James 5:6

Ye have condemned and killed the just The words have been very generally understood as referring to the death of Christ, and on this view, the words "he doth not resist you" have been interpreted as meaning, "He no longer checks you in your career of guilt; He leaves you alone (comp. Hosea 4:17) to fill up the measure of your sin." St James, it has been inferred, uses the term "the Just One" as Stephen had done (Acts 7:52), as pointing emphatically to "Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). Fuller consideration, however, shews that such a meaning could hardly have come within the horizon of St James's thoughts. (1) That single evil act of priests, and scribes, and the multitude of Jerusalem, could hardly have been thus spoken of in an Epistle addressed to the Twelve Tribes of the dispersion, without a more distinct indication of what was referred to. To see in them, as some have done, the statement that the Jews, wherever they were found, were guilty of that crime, as accepting and approving it, or as committing sins which made such an atonement necessary, is to read into them a non-natural meaning. (2) The whole context leads us to see in the words, a generic evil, a class sin, characteristic, like those of the previous verse, of the rich and powerful everywhere. (3) The meaning thus given to "he doth not resist you" seems, to say the least, strained and unnatural, especially as coming so soon after the teaching (ch. James 4:6) which had declared that "God does resistthe proud." (4) The true meaning of both clauses is found, it is believed, in taking "the just" as the representative of a class, probably of the class of those, who as disciples of Christ the Just One, were reproducing His pattern of righteousness. Such an one, like his Master, and like Stephen, St James adds, takes as his law (note the change of tense from past to present) the rule of not resisting. He submits patiently, certain that in the end he will be more than conqueror. It is not without interest to note that that title was afterwards applied to St James himself (Euseb. Hist.ii. 23). The name Justus, which appears three times in the New Testament (Acts 1:23; Acts 18:7; Colossians 4:11), was obviously the Latin equivalent of this epithet, and it probably answered to the Chasidimor Assideans (1Ma 2:42; 1Ma 7:13, 2Ma 14:6) of an earlier stage of Jewish religious history. It is as if a follower of George Fox had addressed the judges and clergy of Charles II."s reign, and said to them, "Ye persecuted the Friend, and he does not resist you." (5) It is in favour of this interpretation that it presents a striking parallel to a passage in the "Wisdom of Solomon," with which this Epistle has so many affinities. There too the writer speaks of the wealthy and voluptuous as laying snares for "the just" who is also "poor," who calls himself "the servant of the Lord," and boasts of God as his Father (Wis 2:12-16). Comp. also the description of the ultimate triumph of the just man in. Wis 5:1-5.