Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

Regrettably the pattern of Revelation 3:3 and 3:16, in evidence between
twenty and forty years after the churches under Jesus’ gun were planted, depending
upon the date of Revelation, is far from incidental. History has repeated
itself again and again. The Middle East, Asia Minor and North Africa,
once blossoming with churches, are spiritually dead. Eastern and Western
Europe, once experiencing the outpouring of God’s grace, are nearly dead.
The United States of America, once blessed with mighty conversions and a
Christian societal impact, are slowly dying.
The upshot of all this in the present context is quite simple. The Church
either displays the abundant life as exemplified in 2 Cor. 8:1-5, and periodically
throughout its illustrious and not so illustrious history, or the shoe of
James 5:1-7 fits it to “perfection,” and it has no choice but to judge (1 Cor.
11:31), and upon lack of repentance, to condemn itself (1 John 3:20)! After
all, a truly Spirit-filled Church will invariably meet all the perplexities it encounters
in its midst, and, if worst comes to worst, turn the property entrusted
to it into cold cash in order to warm the hearts and reverse the fortunes of its
poverty-stricken and penniless brothers and sisters (Acts 2:45; 4:37)! Especially
the latter is a rarity, and cannot but be a negative indication of the poor
spiritual health of the covenant community. In short, the Church either embraces
poverty (2 Cor. 8:9) or “poverty” is bound to embrace it. Even more
pointedly, the Church has a defining choice. It either dies (to itself) or it dies!
This, after all, is what James is all about (Jam. 5:19-20)! The Church simply
cannot be wishy-washy, and be satisfied with a hollow, self-deluding, reputation
(Rev. 3:1ff), or content with useless, self-deceiving, riches (Rev. 3:14ff).
b. The Poor and the Coming Lord (5:7-11)
(1) Call to Endurance and its Two Grounds (5:7-9)
(a) Call to Endurance (5:7)
James now shifts his attention to those who suffer oppression with, as it appears,
both words of consolation and a word of warning. This is not the beginning
of a closing summary of the Epistle (contra PHDavids, 181; Martin,
186; Nystrom, 285). Neither is it merely “the hinge between James 4:11-5:6
and 5:12-20,” responding to “the denunciation of the three modes of arrogance”
and continuing “the theme of divine judgment” in the preceding section
and proceeding with “an explicit turn to the community of readers” in the
next section (Johnson, 311). In short, it is neither a new beginning nor merely
a transition.
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