Jam 3:14, 16 | Barnes | STEP | Verse 14. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts . If that is your characteristic. There is reference here to a fierce and unholy zeal against each other; a spirit of ambition and contention. Glory not . Do not boast, in such a case, of your qualifications to be public teachers. Nothing would render you more unfit for such an office than such a spirit. And lie not against the truth . You would lie against what is true by setting up a claim to the requisite qualifications for such an office, if this is your spirit. Men should seek no office or station which they could not properly seek if the whole truth about them were known.

James 3:14

Verse 14. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts. If that is your characteristic. There is reference here to a fierce and unholy zeal against each other; a spirit of ambition and contention.

Glory not. Do not boast, in such a case, of your qualifications to be public teachers. Nothing would render you more unfit for such an office than such a spirit.

And lie not against the truth. You would lie against what is true by setting up a claim to the requisite qualifications for such an office, if this is your spirit. Men should seek no office or station which they could not properly seek if the whole truth about them were known.

James 3:16

Verse 16. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion. Marg.:, tumult, or unquietness. Everything is unsettled and agitated. There is no mutual confidence; there is no union of plan and effort; there is no co-operation in promoting a common object; there is no stability in any plan; for a purpose, though for good, formed by one portion, is defeated by another.

And every evil work. The truth of this no one can have any doubt who has observed the effects in a family or neighbourhood where a spirit of strife prevails. Love and harmony of course are banished; all happiness disappears; all prosperity is at an end. In place of the peaceful virtues which ought to prevail, there springs up every evil passion that tends to mar the peace of a community. Where this spirit prevails in a church, it is of course impossible to expect any progress in Divine things; and in such a church any effort to do good is vain. "The Spirit, like a peaceful dove,

Flies from the realms of noise and strife."

(+) "confusion" or, "tumult, or unquietness"