James 5:1-6 – “Hearts and Steady Hands”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹Come now, [you] the rich ones, weep howling upon your miseries, the ones coming. ²Your wealth has rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be into a witness to you and will eat your flesh as fire. You laid up treasure in [the] last days. ⁴Look! The wages of the workers who reaped your fields which were withheld by you are crying out, and the cries of the harvesters have entered into the ears of [the] Lord of Sabaoth. ⁵You have lived luxuriously on the earth and you have lived in excess. You nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. ⁶You have condemned [and] murdered the righteous one. He is not opposing you.

Wow. What a passage. Wow. I’ve read this for years and never knew quite what to do with it. Wow. Words that ought to register about a 10.5 on the Richter Scale of our hearts. Wow.

It has been the perennial affliction of the human race that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer until finally the whole wretched affair collapses in some horrible bloodbath of revolt or conquest. In a sense, in America, we have been sheltered from this evil by the economic predominance of a prosperous middle class. I have, of course, through my lifetime sadly observed the slow decay of that middle class, knowing my history well enough to know exactly where this is headed – to the same broken pattern it has followed throughout human history. It will only get worse, not better, until finally we join our ancestors in the certain outcome – another bloodbath.

What I have never realized is just how much God is aware of the problem and just how much He hates it, how that ultimate collapse is actually His very predictable judgment on the monstrously wicked, cruel, and oppressive system we invariably create. I’ve known for years that God hates oppression and social injustice, but in my mind I’ve never connected it with the whole rich/poor cultural divide. I think about passages like Isaiah 58:6,7:

⁶Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

The Lord in this passage is speaking to people who “have” and calling them to share out of their “have” with those who “have not.” What He is clearly calling us to in this and a thousand other passages like it is to care about people less fortunate than ourselves and to share out of our abundance to relieve their want. This is the heart of a true believer and, think about it, to do this is to distance ourselves from the very problem God is addressing in our passage from James. What is the Lord really doing in our passage except reproving people who have utterly disregarded the heart of Isaiah 58:6,7?

The Lord would have us all to know that it us utterly unchristian for anyone to run a business, make profits, and then hoard it all for themselves while the people around them, and particularly the people who work for them, suffer want. The rich fool in Luke 12:16-21, when he brought in a great crop, said to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops … This is what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods …” Of course God said to him, “You fool. Tonight shall your soul be required of you.” People around him were starving, and all he could think of to do with “more” crops is to build bigger barns to store them in. The same was true of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man “was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day,” while right at his gate was laid “a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke 16:19,20). The man had hoarded his wealth and lived in luxury while another man at his very gate would have been happy if he could just eat the rich man’s garbage.

I guess I’ve never thought just how much God hates this.

Hmmmm. As I type I am very thankful that I grew up in a generous family. My parents and pretty much my entire family have never been rich people, but they’ve always been willing to share what little they had with others. That makes it a lot easier for me to see what God is wanting here. It’s the world I grew up in.

I suppose I should inject here that I do not think James is speaking to believers, although his words should go to each of our hearts. James is not writing to a church. He is writing to the “Twelve Tribes,” the Jewish people, and when speaking to the Jewish people, Jesus Himself could mentally break away from His disciples and directly address “the rich,” as in Luke 6:24ff, “Woe to you who are rich …”

I also want to note the four particular problems James addresses, which are:

1.      Hoarding --  ³Your gold and silver have rusted ...You laid up treasure in [the] last days.

2.      Cheating people -- ⁴Look! The wages of the workers who reaped your fields which were withheld by you are crying out…

3.      Self-indulgence -- ⁵You have lived luxuriously on the earth and you have lived in excess.

4.      Cruelty -- ⁶You have condemned [and] murdered the righteous one. He is not opposing you.

One last thing, always worth noting, is that it isn’t a sin to be rich. The Bible is full of people who were wealthy particularly because of the Lord’s blessings – Abraham, Job, Boaz, David, Solomon, and on. When addressing the Christian rich, Paul instructs Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (I Tim 6:17-19).

The problem, of course, is that “it takes a steady hand to carry a full cup,” and few of us seem to have a very steady hand. Unfortunately, “wealth” in any form tends to be our ruin. But this very issue leads us all back to our hearts. “My son, give me thine heart, for out of it are the issues of life.” The Lord wants our hearts whether we have wealth or not. If we give Him our hearts, if we would have His heart for the people around us (and under us), then with or without wealth, we’ll live the love that life is really all about and certainly not fall into the horrible judgment portrayed in our passage in James.