There is no other way than the slow way of life. The mushroom springs up
in a night and goes as quickly away. The oak grows a few inches a year
and lasts for centuries. The finest product in God’s garden is the soul
of man, ripe with the long years of toil and sorrow. Luther Burbank
learned some of the witchery of nature by watching her ways with plant
life. He showed great patience and has much to show for it. Give
patience a chance to do its work and keep on giving it a fair show. Ole
Bull said that if he missed practicing on his violin one day, he noticed
the difference in his playing. If he missed two days, other musicians
noticed it. If he skipped three days, all the world knew it.
“Only, let your endurance be a finished product” (Moffatt). It comes to
that in all great achievements, for the test is endurance. The goal is
at the end of the race, where Jesus is the author and finisher of the
faith which we possess (Heb. 12:2). “We are become partakers of Christ,
if we hold ... firm unto the end” (Heb. 3:14). “But he that endureth to
the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).
Patience calls for courage; discouragement leads to impatience and
failure. There is need of long-suffering (Col. 1:11), if we get the
“finished product.” The word for perfect here occurs also in James 1:17,
25; 3:2. The word, like the substantive, has a double usage (cf. _finis_
and our _end_), either limit or aim. So the perfect man may be regarded
in the absolute sense, the limit, as the perfect Man Christ Jesus (Eph.
4:13), or as on the way to the goal (no longer a child but a developed
man, as in 1 Cor. 2:6; Phil. 3:15). “The perfect” (1 Cor. 13:10) is
still to come, but there is “perfect love” (1 John 4:18). We are to aim
after the perfection of God himself (Matt. 5:48). Paul’s ambition was to
present each one “perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28). Compare also
Colossians 4:12. Here James has his eye on the goal which is at the end
of the long road. He knows full well (3:2) that in many things we all
stumble, but we must persevere. Patience must do its “perfect work,”
that ye may be “perfect.”
But James takes a latitudinal look at the work of patience, not merely
the longitudinal view—the view that ye may be “entire, lacking nothing,”
“complete, with never a defect” (Moffatt). This word for entire (cf.
_integer_) means complete in all its parts, whole, not unsound anywhere.
At the end of the race we are to be fully developed and sound to the
core in heart and limb. The word is used of stones untouched by a tool
(Deut. 27:6), of a body without blemish. Epictetus (bk. III, chap. xxvi,
§ 25) uses the word of a vessel which one finds whole, unbroken, and
useful. It is used of a complete or unbroken household. In the papyri
Philo uses both words together, as James does here.
The substantive is used of the “perfect soundness” of the man just
healed by Peter and John (Acts 3:16). This adjective occurs with
“righteousness” (Wisd. 15:13) and “worship” or “religion” (4 Macc. 17).
The adjective is used by Paul in his prayer for the Thessalonians,
“preserved entire, without blame” (1 Thess. 5:23). This is what Jesus
does for his glorious church, which is to be without “spot or wrinkle or
any such thing” (Eph. 5:27). Jesus, our High Priest, “has perfected for
ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Alas, Isaiah (1:6) found
Israel wholly wanting in this soundness. James’s ideal is that we shall
fall short in nothing. Our destiny is to dwell in the family of God and
to be like Jesus, our elder Brother (1 John 3:2). This ultimate divine
fulness is not the self-sufficiency of the stoics.