James 5:11, commentary and pictures

Those who endure trial and suffering are counted happy and blessed, with the patience of Job held up as the heard example whose outcome reveals the Lord's tender care. The verse declares that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy, deeply compassionate toward His children with His heart touched by their sorrows and attentive to their needs. To see the end of the Lord is to recognize afterward that through perplexity, sorrow, and disappointment His loving purposes have been steadily fulfilled. His compassion reaches even sinners whose lives have been darkened by error, so that no perplexity is beyond His unraveling and none have fallen too low for deliverance in Christ. Therefore He invites people to bring Him their trials, sorrows, weakness, and prayers, trusting Him for sympathy, healing, and strength, and He receives those who come in repentance with broken hearts and gives them peace.

Endurance and God's Purpose

Those who endure trial and suffering are counted happy and blessed. The patience of Job that has been heard of is the set example of such endurance, and the Lord's dealings with Job show His tender care. His pity and tender mercy are revealed in that end toward those who endure.

To have seen the end of the Lord is to recognize afterward that through perplexity and sorrow His loving purposes have been steadily fulfilled, for His paths are mercy and truth toward those who keep His covenant and testimonies. Those who endured disappointment and trial with mistaken understanding would at last see the same steady fulfillment of His loving purposes despite their error, and their experience would teach them that He is compassionate and merciful.

Lord's Tender Compassion

James 5:11 reveals the Lord as very pitiful and of tender mercy, deeply compassionate toward His children. His heart is touched by their sorrows, He is not indifferent to their needs, and He attends to them when they tell Him about them and bring their cares and troubles to Him. That compassion extends to sinners, so mistakes and a life darkened by errors do not mean the Heavenly Father stops loving or refuses to hear prayer. Nothing is too great for Him who upholds worlds and rules the universe, and nothing concerning peace is too small for Him to notice. No dark chapter of experience is beyond His reading, no perplexity beyond His unraveling, and none have fallen so low or become so vile that they cannot find deliverance in Christ, for everything that perplexes the mind can be taken to Him.

His tender care invites people to bring Him their trials, sorrows, wounds, weakness, worries, joys, needs, and sincere prayers. They may trust Him for sympathy, love, healing, strength, and fullness, with the assurance that those who come to Him will not be disappointed. His compassion reaches each person in particular, noticing every sorrow, worry, joy, and sincere prayer, and caring about whatever affects a person's peace. He understands human weakness and temptation, accepts those who come to Him in repentance with broken hearts and contrite spirits, and promises peace to those who rely on Him and take hold of His strength, a mercy that calls for gratitude and joy. He knows human lack of faith and courage but does not cast off the weak, and His patience, mercy, compassion, and love remain unchanged, giving comfort through sickness and sleepless nights, while those who endure suffering are counted happy after the pattern of Job's patience.

The Father loves each person individually, a love expressed in the cross of Calvary, and for Jesus' sake He is ready to hear poor prayers and give the riches of His grace. Because He is merciful, a person can come to Him with confidence that He will have mercy in his own case. When temptation presses to doubt that mercy, its suggestions must be pressed back with the promises of God by placing the will on the side of God's will and refusing positive resistance against it, and through faith in Him who loved us and gave Himself for us a person can be more than conquerors and cannot be overcome by the enemy. He receives repentant sinners who seek pardon even when sinful habits have damaged their health and weakened their faculties. He also works through the Holy Spirit to bring those who have resisted light to recognize their condition, humble themselves, and confess. Because God is very pitiful, no one can depend on personal righteousness but must make the Lord the constant and only trust for all spiritual necessities and keeping power, trusting wholly in the One who understands so as not to be brought into confusion, since Christ's righteousness atones for sins and Christ intercedes, with the response of seeking to please Him by keeping all His commandments.

Trusting Him in Affliction

In sickness the direction of the chapter is to be followed in faith, with the sick person doing their part faithfully while trusting that the Lord is able to raise them up if it is for His glory. One worn by disease and long without rest is to ask fellow believers to pray earnestly to God for relief, and to keep trusting in the Lord even when severe coughing breaks off personal prayer and prevents the speaking of faith. Enduring in belief in this way brings the Lord's pitiful and tender end in quiet sleep, healing of throat and lungs, the blessing of heaven resting upon the sufferer, and gratitude and praise to God on waking.

The Lord is very merciful, tender in pity, compassionate and loving-kind, good and gracious in pitying love. His mercy is seen in sparing life during serious illness, and His sustaining grace comforts and strengthens sufferers in affliction so they can endure and praise Him.