Jas. 3:11. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?
Jas. 3:12. Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
The apostle wishes to touch the hearts of his listeners. If we are commanded to bless all, for the abusive will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10), then how is it not shameful to use one and the same instrument for evil and for good? No one of sound mind would stir filth and ointment with the same instrument. Do you pray? Do not curse your enemy, for between prayer and cursing there is a great distance. If you do not forgive the one who offended you, then you yourself will not receive forgiveness, and you will bring the curse upon yourself when you pray that your debts be forgiven just as you yourself forgive your debtors (Matt. 6:12).
Jas. 3:13. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.
Jas. 3:14. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.
Jas. 3:15. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic,
Jas. 3:16. for where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.
People who love to rule and who boast of the wisdom of this world preached in opposition to the Orthodox teachers, envying them and mixing the human with the Divine in order to attract listeners to themselves by the novelty of their teaching, from which heresies also arose. Therefore, having finished his discourse on the recklessness and unruliness of the tongue, the apostle turns his speech to "envy," which is born in people from similar thoughtlessness, and says that such teachings are not characteristic of true teachers, because they flow not from Divine wisdom but from demonic wisdom. He said this, having first praised the good teacher. And since zeal can be applied to both good and evil — for zeal is a fervent striving of the soul toward something with a certain likening to that toward which there is zeal — the apostle added "bitter," to show what kind of zeal he is speaking of. Self-seeking is a reprehensible passion for disputes. It is also called slander with evil speaking.
Jas. 3:17. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
Jas. 3:18. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
"Pure," that is, blameless, attached to nothing carnal. "Without partiality," that is, it does not observe distinctions in food and various washings. But about this Paul speaks in detail in the Epistle to the Colossians.