In a letter in which James does not hold back, he saves his strongest language for the rich who have lived ungodly lives. People who have rejected God and made wealth their god.
In verse 1, James isn’t really writing directly to the ungodly but rather about them. Because he is not calling them to repentance, but he is giving the Christian a glimpse of the ultimate destiny of the wicked.
Sometimes as Christians we can look at the ungodly and we might envy them. We can envy their wealth, their power, nd their influence. And what James wants us to see is that when we live life for ourselves and outside of God’s desire there is nothing to envy. We do not want the destiny of the wicked.
Verse 1
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
James says the ultimate consequences of the wicked should cause them to weep and howl The word Howl here describes “the the sound a person utters when he suffers extraordinary pain or grief.”
This is not someone who is simply weeping out of sadness but a person who is wailing because of intense and deep despair.
James is saying to the rich who have lived ungodly lives, weep and howl because miseries are coming upon you. These miseries are a reference to the final destiny of the wicked – eternal punishment in hell.
Verses 2-3b
Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.
What is James referring to with these verses? He is referring to what eventually happens to all material possessions. They fade. They wither. They rot. They crumble. They fall apart. Now technically speaking, gold and sliver do not corrode. But the point that James is making is that everything is destined to perish Nothing physically lasts. Some of great wealthy civilizations in world history that looked like they would stand forever now no longer exist. They have been defeated. They have fallen and now buried under the sands of history. Nothing in this physical world lasts forever.
As James writes in chapter 4:14 life is but a mist. It is brief. It is temporary.
In the beginning of chapter 5, James is speaking into the hope and identity of those who made wealth their god. The very thing that gave them a sense of power and control and status. The thing that gave them a sense of being immortal and indestructible is now gone. James is speaking of a future time in which they will have physically perished and their bodies are rotting away along with their wealth.
And in these statements the rhetorical question that James is essentially asking is: what will you have gained? You will have gained nothing of eternal significance. In fact, you will experience the miseries of eternal punishment.
Verse 3b
James writes in verse 3, “Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.”
This statement about laying up treasure “in the last days” means that these rich hoarded their own wealth up until their dying breath. They didn’t use their wealth for others. Even up to the point where they knew they were dying, they knew they would soon pass away and have no use for this wealth. And instead of giving to others, they held onto it until their last breathe as if the wealth itself could go with them or if the wealth itself could give them life.
The judgment that is being made against them isn’t that they were rich. But rather that they hoarded their wealth. They did not use it for the benefit of others. It wasn’t a means to serve, to help, to love, to be compassionate. There were people all around them living in poverty, barely clothed, dying of hunger. And they sat in their abundance of wealth and did nothing.
And so James makes two statements about this hoarded wealth 1) it will bring judgment against them 2) it will eat their flesh like fire.
Many commentators view the “eating the flesh like fire” as describing what hoarding wealth does to the soul. It destroys. It corrupts. While outwardly it can appear you are becoming stronger, inwardly, you are rotting away.
Eugene Peterson in The Message paraphrase this verse this way: your “greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within.”
In other words, you don’t even recognize that your love of wealth is corrupting your character, your heart, your soul to the point that people are dying of hunger and you don’t care. You have the means to help and you don’t. Your heart is hardened and cold. When wealth or luxury becomes your god you become empty inside.
On the outside they look like they are flourishing but they are dead inside.
With these words, James is also making a warning to us.
When our hope and peace becomes tied to our physical stuff it begins to impact the character of our heart. As Eugene Peterson writes, greed becomes a cancer and it destroys our ability to have compassion to others, mercy to others. We can become so concerned about our own life and the protection of our own life that we lose the ability to pour into others.
The more things we accumulate can leads to us spending more and more time and energy protecting and guarding these things so that we don’t lose these things.
This is why we are to hold to material things loosely so that our world doesn’t become about protecting and guarding these materials things and that we are quick to giving away these things.
When we hold things loosely and we see a need, we can be quick to say, here, I want you to have this. But when we hold things tightly and we see a need, we are quick to ignore that need because meeting that need could take away what is mine.
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And so James says this hoarded wealth that has been left behind to corrode will be evidence against you.
When you stand before God and try to make the case that you did not have a wicked, self-centered heart, that you indeed loved your neighborhood, your hoarded wealth will be a witness against you that you in fact did not love others but you loved only yourself. Your accumulation of wealth will be evidence that your life pursuit was about you.
