Tiago 2
William Barclay · Citado em PreceptAustin
Tiago 2
Barclay adds - "We adorn our fingers with rings,' said Seneca, 'and we distribute gems over every joint.' The early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria recommends that Christians should wear only one ring, and that it should be worn on the little finger. It ought to have on it a religious emblem, such as a dove, a fish or an anchor, and the justification for wearing it is that it might be used as a seal. (Barclay's Daily Study Bible) J
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Barclay - "in the society which James inhabited the rich (continually) oppressed the poor. They dragged them to the law courts. No doubt this was for debt. At the bottom end of the social scale men were so poor that they could hardly live, and moneylenders were plentiful and extortionate. In the ancient world there was a custom of summary arrest. If a creditor met a debtor on the street, he could seize him by the neck of his robe, nearly throttling him and literally drag him to the law courts. That is what the rich did to the poor! They had no sympathy; all they wanted was the uttermost farthing. It is not riches that James is condemning. It is the conduct of riches without sympathy." (Barclay's Daily Study Bible) And personally (present tense - continually) drag (helko) you into court? Answer? Yes! Here James speaks of the legal harassments of the believers by the rich who they favored! The wealthy visitors being fawned over are often the very people dragging believers into court, using their economic power against the church. Drag is in the present tense picturing this as the continual practice of the rich. Of course, James is not indicting every rich person, but stating this as a general (and well known) rule. This rhetorical question shows how irrational it was for the believers to honor those who continually mistreated them. Craig Keener notes that "Roman courts always favored the rich, who could initiate lawsuits against social inferiors, although social inferiors could not initiate lawsuits against them. In theory, Jewish courts sought to avoid this discrimination, but as in most cultures people of means naturally had legal advantages: they were able to argue their cases more articulately or to hire others to do so for them." (See Pdf page 677 The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament) John
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Barclay: The Jew was very apt to regard the law as a series of detached injunctions. To keep one of these injunctions was to gain credit; to break one was to incur debt. Therefore, a man could add up the ones he kept and subtract the ones he broke, and, as it were emerge with a credit or a debit balance. (Barclay's Daily Study Bible) Douglas Moo: The law, the will of God for his people, is an indivisible whole, and to violate one part of it is to be at odds with all of it. The unity of the law, with the corollary that it had to be observed in its entirety, was a widely held notion. (James: An Introduction and Commentary - Page 127) Thomas Lea: The Bible does not say all sins are equal. Stealing a candy bar is not the same as committing adultery. Thinking about murder is not as bad as committing the act. Every sin does bring guilt. It takes only a single sin to make a person a sinner. No act of obedience can compensate for acts of disobedience. (Holman New Testament Commentary - Hebrews & James) Dan McCartney: Because the law is a perfect, complete law, selective obedience of it is disobedience. Thus, the one who keeps the whole law save in one respect is a transgressor. This may seem harsh, but at issue is not the totaling up of merits and demerits, where one demerit then wipes out all the merits, but an attitude toward God’s law. Violation of even one of its tenets bespeaks the attitude of the doer toward the law: it is an attitude of rebellion. The unity of the law is based on the unity of the lawgiver (James 4:12), and therefore “disregard to a single point is disregard to the Lawgiver” (Mayor 1897: 86). James’s application here, of course, is first of all that someone who “loves” wealthy people more than the poor is not truly obeying the command of love. However, the principle is more far-reaching. It undercuts any notion that keeping most of the law most of the time has any value at all, and it should give the lie to the theory that James is advocating the acquisition of merit by obedience. (James (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)) D Edmond Hiebert on has become guilty of all explains that here James "categorically states the sweeping result. "Has" (gegonen) renders a perfect tense and asserts that his failure has brought him