More Money, More Problems | James 5:1-6

Introduction

This is an election year, and one of the major issues in every major election is the economy. A recent poll by The Economist asked voters to identify the most important issue. The list of issues included immigration, climate change, health care, guns, civil rights, crime, abortion, and education.

Do you know which issue ranked highest for most voters? Inflation and prices. And further analysis found that “68% of those who put inflation and prices first named the cost of food as their principal concern.” “More than two-thirds of voters say that inflation is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly three-quarters say that price increases are exceeding gains in household income.”

Whether you’re a young family dreaming of buying your first house, a large family trying to buy groceries, or a couple approaching retirement and wondering if you’ll have enough, you are probably experiencing the effects of inflation in some way. And economic pressures provoke all sorts of attitudes: from fear, anxiety, and stress, to anger and envy, to despair and hopelessness. That’s because economics is not a matter of competing theories or policies; it’s a matter of integrity, of justice and injustice.

The Apostle James wrote his letter to persecuted Christians familiar with economic affliction. And the character of God revealed in James 5 replaces all of those attitudes of unbelief with peace, comfort, and joy for those who know and trust Jesus.

James 5:1–6

1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

Context

James 5:1 begins, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.”

This immediately raises questions. Who are the rich James is addressing? And why are they going to suffer terrible miseries?

James is most likely addressing the unrighteous rich and not wealthy Christians. He normally addresses his audience as my brothers and my beloved brothers, but there is no warmth or affection in his tone here. He refers brusquely to “you rich.” We’ve seen that James is not afraid to speak firmly and critically.  He addressed his audience as “you adulterous people” in 4:4, but there was a clear call to repentance and an assurance of grace (4:6). Strikingly absent from this passage is any call to repentance, which we would expect if James was addressing Christians. Instead, James calls the rich to weep and howl because their judgment is certain.

More specifically, James may have in mind wealthy Jewish landowners who persecuted and oppressed the Jewish Christians in his audience. Remember that this letter was sent to Jewish Christians scattered by persecution (1:1).

So James is using a specific rhetorical device, where a message is addressed to one audience (who is absent) for the sake of another audience (who is present). Politicians do this when they make a point to their supporters by speaking to their opponents who aren’t at their rally. This is common in the Old Testament prophets, who often rebuked foreign nations that probably didn’t care what a prophet in Israel had to say. 

In fact, James sounds just like one of the Old Testament prophets in this passage. He thunders forth with an oracle of divine judgment against violators of God’s Law.

And while these six verses are addressed to the unrighteous rich, they are primarily about God. They reveal God’s character, God’s righteous law, and God’s just judgment. James speaks on God’s behalf, appealing to God’s law and declaring God’s verdict.

A passage like this—with no offer of salvation—can sound stark and stern in the New Testament, where we’re used to hearing of God’s grace and mercy. But don’t miss this: God’s judgment and God’s mercy are not two separate things. They are two sides of the same coin. When God judges the wicked, that very judgment is an act of mercy to God’s people. God destroyed the wicked in a flood and delivered Noah. God judged Egypt and delivered Israel. And God judged your sins in Christ so that he might show mercy to you.

James 5:1–6, which is addressed to the unrighteous rich, is meant to assure you that even though the wicked prosper and persecute you, God will rightly judge the wicked and mercifully deliver his people. 

God rightly judges the wicked.

James sets forth four specific charges against the unrighteous rich. Just like legal charges refer to the law that was violated, prophetic oracles of judgment appeal to God’s unchanging and universal moral law, listing specific transgressions.

Hoarding

James first charges the rich with hoarding their wealth: “Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days” (James 5:2–3).

The sin is not possessing wealth or owning gold or silver or clothes. The picture vividly depicts worldly possessions piled up and rotting away from disuse.

Legitimate uses of wealth include meeting one’s own needs (1 Tim 6:8), enjoying God’s gifts (1 Tim 6:17), and meeting the needs of others (1 Tim 6:18). Here, however, unused stockpiles of gold, silver, and clothes are rotting and ruined. James is not condemning prudent saving for the future (cf. Prov 13:11, 22). He is condemning those who hoard their possessions with idolatrous greed and sinful stinginess rather than using wealth for the glory of God and the good of others. They are miserly and unmerciful.

Deuteronomy 15 is one of the texts in God’s Law that directly addresses wealth and poverty. That text says two apparently contradictory things. Verse 4 says, “But there will be no poor among you; for the LORD will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you ….” And verse 11 says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land.”

Which is it? Will there be no poor? Or will there never cease to be poor? In between those apparently contradictory statements are these commands: “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. … You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake” (Deuteronomy 15:7–8, 10).

