Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

574
1. OBSTACLE TO VICTORY (3:1-9)
a. Focus upon Human Impotence (3:1-5)
(1) Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers, because
you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
(2) For we all err in many ways. If anyone commits no error
in his speech, he is a perfect person, able to control the entire
body also. (3) And if we put bits in the mouths of horses to
get them to obey us, we also guide their entire body. (4) Look at
ships as well. Although they are so large and driven by strong
winds, they are guided by a tiny rudder at the beck and call of
the pilot. (5) So too the tongue is a small limb and boasts of
great things. Look how huge a forest is set ablaze by how small
a flame!
(1) Paradigm of Teachers (3:1)
Why would James warn members of the covenant community not to become
teachers, when Scripture with equal force rebukes them for not being teachers
(Heb. 5:12), in fact, heartily commends the believer’s desire to enter into the
teaching office (1 Tim. 3:1). Many commentators could not resist the temptation
to surmise that there must be something essentially wrong with the folks
James addresses. Otherwise why would James so emphatically start out by
warning the Church against a craving, a rush, if not a stampede, to become
teachers? A whole slew of possibilities have been advanced.
First, they are supposedly self-appointed, false teachers with total lack of
humility, impostors with sinful motivation who seek to implement their own
agenda, pretenders who refuse to practice what they preach and only call attention
to themselves, or possibly even self-appointed intruders whose mediocrity
was manifest to everyone except themselves. In this case James would
stand in the gap against foreign elements in the body ecclesiastic with the indisputable
certainty of disastrous consequences for both faith and practice.
Second, the craving which James combats and appears to have been
widespread was rooted in a desire on the part of proud show-offs for the
prominence, the rank, the prestige, the status, the authority, in short, the rewards,
that such a position would afford (Cargal, 143-144). It is even surmised
that this at least partly precipitated the envy and strife of James 3:14,
and the wars and battles of James 4:1 with the tongue adding fuel to the fire
(Jam. 3:6). The potential privilege simply blinded the “many” to a proper estimate
of the solemn responsibilities as well as the grave dangers associated