Have patience, therefore, brethren, till the coming of the Lord. Behold, the labourer awaits the precious fruit of the earth, having patience for it until it receive [the] early and [the] latter rain.
James has just spoken to rich oppressors. Now he turns to the people they were crushing, and his word to them is not "fight back" but "wait." Two questions follow: how long is the wait, and why is a farmer's crop the right picture of it?
James does not use the general Greek word for endurance here. One writer explains the difference:
Archbishop Trench put the distinction like this: "makrothumia expresses patience toward people, hupomone patience toward things." The way Scripture uses the words seems to confirm it... Matthew 18:26, 29 and James 5:7, 8, 10 use the verb makrothumeo — "be patient," "have patience"... So it means "a long holding out of the mind before it gives room to action or passion." Scripture applies it to God, in His forbearance toward those who provoke Him.
The "therefore" reaches back to the oppression of the verses before. The response asked of the sufferer is striking:
If he is oppressed, he is not to fight or make what he considers righteous demands. He is to be patient. For how long? Until the coming of the Lord! This is the only real hope of the child of God. It is pointless to hope that people will willingly stop their oppression unless they are truly brought to God.
That refusal to retaliate has a pattern behind it:
First, then, we ought not to resist evil; the Just One did not resist. We must wait with patience, as the farmer waits for the precious fruits of the earth until he has received the early and the latter rain. These rains are the means God uses to bring the fruit of harvest to perfection.
The waiting has a fixed end point. One writer rules out two common readings of it:
"Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord." This is not God's providential dealing with Jerusalem and the Jews. Nor is it death, which relieves sufferers from the troubles of this life. These are the misinterpretations of fallen Christendom. The truth is the hope of His own coming. It will act first on all the saints, dead or living, to give them completed blessedness. Then it will act on the land and people of Israel, and on all the earth.
Commentators differ on which aspect of that coming James has in view. Another writer ties it to the visible return the Lord Himself described:
He is speaking here to the believers, a small suffering group among the unbelieving crowds who attended the synagogue. They are to be patient and to suffer patiently, without resisting. The coming of the Lord is mentioned twice in these verses. It means His visible and glorious appearing, the same one our Lord speaks of in Matthew 24:30-31.
Farming exposes the limits of human effort. Everything decisive is out of the farmer's hands:
The farmer expects no crop until the seed has had time to sprout and grow. God designs this long waiting time as a picture of His own long patience in dealing with us. In the end that patience brings out the fruit He seeks. And we too are to have the same patient character. It is God who sends the rain, whether early or latter, at the time of proper need... We cannot either hasten or delay it, so it is our wisdom to act in both faith and patience.
Some read the two rains as a prophecy of a coming outpouring of the Spirit. One writer rejects that:
Some have foolishly interpreted the latter rain that James speaks of as a spiritual latter rain, another Pentecost. This is one of the star arguments of present-day Pentecostalism, with its supposed revival of the gifts the apostles had. The former and latter rain that James speaks of has no such meaning; it is purely the rainfall in nature. In Palestine there are two distinct rainy seasons, one in the spring, the other in the autumn. (See Deuteronomy 11:14.)
Heaven can look inactive. That silence has a reason, and an end:
God is not indifferent to the wrongs of His poor people, nor to the rejection of Christ by the world. At present God does not generally show by any public intervention His care for His people. When He does intervene, it will be in judgment on the world. At present He is acting in grace, not willing that any should perish. For His public intervention we must await the coming of the Lord... When He comes, His people will reap in heavenly blessings the precious fruit of their long patience.
- Sown. The wronged believer is a farmer, not a fighter — no counterattack, no demands, just patient waiting.
- Waiting. The word for patience means holding out toward people — the same forbearance God shows those who provoke Him.
- Rain. The early and latter rain is literal rainfall, not a promised second Pentecost; its point is that we can neither hasten nor delay what God alone sends.
- Coming. The waiting ends at the Lord's return — not at death, and not in God's dealings with Jerusalem. Commentators differ over which side of that return James means.