into the abiding condition of being guilty of all, all the things demanded by the law. Guilty does not mean that James charges the man with having actually violated all the other parts of the law Nor does it mean that all violations of the law are equally serious. Guilty (enochos) is literally "in the power of" and means that the transgressor has been "brought into the condemning power of" the whole. In the words of Davids, "although penalties may vary, one is counted a criminal no matter which particular section of the code one may have broken." He who deliberately violates one part of the law, while observing the rest, reveals in himself "a sinful disposition which will manifest itself in many other ways when there is convenient opportunity and adequate inducement." Our obedience to God's will cannot be on a selective basis; we cannot choose that part that is to our liking and disregard the rest. God's will is not fragmentary; the entire law is the expression of His will for His people; it constitutes a grand unity. (Commentary on James) Stumbles (4417)(ptaio) means literally to lose one's footing and so to fall, stumble or “to be tripped up. Ptaio is used only figuratively in the NT of failing to do God's will and thus "going astray," erring or sinning. In the present passage stumbles indicates one trips over (so to speak) the "boundary line" established by the royal law. James is not necessarily saying we do this on purpose or willfully, but that we stumble and disobey a law out of carelessness or inattention. In James 3:2 James writes "For we all stumble (ptaio) in many ways. If anyone does not stumble (ptaio) in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well." PTAIO - 4 uses in NT - Ro 11:11+; Jas. 2:10; Jas. 3:2+; 2 Pet. 1:10+ Guilty (liable, accountable) (1777)(enochos from enecho = to hold in) literally means held fast in or caught in. Enochos means being guilty of having done wrong and thus deserving some particular penalty. As the NLT says the one who stumbles over only one point "is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God's laws." The Amplified says this one "has become guilty of [breaking] all of it." ENOCHOS - 8V - Matt. 5:21; Matt. 5:22; Matt. 26:66; Mk. 3:29; Mk. 14:64; 1 Co. 11:27; Heb. 2:15; Jas. 2:10 POSB summaries James 2:10 - Showing partiality makes a person guilty of the whole law of God (James 2:10). How is this possible? How can a person be guilty of all the law if he breaks only one law? Men follow God or else they do not follow God. There is no such thing as subtracting the laws that one does not like and keeping the laws that one does like. Every law has been given by God. They all form a whole pattern, a complete style of life. They are all necessary to point one in the right direction and toward the right goal.Thus, to offend in one point or to slip from one law makes one short of the goal. One side-steps from the right direction. One goes astray from the whole law of God and one becomes guilty of the whole law.Simply stated, if a person breaks one law, he has violated the law of God, the whole package of God's law. Although he broke only one law, he is still guilty; he is still a transgressor. He has still broken God's law. He is no less guilty than if he had broken every law. He stands as a transgressor before God and he must be forgiven by God just as much as any other transgressor. This is significant for us to notice and heed, for it means (2) that we cannot pick and choose what laws we will keep and what laws we will violate, (2) that we cannot build up a merit system with God by keeping most of the laws and be allowed to break a few of the laws, (3) that we cannot become more acceptable to God because we keep most of the laws and break only a few, (4) that we are more righteous than other people because we keep more laws than they do and break fewer of what men call the more meaningful laws. The point is this: showing partiality makes a person a terrible law-breaker, the most serious offender imaginable. We are guilty of breaking the great royal law of God, the law of love, the very basic law of God's kingdom. We are guilty of breaking all the laws of God. We stand as guilty as the the most base transgressor of God's holy law, and we are just as liable and subject to punishment as any other transgressor. (Borrow The Preacher's outline & sermon Bible) D L Moody - THE ten commandments are not ten different laws; they are one law. If I am being held up in the air by a chain with ten links and I break one of them, down I come, just as surely as if I break the whole ten. If I am forbidden to go out of an enclosure, it makes no difference at what point I break through the fence. “Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” “The