James 3:1

7. Christian synagogue, also, rejects many teachers with untamable and self-contradictory tongues, James 3:1-12.

1. My brethren Our apostle’s standpoint is still in the Christian synagogue, where he is checking the errors and faults of his brethren. In the last chapter he reproved their obsequiousness to rich incomers, and refutes their excuses; he here checks their ambitious loquacity, aiming to be teachers before they had become competent learners. In James 1:19-26 he had criticised rather the garrulity of hearers and answerers; he here reprehends the assumptions of the speakers.

Masters Rather, teachers. This did not forbid the expression of Christian experience and interchange of exhortation and counsel by the many. Nor did it forbid catechists and imparters of the elements of established Christian knowledge to be many. Nor does it forbid Sabbath-school instructors at the present day, who are happily very many; but it reprehends self-conceited and self-appointed doctrinaries, ready to blurt their individual notions and maintain them in the assemblies. The result would be crude theologies, heated disputations, and erratic sects and heresies. Alford and Huther condemn Grotius for interpreting many teachers as equivalent to all teachers. But as the whole Church is addressed in the caution it can hardly mean less. The picture it suggests is, that (as in 1 Corinthians 14:26-33) every member of the Church was free to use his tongue in the assembly, and used his freedom fully. The institute of the single pastorate for the single Church was, perhaps, as yet not fully established, though its need was fully felt, and its existence coming in.

Condemnation Namely, for the offend of next verse, to which we are all liable. Greater condemnation will fall on him who assumes the higher responsibilities and exhibits his assumption most loudly.