James 5:19,20 – “Truly”

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

¹⁹My brothers, if someone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, ²⁰know that the one bringing back [the] sinner out of [the] error of his way will save his soul out of death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Like I John, these last two verses are a very abrupt ending for James’ book. Obviously that was deliberate.

What’s interesting to me also is that, in a sense, this verse embodies everything James himself has been doing for five chapters – he’s been trying to bring all of us sinners back out of the error of our way!

As I think back through the book, I notice (along with a lot of other writers down through the centuries) that James has been particularly concerned not so much with what we believe but with how we live. In Romans, Paul spends the first eleven chapters delving deeply into the theology of the Gospel, into right “thinking” about God, and our sin, and salvation by grace. James, in a sense, picks up at that point, goes to people who say, “Okay, we believe all of that,” and then asks us all “but are you living it?” We are all imminently in danger of saying we believe the Gospel but then living lives which completely contradict it. He would turn us sinners from the error of our ways!

I think it worthwhile to note that James, in particular, is writing to Jewish believers. Paul is writing primarily to Gentiles, of course. Back then, the entire Gospel was a new thought to Gentile peoples. Their first order of business, in a sense, was to understand the Truth at all! But Jewish people grew up in a culture that was immersed in God and the Bible. It was easy to just assume, because you were a Jew, you were “okay.” “Yes, I know all of that,” they could say. So, in order to help them, James doesn’t need to write eleven chapters explaining the Gospel. He needs to write to them and say, “So you believe it – then are you living it?”

In my mind, that brings us to us. Many of us, like the Jews, “grew up in church.” At least as late as my generation, that was true of almost everyone in America. But, in most of the churches I’ve ever known, I would suggest they had exactly the same problem as James’ readers – they all say that’s what they believe but their lives are a complete contradiction.

So Jew or Gentile, a lot of us need to seriously consider what James is saying throughout this book. It is too typical to “say we have faith, and yet have no works.” We need, as an entire religious culture, to be turned “from the error of our way.” In my lifetime, churches have been very “busy” places. They have done a LOT. Seriously. But precious few took it seriously to actually live everyday lives, to do their work, and to treat other people like Jesus would have us do, to actually live grace. Their religion is their “church work.” Their relationship with God is nothing more than another “ministry” at church. The end result of all that (misdirected) church busy-ness has been only to watch our nation and our world drop into hell. James calls us to the kind of life that is “true religion and undefiled” and the only “religion” that the Lord will use to significantly impact our world. … if we would only listen.

My next thought is that this same culture of people (who say they believe but don’t live it) are the very ones who will jump on James 5:19,20 and then run out to be great “witnesses” for the Lord, to “win the lost,” and turn all those people from errant denominations back to the Truth. In my humble opinion, instead of taking seriously what God Himself has said, I fear much of what evangelical Christians do is driven by their traditions, not from a serious consideration of the Bible or who God is. To be challenged to “serve the Lord” better, they run back to church busy-ness and to their Arminian view of evangelism. These last two verses in James to me are case in point.

What do I mean? I have counted eighteen times in this book where James refers to his readers as “brother” or “brothers,” and three of those were “my beloved brothers.” As sharp as the book may seem, it is bathed from beginning to end with love and personal relationship. It is a fundamentalist error, in my mind, to grab these last two verses and think we are justified to go out and beat people over the head, shove tracts in their lunch boxes, “invite them to church,” and all the rest, while utterly ignoring genuine love and/or relationships.

I’ve participated in plenty of that myself. And I know how little good it does to try to get “personal” with people with whom I have no real personal relationship.

I like what it says in the Expositor’s Bible: “A holy life is the best sermon, the most effectual remonstrance, the strongest incentive, the most powerful plea. Without it words are of little avail; with it words are scarcely necessary. This is the instrument which St. James throughout this Epistle commends. Not words, but works; not professions, but deeds, not fair speeches, but kind acts. [James 1:19; James 1:22; James 1:27; James 2:1; James 2:15-16; James 2:26; James 3:13; James 4:17] Nothing that we can say will ever make such impression upon others as what we do and what we are.”

It is the privilege of a personal relationship to be granted the opportunity to actually enter into the personal recesses of a sinner’s heart and help him see where he’s wrong. Most of the time, it takes an established relationship of love and respect ... which is what I personally see as the message of the entire Bible to the church. It is not so much, “Go and tell,” as “Go and live.” Yes, there are evangelists and missionaries and pastors and teachers who are called of God to herald the Gospel to even masses of people.

But I honestly think it is the amazing genius of real Christianity that what God has done is essentially infiltrated the world with His people, set them in families, neighborhoods, workplaces, grocery stores, soccer fields, and literally everywhere else and told them to live their faith there, to live grace there, to let their light shine. In so doing, He would create a world that is hungry to hear the gospel. In so doing He would create a world where, when the pastor or missionary or evangelist speaks, people pause to listen. He Himself calls it “adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (Titus 2:10).

What we see in these two verses is exactly this kind of personal relationship. Notice it is if “one” should wander from the truth and “one” of you should turn him. Notice the singulars. Once again, there is a place for mass evangelism, for the Billy Grahams of the world. But there is also an enormously significant place for the “ones” who live and work and rub elbows all day every day with people who’ve lost touch with the Truth. It is the very “personal-ness” of our relationships that buy us the opportunity to “turn them.”

For those who would take James’ message seriously, to sincerely try to live grace every day (and not to just buy the evangelical Christian “bait-and-switch” of church busy-ness), they can expect that the personal relationships they thus engender will invariably afford them opportunities to actually help other people.

In a sense, perhaps this verse really does summarize James’ heart from the whole book – live your faith, don’t just talk about it, and everywhere you go build the kind of relationships the Lord can use to touch others.

Lord, help us be real. Help us to truly love. May the reality of Jesus in us save someone else’s soul from death and cover that multitude of sins.