Take [as] an example, brethren, of suffering and having patience, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of [the] Lord.
James closes his letter by urging patience on believers whom the rich and powerful were wronging. He points them back to men who suffered before them. Two questions follow: why the prophets are the model, and what kind of patience James means.
James does not pick out random sufferers. He names men known for one thing: they spoke for God. That very speaking is what made them targets.
They are to avoid the fretfulness that so easily grows out of the very things that call for patience. Brothers in a common faith may even in this way grumble against one another. It may come from the better lot that some appear to have. But the Judge of all stands at the door. For suffering and patience they may take as examples the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Surely it was a most blessed thing to have been one, yet they are the very picture of those persecuted and wronged for that very speaking.
Another writer measures how far that suffering ran.
We need patience in every direction, and verse 10 points us back to prophets in the past, who spoke in the Name of the Lord. Almost none of them was without persecution and affliction, and the patience with which they bore it is certainly an example for us.
James uses one Greek word here, and a different one of Job in the next verse. Older English translations render both as patience.
James 5:11 speaks of the "patience" (hupomone) of Job. James 5:10 holds up the prophets as an example of "long-suffering" (makrothumia), which the Authorized Version also renders "patience".
One writer sums up the difference in a single sentence.
Archbishop Trench put the distinction this way: makrothumia expresses patience toward persons, hupomone patience toward things. And the way Scripture uses the words seems to confirm this.
This patience toward people showed in how the prophets answered those who hurt them. It also left the verdict to Someone else.
In the prophets we see men who suffered wrongfully. Instead of insulting their persecutors, they bore their sufferings patiently, and so they were happy despite the wrong done to them. They are examples for us when we are called to suffer unjustly for the Name of Jesus and for confessing the truth. We are to follow in the steps of Him "who committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:22-23). "The Judge stands before the door", and we do well to leave the judgment with Him.
There is a gap between praising someone else's endurance and carrying your own, and one writer names it plainly.
If we see someone suffering unjustly for the name of Jesus, and he is patient and meek, his heart drawn out on behalf of his persecutors rather than irritated against them, then we recognise the power of faith, and of confidence in the love and faithfulness of the Lord; he is calm and full of joy, and we say, See how grace makes that man happy! … But it is one thing to admire others whom the Spirit of Christ sustains. It is another to glory in troubles when we are in them ourselves. We need a broken will, confidence in God, and communion with Him who has suffered for us, so that we can glory in sufferings.
The prophets are held up as a model, but they are not the highest one, and those who follow them now have more to look forward to.
Nor is our Lord the only pattern for us. "Take, brothers, for an example of suffering and of patience, the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord." We tread the same path with yet brighter hope, though in substance the same.
- Speaking — the prophets spoke in the Lord's name. That speaking is what got them persecuted, and almost none escaped it.
- Suffering — the patience asked for here is long-suffering toward people. Endurance of hard circumstances is the word used of Job in the next verse.
- Silence — they suffered wrong and did not insult their persecutors back. They followed the One who kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.
- Self — admiring another's patience costs nothing. Glorying in your own trouble takes a broken will, confidence in God, and communion with the One who suffered for us.
- Same path — believers walk the road the prophets walked. The path is the same; the hope ahead is brighter.
Behold, we call them blessed who have endured. Ye have heard of the endurance of Job, and seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is full of tender compassion and pitiful.
James closes his call to patience by pointing suffering believers to Job, a man whose story they already knew. Two questions follow: why call endurance a happy thing, and what is "the purpose of the Lord" that Job's life put on display? (The writers quoted below use an older translation: "the end of the Lord," and "very pitiful, and of tender mercy.")
The world looks at a suffering believer and sees only bad luck. Someone who knows what God is after sees the opposite.
By the world this would be considered a terrible misfortune. But a Christian who has entered even a little into God's purposes for His people understands very well the happiness of tried and afflicted believers. He knows they are in the hands of the Lord, and there for rich and unspeakable blessing. God's thoughts are not like man's thoughts. So the people whose homes have lost their light, or who are passing through the harshest trials, are often the ones He specially favours.
Job is famous for patience, yet he also complained bitterly. His endurance was real, but uneven.
Job's patience at the start was more admirable than it was later, when he complained bitterly. Yet he did endure, until God showed him what "the end of the Lord" was. That is the goal the Lord had in mind in allowing all his affliction. The end proved that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. So it will prove in every case.
Job would not give up one thing, and Satan had no answer to it.
"Curse God!" That would have meant giving up his God. Could he do that? Never. He could lose everything, but not his God. Many things may have seemed essential to him in earlier days. But he had now reached this point: he could do without everything except God... So Job endured, and this is where his patience showed. Satan is heard of no more in the story. He had nothing left to say. Job's faith in God silenced him, and Satan left him to the God he trusted — and "He is very pitiful and of tender mercy."
Satan was given limits with Job, and one of those limits had a purpose beyond Job himself.
Satan was not permitted to take his life and so remove him from our observation. He was to live so that we might see "the end of the Lord" in his case. And what a wonderful end it was! We can see God's pity and tender mercy shining through all his disasters, once we look at them in the light of how his story ends.
Job's first gain was inward, and it changed what he could say about God.
Job gained a richer knowledge of God Himself. He said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." With those words he set his old knowledge, which came by report only, against what he had now gained by seeing for himself. He had, if we may put it this way, exchanged second-hand knowledge for first-hand knowledge. Before, he knew about Him. Now he knew Him.
It showed in how he treated the friends he had argued with.
The Job his friends knew had disappeared, replaced by a new Job formed in the character of the God he now knew first-hand. The hot feeling, the animosity, the sarcasm were gone. Prayer took their place. And it was not prayer for himself, not a cry to escape his boils and poverty. It was prayer for them, a warm stream of kindly intercession.
Job got everything back only after God had changed him inside. Commentators differ on where "the end of the Lord" is finally reached. One points to what Job gained in this life:
Yet God did not let the tide of blessing roll in on Job again until he had been deeply altered in spirit and character... Job, therefore, was not a loser but a gainer by God's dealings, even in material things.
Another says that for us it is not reached here at all:
"The end of the Lord" is not reached for us in this life. The New Testament has revealed to us a life beyond this, and as we realise this we shall be patient and endure.
- Purpose — Every trial has a designed end. Reading Job's story from its finish shows what God was aiming at all along.
- Patience — Endurance here is holding on to God when everything else is gone, not feeling calm about the loss.
- Person — The first prize of the end is God Himself: knowledge by sight replacing knowledge by hearsay.
- Pattern — A man remade in God's character prays for the friends who hurt him. That prayer is part of the end, not a footnote to it.
- Proof — Job's story has a visible finish. So the sufferer today has evidence, not just a promise, that the Lord is compassionate and merciful.