James: More GraceSample

We love a quick fix, especially one that is easy and trouble-free.

But sometimes a project takes a long time to complete and much patience is needed. In today’s verse, James calls on his readers to have just this sort of patience.

James has had some striking things to say about trials. He has been reminding his readers that testing makes our faith in Christ more resilient. Trusting Christ through trial after trial helps us keep going right to the end. Such testing will help us reach the finishing line, but that is not all. As we persevere through trials, we will also be transformed in the process.

Trials produce perseverance and James pictures this perseverance as a worker with a job to finish. The job is a long-term project and progress may appear very slow. Patience will be needed. But we need to keep faith with this ‘worker’ and not reject them; we mustn’t go looking around for an alternative one to do the job.

• If we do ‘let perseverance finish its work’, what will be the result (v. 4)?

When we are in the midst of trials, our spiritual life and our godliness can seem pretty ragged. We can feel as if we are only just clinging on to faith in God by our fingertips. Trials can show up all sorts of weaknesses and sins in our lives that need sorting.

We may not feel as if we are becoming ‘mature and complete, not lacking anything’, as James promises here. It is very tempting to look for other routes to spiritual maturity and godly character, especially if they look quick and trouble-free.

But James calls on his Christian readers to ‘let perseverance finish its work’. They are to trust that, in the end, this process of persevering faithfully through trials will complete its job of changing them for the better.

In testing times everything can seem out of control. We just don’t know what is coming down the line, at least that is how it seems. James wants to reassure these believers, because what is coming for them is transformation. In the end, they will be a finished work of great beauty and worth! James wants his friends to stand back from the challenges of today and look on to the end – that will help them to persevere and help them keep counting trials as ‘pure joy’.

Pray

Thank God that as we persevere through trials, we will become 'mature and complete', lacking nothing. Ask him to help you believe that.