<p>5:6 <i>You have condemned, you have killed the righteous, even though he does not oppose you</i>- We have shown in our comments on v.4 that &quot;the just&quot; can refer to both Christ and the oppressed underclass of believers. Their sumptuous feasts of v.5 were at the expense of killing fatted animals- who represented the spiritually fat, ideal sacrifices of Christ and the poor brethren. The idea of killing being equated with lack of love is popular in James- e.g. 4:2; 2:11, based on Mt. 5:22. There seems to be a contrast here with 4:6, where God is said to resist (same word) the prayer of the brethren. Maybe the maximum show of God's displeasure with them was only in not answering their prayers for material things and money. Thus an apparent lack of major signs of displeasure from God should not lull any of us into thinking that this means we are totally acceptable in God's sight.</p><p>&quot;The just one&quot; is a title of the Lord Jesus (Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14) whom they crucified afresh, and &quot;He doth not resist you&quot; indicates that one particular &quot;just one&quot; is being referred to. However, &quot;the just&quot; can also refer to those justified by their faith, which is how it is used in early Romans (1:17; 2:13), a part of Scripture which James' readers seem to have been familiar with in view of the number of references made to it. By being justified by their faith these believers were not relying on the Mosaic law- for which they seem to have been condemned by their elders. Yet they did not resist the abuses made of them, but followed Christ's example on the cross. Thus we have the impression of this group of brethren being condemned by pompous, materialistic elders claiming to have some new revelation from God, who used this as an excuse to withhold their wages and publicly humiliate them at the communion service (2:2); and in the face of all this, they did not actively resist but took the sad state of the ecclesia to God in prayer- cp. the faithful servants sorrowfully telling their Lord about the abuses of one of their number by the much-forgiven ecclesial elder (Mt. 18:31). The cry of those servants and their fellow brethren whom James is referring to &quot;entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth&quot;- and He heard.</p>