James focuses on not grumbling or judging. In effect, he’s saying, “Don’t take your frustration out on your innocent companions. Yes, times are hard. But when we succumb to rudeness towards our co-sufferers, we multiply our hardship by isolation.” There is an important message in this emphasis: being the victim of oppression does not excuse what we do to others. 

Passage – James 5:7-12

⁷ Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. ⁸ You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. ⁹ Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. ¹⁰ As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. ¹¹ Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

¹² But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

Commentary

Think of a time when you were relationally hurt or emotionally upset. What was one of the hardest things for you to do? Chances are, “sit still” is near the top of the list. Being hurt and upset energizes us. We feel an innate need to move, to talk, to do something. We want things to be different, so anything other than prompt, decisive action feels like “doing nothing.”

Often, the result of hurt-fueled activity is to take the situation from bad to worse. We say things we haven’t thought through. We do things we regret. We blow up at people who had nothing to do with our hurt and then feel bad for hurting them.

Facing the challenges of post-hurt temptation is what this passage is all about. As we’ve seen, James’s readers had been hurt in many ways. In these verses, James turns his attention to helping his friends avoid the regret that comes from post-suffering temptations.

Patience Isn’t Passive (v. 7-8)

When James says, “therefore” in verse seven, he is referencing back to his pronouncement of God’s promised judgement on those who harmed his readers. We need to be careful not to read this passage like a generic pontification on the themes of patience, farming and suffering. James is not writing random proverbs about life; he is writing a letter to his friends.

As they heard of God’s judgement against their oppressors, their question had to be, “Okay, we’re glad God won’t overlook our oppression, but how are we to respond now?” James says, “Be patient (v. 7).” To which their inevitable reply would be, “How long should we be patient?” And James answers, “Until the coming of the Lord (v. 7).” Our response is to interpret this as a hyper-spiritual way of saying forever.

But it is a misperception of what it means to be patient that can make James’s response seem off-putting. If we mistake patience for passivity, it is as if James is saying, “Do nothing. Take it until Jesus returns.” We would be right to dislike this counsel.

To help us better understand what James means by “be patient,” consider the illustration he uses: a farmer patiently awaiting harvest. Anyone who knows a farmer knows that farmers are not passive. Famers plant, fertilize, weed, and tend to their crops. Farmers protect against insects and animals that would eat their crops. Farmers are highly active towards the things they can control.

But farmers are patient with regards to things they cannot control – the weather. A farmer cannot coerce the early rain to fall after the seeds are planted or the late rain that would optimize the yield. Patience towards the things that cannot be controlled is not passivity towards the things we can. Both healthy faith in God and good mental health require knowing the difference.

A fancy term for what James is describing in this passage is responsibility allocation: that is, accurately assigning responsibility for the various components of a situation to the right people.

• Name and describe the situation that is distressing for you. In this passage, the situation is the pressure to produce a crop that will feed and provide for the farmer’s family.
• Name the aspects of this situation that you can control. Obedience entails doing these things with a good attitude, like farmer planting and tending his crops.
• Name the aspects of this situation that only other people can do.
  • If these people are cooperative, then trust gives them the freedom to fulfill their role.
  • If these people neglect or are manipulative with their responsibilities, then patience is waiting on God’s James 5:1-6 response to their actions.
• Faith that honors God by actively obeying out of devotion to God, trusting good faith actors in our life, and being patient for God’s judgement against bad faith actors in our life.

Whether you’ve noticed it or not, these three notes (i.e., obedience, trust, and patience) are the melody of faith that have been playing throughout the book of James. James has cycled through these themes many times. We could summarize it this way:

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