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TESTED AND TRIUMPHANT

James 1:2–4

My brothers, reckon it all joy whenever you become involved in all kinds of testings, for you are well aware that the testing of your faith produces unswerving constancy. And let constancy go on to work out its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, deficient in nothing.

JAMES never suggested to his readers that Christianity would be for them an easy way. He warns them that they would find themselves involved in what the Authorized Version calls divers temptations. The word translated as temptations is peirasmos, whose meaning we must understand fully if we are to see the very essence of the Christian life.

Peirasmos is not temptation in our sense of the term; it is testing (trial in the Revised Standard Version). Peirasmos is trial or testing directed towards an end, and the end is that anyone who is tested should emerge stronger and purer from the experience. The corresponding verb peirazein, which the Authorized Version usually translates as to tempt, has the same meaning. The idea is not that of enticement into sin but of strengthening and purifying. For instance, a young bird is said to test (peirazein) its wings. The Queen of Sheba was said to come to test (peirazein) the wisdom of Solomon (1 Kings 10:1). God was said to test (peirazein) Abraham, when he appeared to be demanding the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1). When Israel came into the promised land, God did not remove the people who were already there. He left them so that Israel might be tested (peirazein) in the struggle against them (Judges 2:22, 3:1, 3:4). The experiences in Israel were tests which contributed to the making of the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 4:34, 7:19).

Here is a great and uplifting thought. F. J. A. Hort, the New Testament scholar, writes: ‘The Christian must expect to be jostled by trials on the Christian way.’ All kinds of experiences will come to us. There will be the test of the sorrows and the disappointments which seek to take our faith away. There will be the test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices and the unpopularity which are so much a part of the Christian way. But they are not meant to make us fall; they are meant to make us soar. They are not meant to defeat us; they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant to make us weaker; they are meant to make us stronger. Therefore we should not complain about them; we should rejoice in them. Christians are like athletes. The heavier the course of training they undergo, the more they are glad, because they know that it is preparing them all the better for victorious effort. As Robert Browning said in ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’, we must ‘welcome each rebuff that turns earth’s smoothness rough’, for every difficult experience is another step on the upward way.