James 1:1-4
Count It All Joy
1James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes of the Dispersion: Greetings.
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds,
3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
4Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Berean Standard Bible
The letter opens the way a letter does, with a name and an address, and then it says something that does not sound like an opening at all. It tells people who are scattered and under pressure to consider it pure joy when they run into trials of many kinds. Not to endure them, and not merely to get through them. To count them as joy.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds,
The phrase is trials of many kinds, and it is left that wide on purpose. James does not sort them or rank them, and many kinds reaches from the small daily friction to the kind of thing that can break a person. He leaves each reader to fill in which ones are theirs this week.
He does not leave the command bare. The reason he attaches to it is the only thing that keeps it from being cruel. The testing of your faith produces something. It is not that the trial is good in itself. It is that the trial does work on a person, the way a weight does work on a muscle, and what it produces is staying power.
because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
Perseverance is not a glamorous word. It names the ability to keep going when going is hard, and James treats it as the thing to want, more than the comfort the trial took away. He has one more step to add, and it carries the point of the whole paragraph.
Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
He says to let it finish. That is a strange thing to be told to allow, because everything in us wants the hard season to end early, and James says the early exit is the thing to resist. The work being done is maturity, being complete, lacking nothing. He is describing a person who has come through something and come out whole, and he is saying the trial is the road to that person rather than the thing standing in the way of it.
Nothing here promises the trial will be short, or that it will make sense while it lasts. What it promises is that the trial is not wasted, and that the joy he asks for is not pretended. The joy is in knowing where the hard thing is going.
Questions
1 James says to count trials as joy. Is he saying the trials themselves are good?
AnswerNo. He never calls the trial good. He says the testing does something, the way exercise does something to a body that would rather rest, and the joy is in what it produces rather than in the hardship itself.
2 What does the testing of faith produce, according to verse 3?
AnswerPerseverance, which is the plain ability to keep going when it is hard. James does not promise it produces relief or answers. He promises it produces staying power, and he treats it as the thing to hold on to.
3 James says to let perseverance finish its work. Why would anyone cut it short?
AnswerBecause a hard season is uncomfortable and we want it over, so we look for the exit before the work is done. James says to allow it to finish instead, which is harder than starting and is where the maturity actually comes from.
4 What is the finished result James describes at the end?
AnswerA person mature and complete, lacking nothing. Not a person who avoided the trial, but one who went through it and came out whole. That is the picture he holds in front of people who would rather have skipped the whole thing.
What This Means for Us
Name one hard thing this house is carrying right now, out loud, without dressing it up or explaining it away. Then, instead of asking God only to end it, ask him to finish his work through it, and to give this family the staying power James calls perseverance. The trial may not be shorter for the asking. The point is to stop treating it as time stolen from real life and start treating it as the place where God is making us whole.
Prayer
Lord, we would rather be comfortable than complete, and we ask you to end hard things long before you are done with them. Give us the perseverance to let your work finish. Teach us to find real joy in knowing that nothing we are going through is wasted in your hands. Amen.