golden chain of obedience is broken if one link is missing.” ILLUSTRATIONS - The honor code for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is as follows: “A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal; nor tolerate anyone who does.” This honor code is so stringent that even one violation at any time during the four years of study, including even the day before graduation, requires automatic expulsion of the guilty party. Assume that a ship is anchored at port with an anchor that has 613 links in its chain, representing the 613 commands in the Mosaic Law. If only one link breaks, the ship will be set adrift, so the 612 links that did hold count for nothing if just one is broken. Or consider your situation if you had fallen over the edge of a very high cliff and were clinging to a chain for dear life. How many links of that chain must break before you would plummet to your death? The Mosaic Law is the same, according to James 2:10. If you fail in one point, you might as well have blown it all—you’re dead either way. James Smith - SOLIDARITY OF THE LAW JAMES 2:10–12 We are here exhorted ever to keep in mind the fact that we shall be judged by the Law, called here the Law of Liberty (v. 12), and that the constant remembrance of that fact should influence our speech and conduct. “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the Law of Liberty.” There is another point we shall deal with in our next study, but we must now note the solidarity of the Law. It is human to gloss over sin. Said a little girl when excusing some questionable act, “I haven’t broken the commandment, I’ve only cracked it.” Here in verses 10 and 11 we are told that if only one commandment be broken, we are “guilty of all,” that in the breaking of one we break all. Read Gal. 3:10 which enforces this fact, observing the word “all.” We may have a fine chain, but of what use is it if all links are good save one? That one broken link renders it useless. “For whosoever obeys the whole Law, and only makes a single slip, is guilty of everything” (M.). Another fact. It is clear that the one sin thought of here is that mentioned in verse 9., viz., respect of persons. And there are few, if left to themselves, who would ever dream of reckoning such behaviour as sin. These are facts to ponder. John
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Barclay - He calls it the law of liberty; that is, the law in the keeping of which a man finds his true liberty (Ed: Again freedom enabled by the indwelling Spirit - cf Ro 8:2+, 2Cor 3:17+). All the great men have agreed that it is only in obeying the law of God that a man becomes truly free. "To obey God," said Seneca, "is liberty." "The wise man alone is free," said the Stoics, "and every foolish man is a slave." Philo said "All who are under the tyranny of anger or desire or any other passion are altogether slaves; all who live with the law are free." So long as a man has to obey his own passions and emotions and desires, he is nothing less than a slave. It is when he accepts the will of God that he becomes really free--for then he is free to be what he ought to be. His service is perfect freedom and in doing His will is our peace. (Barclay's Daily Study Bible) John Phillips on law of liberty - We are now free. Free from servitude of the law! Free to serve the Lord! Free to be under His authority! Free to lift Him up before men! Thus shall we anticipate with joyful expectation the day when we shall be judged by the law of liberty. What have we done with that liberty? That will be the question. Michael Andrus on law of liberty - the purpose of a good law is to restrict one kind of behavior in order to grant freedom in a more important area. God’s Law frees us from sin and enables us to be all we can be in Jesus Christ. Liberty (1657) (eleutheria from eleutheros - that which is capable of movement, freedom to go wherever one likes, unfettered; see word study on verb eleutheroo) describes the state of being free and stands in opposition to slavery or bondage. It depicts the state of being free as opposed to being in bondage to the Law (cp Gal 2:4+, Ro 7:4+) or enslaved to Sin (Ro 6:16+, Ro 6:17, 18+). Eleutheria refers to personal liberty but not license. True liberty is living as we should, not as we please. Eleutheria was used especially in NT times of the freeing of slaves. Related Resource: Excursus on Freedom - discussion of eleutheria, etc Vine - liberty, is rendered “freedom” in Gal 5:1, “with freedom did Christ set us free.” The combination of the noun with the verb stresses the completeness of the act, the aorist (or point) tense indicating both its momentary and comprehensive character; it was done once for all. The RV