We need to let James be James. We ought not try to make him sound like Paul, or John, or Peter, or anyone else

Carr, William, Jr.

English

Concordia Seminary, St. Louis: Scholarly Resources

Concordia JournalVolume 41 | Number 1 Article 92015Lent 1 • James 1:12–18 • February 22, 2015William Carr Jr.Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, carrw@csl.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://scholar.csl.edu/cjPart of the Practical Theology CommonsThis Homiletical Help is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. It has been accepted for inclusionin Concordia Journal by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary. For more information, please contactseitzw@csl.edu.Recommended CitationCarr, William Jr. (2015) "Lent 1 • James 1:12–18 • February 22, 2015," Concordia Journal: Vol. 41: No. 1, Article 9.Available at: http://scholar.csl.edu/cj/vol41/iss1/9 62Lent 1 • James 1:12–18 • February 22, 2015 “Blessed is the man (Makarioj avnhr; see, e.g., Ps 1:1, vyaih’ yrEv.a;) who remains steadfast under trial” (Jas 1:12, ESV). Preparing this homiletical help in September makes it difficult not to think about Christians in Iraq and in several areas of Africa, who are pursued, persecuted, kidnapped, and murdered because they are Christians. The stomach churns, the heart aches, the eyes burn. O Lord, come to the aid of your people! Exegetical Notes 1. We need to let James be James. We ought not try to make him sound like Paul, or John, or Peter, or anyone else. 2. One of the struggles in this text and in its preceding context is how to handle peirazw, peirasmoj, and avpeirastoj. Are we actually doing the right thing when we hopscotch between tempt, test, trial, and temptation? 3. We need to pay attention to the “little” particles as much as to the “big” verbs and nouns. For example, “tempted by God” (ESV) is, in Greek, avpo qeou peirazomai (v. 13). avpo plus the genitive usually indicates source more than agency (u`po, which might favor agency, is a variant reading but less well attested), thus “let no one say ‘I am tempted from God.’” Also in v. 13, notice the construction o` gar qeoj avpeirastoj evstin kakw/n: “for God is untempted of evil”—the adjective makes “untemptedness” an ingredient of God’s character, not of his experience. But in v. 14 it is made clear that “each [of us] is tempted by (u`po) his own desire” (evpiqumia; in the Pauline letters, ESV often translates evpiqumia as passion; it isn’t a good thing; as a result, I’m not enthralled by the phrase “passion for ministry”). 4. Verse 16 is the swing verse. In NA27 and NA28, it introduces a new para-graph, but it also is the concluding warning for the preceding argument. 5. What is the significance of using dosij and dwrean (ESV renders both as “gift”)? If I may hazard an exegetical guess, dosij tilts toward the giving and dwrean toward the thing given. So, God gives well (“good”) and what he gives is perfect (teloj, also “complete”). If you’ve ever asked a little child to hold out his or her hand, so that you can put something in it, but then had to take the child’s hand in yours, in order to place the thing in it—well, God is fully prepared to give us his gifts, but he also has to take our hands in his. We don’t even do receiving well, without assistance. Faith receives God’s grace, but faith too is his gift (Eph 2:8).6. parV w`| ouk evni parallagh hv trophj avposkiasma (v. 17): This is a great clause. A cognate of parallagh is “parallax,” the apparent shift of an object when, for example, we close one eye then the other (the old dominant eye game). In actuality, the object does not move; it is where it is, but our eyes are just far enough apart to suggest (since, after all, we are standing still) that the object does move. The point here is that God does not “shift” (we think we see/perceive him doing so, but in actuality he does not; the problem is with our seeing/perceiving).Our word “trope” may derive more from tropoj than troph, but they are con-nected (in fact, it looks like tropoj has more to do with the resulting image, as in “turn 1Carr: Lent 1 • James 1:12–18Published by Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary, 2015 Concordia Journal/Winter 2015 63of phrase,” and troph with the turning). The shadow an object casts changes as it turns in the light, but not God. Again, if there is a problem, it is with our perception of God, and not with God himself.7. God’s work is good, perfect; that’s a good thing and worth relishing. But verse 18 puts its own stamp on this message with its opening word: boulhqeij. ESV uses a nominal phrase, “of his own will,” and that’s okay. But it obscures the activity that seems entailed in the participle. God gave birth (avpekuhsen) to us, has done so, because he wanted to. Sin gives birth to death (avpokuei, v. 15); God gives birth to us by the word of truth (none else but Christ). In sin is death; in God (alone) is life. And he gives birth to us for a purpose (eivj plus the infinitive is different from, say, i`na plus the sub-junctive); the work is his, not ours; it’s not about something “we should be.”  Application The Lent 1 (B) Gospel is Mark’s temptation narrative (1:12–13), the most sparse among the evangelists. Matthew and Luke say that Satan goes away, if only until “an opportune time” (Lk 4:13). Mark does not say that; Satan does not go away. Jesus’s whole ministry in “this world’s bleak wilderness” is a time of testing, trial, and tempta-tion. And his disciples are not above their master. Testing, trial, and temptation are all around us too, and will go on until the end. They do not make us “happy” (one of the unfortunate renderings of makarioj), nor are they “blessings.” But “the man” of God endures them—and resists them—with patience, contentment, and even joy (Jas 1:3).  In this reading James gives us only one direction: not to be deceived. Everything else is description, the way things are: the bad way of the fallen world, the good and perfect way of the God who makes us new, in Christ, who is the word of truth.William W. Carr   Lent 2 • Romans 5:1–11 • March 1, 2015 Sometimes it seems as if our lives have wandered into one of the survival shows on television and we are about to be eliminated, or at least have questions about last-ing longer than a few more weeks or months. Too many false calculations, too many wrong-headed decisions. Paul tells us in this lesson that this is the normal condition of those who have been claimed by the God who makes his strength perfect in his people’s weaknesses (2 Cor 12:9). In Romans 5 Paul is moving from his presentation of the sinful state of all (1:18–3:20) and of God’s gift of righteousness, the new identity we have in Christ (3:21–4:25) into his discussion of life of the justified sinner, both from God’s perspec-tive and from that of sinners in the midst of the struggle with sin (5:1–8:39). Today’s lesson addresses this situation in the present with the promise of a great future on the basis of what Christ has done in the past. He just gives us the facts. The present fact of the matter is that we are justified through Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom 4:25) 2Concordia Journal, Vol. 41 [2015], No. 1, Art. 9http://scholar.csl.edu/cj/vol41/iss1/9

Lent 1 • James 1:12–18 • February 22, 2015

https://scholar.csl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1119&amp;context=cj

Lent 1 • James 1:12–18 • February 22, 2015

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