James 1:15

The lust Note the article, omitted in A. V. The peculiar lust of his own. Hath conceived (συλλαβοῦσα) Lit., having conceived. Bringeth forth (τίκτει) Metaphor of the mother. Rev., beareth. When it is finished (ἀποτελεσθεῖσα) Better, Rev., when it is full grown. Not when the course of a sinful life is completed; but when sin has reached its full development. Bringeth forth (ἀποκύει) A different verb from the preceding, bringeth forth. Rev. has rendered τίκτει, beareth, in order to avoid the repetition of bringeth forth. The verb is used by James only, here and at James 1:18. The image is interpreted in two ways. Either (1) Sin, figured as female, is already pregnant with death, and, when full grown, bringeth forth death (so Rev., and the majority of commentators). "The harlot, Lust, draws away and entices the man. The guilty union is committed by the will embracing the temptress: the consequence is that she beareth sin....Then the sin, that particular sin, when grown up, herself, as if all along pregnant with it, bringeth forth death" (Alford). Or (2) Sin, figured as male, when it has reached maturity, becomes the begetter of death. So the Vulgate, generat, and Wyc., gendereth. I am inclined to prefer this, since the other seems somewhat forced. It has the high endorsement of Bishop Lightfoot.

Jam 1:15 . Συλλαβοῦσα , when it hath conceived ) Sin arising from man’s will.— ἁμαρτίαν , sin ) The act of sin. It does not therefore follow that concupiscence of itself is not sin. He that begets man, is himself man.— ἀποτελεσθεῖσα , when it is finished ) having attained its full-grown strength: and this quickly comes to pass.— θάνατον , death ) Sin from its birth is big with death.

15. The guilty union is committed by the will embracing the temptress. "Lust," the harlot, then, "brings forth sin," namely, of that kind to which the temptation inclines. Then the particular sin (so the Greek implies), "when it is completed, brings forth death," with which it was all along pregnant [Alford]. This "death" stands in striking contrast to the "crown of life" (Jas 1:12) which "patience" or endurance ends in, when it has its "perfect work" (Jas 1:4). He who will fight Satan with Satan's own weapons, must not wonder if he finds himself overmatched. Nip sin in the bud of lust.

Verse 15 shows where temptation passes into sin. Ἐπιθυμία , lust, is clearly not in itself "true and proper sin," but it is no less clear that, as our Article IX. says it "hath of itself the nature of sin." With this whole passage we should compare St. Paul's teaching on ἐπιθυμία , ἀμαρτιὰ , and θανατός , in Romans 7:7-11 . Ἀποκύειν occurs only here and in ver. 18; translate, gendereth. James 1:15

Then when lust hath conceived; lust (compared to a harlot) may be said to conceive, when the heart is pleased with the motion, and yields some consent to it. It bringeth forth sin; the birth of sin may be the complete consent of the will to it, or the outward act of it. And sin; actual sin, the fruit and product of original. When it is finished; sin is finished, when it is not only committed, but continued in, as the way and course of a man’s life. Bringeth forth death; not only temporal, but eternal. Or we may thus take the order and progress of sin: the first indeliberate motion of lust, is the temptation or bait, which by its pleasantness enticeth, and by its vehemency draws the heart after it (as the harlot, Proverbs 7:21 , with the flattering of her lips forced the young man, telling him of the pleasure he should enjoy, Jam 1:14,16-18 , and then he goes after her, Jam 1:22 ); the heart’s lingering about and being entangled with the delightful motion of lust, is its committing folly with it; when the full consent is joined, lust hath conceived; when the outward act is performed, sin is brought forth; and when sin is finished in a settled course, it brings forth death; which, though every sin do in the merit of it, yet sin only finished doth in the event. Objection. Doth not this imply lust, and its first motions, not to be sin? Answer. No: for; 1. The least motions of it are forbidden, Matthew 5:28 Romans 7:7 . 2.

It is contrary to the law and Spirit of God, Romans 7:23,25 Ga 5:16,17 . 3. It is the fountain of impurity, and therefore is itself impure, Job 14:4 Matthew 7:15,16 Jas 3:11 . 4. Evil thoughts defile a man, Matthew 15:19 Acts 8:22 . Objection. How is lust said here to bring forth sin, when, Romans 7:8 , sin is said to work lust? Answer. James calls the corrupt principle itself lust, and the actings of it, sin; whereas Paul calls the same principle sin, and the actings of it lust. And so both are true, lust, as a root, brings forth the acts of sin as its fruits; and sin as a root, brings forth actual lusts, as its fruits.

