James 1 · Passage · Suffering
Trials of Many Kinds
James 1:2 to 4 and 1 Peter 1:6 to 7 call believers to rejoice when their faith is tested by trials.
James wrote to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion, and Peter to exiles scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds,
- The passage
- James 1:2 to 4, 1 Peter 1:6 to 7
- Books
- James, 1 Peter
- Hold in memory
- James 1:2 to 4
Summary
Two apostles, writing to different churches, gave suffering believers the same counsel and the same reason. Trials put faith to the test, and the test shows it genuine and makes it strong. The joy they command looks past the pain to what God does through it. Each letter then follows that work further, James into the believer's maturity and Peter to Christ's appearing.
- The Greek word dokimion, the testing of faith, joins the two passages.
- Peter compares tested faith with gold refined by fire and counts the faith the more lasting.
- James 1:13 adds that God cannot be tempted by evil and tempts no one.
Two Letters to Scattered Believers
James opens his letter with the passage, and Peter sets his within the blessing that opens his letter.
Christians in every age have asked how a believer can meet hardship with anything but dread. James 1:2 to 4 and 1 Peter 1:6 to 7 give the New Testament's plainest answer. The passage is one of the chief texts of suffering in the letters, and it shows what God does with trials in the life of faith.
The question this study answers is why two apostles could tell suffering people to rejoice without asking them to pretend. It sets the two passages side by side, gives the three Greek words they share, and shows what each letter adds. It also gives a teacher who read Peter's passage and the two questions readers have argued over both.
The Two Passages Side by Side
The command, the trial, the testing, the result and the end stand in the same order in both letters.
The steps match, and the words of each step differ, most of all at the end.
| The step | James 1:2 to 4 | 1 Peter 1:6 to 7 |
|---|---|---|
| The command | Consider it pure joy, my brothers | In this you greatly rejoice |
| The trial | when you encounter trials of many kinds | though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in various trials |
| The testing | the testing of your faith develops perseverance | so that the proven character of your faith |
| The result | Allow perseverance to finish its work | may result in praise, glory, and honor |
| The end | so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything | at the revelation of Jesus Christ |
What Each Letter Adds
James names perseverance and wisdom, and Peter names a little while, fire and glory.
James names what the testing produces, hypomonē, which the Berean text renders perseverance. He tells his readers to let that perseverance run its full course, and he names the goal in three words, mature, complete and lacking nothing.
The next verse takes up the word lacking and promises wisdom from God to anyone who lacks it, so the trial sends the reader to prayer.
Peter limits the trials to a little while, and he names the end of the testing as praise, glory and honor when Christ is revealed. His passage stands within the blessing of 1 Peter 1:3 to 9, the living hope into which God has given the new birth.
Peter's gold in the fire belongs to a line of furnace pictures in Scripture, and the best known is Daniel 3, where Nebuchadnezzar saw four men "unbound and unharmed, walking around in the fire".
How the Passage Has Been Read
A bishop of the fourth century read the refining of 1 Peter 1:7 in the lives of the saints.
296 to 373 · Athanasius of Alexandria
Athanasius of Alexandria, in his tenth Festal Letter, wrote that the saints "did not shrink back from or get discouraged by the trials which they faced". He held that they grew through them and were made better, "shining like gold that has been refined in a fire".
Where Readers Disagree
Readers have divided over the word for trial in James 1 and over the tenses of 1 Peter 1:6.
One word in James 1:2 and James 1:13, or two sensesAugustine, John Gill, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.James uses the verb of the same root for temptation that his opening verse used for trials, and every reading must explain the move.
Augustine, in Sermon 57, read the temptation of James 1:13 as "the bad sort by which we are deceived and subjected to the devil". He set beside it "a kind of testing that comes from God". John Gill, in his Exposition of the New Testament, wrote that in James 1:13 the apostle "uses the word 'tempted', in another sense than he did before". Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, named the word's "two grand meanings, solicitation to sin, and trial from providential situation or circumstances".
Albert Barnes read the word as one, "of so general a character as to cover the whole usage". In his note on James 1:13 he held that James "seems here to have had his eye on whatever there was in trial of any kind to induce us to commit sin". On this reading one hardship can test faith and also tempt to complaint or despair.
Joy and grief at one time, or one after the otherOrigen, Charles Spurgeon, Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
In 1 Peter 1:6 the verb for rejoicing, agalliasthe, is in the present tense, and the word for grief, lupēthentes, is an aorist participle. Readers have taken the two tenses in two ways.
Origen, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, read the grief "in the sense of 'suffer'". Charles Spurgeon preached on the verse as a paradox and held that it "has been known and felt by many of the Lord’s children". On his reading great joy and heaviness stand in one heart at once.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the tenses the other way. They wrote, "The 'grieved' is regarded as past, the 'exulting joy' present".
Paul told Timothy to take a little wine "because of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23). Joy in trial leaves room, beside prayer, for a doctor's care where the trial touches the body or the mind.
The Crown of Life
James closes his paragraph on trials with a blessing on the one who endures them.
Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.The verse ties the trial of James 1:2 to the crown promised at its end.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, the Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek based on Abbott-Smith (1922), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible, the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (TAGNT), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0, with Strong's numbers, morphology, glosses and transliterations.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letters, letter 10, on 1 Peter 1:7.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on James 1:12.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on James 1:13.
- Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, sermon 57, section 9, on James 1:13.
- John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament (1746 to 1748), on James 1:13.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on James 1:13.
- Origen of Alexandria, Exhortation to Martyrdom, section 39, on 1 Peter 1:6.
- Charles Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 222, The Christian's Heaviness and Rejoicing (1858), on 1 Peter 1:6.
- Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 1 Peter 1:6.
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