Main Idea
True love calls people out when we see them drifting from Jesus
Sermon Notes
Overview
Blomberg and Kamell, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
Helping bring back wayward Christians securely into the “fold” may constitute one of the most neglected responsibilities of the church today.
Many churches, particularly growing ones, count only the number of visitors, new members, converts, those baptized, and so on, but never notice how many disappear out “the back door.”
Love covering a multitude of sins alludes to Pr. 10:12 and will reappear in 1Pe 4:8. But the really serious issue at stake here goes back to Mt 18:15-18.
If Christians spent even half the time taking their concerns about other people directly to them in gentleness and love (recall Gal 6:1) rather than complaining about them to others, we would all be far healthier, individually and collectively.
Moo, Pillar New Testament Commentary
James does not conclude his letter with greetings and benedictions typical of epistolary endings, but with a summons to action. This kind of ending is more typical of the more “formal” NT letters that read like published sermons; 1 John is an especially close parallel. James’s letter has been full of specific rebukes and commands. Indeed, as we pointed out in the Introduction, there are more imperative verbs per word in James than in any other NT book. So it is fitting that he would in the end turn to the community with an encouragement to intervene on behalf of fellow Christians who may be having difficulty with the spiritual matters that James has been discussing.
Motyer, The Bible Speaks Today
The words My brethren have appeared over and over in James’ letter (1:2, 16, 19; 2:1, 5, 14; 3:1, 10, 12; 4:11), and especially since he began to pen his conclusion (5:7, 9, 10, 12).
We have a care for each other not only when someone in physical (14–15) or spiritual (16a) need makes an approach for help, but also when there is no such call. This is when the evidence of our own eyes tells us that someone within the circle of the fellowship is slipping away into the path of sin and death.
Someone who is within the fellowship of the local church (any one among you, 19) is seen to wander from the truth (19) and to live in the error of his way (20). In Titus 1:1 Paul speaks of ‘the knowledge of the truth which accords with godliness’. ‘Truth’ and ‘godliness’ belong together. It is impossible (in Scripture) to make ‘truth’ a mere matter of holding some propositions or credal statements in our heads. Truth is a living thing; when it grips our minds it changes our lives. If we claim to know the truth, then the Bible would require us to prove our claim not only by reciting a creed and understanding it, but by the evidence of a way of life matching the truth.
The Lord Jesus meant the same thing when he spoke of the truth making us free (Jn. 8:31–32). We learn from Paul of two men named Hymenaeus and Philetus who ‘swerved from the truth’ (2 Tim. 2:17–18). Their error was primarily intellectual. Jude is roused to write to his fellow-Christians because he sees the faith threatened by those ‘who pervert the grace of God into licentiousness’ (Jude 4). Their error was primarily moral. But in each case the true faith is denied, and in each case the error spreads. The ‘talk’ of Hymenaeus and Philetus eats its way into people like a cancer, corrupting and destroying their lives. Jude sees the moral error of his adversaries working in their minds also so that they ‘revile whatever they do not understand’ (Jude 10).
More and more, we have witnessed people in leading ecclesiastical positions denying central Christian truth, departing from Christian morality, and yet continuing in office as official teachers of the church. Correspondingly, society has withdrawn from anything but a vague ‘folk’-attachment to Christian sentiment.
It is this same verb (though not in the same form) which the Old Testament uses to describe how God deals with our sin. He covers it over, hides it right out of his and our sight; nothing is left to ‘grin through’. But it is more than sweeping sin under the carpet; it is atonement; it is a putting of sin out of sight by the provision of a sufficient sacrifice.
And, of course, if we do not avail ourselves of the death of the lamb, then we must forfeit our own lives, for the wages of sin is death
Every Christian fellowship, as James implies in these verses, is a place of truth and holiness. The truth is held by every member and the life which matches the truth is lived out.
We know within ourselves how easy it is to slip away from a full commitment to our Lord. We also know (please God, we know) what a blessing it is to have a brother or sister to run after us, minister to us, direct us in the right way and bring us back to God. Such is a scriptural procedure. The leaders of our churches are to keep watch over our souls (Heb. 13:17); we are to stir one another up to love and good works (Heb. 10:24).
But the question must be asked whether it is in fact possible for us, with our limited wisdom and blinkered perceptions, to discern the difference between the backsliding of a believer who, for all his present slipping away in truth and life, is none the less secure in Christ and will unfailingly be brought back, and, on the other hand, the pretty identical evidence which declares that one within the visible fellowship does not truly belong to Christ at all. The fact is that the only evidence we have of each other is what we profess with our lips and live in our lives. We are not privy to the secrets of another’s heart, nor to the secret counsels of God. We dare not sit back from any declension in truth or life that becomes evident within the bounds of our local church.
