ABS for 5/24/12 will focus on James 5:1-6, what the NIV calls WARNING TO RICH OPPRESSORS
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
THIS is one of those passages that has the potential to confuse us. Is James saying that wealth is inherently evil? If a man puts money in his 401-K is he "hoarding wealth"? I don't think that is what James means here. It is not simply money that is the root of all evil, but the LOVE of money that Jesus cautions us about. We are given different skills and gifts from God with which we are called to serve one another. There must be some system by which we compensate each other for the performance of those skills. Money is simply the currency of that system of compensation.
WHAT James is concerned with here is the human tendency to over-indulge and the havoc that results when money is the object of that weakness. Addicted to money, a man becomes progressively less able to part with it until he is not paying people who have labored for him and using his power to improperly thwart their efforts to recover what is justly theirs. Per James, it is a form of corruption that does not go unnoticed in the eyes of the Lord and is something that He will make right.
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