(15) Then when lust have conceived. . . . —Then come the downward steps of ruin—Lust, having conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. The image well depicts the repellent subject. The small beginning, from some vain delight or worldly lust and pleasure; next from the vile embrace, as of an harlot—sin, growing in all its rank luxuriance, until it bear and engender, horribly, of itself, its deadly child. The word of parturition is frightful in the sense it would convey, as of some monstrous deformity, a hideous progeny ten-fold more cursed than its begetter. The one effect of sin, more especially that of the flesh here alluded to, must be Death. The act itself is mortiferous, the result inevitable; just as much so, and as naturally, as the work of poison on the body. There are antidotes for both, but they must be given in time; the door of mercy stands not always open, nor will the “fountain opened . . . for sin and uncleanness” (Zechariah 13:1) flow on for ever. “Because,” says the Wisdom of God (Proverbs 1:24-26), “I have called, and ye refused . . . I also will laugh at your calamity.” “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and their paymaster is the devil.

15 . when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ] The image suggested in the previous verse is developed with an almost startling boldness. The will that yields to desire in so doing engenders evil. And as from that fatal embrace, there comes first the conception and then the birth of sin. But sin also grows; it has its infancy of purpose and its maturity of act; and so the parable is continued. Sin, in its turn, grows up, and by its union with the will becomes the mother of a yet more terrible offspring, and that offspring is Death, the loss of the true life of the soul, which consists in its capacity for knowing God. The second of the two words rendered “bringeth forth” (better, perhaps, engendereth ) differs from the first, and seems, as a less common word, to have been used for extraordinary or monstrous births (such e. g. as a woman’s bearing four or five children), and so is appropriate here. The word occurs again in James 1:18 , where see note. In looking at the allegory as a whole we note: (1) its agreement as to the relation of sin and death, with the teaching of St Paul ( Romans 5:12 ); (2) its resemblance to like allegories in the literature of other nations, as in the well-known Choice of Hercules that bears the name of Prodicus, in which Pleasure appears with the garb and allurements of a harlot; (3) its expansion in the marvellous allegory of Sin and Death in Milton’s Paradise Lost (B.

II. 745–814), where Satan represents Intellect and Will opposed to God, Sin its offspring, self-generated, and Death the fruit of the union of Mind and Will with Sin. In the incestuous union of Sin and Death that follows and in its horrid progeny, Milton seems to have sought to shadow forth the shame and foulness and misery in which even the fairest forms of sin finally issue.

Jam 1:15 . εἶτα : continuing the description of the method of the working of ἐπιθυμία .— ἡ ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα τίκτει ἁμαρτίαν : With this idea of personification, cf. Zechariah 5:5-11 , where the woman “sitting in the midst of the ephah” is the personification of Wickedness; and for the metaphor see Psalm 7:15 (Sept.), ἰδοὺ ὠδίνησεν ἀνομίαν , συνέλαβεν πόνον καὶ ἔτεκεν ἀδικίαν . Since ἐπιθυμία is represented as the parent of ἁμαρτία it can hardly be regarded as other than sinful itself; indeed, this seems to be taught in the Targum of Jonathan (a Targum which had received general recognition in Babylonia as early as the third century A.D., and whose elements therefore go back to a much earlier time) in the paraphrase of Isaiah 62:10 , where it says that the imagination of sin is sinful, cf. Jer. Targ. 1 to Deut. xxiii. 11; this is evidently the idea in the words before us.— ἀποτελεσθεῖσα : this word does not occur elsewhere in the N.T., and only very rarely in the Septuagint, cf. 1Es 5:7 , ἀπεκώλυσαν τοῦ ἀποτελεσθῆναι (A reads ἐπιτελεσθ .) τὴν οἰκοδομήν ; 2Ma 15:39 .… οἶνος ὕδατι συνκερασθεὶς ἤδη καὶ ἐπιτερπῆ τὴν χάριν ἀποτελεῖ …; it refers here to sin in its full completeness, Vulg., cum consummatum fuerit . The passage recalls Romans 6:23 , τὰ γὰρ ὀψώνια τῆς ἁμαρτίας θάνατος . Mayor quotes the appropriate passage from Hermas, Mand. , iv. 2. ἡ ἐνθύμησις αὕτη θεοῦ δούλῳ ἁμαρτία μεγάλη · ἐὰν δέ τις ἐργάσηται τὸ ἔργον τὸ πονηρὸν τοῦτο , θάνατον ἑαυτῷ κατεργάζεται .