- Harvest. God's present silence is grace, not indifference; when He comes, He judges the world and His people reap the precious fruit of their patience.
*Ye* also have patience stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is drawn nigh.
Rich men have cheated and bullied the believers James writes to. His answer is not protest but patience. Two questions follow. What does it mean to steady, or "establish," a heart? And how can a coming that is still future be "at hand"?
One writer notes that the instruction rules out both hitting back and pressing our own demands for justice:
If the believer is oppressed, he is not to fight or make what he considers righteous demands. He is to be patient. For how long? Until the coming of the Lord! This is the only real hope of the child of God. It is useless to hope that men will choose to stop oppressing others unless God truly brings them to Himself.
That silence has a reason, and it has an end:
God is not indifferent to the wrongs of His poor people, nor to the rejection of Christ by the world. For now God does not usually show His care for His people by stepping in publicly. When He does intervene, it will be in judgment on the world. At present He is acting in grace, not willing that any should perish. For His public intervention we must wait for the coming of the Lord. When the Lord comes, it will be clear that God has not been indifferent to the sufferings and wrongs of His people. Trouble will overtake those who troubled them, and those who were troubled will be brought into "rest" (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10).
"Establish your hearts" is aimed at a particular feeling — the sense that nothing underfoot is solid. One writer sets each phrase of the passage against the trouble it answers:
Are we tested, our hearts weighed down with wrongs that no one has put right? "You also, be patient," is the word for us. Do we feel unsettled, as if everything around us and inside us were shaking and unsafe? The message comes to us, "Establish your hearts." Does it seem as if we sow and sow with no result? Do we plough and wait, and plough and wait, until we are tempted to think we are only ploughing sand?
Commentators here reject two common readings: that James means the fall of Jerusalem, or that he means death releasing the sufferer:
But to those who love Him, His presence means more than all the rest. No truth has a stronger effect than this one, after faith in His person, His love, and His death. It pulls us away from the world and its traps. It holds us up under the world's hatred and persecution. … It is not God's providential dealing with Jerusalem and the Jews. Nor is it death, which rids sufferers of the troubles of this life. Those are the misreadings of a fallen Christendom. The truth is the hope of His own coming. It will act first on all the saints, dead or living, to give them complete blessedness, and then on the land and people of Israel, as well as on all the earth.
If the coming was at hand then, the centuries since raise an obvious objection. One answer is that the delay is grace at work:
But God is full of longsuffering. He is "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). So He has slowed down the working of evil. It is a very long time coming to a head — as we count time. When the Apostles wrote, it was quite true that the next decisive move in the drama would be God's public intervention at the coming of the Lord. We are still waiting for that coming today. We shall not wait for it in vain!
The farmer of verse 7 shows the shape of that waiting, and one writer presses the comparison:
The farmer waits for the good crop of the earth, until it gets the rain it needs from above, both early and later. Our hope is far better than his. How much more, then, should we establish our hearts in patience, until the last believer is called! For the coming of the Lord is at hand. Can we not trust Him Who gave us His Son, and with Him all things?
For these believers the Lord's return was not filed-away teaching but daily expectation:
But this exhortation shows plainly that the hope was a present thing, woven through the whole thread of Christian life. It was not a theory in the head, a point of acquired knowledge, or a dogma of belief only. They expected the Lord in person. … Nothing produces separation from the world like waiting for the Lord — I do not say the doctrine of His coming, but true waiting for Him.
- Wrong — the oppression is real. The answer is not to fight back or press our own claim. It is to wait for the only One who can put it right.
- Waiting — God's silence is grace, not indifference. He holds back judgment so that people may still repent.
- Steadying — "establish your hearts" is for the person who feels everything shaking, inside and out.
- Which coming — commentators read it as Christ's own return, not the fall of Jerusalem and not death. It brings His people into rest.
- Near — the farmer waits for rain he cannot hurry. The believer waits with a better hope, and that waiting loosens the world's grip.