Verse of the day · September 10
Why is purity put first in James 3:17?
Heavenly wisdom does not start by making a man any cleverer.
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But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
James 3:17
Men among the readers of this letter wanted to be thought more wise than the rest, and endued with more knowledge than they. The sins the letter has just been condemning arise out of that — bitter envying and strife in the heart, and a glorying that lies against the truth. The envying comes first and excites the strife, the strife excuses itself by vain-glorying and lying, and out of the two come confusion and every evil work. A zeal for truth, and a boast of knowing more than others, employed only to make other people hateful, is a shame to the profession of Christianity and a downright contradiction to it. Anybody after the name of wise was told to show it in his works — not in words only, but in the whole of his practice, and with meekness.
There is a peace with the world that makes no distinction between clean and unclean, and purity is put first of all, ahead of peaceable, on account of it. JFB turn that on the ministry as a caution: no crying Peace, peace where there is no peace, before a purifying change of heart. Peace follows purity, and depends upon it, in a note Matthew Henry runs across the whole of this passage.
The purity meant is the man's own. The first and immediate effect of this wisdom, Albert Barnes has it, is not on the intellect, to make it more enlightened, nor on the memory and judgment, to make them clearer and stronger, but on the heart, to make the man upright, inoffensive and good. It leaves him clear of the three things the other wisdom had just been called — earthly, sensual, devilish — and comes out in his life and conduct. The Greek word, Adam Clarke has it, is chaste, holy and clean.
Purity has respect both to God and to ourselves; the six qualities after it regard our fellow men. John Gill's peace reaches the saints and then all men — those of a man's own household, his neighbours, yea, his enemies.
Each of the six meets something in the other person. Gentle is forbearing, making allowances, lenient toward a neighbour as to the duties he owes us; and full of mercy answers his miseries. The good fruits stand over against the confusion and every evil work the strife had been producing. In a quarrel the gentleness comes down to how an argument is handled — not being furious about opinions, and not urging our own beyond their weight, nor theirs who oppose us beyond their intention. Clarke has the same quality taking everything in good part, and putting the best construction upon all the actions of others.
The word behind easy to be entreated means easily persuaded, and tractable — not harsh as to a neighbour's faults. There is an easiness that is weak and faulty, Henry allows, but it is no blamable easiness to yield to the persuasions of God's word, and to the just and reasonable counsels of our fellow-creatures, nor to give up a dispute where there appears a good reason for it and a good end to be answered by it. Such a man is far from proud, arrogant, obstinate and overbearing.
Without partiality is adiakritos. Henry reads the word as being without suspicion and free from judging, making no undue surmises nor differences in our conduct toward one person more than another. The margin reads it without wrangling, which he glosses as not acting the part of sectaries, not disputing merely for the sake of a party, and not censuring others purely on account of their differing from us. The wisest men, he writes, are least apt to be censurers. The last quality faces the same way, since a man's peaceableness and his mercy toward other people have to be without dissimulation. What he professes to be, he is.
Every one of these marks needs a second person present. Somebody has to be owed the forbearance, somebody's faults have to be borne with, somebody's misery has to be answered, and somebody has to be conceded the better reason. The one quality that was not about other people came first, so that the peace, when it arrived, would not be the kind a man has by no longer minding what is clean. The men who wanted the name of wise would have had to show it in the people they were fighting.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Adam Clarke and Albert Barnes. How these teachings are made