Pure Joy (1:2)

You who follow Christ have experienced this: your painful surprise at realizing you are misunderstood, criticized or held at a distance by people to whom you had hoped to draw near. You must understand this separation that divides you from non-Christians so that you can be prepared to consider it pure joy when you encounter the rejection.

The course of the separation was traced by Jesus in the Beatitudes. It begins so promptly after your conversion because it is rooted in the very starting point of faith—your honest acceptance of your spiritual need as one who is "poor in spirit." That starting point sets you on a path that diverges more and more radically from the path of those who continue to rely on their own sufficiency. The difference between you and ones who do not seek after God widens when you "mourn" over your sin, for this seems mentally and emotionally unhealthy to them.

Your repentance for sin makes you "meek," but this humility is foolishness to people who are driving to get ahead by their self-sufficiency. For you, the outgrowth is that you begin to "hunger and thirst for righteousness" to replace your sin, but this hunger is not shared or welcomed by many others. This direction for your life, traced in the Beatitudes, brings you increasingly into conflict with people who are on a different course, because your course entails a thorough reversal of your values.

Jesus lovingly warned you to be prepared for it: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven" (Mt 5:11-12). James now, with his mind saturated with these teachings of Jesus, will tell his readers about the rejoicing and about the reward.

James picks up the root idea of joy from his "greetings" (chairein) and makes it emphatic with his phrase pasan charan—"all joy" (RSV) or "pure joy" (NIV)—as if to say, "Yes, I really meant joy." "Happiness" would be a weak term to use in place of joy; moreover, it would be misleading. The translation "be happy" (LB) is only slightly improved as "supremely happy" (NEB) or as "a happy privilege" (JB). "Fortunate" (TEV) avoids the misleading impression that one should expect to feel happy in the midst of the trial. But James's phrase pasan charan is better translated "all joy" (RSV) or "pure joy" (NIV). Happiness is a subjective state, whereas James is instructing us to make a more objective judgment when he says consider it pure joy. "Happiness" might encourage readers to expect a carefree life or a constantly cheerful mood. Neither of these is what James has in mind. He acknowledges the presence of extremely unhappy experiences in his readers' lives. At the same time, and with no perception of any contradiction, James counsels these readers to rejoice during those very experiences of hardship.

My friend Jim, having lost son and job and income, had not had a happy year. Though he was sincere in expressing his new stance in Christ with the term "happy," it would have been more accurate to say "joyful." This joy is what we must grasp if we are going to teach the redemptive message of James accurately. James now goes on to explain why his readers may rejoice, and in his explanation we will discover the content of biblical joy.