James 1:2

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; MY BRETHREN - often in James, marking community of nation and of faith. ALL JOY - cause for the highest joy (Grotius). Nothing but joy. Count all "divers temptations" to be each matter of joy (Bengel). FALL INTO - unexpectedly, so as to be encompassed by them [ peripeseete (G4045)]. TEMPTATIONS - not allurements to sin, but trials which test and purify the Christian character. Some to whom James writes were "sick," or otherwise "afflicted" (James 5:13). Every possible trial to the child of God is a masterpiece of strategy of the Captain of his salvation for his good....

2_All joy_. The first exhortation is, to bear trials with a cheerful mind. And it was especially necessary at that time to comfort the Jews, almost overwhelmed as they were with troubles. For the very name of the nation was so infamous, that they were hated and despised by all people wherever they went; and their condition as Christians rendered them still more miserable, because they held their own nation as their most inveterate enemies. At the same time, this consolation was not so suited to one time, but that it is always useful to believers, whose life is a constant warfare on earth. But that we may know more fully what he means, we must doubtless take _temptations _or _trials _as including all adverse things; and they are so called, because they are the tests of our obedience to God. He bids the faithful, while exercised with these, to rejoice; and that not only when they fall into...

1-11 Christianity teaches men to be joyful under troubles: such exercises are sent from God's love; and trials in the way of duty will brighten our graces now, and our crown at last. Let us take care, in times of trial, that patience, and not passion, is set to work in us: whatever is said or done, let patience have the saying and doing of it. When the work of patience is complete, it will furnish all that is necessary for our Christian race and warfare. We should not pray so much for the removal of affliction, as for wisdom to make a right use of it. And who does not want wisdom to guide him under trials, both in regulating his own spirit, and in managing his affairs? Here is something in answer to every discouraging turn of the mind, when we go to God under a sense of our own weakness and folly. If, after all, any should say, This may be the case with some, but I fear I shall not succ...

Verse James 1:2. _COUNT IT ALL JOY_] The word πειρασμος, which we translate _temptation_, signifies affliction, persecution, or _trial_ of any kind; and in this sense it is used here, not intending diabolic suggestion, or what is generally understood by the word temptation....

MY BRETHREN - Not brethren as Jews, but as Christians. Compare James 2:1. COUNT IT ALL JOY - Regard it as a thing to rejoice in; a matter which should afford you happiness. You are not to consider it as a punishment, a curse, or a calamity, but as a fit subject of felicitation. Compare the notes at Matthew 5:12. WHEN YE FALL INTO DIVERS TEMPTATIONS - Oh the meaning of the word “temptations,” see the notes at Matthew 4:1. It is now commonly used in the sense of placing allurements before others to induce them to sin, and in this sense the word seems to be used in...

EXPOSITION JAMES 1:1 SALUTATION. JAMES, A SERVANT OF GOD AND OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. (On the person who thus describes himself, see the Introduction) It is noteworthy that he keeps entirely out of sight his natural relationship to our Lord, and styles himself simply "a bond-servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ." That, and that alone, gave him a right to speak and a claim to be heard. Δοῦλος is similarly used by St. Paul in Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Titus 1:1 by St. Peter in 2 Peter 1:1; and by

MY BRETHREN,.... Not only according to the flesh, he being a Jew as they were; but in a spiritual sense, they being born again of the same grace, belonging to the same family and household of faith, and having the same Father, and being all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus: COUNT IT ALL JOY WHEN YE FALL INTO DIVERS TEMPTATIONS; not the temptations of Satan, or temptations to sin; for these cannot be matter of joy, but grief; these are fiery darts, and give a great deal of uneasiness and trouble; but afflictions and persecutions for the sake of the Gospel, which are so called here and elsewhere, because they are trials of the faith of God's people, and of other graces of the Spirit of God. God by these tempts his people, as he did Abraham, when he called him to sacrifice his son; he thereby tried his faith, fear, love, and obedience; so by afflictions, God tries the graces o...

James 1:1. _James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting._ James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was an apostle, and he was the Lord's brother, yet he mentions not these greater things, but he takes the lowly title, in which, no doubt, he felt the highest honour, and calls himself «a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.» Happy is that man who serves the Lord, whose whole life is not that of an independent master of himself, but of one who is fully submissive to the divine command. Where is the fiction of the ten lost tribes? He writes to the twelve tribes that were scattered abroad, and gives them greeting, so that this Epistle is first directed to the seed of Israel, and then, as in all things, to all the Church of God, seeing all the saints of God are the true seed of believing Abraham, the f...

ANALYSIS AND ANNOTATIONS I. TRIALS AND THE EXERCISE OF FAITH CHAPTER 1 _ 1. Trials and the power of faith (James 1:1)_ 2. The resources of faith (James 1:5) 3. The realization of faith (James 1:9) 4. The conquest of faith (James 1:12) 5. The result of faith (James 1:16) James 1:1 The first verse is the introduction. The writer is James, but he does not add, as he might have done, “the brother of the Lord.” It would have identified his per

The paragraph, like its successors, has no special link with its context: it is the writer's habit to throw out a series of aphoristic comments on topics, with as much connexion as there is between the essays of Bacon or successive cantos of Tennyson's _In Memoriam._ It is the manner of Wisdom literature (_cf._ especially Ecclus.). The paradox with which the epistle opens is an expansion of the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20). The tense of the verb, when you have fallen, gives the key. James has not forgotten the Lord's Prayer; but when a devout man _has_ been brought into trial, he recognises it as God's will, and therefore to be received with joy. He who has inflicted the trial will deliver from the evil which alone makes it distressing. A man untried is rejected, was a saying attributed to Christ. The word rejected is the negative of the adjective here wrongly translated proof: read (as in...