<p>3:17<i> But the wisdom that is from above is most importantly pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without variance, without hypocrisy</i>-The wisdom coming from above is the gift of the word coming down from God, making us &quot;firstfruits of His (spiritual) creatures&quot; (1:17,18). We have suggested that the wisdom from above is the word of Christ as opposed to that of Moses; in Jesus the word became flesh (Jn. 1:14), the whole of God's revelation became associated with the person of Christ, not just the words of the New Testament inspired after His time. Thus this verse describes both the work of the word, and also the character of Christ, the wisdom/word of God from above.</p><p>If the word was truly in them , they would have the characteristics of purity as opposed to their double mindedness; they did not have peace in their hearts (cp. v.16), their rejecting of their poor brethren's welfare requests (2:16) and harsh treatment of them (2:6; 5:4) contrasted with the gentleness and ease with which brethren should feel they can entreat us with. The word with it's associated spirit of Christ will develop these attributes within us. Purity of mind (cp. Phil. 4:8) is of &quot;first&quot; importance; if this is achieved, &quot;then&quot; the characteristics which the ecclesia were so sadly lacking in would then naturally follow. The Greek 'proton' occurs again in Mt. 6:33: &quot;Seek <i>first</i> the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness&quot;. This is achieved, according to James, by striving to let the word develop now those righteous attributes which will be revealed so fully and widely in the Kingdom (cp. Rom. 14:17).</p><p>&quot;The wisdom that is from above&quot; must also refer to Jn. 3:3-5, which speaks of being born from above, i.e from Heaven by the Spirit. Nicodemus thought that he had already been born from above, seeing that he had a knowledge of the Law. But Christ told him &quot;heavenly things&quot; (Jn. 3:12), which Nicodemus found hard to accept. The word which makes us born again (Jn. 3:5 cp. 1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18) does so because it reveals Heavenly principles to us. This wisdom/word in James was &quot;full of mercy and good fruits&quot;. The word develops these fruits (Jn. 15:5-8), as does Christ (Phil. 1:11)- again showing His equation with the word. The language of fruiting goes back to v.12, where the tree that bears fruit is the heart of the believer. Now what bears fruit is the word- because that must be equated with the heart if good fruit is to be produced. Thus we can make the equation: Christ=Spirit=Word=In heart=fruit. These factors may be arranged in any order, showing how Christ dwells in our heart by faith (Eph. 3:17 cp. Col. 3:16; Rom. 10:17). The fullness of spiritual attributes mentioned here may refer back to Ex. 34:5-7 (R.V.), which describes the name of God as being<i> full</i> of His attributes of mercy, patience, justice etc. The word of true wisdom produces these characteristics in us, thereby giving us the Name of God. Again, James is setting an ultimate standard- aiming for the fullness of God to be developed in us through the almighty power of the word. It must be theoretically possible for a man to be perfect in God's sight; even though in the past he has failed and thus come short of Christ's standard, he can still be justified by the faith which is developed by the word acting upon him. Our Lord was of our nature, and yet still attained perfection. We are invited to follow him to perfection, being perfect even as God is. The means by which we achieve this may be slightly different to how he did; yet through the word &quot;now are we the sons of God&quot; (1 Jn. 3:1,2; Jn. 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:23), Spirit-begotten as He was.</p><p>This degree of commitment to the word leads to a brother being &quot;without partiality&quot;; something which the ecclesia were guilty of due to their lack of having the word in their hearts (see notes on 2:4). Having their own minds full of strife, division and confusion (v.14-16) would inevitably lead them to be partial or divided in their dealings with other brethren. The word 'affectionately believed' will lead us to be &quot;without hypocrisy&quot;- again inviting a comparison between these brethren without the word truly in them and the Pharisees, who are those invariably described as &quot;hypocrites&quot; in the New Testament. However, the phrase also occurs in the sermon on the mount, and the many allusions to this discourse in James suggest that he may have had Mt. 7:5 in mind: &quot;Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye&quot;. We have seen that the context of James 3 is of a group of brethren criticizing another group, with the inference that their criticism was masked with pseudo-spiritual reasoning. This is exactly the theme of Mt. 7:5. To avoid being a hypocrite, James implies, we need to let the word sink into ourselves- which has the same effect as casting the plank out of our own eye. It is the word which has the power of self-examination; 1 Jn. 1:10 implies that if the word is in us, then we appreciate what sinners we have been. The telling thing about the description of the Spirit gifted eldership as &quot;hypocrites&quot; ('play-actors') is that their make-up and costume was the Truth itself. The fact we are wearing this can lead us to think that we really are the part we are playing- but putting on the clothes and changing our heart to truly identify with what we profess are two different things.</p>