James 2:11 - Printer Friendly

ESV: For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

NIV: For he who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

NASB: For He who said, 'DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,' also said, 'DO NOT MURDER.' Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a violator of the Law.

CSB: For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder. So if you do not commit adultery, but you murder, you are a lawbreaker.

NLT: For the same God who said, 'You must not commit adultery,' also said, 'You must not murder.' So if you murder someone but do not commit adultery, you have still broken the law.

KJV: For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.

NKJV: For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

James continues his thought from the previous verse regarding the eternal consequences of sin. Whoever stumbles over any single command in God's Law is just as imperfect, and therefore guilty, as the one who breaks all of the commands in God's Law. Both have failed to keep the Law. Both are lawbreakers.

Now James drives the point home. Adultery? Murder? We might think of one as profoundly worse than the other. James says that's irrelevant when it comes to our salvation. Break either one of these commandments, and you are a lawbreaker. You are guilty. "But I didn't commit that other sin" is not a valid defense for the sins we do commit.

Paul wrote something very similar in Romans, but went a bit further: Everyone is a lawbreaker. Everyone has sinned and, by definition, fallen short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). That's why we need for God to forgive us, to judge us according to Jesus' goodness and not our own. Paul's declaration that all have sinned continues in the next verse: "and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:24)."

In the next verse, James will urge us to carry with us an awareness that we are all lawbreakers in need of God's mercy.

James 2:1–13 continues the prior passage's focus on Christians living out what the Word of God says. Those who hold the faith of Christ should obey the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. This includes not showing favoritism to the rich over the poor. Christians should trust God to provide for and protect them, instead of seeking the favor of the very group of people who were oppressing them in the first place. According to the gospel, all of us are lawbreakers. Christians, as people who believe they will be judged by the law that gives freedom, should treat all others as equals.

Genuine saving faith in God leads to good and loving actions: ''works.'' In chapter 1, James discussed the importance of acting on the words of God, not merely hearing them. Favoritism to the rich over the poor demonstrates a lack of faith. In fact, this is a sin. Following up on these ideas, James insists that ''faith'' which doesn't result in good works is dead. Such belief is merely intellectual agreement. It is not trust, or true, biblical saving faith. James doesn't deny that belief in God is essential to salvation, nor does he claim that works are necessary to obtain salvation. Rather, he makes the case that works are to faith what the breath is to the body: a sign of life. A ''faith'' without works is like a body without breath: dead.

In chapter 1, James taught that a saving belief in God changes how a Christian looks at trials in their lives. It affects where they turn for help, and who they credit for good. Believers hear the Word and do it. In this chapter, James insists that our faith in God should keep us from showing favoritism to the rich and powerful on earth and should provoke us to love our poor neighbors as ourselves. He also makes the case that so-called-''faith'' which does not result in works, is not saving faith, at all. Despite controversy, this does not clash with Paul's view of salvation by grace alone. James refers to good works as an expected outcome of salvation, not the source of it. In the following chapters, he will continue to show what a life of genuine faith looks like.

The book of James is about specifically understanding what saving faith looks like. How does faith in Christ reveal itself in a believer's life? What choices does real trust in God lead us to make? Those are the questions James answers. Most scholars believe the writer was Jesus' half-brother, a son born to Joseph and Mary after Jesus' birth. James may not have come to believe Jesus was the Messiah until after the resurrection. Eventually, though, he became one of the leaders of the Christian church in Jerusalem. This is possibly the earliest-written of all the New Testament books, around AD 40–50. James addresses his letter to Jewish Christians scattered around the known world.