James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. (1-3)
The factor that drives practical Christian life is a dependency on GOD. Being rich is not a sin, but, if the riches drive us to be independent of GOD, then that’s a sin and we will have to pay for it. When the pursuit of a holy life is replaced by the love of money, we are going off from the track and makes our life to go miserable. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10. The love of money distracts our race of faith.
“More than that, James adds, with a Dantesque touch of horror, the rust will devour (or corrode) your flesh like fire, you are so bound up with your greedy gains; your wealth perishes and you perish with it and by it, eaten away in burning pain.” (Moffatt)
“Better weep here, where there are wiping handkerchiefs in the hand of Christ than to have your eyes whipped out in hell. Better howl with men than yell with devils.” (Trapp)
Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you. (4-6)
The cry of the laborers and the reapers always contradicts to the joy a master! Their pain is rewarded with more pain than wages. But, James is giving the masters a warning that they will have to face the LORD of armies who sees and hears them all. The hearts were fattened and they rebel against the word of GOD and to the cries of the fellow people nearby. Yes, James is pointing back to the teachings that the people forgot as they became rich. Are the riches of this world blinds us to the word of the LORD?
