What does it mean to "establish your hearts" (James 5:8)?

Yet beginning with verse 7 we see the proper attitude of the believer in regard to these evils. 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 vain to hope that men will willingly cease from oppression unless they are truly brought to God. But a Christian may learn to bear oppression in proportion as he rejoices in hope of the glory of God.

The farmer expects no crop until the seed has time to sprout and gradually grows and God designs this long waiting time as a picture of the long patience He has in dealing with us, so as to bring forth eventually the fruit that 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, to bring it fruition the work of His grace. We cannot either hasten or delay it, so it is our wisdom to act in both faith and patience. It is this that leads to a true stablishing of the heart in sound, dependable characters and we are exhorted to this, for the coming of the Lord has drawn near.

(Vv. 7, 8). 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. To this time the Apostle refers when he says, “Be patient therefore, brethren, to the coming of the Lord.” In view of all that the Lord's people may have to suffer, these two things are pressed upon them: present patience and the immediate coming of the Lord. When the Lord comes, it will be manifest that God has not been indifferent to the sufferings and wrongs of His people. When He comes, tribulation will overtake those who have troubled them, and those who have been troubled will be brought into “rest” (2 Thessalonians. 1:6-10). In the meantime, God's people are called to exercise patience, like the husbandman who has to labour with “long patience”, waiting for the precious fruit of the earth. When He comes, His people will reap in heavenly blessings the precious fruit of their long patience. In view of the precious fruits we are going to receive, and the imminent coming of the Lord, the Apostle says, “Stablish your hearts.”

Such are the consequences of that glorious event. But His presence is more than all the rest to those that love Himself. Nor is there any truth which has a mightier effect (next to faith in His person, His love, and His death) in detaching from the world and its snares on the one hand, and in sustaining under its hatred and persecution on the other. Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. It is not the providential dealing with Jerusalem and the Jews, any more than death ridding sufferers from the troubles of this life. These are the misinterpretations of fallen Christendom. The truth is the hope of His own coming, which will first act on all the saints dead or living to give them consummated blessedness, and next on the land and people of Israel, as well as on all the earth.

Doubtless we have to await the moment of the Father's will. So does the farmer for the good produce of the earth, till it receive the needed rain from above, both early and later. How much more should we stablish our hearts in patience, whose hope is so much more excellent, till the last believer is called! for the Lord's coming hath drawn nigh. Can we not trust Him Who gave us His Son, and with Him all things?

There is another danger, besides impatience, which it corrects. We are apt to murmur, or groan, one against another. How unwise, ungracious, and unbelieving! With what measure we mete, it shall be measured to us again. To judge is to be judged. How much better to wait in patience, overcoming evil with good! Why should we judge? "Behold, the judge standeth before the door." The time is at hand.

In the days of the Apostles the earth was set for the last act in the great drama of God's dealings. Yet because God is full of longsuffering, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," (2 Peter 3:9.) He has slowed down the working of iniquity. It is a very long time coming to a head — as we count time. It was perfectly true when the Apostles wrote that the next decisive movement in the drama was to be God's public intervention, in the coming of the Lord; though for His coming we are still waiting today. We shall not wait for it in vain!

His coming is our hope, and these words of exhortation ought to come to us with tenfold force today. Are we tested, our hearts oppressed with the burden of unrighted wrongs? "Be ye also patient," is the word for us. Do we feel unsettled, everything around and within seemingly insecure and shaking? The message comes to us, "Stablish your hearts." Does it seem as if we are everlastingly sowing without effect? Do we plough and wait, and plough and wait, until we are tempted to think that we are but ploughing sands? "Be patient," is the word for us, "to the coming of the Lord." Then we shall enjoy our grand "Harvest-home."

140 Remark here how the coming of Christ was a present hope. The oppressed one was to have patience until that coming. "Be patient," says James, "until the coming of the Lord." Some one may say, then they were deceived. By no means. We may indeed die before the Lord's coming, and in fact, we know that these saints did die. But they will reap all the fruits of their patience, when the Lord comes. And till that moment they are with the Lord - absent from the body, present with the Lord - and they will come with Him, and will then enjoy all the fruit of those sufferings, in which they had been patient, for the love of His name, seeking to glorify it down here.

