James makes a last appeal to his readers, and it has a touch of
tenderness—“My brethren.” In verse 5 he spoke of the case of a sick man
who is brought to confess his sins and is led to God. Here he seems to
refer specifically to the case of a brother who has fallen into error.
There are such sad instances that puzzle many a pastor by their
indifference, hardness, and even scorn of Christ. “If any among you err
from the truth, and one convert him.”
The condition (third class) is put delicately only as a supposed case,
not assumed as true and yet probable, alas. “Err” is from the Latin
_errare_ (to wander, to go astray). The Greek word here suggests the
picture of one who is lost in the mountains, who has missed his
path,[98] without passing on the question of his own part in the
process. That is now neither here nor there, for he is lost. Our
“planet” is this word, from the notion that these luminaries were
wandering stars, not fixed like the rest. We now know that none of the
stars are fixed, but they all move with great speed.
Whatever the cause, it is not impossible for brethren to go astray “from
the truth.” One way to treat them is to kick them out of the way, down
the hill. Another way is to go after them with hammer and tongs to beat
them back into the path. Another course is to give them up in disgust
and to wash our hands of all responsibility. It must be confessed that
often it is very hard to do anything else, since brethren act with so
much independence and resent any effort to show them a better way. When
they start away, often they go the whole way. But there is a more
excellent way—the way of love. See 1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 6:1
ff.
We are our brothers’ keepers in spite of all they say and all that we
may feel. You that are spiritual have a call to mind the broken lives
all about you. There is no nobler work than this rescue work, to turn a
sinner “from the error of his way.” It is so hard to get a man back on
the right track. He, like all lost men, wanders round and round in his
old tracks of sin and error. He is the victim of his own logical
fallacies and sinful delusions. Though a giant, he is bound by the cords
of the Lilliputians, the bonds of habit which he does not break.
It is enough to discourage any social worker in the slums or in the
tenement districts of our cities to see the hopeless conditions in which
the victims live. Drugs have fastened some with clamps of steel; drink
has fired the blood of others; cigarettes have deadened the will of
others; and immorality has hurled still others into the pit. They
stumble into the rescue halls, “cities of refuge” in our cities. Happy
are those who know how to save souls like these who have known better
days and who have gone down into the valley of sin and sorrow. But it is
worthwhile to save souls like these for whom Jesus died. Let the rescue
worker know (by personal experience, in truth) that he “shall save a
soul from death,” from a living death in which such a soul already finds
itself and from eternal death as well. That is the reward of the winner
of souls.
But it is not alone those who go down into the depths of gross sin, the
“pick-me-ups” of life, that are to be won back. There are many who live
in accord with the outward ethical standards of life who turn away from
the knowledge of Jesus, who go after the strange gods of gold, of
so-called knowledge, of materialistic monism, of “new thought,” of
Christian Science, of Russellism, of any new fad in science or
philosophy or religion, of any new form of old wives’ fables that lead
men astray. These are, in reality, more difficult to win back to the
truth as it is in Jesus, for they have the pride of knowledge and look
with compassionate condescension on those who still worship Jesus as God
and Saviour from sin.
The worker for souls has one more joy. He learns to see the good side of
human nature. The bad side is there beyond a shadow of doubt. No man
knows that better than the worker for the redemption of human souls. But
this fact does not make him a pessimist or a cynic. He sees the angel in
the stone. He learns the love that “shall cover a multitude of sins,”
“hides a host of sins” (Moffatt), that covers with a veil the sins of
the poor soul who wandered away and is now brought back. See 1 Peter 4:8
for the same idea.
This is not the Jewish doctrine of merit in good works balancing evil
ones, as Oesterley holds. Mayor also thinks that the man who rescues
another saves his own soul. But this interpretation seems out of harmony
with the teaching of Jesus and the whole trend of the gospel message. We
do not need to go back to these “blind guides” of Pharisaism to find the
key to this verse and that in 1 Peter 4:8, where we read that “love
covers a multitude of sins.” It is the love that no longer sees the sins
of the saved sinner. We see the true idea in Proverbs 10:12: “Hatred
stirreth up strifes, but love covereth all transgressions.” See also
Psalm 85:2: “Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people; thou hast
covered all their sin.” In Luke 7:47 Jesus speaks of the love of the
converted woman as proof that she has been forgiven much.
James presents the joy of the winner of souls who throws the mantle of
love over the sins of the repentant sinner, the joy of the Shepherd who
has found the lost sheep out on the mountain and is returning with him
in his arms, the joy of the Father who welcomes the prodigal boy home
with the best robe and the fatted calf, the joy in the presence of the
angels that one sinner has repented and turned unto God. That is heaven
on earth. The preacher who has missed this joy of winning souls has
missed the greatest reward in his ministry. If he has this, he can do
without much else. He can stand many rebuffs, small salary, lack of
help, if only there is this meat to eat that satisfied the soul of Jesus
when he led one poor abandoned woman into the light and life of God.