In other words, the local church is a fellowship of mutual care in which each watches over the other’s welfare in the things of God, and is on the alert to minister and rescue. There is just a hint, too, of the delicacy and discretion that is to be used. We understood the phrase about covering a multitude of sins as bringing the wanderer within the embrace of the finished work of Christ. It may have been a special set of sins, or even one single sin, which revealed the departure from the truth and the error of the way. But when a person comes to know Christ as Saviour it is not just one sin that is forgiven, nor even just all the sins of which the sinner is aware, but the whole multitude of all our sins as God knows and has recorded them. The Lord Jesus has offered the one sacrifice for sins for ever (Heb. 10:12).
We cannot but be struck by the fact that James speaks of the concerned believer as ‘bringing back’, ‘saving’ and ‘covering the sins’ of the one in error. Surely these are things which only God can do? Only God can forgive sins, save us from them and give us the gift of repentance by which we return from our personal far country (e.g. Acts 11:18; 2 Tim. 2:25). How can we do these things? The answer is that we cannot, but we must act as if we could. The words express the measure of the concern and effort we are called to expend in our spiritual concern for those in spiritual need. Though we cannot convert them, we must labour to do so. Though we cannot save them from death, we must strive for their spiritual welfare as if their eternal destiny rested with us. Though we cannot cover their sins, we must follow the example of the Son of God who can do so, and hold nothing dear to ourselves and no sacrifice too great if only they are saved. For the local church of which James speaks is a fellowship of concern.25
25 In using this ‘as if’ language James is in line with New Testament ways. Cf. Rom. 11:13–14; 1 Cor. 7:16; 9:22. Above all note the example of the Lord Jesus in Jn. 20:23. This verse has suffered much through being made to refer to how ministers act towards church members and has been forced to provide a colour of truth for the error of ‘priestly absolution’. But the verse is in fact a missionary mandate. The church is being sent into the world as the Father sent the Son into the world. The question, therefore, is, In what sense can we forgive, or refuse to forgive, the sins of the unconverted world? And the answer is, By giving or withholding the gospel of God’s forgiveness. But we are to preach that Good News with all the concern and urgency that arises from acting as if the task and the responsibility of forgiving sins were wholly ours.
Verse 19
Ancient Christian Commentary
Bede: Earlier on in his letter James warned us to restrain our tongues from wicked or pointless statements, but now at the end he takes the opportunity to show us what we should be doing with them instead.
Moo, Pillar New Testament Commentary
The truth does not refer here to Christian doctrine in a narrow sense, but more broadly to all that is involved in the gospel. This truth is something that is done as well as believed (cf. Ps. 51:6; Gal. 5:7; 1 John 1:6)
For James, correct doctrine cannot be separated from correct behavior
Note the following verses, which illustrate the seriousness of sins that can be denoted by planaō: Matt. 22:29; 24:5; 2 Tim. 3:13; Titus 3:3; 2 Pet. 2:15. “Bring back” (epistrephō) can refer to a person’s initial “turn” from sin to God in conversion (Acts 14:15; 15:19; 26:18; 1 Thess. 1:9). Here, however, James specifically refers to one of you, that is, a person who has at least outwardly identified with the Christian community. “Bring back” will mean, therefore, turning back to the faith from which one had strayed (cf. Mark 4:12 [= Isa. 6:10]; Luke 1:16; 22:32).
Blomberg and Kamell, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
But from what has the wanderer strayed? Johnson argues that ‘truth’ in this context does not mean theoretical correctness, but rather the proper ‘way’ of behaving, while Martin thinks that “straying from the truth could easily be characterized as one who emphasizes orthodoxy (as in 2:19) more than orthopraxis.” Given James’ stress on the practical aspects of faith and truth, it seems reasonable to conclude that this is a public falling away, whether in speech or action, rather than merely a private change of theology or thought.
Verse 20
Ancient Christian Commentary
Origen: A man who converts others will have his own sins forgiven
Gregory the Great If it is a great thing to rescue someone’s body when it is on the point of death, how much greater is it to deliver someone’s soul from death, so that it might live forever in the heavenly country?
Hilary of Arles: Someone who preaches to sinners in order to convert them will save his soul, even if the people he preaches to are not actually converted.
