What Does James 1:11 Mean?

(11) **For the sun is no sooner risen . . .**—Translate, *the sun arose with the burning heat, and dried up the grass; and the flower thereof fell away, and the grace of its fashion perished.* The grace, the loveliness, the delicacy of its form and feature—literally, *of its face*—withered and died away. Often must the Apostle have seen such an effect of the fiery-Eastern sun, scorching with its pitiless glare the rich verdure of the wilderness; and in his ear, perchance, was the cry of Isaiah (Isaiah 40:6-8):— “All flesh is grass: And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth; The flower fadeth; Because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: —Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth; The flower fadeth; But the Word of our God shall stand for ever.” **So also** (or, *thus*) **shall the rich man fade away** (or, *wither*) **in his ways.**—Not the rich brother, observe, is to fade thus, though his wealth will so pass away. The warning is rather (as in Mark 10:24) “for them that *trust* in riches.” Even “the mammon of unrighteousness,” well used, will make for us “friends that may receive us into everlasting habitations” (Luke 16:9). And he who, out of the possessions wherewith God has blessed him, “deviseth liberal things, by liberal things shall stand” (Isaiah 32:8). There seems, moreover, looking closely at the text, a special fitness in its exact words: for they mean that the rich shall perish in their journeyings for the sake of gain; and to no people could the rebuke apply more sharply than to the Jews, the lenders unto “many nations” (Deuteronomy 15:6), the merchants and bankers of the world. Nor can “the sword of the Spirit,” unsheathed from this Word of God (Ephesians 6:17), be without an edge for those of us in these latter times who err in the former ways.