God’s grace is seen as our pride is removed and we are brought to a place of humility? So what does this humility look like in practice? James now answers that question. All of this links in to the theme of being slow or cautious to speak.
A look at the text (Read James 4:11-12)
James warns against slander, or speaking evil against brothers and sisters in Christ. The issue with this is that you are setting yourself up as the one in judgement over others. More than that, you are setting yourself above instead of below the Law. You are not required to keep it but in fact you are the one who judges the Law. James says that in effect, you slander/speak evil of the law (4:11). If you seek to judge your neighbour, then who exactly do you think you are? You are getting ideas above your station. There is only one who can take that role of judge, the one who gives the Law because he is the one with power over life and death, the one with power to condemn or forgive, to save or destroy (4:12).
Digging Deeper
How do we end up slandering the Law by judging others. There are three aspects to this first as Davids notes the slanderer is themselves breaking the law, [1] they are picking and choosing which laws they will obey.[2] Indeed, they also break the law by failing to love their neighbour.[3] Secondly, they misuse the Law to cause harm rather than to enable love causing the law itself to be seen in a bad light. Thirdly, when you slander someone, then you either accuse them of doing something wrong when the law judges factually that they have not, or you accuse them of something that the Law does not consider wrong. Therefore, you are claiming to know better than the Law itself but this suggests that the perfect Law given by God is wrong. The implication of course is that you are claiming to know better than God.
A look at ourselves
I remember a few years back when someone who had started coming to our church spoke to me after the service. They were anxious about certain things in their life and wanted to know what the church would think of them. My response was that it didn’t matter what the church thought but rather what God’s verdict on them was. The church then had to get in line with that. I was able to talk them through the little booklet “Two ways to live” and encouraged them to go home and have a look at the prayer at he end to decide if they were ready to pray it. They came back joyfully the next week to say that they had prayed, trusting Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
We have seen in these few verses another example of how hasty talk reveals our heart condition. If we judge and slander others then we forget that Romans 8:1 says that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We cannot judge in our hearts those who God does not condemn.
[1] Davids, The Epistle of James, 169.
[2] Blomberg and Kamell, James, 197.
[3] Davids, The Epistle of James, 169.
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