Bede: James does all he can here to ensure that imperfect people like ourselves do not gloat over winning others away from their wicked ways and converting them to the truth but reminding us that we should be engaged in such work out of love for our brothers and sisters.
Symeon the New Theologian: As a physician you must cure the passions and diseases of those who are sick in soul; as a shepherd you must bring back those who have strayed.
Moo, Pillar New Testament Commentary
“Death” here, as commonly in James and almost always in the NT where sin is the issue, is ultimate “spiritual” death—the condemnation to eternal damnation that results from unforgiven sin (James uses the noun “death” [thanatos] in this sense the one other time it occurs in his letter [1:15]). James pictures death as the final destination on the path that the sinner has determined to take: when he is turned back from that journey, he has “saved” his life (see Ezek. 18:27; Rom. 6:23; and note the spiritual application of “save” [sō̧zō] elsewhere in James: 1:21; 2:14; 4:12; in 5:15, we have argued, the word has a physical connotation).
But the Greek leaves somewhat ambiguous the question of whose “soul” is saved and whose sins are covered. While it is possible to understand the “soul” that is saved to be that of the person who does the converting, the referent of the pronoun him after save is almost certainly the sinner who has been converted. But James does not specify any personal object of the verb “cover,” keeping to a very general, almost proverbial, phraseology. The words are an allusion to Prov. 10:12, where hate, which “stirs up dissension,” is contrasted with love, which “covers all wrongs.” “Cover” (kalyptō in both Proverbs and James) seems to refer here to the overlooking of slights and offenses against us in the interest of preserving peace. This meaning is unlikely in James, however, and 1 Pet. 4:8 shows that the phrase had become a traditional way of denoting God’s forgiveness of sins (cf. Ps. 32:1). Many interpreters think that James intends to encourage the “converter” by reminding him that he can experience forgiveness for his own sins by his disinterested intervention in the lives of other people.67 The notion that our efforts to bring others to repentance will bring benefit to our own spiritual standing is certainly biblical. The Lord promises Ezekiel that he “will save his life” if he is faithful in warning his people of their danger of judgment (Ezek. 3:21); and Paul tells Timothy that he will “save both himself and his hearers” if he takes heed to himself and his teaching (1 Tim. 4:16). The blessing given to the faithful believer must not, of course, be construed as a reward for his efforts. But the idea that God will treat us as we have treated others is inescapable in Scripture (Matt. 6:14–15; 18:23–35) and explicitly mentioned by James (2:12–13).
On the other hand, the sequence of thought in the verse makes it awkward to refer the covering of sins to a person different from the one whose salvation has been described. Furthermore, Scripture often associates salvation with the covering, the complete blotting out, of sins, so that the two phrases could be parallel descriptions of the blessing attained by the sinner who is brought back. Probably, then, James refers to the spiritual benefits enjoyed by the sinner who is turned from his sin in both descriptions at the end of v. 20.
If James is indeed something of a sermon in epistolary form, these last two verses are an appropriate conclusion. Not only should the readers of James “do” the words he has written; they should be deeply concerned to see that others “do” them also. It is by sharing with James the conviction that there is indeed an eternal death, to which the way of sin leads, that we shall be motivated to deal with sin in our lives and in the lives of others.
Blomberg and Kamell, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
The first question is the simpler one. Whose soul is saved by this action? The answer seems clear because of the parallel uses of auto in both “the error of his/her ways” and “saves his/her soul” It makes more sense that the soul in danger of being lost belongs to the person who strays from the truth. Meanwhile, the soul of the person who did the restoring would not be saved by this action, as we would assume that such a person already does believe, thus making them want to restore the wanderer. This restoring is more a work that shows their faith than one that creates their salvation. The implication of “saves their soul” may well be that the wanderer never truly believed, and it is in this restoration that they come to their own saving faith. Or James may be using “saved” here in the sense of final, eschatological salvation—they have now been brought safely to the end of the process that their earlier belief initiated.
The second, and harder question, is that of whose sins are covered in this act. The most obvious person would be the one who has stayed. Yet, “Jewish sources are quoted to the effect that the one who turns a sinner to repentance is deserving of forgiveness himself.” But perhaps James left that description purposely ambiguous, so that while the one who stayed appears to have the more immediate need of forgiveness, it does not hurt us to remember that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace, all “prone to wander” given the opportunity, and right inducement. Thus, in this one act of righteousness in turning another person who has wandered farther astray, we find ourselves drawn back closer to God’s grace and righteousness.