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hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent
in dust and ashes" (Job 42: 5, 6). God's object was to bring Job to the end of himself
and surely this is the Lord's concern for all of us whatever age we live in. "Not I, but
Christ" must be our continual motto. We deal with a God Who is exceedingly patient
with all of us and is "very pitiful and of tender mercy" (James 5: 11). As Psa. 103: 8
expresses it, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy".
The next section of the epistle deals with the prohibition of oaths. We do not believe
that this refers to oaths in courts of law on important matters, but rather the taking of the
Lord's name in vain in ordinary conversation in an irreverent way. The Pharisees were
guilty of this, and the Lord, in His Sermon on the Mount, attacked their hypocrisy and
forbad all such oaths (Matt. 5: 33-37). James here reiterates Christ's teaching:
"But above all things, my brethren swear not, neither by the heaven nor by the earth,
nor by any other oath; but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay; that ye fall not under
judgment" (5: 12, R.V.).
The way to avoid false swearing is to be strictly truthful in one's speech. We should
always really mean what we say. Yes should mean yes, and no should mean no without
any reservations and the name of God should be avoided in frivolous conversation or in a
thoughtless way. "The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain"
(Exod. 20: 7).
The writer of the epistle now asks a number of rhetorical questions:
"Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is
any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him
. . . . ." (5: 13, 14, R.V.).
We must realize the condition of the Christian world in the first century was vastly
different from today. At the present time we see around us Christendom, which
comprises a vast assortment of churches with varying beliefs, religious movements of all
kinds, a veritable Babel of differing voices. It was not like this at the beginning. There
existed the recent converts to Christianity who lived in local groups. There were no
denominations as we know today. Consequently, when James refers sick people to the
elders of the `church', there was only one church then existing and there could be no
misunderstanding of this. But today, if we apply James 5: 14 to ourselves when we fall
ill, to which church shall we go? Many are spiritually dead; others are modernistic and
reject the fundamentals of the faith as found in the N.T. Will any church do, no matter
what its tenets are?
These are problems which arise when we do not rightly divide the Word of Truth.
Those who use this vital principle in their study of the Word and understand what true
dispensational teaching embraces, will not be troubled by these last verses of James'
epistle. They will interpret them according to their context and that context is set in the
period covered by the Acts of the Apostles. This book, one of the most important in the
N.T., has been obscured by the traditional view that Israel was set aside by God at the
Cross and that the Body of Christ, which belongs to the dispensation of the Mystery or