James 5:6

James 5:6. The third sin is the oppression or persecution of the righteous. Y e have condemned and killed the just, or the just one the just man, as the word ‘just' is in the singular. These words have been usually referred to the condemnation and execution of our Lord by the Jews. [1] He is pre-eminently the Just One; and this appears from the Acts of the Apostles to be a common appellation of our Lord in the primitive Church, and perhaps also of the Messiah among the Jews. His murder is ever represented as the crowning sin of the Jewish nation. Thus St. Peter accuses the Jews of having denied the Holy One and the Just and of killing the Prince of life (Acts 3:14); and with the same crime does the martyr Stephen charge his accusers: ‘Your fathers have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers' (Acts 7:52). And so also Justin Martyr says: ‘Ye have killed the Just One, and before Him the prophets.' But there is nothing in the context to indicate this, and the words which follow, ‘He doth not resist you,' are adverse to this meaning: they cannot refer to the non-resistance of Christ, as the verb is not in the past, but in the present tense. Some, indeed, suppose that the words denote ‘God doth not resist you:' that, as a punishment for their crime in killing Christ, God withdrew from them His Spirit; His Spirit no longer strove with them. But such a meaning is far-fetched. Others read it as a question: ‘And doth He, that is, God, not resist you?' We prefer the other interpretation, that by the just one is meant just men in general, an individual being taken to represent the class. Christ was the most flagrant, but not the only example of their killing the just. Stephen fell a prey to the fury of the Jews, and many more whose names are unrecorded; and the writer of this Epistle, who also was called the Just, was afterwards an instance of the fact here stated, ‘Ye have condemned and killed the just one.'

[1] So Lange, Basset, Dean Scott

and he, that is, Christ, if the expression, the Just One, is restricted to Him, though the present tense of the verb is somewhat opposed to this meaning; or the just man, used generally.

doth not resist you, referring either to the patience with which Christ endured His sufferings, or to the patience of just men in general. There is here a tacit reference to the vengeance of God, who adopts the cause of the just.