James 2:12

So speak ye, and so do The thoughts of the teacher dwell, as before (chap. James 1:26) and afterwards (chap. James 3:1-12), on sins of speech as no less tests of character than sins of act. In so doing he was echoing the words of a yet greater Teacher (Matthew 12:37).

the law of liberty See note on ch. James 1:25. The recurrence of the phrase indicates a certain fondness for the thought which it expresses. As a phrase it is peculiar to St James, but the idea is found in John 8:32. Verbally it presents something like a contrast to St Paul's language as to the law "which gendereth unto bondage" (Galatians 4:24), but the difference is on the surface only, St James speaking of the moral law when the will accepts it as the guide of life, St Paul of its work as reproving and condemning when the fleshly will resists it, and pre-eminently of its merely ritual and ceremonial precepts, the days and months and years of Galatians 4:10.