But this exhortation clearly shews how this hope was a present thing, which was interwoven with the entire 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. What consolation for the poor and the oppressed! What a check upon the rich to be constantly expecting the Lord! To know that He will soon come, that troubles will cease, and that we shall be with Him who has loved us! 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. His coming will separate us from it for ever; the heart waits until He come.

In 1 Thessalonians 3 the same truth comes out in a striking way. "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you; to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." This is a passage that looks perfectly unintelligible until you get hold of what I have been saying. Instead of saying unblameable in holiness before God at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should have said, "unblameable in your walk down here." He looks at their realising their Christian position - "to the end he may establish your hearts," and draws the veil and there they are unblameable when Christ comes. This is where it is all measured.

"Unto unfeigned love of the brethren." It is wonderful how purifying the heart, and love, go together. You may get hold of truth, but it is always imperfect, badly put together, and that kind of thing, in man's hand; but here it is obedience to the truth through the Spirit - another thing. You see selfishness is at the bottom of all sin; the opposite of selfishness is love, and we are purified from selfishness by this love. It is love of the brethren, and love which brings in holiness. You get the two things so in 1 Thessalonians 3:12: "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men, even as we do towards you, to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God." Love and holiness - it is a wonderful power which has come out in Christianity. Paul adds, in Thessalonians, "at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." It is not, establish your hearts here, but he is looking at it in all its fulness when Christ comes. It is the power of the hope too, "He that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure." And therefore it is in John 17, "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth; and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." It all takes us up into the other world. "As we do towards you" is the pattern of it, but it is towards one another, and towards all. Observe, you never find that Christ loved the world, nor that God loved the church, because that is the relationship of Christ and the church, His body and His bride.

The joy of the apostle, as it was of divine love, so was it holy: no vain proselyting zeal, but delight in the presence of God over that which was the fruit of His grace to the praise of Jesus; delight over that faith and love kept bright and firm, in young confessors of Christ left alone, notwithstanding the fierce hostility of Jews and Greeks. "For what thanksgiving can we render again to God for you for all the joy wherewith we rejoice on your account before our God, night and day beseeching exceedingly that we may see your face and perfect what is lacking in your faith?" If theirs was the love of Jonathan, his was certainly more than the love of David. It is the love of the divine nature in the power of that Spirit, which finds its ever-growing joy in the blessing of others, and especially of those already blessed, that what is wanting may be perfected in personal ministry. "Now our God and Father Himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you; and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all, even as we also toward you; in order to establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints."

Such was the prayer dictated by the apostle's affection as the Holy Spirit brought their need before him in God's presence. And the way of the apostle was directed to the Thessalonians, but not before another epistle to them followed, and years of labour elsewhere intervened. What he meanwhile seeks for them is no less important for ourselves and all saints — the increase and abounding of love in us, one toward another, and toward all, in order to the establishing our hearts unblameable in holiness. This is God's way as surely as it is not man's; for he insists on holiness in order to love, whereas in truth love must work in order to holiness. It is a true principle from the gospel all the way through; for God's love it was that met and blessed us in sovereign grace when we were enemies, powerless and ungodly, in Christ's death for us, and this was the most powerful motive which wrought in us to holiness. So is it here among the saints, who are exhorted to love mutually as well as toward all, in order that their hearts should be confirmed in holiness without blame; even as Christ, in love to the church, first gave Himself, and then washes with the word, that He may present it to Himself glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

In this chapter we see the afflictions and tribulations they were permitted to pass through in order to strengthen faith (10); make love abound (12); and establish their hearts in holiness, in view of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with His saints. (13).

"To the end he may stablish your hearts," etc. It is an actual establishing of the heart, but which will be seen in its results at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ: "We must all be manifested," etc.