The first part of James 1 is all about trials and temptations. That’s helpful because following Jesus is hard. James assumes Jesus’ promise: “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). James wrote to the twelve tribes in “the Dispersion,” the harsh world in which God’s people are scattered. Surely the Lord is saving a great remnant, but the church, in time, is a “little flock” in a hostile world (Luke 12:32). God’s people have no lasting place on earth. We seek a homeland and desire a better country (Heb. 11:14, 16). Pilgrims will “meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).
But James is far from hopeless about this reality. In fact, without further explanation, his message to be joyful in trials (1:2) sounds absurdly optimistic. But James isn’t saying, enjoy your difficulties. He’s insisting that if we understand God’s purpose for our trials and endure them righteously, they will be for us an occasion for great joy. How can that happen?
What Trials Do
James concentrates on two things trials do for God’s children.
Trials Perfect Your Maturity
As much as we dislike hardships, they self-evidently produce maturity. You don’t get war heroes without the war, or tournament champions without opposition. To rely on Jesus well, you need to be tested. An easy life is incompatible with conformity to Christ. Here’s how trials perfect maturity: “The testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (1:3). Steadfastness is godly perseverance under duress. Job exemplified steadfastness. Satan supposed that Job’s faith depended on constant blessing. So, for a time the Lord replaced his good life with “evil” (Job 42:11). Yet, through his suffering Job spoke rightly of God (Job 42:7, 8). After his ordeal, Job told God, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5). Trials among Christians achieve something like what happens in the training of elite military units. Many drop out (John 6:66). But those who persevere become what they couldn’t have without the pain. Trials are heat that tempers the steel of your faith.
Trials Prepare You for Glory
Only through trials will you “receive the crown of life” (James 1:12). Suffering is the way to Jesus because it was the way of Jesus. Why would adopted sons be spared suffering if the natural Son endured it? Jesus tells us what the road to glory looks like so that we will not buckle under pain. “Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). The crown is awarded to victors after they finish the race. So Paul can write, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. 4:7, 8).
Believers can consider trials all joy because they are God’s way of helping us rest in him, both now and in eternity. An old hymn gives us this encouragement: “Life with trials hard may press me, heav’n will bring me sweeter rest.” Difficulty is the vehicle that brings believers to God. But for that to happen, we must endure.
What Trials Require
To joyfully profit from trials, James gives us four assignments.
Receive Divine Wisdom
We need wisdom (James 1:5). But James isn’t saying that in our trials we need more data. That’s what we want; if I only knew why God is doing this! Theologian Herman Bavinck is right to say that “Genuine wisdom is not the product of human intellect but [is] rooted in the fear of the Lord and…manifests itself in a moral life.” That’s James’ point: “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom” (James 3:13; cf. 15, 17; Eph. 5:15). Wisdom answers this question: Knowing what you know, how will you live? Ask for a mind committed to pursuing the best ends by the best means even at the worst times.
Resign Yourself to God’s Will
James’ association of the lowly with exaltation and the rich with humiliation (James 1:9–11) sounds like Jesus when he said, “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matt. 20:16). Trust that logic. Submit to God’s loving chastening. If God makes you lowly, boast in your high status. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:10). The same God who knows how to bring you low “knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment” (2 Peter 2:9, 10).
Recognize Personal Fault
Temptations are an example of the “various kinds” of trials that Christians endure (James 1:13–15). When we are tempted, we are quick to blame; because of God’s sovereignty, this means we ultimately blame him (see Gen. 3:12). James warns us not to go down this road. “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). Your desire leads to sin and death (1:15). You are not to blame for all your problems, but you are rarely wholly innocent either. Take responsibility for your actions. Confess your sins. Pray for help. Make a new start.
Rest in God’s Goodness
James reminds tired believers that God is the Father of lights, the creator of the sun, moon, and stars, the source of warmth and life. Unlike everything else we know, God does not change (1:16, 17). He isn’t for us one moment and against us the next. In affliction, children of God can never say, God has abandoned me. Christ was forsaken by the Father so that we would never be forsaken by him. And God is the real Father of every believer, not only by creation but also by recreation. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (1:18). Our loving Father knows just the right ingredients to mix into the recipes of our lives.
You can’t avoid trials. But you can waste them. When you are brought low, you can become angry and bitter. You can choose to throw out your morals and abandon wisdom. You can be self-righteous and forgetful of God’s promises. Or you can come to say with Charles Spurgeon, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” If trials perfect your maturity and prepare you for glory you can count it all joy when you face them.
Footnotes
Henry F. Lyte, Trinity Psalter Hymnal, 513.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 2:203.