margin “for freedom” gives perhaps the preferable meaning, i.e., “not to bring us into another form of bondage did Christ liberate us from that in which we were born, but in order to make us free from bondage.” The word is twice rendered “freedom” in the RV of Gal 5:13 (KJV, “liberty”). The phraseology is that of manumission from slavery, which among the Greeks was effected by a legal fiction, according to which the manumitted slave was purchased by a god; as the slave could not provide the money, the master paid it into the temple treasury in the presence of the slave, a document being drawn up containing the words “for freedom.” No one could enslave him again, as he was the property of the god. Hence the word apeleutheros, No. 2. The word is also translated “freedom” in 1Pe 2:16, rv. In 2Co 3:17 the word denotes “freedom” of access to the presence of God. See liberty. (Vine's Expository Dictionary) Eleutheria - 11x - Ro 8:21; 1Co 10:29; 2Co. 3:17; Gal 2:4; 5:1, 13; James 1:25; 2:12; 1Pe 2:16; 2Pe 2:19. Norman Geisler - When Critics Ask - JAMES 2:12—Does the law bring liberty or bondage? PROBLEM: By James’ account, the law of God brings liberty into the Christian’s life, since he describes it here as the “law of liberty.” This appears to be in direct conflict with the Apostle Paul’s contention that the Law of Moses “gives birth to bondage” (Gal. 4:24). SOLUTION: James and Paul are speaking of two different laws. Paul is speaking of the OT Law of Moses, “the one from Mount Sinai” (Gal. 4:24). And James is speaking of the NT “law of liberty,” which Paul calls the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2) that has set us free from the law of bondage. As Paul put it, “what the Law [of Moses] could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,” nevertheless “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2–3). The Law of Moses was written in stone, but the law of Christ is inscribed by the Spirit in our hearts (Jer. 31:31; 2 Cor. 3:3–7). The two laws can be summarized as follows: THE LAW OF MOSES THE LAW OF CHRIST Brings bondage Brings liberty Weak through the flesh Powerful by the Spirit Written on stone Written on the heart Kent Hughes gives an illustration of the radical change Spirit enabled obedience to James' commands in this passage produced inthe life of Amy Carmichael the celebrated missionary to India. The decisive moment which determined the direction of her life came on a dull Sunday morning in Belfast as the family was returning from church. They saw what they had never seen before in Presbyterian Belfast—an old woman lugging a heavy bundle. Amy and her brothers turned around, took the bundle, and helped her along by the arms. "This meant facing all the respectable people who were, like ourselves, on their way home. It was a horrid moment. We were only two boys and a girl, and not at all exalted Christians. We hated doing it. Crimson all over (at least we felt crimson, soul and body of us) we plodded on, a wet wind blowing us about, and blowing, too, the rags of that poor old woman, till she seemed like a bundle of feathers and we unhappily mixed up with them." There was an ornate Victorian fountain in the street, and just as they passed it, "this mighty phrase was suddenly flashed as it were through the grey drizzle: 'Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be declared by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide—'" Amy turned to see who had spoken. There was nothing but the fountain, the muddy street, the people with their politely surprised faces. The children plodded on with the bundle of feathers, but something had happened to the girl which changed forever life's values. (From the great book A Chance to Die, the Life and Legacy of Amy Carmicheal by Elisabeth Elliot). The knowledge that God was her judge, and that judgment was coming, gave Amy Carmichael the strength of character to ignore the pressures of a class-driven society and forever identify with the poor, which she did in her legendary ministry. She no longer courted the favor of the privileged. (SEE James: Faith That Works - Page 101) When the Reverend George Pentecost had finished a discourse in the city of Edinburgh, Horatio Bonar put his hand upon his shoulder and said, “You love to preach to men, don’t you?” and Dr. Pentecost answered, “Yes.” Then Mr. Bonar said, “Do you love the men you preach to?” That is the message of James in the words “Thus speak …”—love the men you speak to; put affection in your articulate sounds; otherwise they are no different from the sounds of the grasshoppers and the animals. See article - Mercy Triumphs Over Justice: James 2:13 and the Theology of Faith and Works BY WILLIAM DYRNESS - Themelios Volume 6 - Issue 3 John