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THE RESULT OF TESTING

James 1:2–4 (contd)

JAMES describes this process of testing by the word dokimion. It is an interesting word. It is the word for sterling coinage, for money which is genuine and absolutely pure. The aim of testing is to purge us of all impurity.

If we meet this testing in the right way, it will produce unswerving constancy (or steadfastness as the Revised Standard Version translates it). The word is hupomonē, which the Authorized Version translates as patience – but patience is far too passive. Hupomonē is not simply the ability to bear things; it is the ability to turn them to greatness and to glory. The thing which amazed the non-Christians in the centuries of Christian persecution was that the martyrs did not die grimly they died singing. One smiled in the flames; they asked him what he found to smile at there. ‘I saw the glory of God,’ he said, ‘and was glad.’ Hupomonē is the quality which makes people able not simply to suffer things but to overcome them. The effect of testing borne in the right way is strength to bear still more and to conquer in still harder battles.

This unswerving constancy in the end makes those who are tested three things.

(1) It makes them perfect. The Greek is teleios, which usually has the meaning of perfection towards a given end. A sacrificial animal is teleios if it is fit to offer to God. A scholar is teleios if he or she is mature. A person who is fully grown is teleios. This constancy, which comes from a positive response to testing, makes each one of us teleios in the sense of being fit for the task we were sent into the world to do. Here is a great thought. By the way in which we meet every experience in life, we are making ourselves either fit or unfit for the task which God meant us to do.

(2) It makes them complete. The Greek is holoklēros, which means entire, perfect in every part. It is used of the animal which is fit to be offered to God and of the priest who is fit to serve him. It means that the animal or the person has no disfiguring and disqualifying blemishes. Gradually, this unswerving constancy removes the weaknesses and the imperfections from a person’s character. Daily, it enables us to conquer old sins, to shed old blemishes and to gain new virtues, until in the end we become entirely fit for the service of God and of one another.

(3) It makes them deficient in nothing. The Greek is leipesthai, and it is used of the defeat of an army, of the giving up of a struggle, of the failure to reach a standard that should have been reached. If we meet our testing in the right way, if day by day we develop this unswerving constancy, day by day we will live more victoriously and reach nearer to the standard of Jesus Christ himself.