So here’s how it works. God provides enough, but God does not provide evenly. God provides some with more and some with less. Why? So that those who have less will trust the Lord to provide and so that those who have more can experience the joy of giving generously like God does.

The rotting riches of the unrighteous, however, indicate misused wealth and misplaced worship, as Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21).

Fraud & Exploitation

Next, James charges the rich with defrauding and exploiting the poor: “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4).

This is a clear appeal to God’s moral law, which requires the prompt payment of wages: “You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy …. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the LORD, and you be guilty of sin” (Deuteronomy 24:14–15).

The 8th Commandment prohibits stealing, but there are all kinds of ways to steal other than robbery. The Westminster Catechism, Question 142 says those include “fraudulent dealing, false weights and measures, removing landmarks, injustice and unfaithfulness in contracts …; oppression, extortion, usury, bribery, vexatious lawsuits …; engrossing commodities to enhance the price; … and all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbor what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves.”

The rich commit white collar crimes, and the poor are particularly vulnerable to their injustice. People in desperate need are easily taken advantage of. When they are abused, they often can’t afford legal help to do anything about it. They are an easy target, vulnerable prey for the greedy and powerful. But listen to Proverbs 29:7: “A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge.” Those who gain wealth by injustice, deception, extortion, or exploitation are wicked.

Self-Indulgence

James levels a third charge in verse 5: “You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.” This one requires clarification because I think the tendency is to assume luxury is measured externally in terms of how much stuff you have or how nice your stuff is. And I don’t think that’s right. For one thing, materialists and minimalists are the same: both measure their own goodness externally in terms of stuff—either how much they have or don’t have.

For another thing, God is a God of abundance who lavishes excessive goodness on his people. When God created the world, he made it swarm and teem with life. He put Adam and Eve in a Garden overflowing with pleasure. He brought Israel into a land “flowing with milk and honey.” He promises extravagant blessings to all nations in Christ: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Isaiah 25:6). So God is not a minimalist. He is the God of super abundance, of excess.

“You have lived … in luxury” might be better translated, “You have binged, you have caroused.” And this outward binging and self-indulging grows from sinful attitudes of the heart. 

Self-indulgence is ungrateful, enjoying God’s good gifts without thanking him. 

It’s full of discontentment, always craving and demanding more, but never satisfied. “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

Self-indulgence is the idolatrous love of things more than God. Everyone trusts someone or something to provide satisfaction and security. The psalmist speaks of sinners “who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches” (Psalm 49:6).

Self-indulgence is full of pride, arrogantly denying the God-given limits on our capacity for pleasure. There is no self-control or moderation here.

Finally, sinful indulgence is marked by consuming without contributing. Scripture commends working hard and enjoying the fruit of your labor (Amos 9:14; Eccl 3:12–13, 22). But Scripture condemns the self-indulgent who always consume at the expense of others and never produce anything of value for others (Amos 2:8, 4:1). This sin is not unique to the rich; it is found in the hearts of billionaires and people on welfare.

Violence

Finally, James condemns the wealthy for murder: “You have condemned and murdered the righteous person” (James 5:6; cf. Ps 10:8–10, 37:32). Of course, it’s unlikely that the rich commit murder with their own hands. But when you have money, you have other means.

One way the rich murder the innocent poor is by depriving them of basic necessities, which violates God’s law. Deuteronomy 24:6: “No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.”  Taking a person’s ability to feed his family as collateral threatens his very life. Deuteronomy 24:13: “You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you.” A poor man’s cloak was his source of warmth, necessary to survival. Making a profit by depriving someone of basic life necessities is murderous.

But the rich can also afford to get away with murder through layers of plausible deniability. When King Ahab coveted Naboth’s vineyard, he didn’t personally murder him. He didn’t even hire a hitman. His wife Jezebel took care of it, and she used God’s law and the courts! She arranged for false witnesses to accuse Naboth of blasphemy against God, and he was condemned to death (1 Kings 21). Likewise, when King David took the wife of Uriah, he instructed the commander of his army to position Uriah where the battle was fiercest (2 Samuel 11).

These are the charges James brings against the rich. They have violated God’s law in their attitudes and actions.

The Sentence

In addition to bringing charges, James also announces God’s just sentence. This is where James began in verse 1: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.” Weeping and howling are expressions of distress in response to total devastation. James borrows the language of the OT prophets, who frequently call for weeping and wailing in response to the devastation and destruction of God’s judgment.

“Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!” (Isaiah 13:6).

“Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth” (Joel 1:5).

