James 1:21

Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness. — So Peter (1 Peter 3:21) speaks of “the filth of the flesh.” But the defilement here referred to seems general and not special, common, that is, to the whole natural man. The superabundance — the overgrowth — of evil will occupy the heart, if care be not taken to root it out; and, like the thorns in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:7, et seq.), spring up and choke the good seed. All such a rank and poisonous crop must be gathered and laid aside, in caps may be, for some fiery trouble to consume, that out of the dead luxuriant weeds a richer soil for virtue may be made.

Naughtiness (ne-aughtiness, or nothingness) was used in 1611, instead of the older and more correct translation, malice or maliciousness. The badness implied in the original is much more positive than that which appears from our present version.

Receive with meekness the engrafted word. — Or, in mildness accept ye this word of truth (see James 1:18, above), engrafted, like a good olive tree, or rather implanted, in you. The term is peculiar to this place, and means “innate” in its first intention. If taken so, “the innate Word” will be Christ Himself formed within us. (Comp. Galatians 4:19.)

Able to save your souls. — In like manner Paul at Miletus commends the elders of Ephesus “to God, and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). Observe, the idea of salvation thus conveyed by the implanted word, is so potentially and not actually. Tended and cultured, it will grow into a tree of life, the fruit whereof may heal the wounds of sin; but the after-growth of this plant of God is largely in the hands of man.

We can hardly help making a brief inquiry in this place on the meaning of “soul.” There are few words more vaguely used by devout persons, or which present greater difficulties to the learned, or open wider fields of speculation for the thoughtful. In common language we speak of “body and soul,” meaning much the same as “body and spirit;” but theologians write more carefully of “body, soul, and spirit” (comp. 1 Thessalonians 5:23); and psychologists distinguish between the animal branch of their subject and the rational or intellectual (ψυχή νοῦς). The second of these methods of division is known as the trilogy, and is of most importance to the Christian reader. By it is understood (1) the body, wholly and entirely material, of and belonging to this world; (2) the mind or reason, corporal also — that is, arising from the body, and depending in its exquisite balance upon it; (3) the true soul or spirit, the breath as it were of God, immaterial and immortal. Our bodily nature, of course, is shared with the lower creation, and the spiritual with the higher, while the intellectual is peculiar to mankind. If it be hard to draw a line between vegetable and animal, harder still is it to separate instinct from reason, the difference being of degree rather than kind. But if the one side of the mental soul — namely, the rational, be near akin to what is termed instinctive in the brute, the other, the intellectual, however it may, as it does, soar upward, yet approaches not to the angels, for the difference here is of kind and not degree. Now, strange to say, the Apostle treats not of the spirit but the natural soul. Other texts in plenty assure us that God is able to save the one; from this we may learn salvation is for both, such being the work of “the engrafted Word.” Reason and intellect consecrated to divine service have an eternity before them, one of activity and not repose. The highest conception of God to the Greek mind was the Aristotelian idea of intellectual self-sufficiency and contemplation; the Oriental strives, as for ages it has striven, for extinction and nothingness; but to the Christian is given the sure and certain hope of the glorified body, the enlightened soul, the perfected spirit — three in one, and one in three — working the will and praise of its Maker and Redeemer for ever.