¹³Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.

James’ teaching up to now has been prophetic and authoritative, reminiscent of his divine half-brother, Jesus. Now, using words familiar to readers of the book of Proverbs, James resorts to Solomonic reasoning. He is not an armchair theologian, nor an ivory-tower academic. Nor is he a Pharisee fostering good works as a means to salvation. He was an earthy (not earthly) teacher of the righteousness that comes through grace. The faith he espouses involves a rugged realism; words are not enough to demonstrate one’s faith. One can speak great, lofty words from the reclining lounger, but faith must be lived out in the trenches of life, where real people live real lives, where faith actually can make a difference. One could say James comes from a street-wise background, proclaiming a practical faith, one that must be authentic in the everyday issues of life.

What James has just written in the previous verses is, indeed, wisdom illustrated from common things of life. We might summarize him as saying, “Consider what I have been saying. Think!” Too often today Christians take the Scripture woodenly, without thinking deeply. God has not given us a behavior manual of do’s and don’ts, yet we who proclaim salvation by grace through faith, tend to live out our lives with a Christianized form of the law. When we treat the NT teachings of Christ, Paul, James, and the others as inviolable laws, we fall into Christian Phariseeism. Sure, we are encouraged to freely follow Christ and freely obey him, but if anyone slips up in one thing he can too easily be judged as unspiritual. Ironically, there is a sense in which we all do slip up, or to put it more bluntly, we sin. As Christians, when another believer sins and does not respond to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, we are quick to judge, launching a trial in our minds and conversations.

If we take James literally, none of us would stand a chance with God; we should all lapse into self-defeat and abject shame. Yet that is not God’s goal for us; He wants us to change. In the case of faith, we must look honestly at our life and wisely evaluate. Putting aside any obsessive fear of a works-based salvation, the question for us is this: does our life match up with our proclaimed faith?

There is one caveat, and this effort must be done “in the gentleness of wisdom.” In other words, we should live our lives purposefully and inauspiciously (and genuinely) with the goal of showing our faith in wisdom-based action.

Lord, help me to live wisely by Your grace and not foolishly by legalism.