James warns the unrighteous rich that their luxurious indulgence will give way to eternal conscious torment. He says in v. 3, “Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.” This is prophetic language that describes God’s judgment against sinners. Gold is considered a noble or precious metal precisely because it is not subject to rust or corrosion like other base metals. However, James is not making a point about the actual chemical process, but about the relative worthlessness of the most valuable earthly possessions in light of eternity.

Gold may not literally rust, but on the Day of Judgment it will be literally worthless. Ezekiel describes one scene: “They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity” (Ezekiel 7:19; cf. Isaiah 2:20–21).

James warns of God’s eternal judgment again at the end of verse 3, “You have laid up treasure in the last days,” and again at the end of verse 5, “You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” “The last days” and “the day of slaughter” are explicit references to judgment. And the verses immediately following these make it clear that James has “the coming of the Lord” in judgment in mind:

“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord” (v. 7).

“Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (v. 8).

“Behold, the Judge is standing at the door” (v. 9).

“The last days” refers to the entire age between the bodily resurrection of Christ and the bodily return of Christ (Acts 2:17, Heb 1:2). When Jesus rose from the dead, he brought the last days into the middle of history. And his resurrection is evidence of his authority to judge the world (Acts 17:31). So “the last days” are these days, when “salvation has come [and] judgment is near.”

It would be a mistake to think that God’s judgment against the wicked is only far off in the future. There will be ultimate cosmic justice on the Last Day. But God’s justice has arrived in the world already through the rule and reign of Jesus, who is—at this moment—sitting at the right hand of the Father as all his enemies are placed under his feet (1 Cor 15:25).

And as King and Judge of the world, Jesus acts in history to limit the power of the wicked. Psalm 37 says, “In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace” (Ps 37:10–11).

What makes the guilt of the rich so much worse now is that they are sinning with their wealth in the age when Jesus Christ has taken his seat as the rightful Ruler and Judge of the world. The wicked have always comforted themselves by saying, “God doesn’t see; God doesn’t act” (cf. Ps 10:4, 11; Ps 73:11). But God has acted decisively in history by becoming a man, bearing our sin in his body on the cross, and trampling over sin and death and the devil. Therefore, those who reject King Jesus and continue heedlessly in self-indulgent greed are making their own guilt worse and worse.

By appealing to God’s law, denouncing the specific sins of the rich, and announcing God’s just judgment, James assures you that God rightly judges the wicked.

The flipside is that God mercifully delivers the righteous.

The reason James condemns the unrighteous rich is to comfort Christians. John Calvin writes, “He [James], therefore, does not address them in order to invite them to repentance; but, on the contrary, he has a regard to the faithful, that they, hearing of the miserable end of the rich, might not envy their fortune, and also that knowing that God would be the avenger of the wrongs they suffered, they might with a calm and resigned mind bear them.”

Remember, God’s justice and God’s mercy are two sides of the same coin. So a passage that announces God’s judgment on the wicked simultaneously announces God’s merciful deliverance of his people. Verse 4 says, “The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” There is a comforting promise implied: God hears the cries of those who are afflicted. He is the compassionate God who executes justice for the widow and the orphan and who loves the sojourner (Deut 10:17–18). So trust the Lord and cry out to him in all your afflictions.

And fret not. The prosperity of the wicked tempts the faithful to envy the rich (cf. Pss 37 and 73). And envy is a deadly trap: “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73:2–3). But Psalm 37 wisely exhorts God’s people not to fret: “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! … Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Psalm 37:1, 7–8).

When you consider the current economic situation, or when you think about the blasphemous schemes of Big Tech, Big Pharma, or Hollywood, how do you respond? Are you prone to anger, frustration, bitterness, or despair? James 5:1–6 is meant to keep you from envy and from fretting by assuring you that God will act to deliver his people.

So set your hope on enjoying God forever. In verse 6, James refers to saints who have been unjustly murdered by the rich.: “You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.” James himself would one day be stoned to death for his faith. This reminds us that even when God’s deliverance is not temporal and material, the rich and powerful can never separate you from God’s love in Christ. Even if they kill your body, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And if you suffer oppression and injustice for the sake of righteousness, you can do so with the joy and confidence that you are sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Jesus is the only truly Righteous One, and he suffered in your place without resistance. And if you share in his sufferings, you will also share in his resurrection and glory.

The certainty of God’s judgment against the unrighteous rich should cause you to cling to Christ in faith all the more. James 5 simply applies the truth of Proverbs 11:4: “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” Only righteousness, not riches, can deliver your soul from the wrath of God. And your only hope of righteousness is Christ. Therefore, Christ is infinitely more valuable than gold and silver.

Do you desire him? Do you treasure him? Do you trust him?