about what a “doer of work” actually does. He controls his tongue, is charitable to the needy, and keeps himself pure from worldly defilement (1:26-27). Moreover, he rejects the spirit of partiality and favoritism which is so common in the world (2:1-13). That spirit is wholly inconsistent with his faith in the Lord of glory (2:1).

Instead of partiality, therefore, there should be true obedience to “the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (2:8). In fact, love and its handmaiden, mercy, are standards by which the lives of believers will be assessed at the Judgment Seat of Christ (2:13). They should therefore “so speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty” (2:12). The reference back to 1:25 is obvious in the phrase “law of liberty.”

In referring to judgment, of course, James does not contradict the declaration of John 5:24 that the believer does not come into judgment. There is no judgment for the regenerate person if by that term is meant a weighing of his merits in terms of heaven or hell. There is not even any charge that can be brought against the redeemed believer. He is justified before the bar of eternal justice, as Paul so plainly states (Rom. 8:33, 34). Thus there cannot be any trial at all to determine the believer’s eternal destiny. God declares that a settled matter when He justifies.

But the New Testament does teach an assessment of the believer’s earthly experience in connection with rewards, or the loss of these. (See 1 Cor. 3:12-15; 2 Cor. 5:10.) More will be said of this in a later chapter.

James 2:14-26 is the final subsection of the larger unit, 1:21-2:26. At 2:14 James returns to the thought expressed in 1:21 about “saving the life.” Since he has insisted that “saving the life” is only possible when one is actually a “doer of work”[!], he wishes now (2:14) to oppose the idea that faith can substitute for obedience and accomplish the same saving result he had mentioned earlier (1:21).

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