Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to James · About this commentary
Not Many Should Be Teachers
James 3:1-2
1 Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment. · WEB
The warning is against a position rather than a fault, and the writer places himself inside the danger he is describing.
Verse 1 discourages something the readers evidently wanted. Let not many of you become teachers — the ambition is assumed, and the letter does not praise it. In congregations where teaching carried honor and cost nothing to claim, the position attracted people, and the letter's answer is not to raise the qualifications but to state the liability.
The reason is a heavier judgment, and the pronoun is the important word: we will receive it. The writer includes himself. Whatever authority the letter exercises, it does not exempt the one exercising it.
Verse 2 supplies the ground and does it by concession. We all stumble in many things — again first person plural, and unqualified. The letter has just spent a chapter on partiality and dead faith without ever standing outside the problem.
Then the criterion, and it is why the whole chapter follows. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a complete man. Speech is presented as the hardest of the disciplines, so the person who has mastered it has mastered everything.
The last clause supplies the image the next three verses expand: able to bridle the whole body also. The bridle has appeared once already, of the man whose religion is worthless because he does not bridle his tongue James 1:26. It is about to appear twice more, and the argument becomes an argument about steering.
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