Verse 4
Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
James calls out their sin of defrauding people. You promised to pay these workers and then you didn’t. Your greed has led you to withhold money from people who not only earned it but desperately need it.
Listen to these words from the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 24:14-15. the Lord says to Israel: “You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.”
The warning here in Deuteronomy is both a warning about not defrauding people but also a warning to not show a lack of compassion toward people.
This is the judgment given here in James 5. The wicked wealthy have both defrauded out of their own greed but also lacked compassion out of their hardened hearts. This is the sickness of greed: I only care for myself.
And by the way, you don’t have to be wealthy to be greedy. Both the rich and the poor can love money and hold tightly to their material possessions. Greed is not necessarily a reflection of our bank account, it is a reflection of our heart.
When James makes this statement condemning the rich in verse 4, he also reveals several very important aspects of who God is.
First, God hears the cries of the oppressed. He hears the cries of those experiencing injustice. When we look around this world and wonder if God sees injustice. He does! He has not tuned it out. He has not ignored it. He deeply cares for those society has cast off and ignored and forgotten.
One of the themes of the Old Testament is God regularly declaring his heart for the widow, the orphan., the oppressed foreigner.
I think sometimes as Christians we run from social justice issues, because we think a focus on social justice will water down the Gospel. But when we read the Bible, God is regularly reminding us that he hears the cries of the oppressed and he calls his people to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
The second thing that James reveals about God is that this God who hears. He is a powerful God who defends the oppressed. James writes that “the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”
Notice that James doesn’t simply say the cries have reached the ears of the “Lord.” Rather, he says the “Lord of Hosts.” Other translations might say “Lord of Heaven’s Armies” or the “LORD Almighty.” The term Lord of Hosts is describing God has great and mighty and powerful.
When David went up against Goliath, David said to him, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts…” What David was saying was you might think you have the advantage because of your size, strength and weapons but I have the advantage because I am come in the name of the Lord of hosts, the Lord of heaven’s armies, the Lord almighty.
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And so James is saying to the rich who have defrauded their workers, who have shown no compassion toward their workers that the one true God, the God Almighty knows what you have done. You might have thought that your workers had no one to fight their cause, to take up their case but in fact, their defender is The LORD of Host.
You do not want to be an opponent or adversary of the Lord of Host. You do not want to experience his judgment. But James is saying, “you will – so weep and howl.”
In this statement of condemnation toward the wicked wealthy, James reminds his Christian audience who have experience oppression and persecution from the ungodly that God hears their cries and that God has the ability to defend. He is greater and will have the final say against the oppressors.
Verses 5
You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
James brings more accusation and condemnation. He says you have lived your life only seeking to satisfy you. Your life has been about your peace, your comfort and your pleasure.
James writes that “You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter”.
One writer said, “These apathetic, wicked rich are like unreasoning cattle who graze in the field all day long, getting fat not knowing that their day of slaughter is coming!”
Jesus said it this way, “you have gained the whole world and yet lost your soul.” You spent your whole life satisfying your earthly desires while your soul was withering away.
Instead of seeking to know God and delight in Him and ultimately discover true life in Him, you made life about you which ultimately led to you losing your life.
Verse 6
You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
Whether it is a sin of hatred or a sin of greed, when sin fully has its way it seeks to kill and destroy. James says to the rich, you have become so self-centered and greedy that you will kill the righteous, you will kill those who have done no wrong. And you will take what little they have. And the final condemning statement is that you kill them even when they don’t resist you. They would have given you what they have but you simply chose to kill them. This is what you have become. This is what greed has turned you into.
These are strong words from James. They are uncomfortable words. And we can find ourselves thinking, why does he choose to address this issue of greed here in this final chapter?
Well as we mentioned at the beginning, it is both a warning to Christians but also an encouragement. The warning is not to set your heart on earthly things, it will leave you empty but to give your heart and soul to the one who truly satisfies. And the encouragement is you may be living in a world where the ungodly oppress you. Take a heart this suffering is momentarily. This life is brief.
Therefore live life with a patient and persevering faith.
This will be the theme of the rest of this chapter and the rest of this book. James finishes up this letter by calling us to the very thing he began this letter with: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”