James 1:26-27

Reading Time: 5 minutes

If anyone among you thinks he is a model of piety, and is one who does not bridle his tongue but deludes his own heart, this man's piety is vain.
The way to win an account with God the Father for piety pure and undefiled is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. (James 1: 26 and 27)

Adamson aligns these two closing verses of chapter one with the seven preceding verses. He puts verse 26 with verses 19-21, focusing on the tongue. Verse 27 deals with verses 22-25, describing doers of the Word. (For verses other than 26 and 27, please hold your cursor over the citation to see the entire verse.)

According to Ropes¹ (p. 181) James advances from ‘the more general precept of reality, ‘not hearing but doing’, to the more specific, ‘not mere worship but doing good’. For the latter concept, ‘not mere worship but doing good’, Adamson prefers and substitutes the following: ‘not a vain and corrupt illusion of worship’.

Verse 26

According to Adamson, the Greek words in v. 26 correspond in sense to our words ‘pious’ and ‘piety’, which refer to the ‘scrupulous observance of religious exercises in action or words‘. However, this observance can be performed either sincerely or hypocritically. If performed hypocritically, it is a pretense of devout religion. He cites Jesus’s criticisms of this type of religion in Matthew 6:2-6.

Be careful not to make a show of your religion before men (v. 1, NEB)

Inner and External Aspects of Religious Worship

The adjective thrēskos is rare in Greek, and Adamson lists a small number of sources that use it. The adjective describes ‘one who stands in awe of the Gods, and is tremulously scrupulous in what regards them‘ (Hort²). The noun thrēskeia occurs once in Herodotus, never in Attic, and only in the Apocrypha in the LXX. Both ‘have the same considerable range of meaning as the English word ‘worship’ with reference to the inner and the external aspects of religious worship’

So, in John 4:22, Jesus says to the woman at the well:

You Samaritans worship without knowing what you worship, while we worship what we know. (NEB)

Both mentions of ‘worship’ in this verse (worship on Gerizim) and (at Jerusalem) are defective in comparison with ‘worship’ in the next two verses.

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.

God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:23, 24)

Adamson Continues to Praise The Epistle’s Unity

Throughout his commentary, Adamson continues to point out the unity of thought, in this case, the unity of verses 26 and 27 with the whole chapter and Epistle. They touch on the concept of ‘doublemindedness’ as discussed in 1:6. Later in 4:8 it is called ‘instability’ or ‘anarchy’. This is also the case in verses 1:8 and 3:16. And all of this is linked with James 1:13, and 1:14. ‘Pure and undefiled…unspotted from the world’ is just a variant of putting off all filthiness.

Verse 27

Verse 27 is not a comprehensive definition of Christianity, and it wasn’t intended to be; it merely asserts an element that is indispensable to Christianity. The spirit of the religion and service of God must be present in our lives (Lev. 19:18).

The Example of Jeeves

There is a fictional character who illustrates behavior that is alien to the spirit of the good servant of God (or of man). The behavior is the tendency of ‘working to rule’ like P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves. However, this is not a denial that true worship is valuable. Similar to the Prophets, James is saying that our worship is only acceptable to God when it includes love to our neighbor. Similar to Jesus, James describes worship as an expression of inner active goodness, and not exclusively obedience to external law.

The Notion of Piety as the True Form of Purity

Adamson provides the example of Isaiah 1:16, 17:

Wash yourselves and be clean. Put away the evil of your deeds, away out of my sight (NEB).

The rabbis held that ‘upon three things the world is based: upon the Torah, upon the Temple Service, and upon the doing of loving deeds’. The last two of these, Temple service and doing loving deeds are said to control the evil yetser.

Jesus says “Let what is in the cup be given in charity, and all is clean.” Here Adamson cites Luke 11:41 NEB, and Matthew 23:14, 26.

First Step in Winning an Account with God

Genuine religion must be practical. Practical religion involves interior righteousness. It is not merely attending divine service although that should lead one to do something for God.

The Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of man, specifically in this case the fatherless and widows, both of whom figure prominently in the social concern of the early Church. (Adamson, p. 86)

Here he cites Acts 6:1; 9:39; 1 Timothy 5:3, and the rabbis who taught that those who looked after orphans will enter ‘into the gates of the Lord’. Several Old Testament verses illustrate the teaching of the rabbis: Exod. 22:22; Deut. 14:28, 29; 16:11; 26:12; 27:19; Ps. 68:5; 146:9.

Adamson considers Paul the best interpreter of James. For both of them, Christianity is word (logos) plus deed (poiēsis). Worship or service is what one does to please God and if it is not done outside the church, it is not done at all.

Again, this is not a definition of religion. It is a description of Christian conduct. Worship must be related to life. It must be contemporary and relevant, but also practical.

Second Step in Winning an Account With God

Genuine religion must also be pure and unspotted from the world. Christian faith means trusting God, or trusting one’s self to God. We can’t trust him with part of our minds and give the other part to the world. Verse 1:18 says firstfruits are holy. Therefore, the Christian must not live like the unconverted.

Encouragement for the Discouraged

Adamson seems aware of how exacting these teachings are. He assures the reader that the first Christians did not all live up to their faith. That is why Paul and James and others are constantly preaching the importance of keeping conduct in line with faith. The purity they are talking about is ethical, not ascetic nor ritual.

The World

In Adamson’s view, the best comment on the concept of the world is James 4:4.

Adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Anyone who has chosen to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

The covenanters at Qumran had a sinister view of the world. James, John and Paul agreed with that view. They believed the world was a domain of evil. James uses the word kosmos in 1:27, his name for the epitome of these evils.

Adamson provides other verses to illustrate what James meant. They are listed below. These verses differ in their view of kosmos compared to how it was presented in a previous article. I was thinking of the powers that be which threaten the human race. Adamson was being faithful to this epistle and to James’s focus on being pure and unspotted from the world. The words to many of them have already been included above. James 1:14, 15, 20, 21, 26.

1. J. H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James. ICC (1916). ↩︎
2. F. J. A. Hort, The Epistle of St. James, i. 1-iv. 7 (1909). ↩︎