NIV: Above all, my brothers, do not swear— not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your Yes be yes, and your No, no, or you will be condemned.
The Message: Above all, my brothers, do not swear— not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your Yes be yes, and your No, no, or you will be condemned.
Just take a walk down any street, go to the shopping precinct, sit on the bus, or just listen to what is going on around you. I am always shocked by the language I hear. I know I shouldn't be but when I hear young children aged 10 or so, teenagers and others, saying "f*** this, f*** off," and all sorts, I find it so upsetting. I don't break down in tears or anything, but inside, I am grieved. Why cannot people use their minds and think of a decent word to use instead of coming up with a profanity every other word or sentence? What sort of parent uses language like that in front of their children so they think it is commonplace?
Then there is the blasphemy, when they take the name of God in vain, when they use Jesus Christ as a swear word. Do they not realise what they are doing? I know some don't even know they have said anything wrong, it is so much of a habit that they use these words without thinking. You can just picture the devil laughing his socks off every time someone blasphemes or uses profanity.
And note how James starts off this verse, with the words "above all". In other words, this is really important and needs to be remembered above everything else as otherwise, says James, "you will be condemned. " Jesus said exactly the same thing:
Matthew 12: 36-37 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.
By your words you will be acquitted, by your words you will be condemned. By my words, I will be acquitted, by my words I will be condemned. Scary stuff indeed and this is all hidden away in the bible, the sort of verse that you are liable to skim read as you nod your head and say "yeh, right, of course, no swearing" and pass quickly on to a verse that seems more important, more relevant.
But the thing is, nothing is in the bible without a reason. If you genuinely believe the bible is God breathed, written by men but inspired by the Holy Spirit, every single word in the bible has meaning and relevance. Every. Single. Word. Even all the so and so begat such and such verses. If James took the trouble to tell us that, above all, we should not swear, and Jesus made sure he warned us what would happen if we used words idly, without thinking, then don't you think we need to pay attention and heed these words?
Men (and women) swear to emphasise a point, to show how serious they are, how annoyed they are or to stress how honest and truthful they are and that you can trust them absolutely. Swearing, or using an oath, shows they mean business. After all, why else when you are in court do you have to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing else, so help you God? So does this mean that when they don't use an oath or swear, they could be lying? So when they say "For God's sake..." they are being totally honest and up front, and when they don't , well, your guess is as good as mine whether their word can be trusted?
But James is not talking about just using bad language here, coarse language, double entendres and worse. No, he is talking about the whole culture of using the name of God as an affirmation, a witness to what you were about to do. As John MacArthur puts it:
Well the oath, the word "oath" in the Hebrew is the word shebuah, it means "to swear." The Greeks used the word horkos which means to bind or strengthen. In other words, you strengthen your word by swearing by some higher authority. And an oath or swearing had three parts. It was a testing to the truth, calling for God to witness and, thirdly, invoking God's punishment if you violated your word. To say "I swear to God" meant I want you to know I'm telling the truth, I want God to witness I'm telling the truth and I want God to punish me if I'm not telling the truth. Very serious. You're invoking the curse of God on you if you lie in an effort to try to convince somebody that you're really telling the truth.
And in those days when there weren't contracts and there weren't the binding kinds of authoritative documents and court rooms to enforce them and all of that like there are today, it was very important that people be trusted. And if a person said, "Look, I promise you I will hold your money." And the guy said, "Boy, I hope you do it, I want you to swear to do it." "I swear by God, may God strike me dead if I don't." That was a way in which you bound your conscience to do what you were supposed to do. Now believe me, it was a solemn thing to call God to witness and invoke the judgment of God on you if you defaulted.
Pasted from <http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/59-32>
There are times when we are called upon to swear an oath, when we take the witness stand in court, when we swear an affidavit, when we get married in church and so on. But the oaths James is talking about are when you say something along the lines of "I swear by my mother's grave...by the live s of my children... and so on as well as the ones where we swear by God.
The NASB translates James 5:12 as:
But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.
Going into this even further, the condemnation, the judgment James mentions is not the judgment of Christians. Far from it. The word "judgement" here comes from the Greek krisis which means:
- a separating, sundering, separation
- a trial, contest
- selection
- judgment
- opinion or decision given concerning anything
- esp. concerning justice and injustice, right or wrong
- sentence of condemnation, damnatory judgment, condemnation and punishment
- the college of judges (a tribunal of seven men in the several cities of Palestine; as distinguished from the Sanhedrin, which had its seat at Jerusalem)
- right, justice
It is apparently never used to describe the judgment of believers, but is the decision of a judge when he passes sentence. So in this context, it effectively means the judgement of non believers and the condemnation they will face on the Last Day. In other words, being thrown into the lake of burning fire along with satan and his minions.
When you take the name of God in vain, you are risking eternal damnation, suffering the torments of hell for eternity. James is actually writing to the church about this though, because this is all about getting your heart and your life right with God. When we open our mouths, we reveal what is in our hearts by the words we speak. Do we speak words of love, of God's grace, tell others of His forgiveness and compassion, His grace and mercy, show our faith by the things we do and say, or do we take His name in vain, treat everyone with contempt, disregard their feelings and concentrate on our own, because we "have a right to be happy", behave just as many in the world behave, having no regard for anyone else and taking God's name in vain all the time? Do our lives demonstrate our faith and trust in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit? Do our works provide the outward evidence of our inner faith?
Revelation 21: 6-8 He said to me: It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars— their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.
Judgement is coming and coming soon. Do you want to be one of those who overcome all that is in the world, whom God will claim as a son, or one of those who gain a place in the lake of burning sulphur? The choice is yours.
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