Charles Ellicott Commentary James 1:21

"Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." — James 1:21 (ASV)

Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness. So Peter (1 Peter 3:21) speaks of the filth of the flesh. But the defilement referred to here seems general and not special—common, that is, to the whole natural man. The superabundance, the overgrowth, of evil will occupy the heart if care is not taken to root it out; and, like the thorns in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:7 and following), it will spring up and choke the good seed. All such a rank and poisonous crop must be gathered and laid aside, perhaps in heaps, for some fiery trouble to consume, so that from the dead, luxuriant weeds a richer soil for virtue can be made.

Naughtiness (ne-aughtiness, or nothingness) was used in 1611 instead of the older and more correct translation, malice or maliciousness. The badness implied in the original is much more definite than that which appears from our present version.

Receive with meekness the engrafted word. Or, in mildness accept you this word of truth (see James 1:18, above), engrafted, like a good olive tree, or rather implanted, in you. The term is peculiar to this place and means “innate” in its first intention. If taken so, “the innate Word” will be Christ Himself formed within us. (Compare to Galatians 4:19.)

Able to save your souls. Similarly, Paul at Miletus commends the elders of Ephesus to God, and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified (Acts 20:32). Observe, the idea of salvation thus conveyed by the implanted word is potential and not actual. Tended and cultivated, it will grow into a tree of life, the fruit of which may heal the wounds of sin; but the subsequent growth of this plant of God is largely in human hands.

We can hardly help making a brief inquiry here into the meaning of “soul.” There are few words more vaguely used by devout persons, or which present greater difficulties to the learned, or open wider fields of speculation for the thoughtful. In common language, we speak of “body and soul,” meaning much the same as “body and spirit;” but theologians write more carefully of “body, soul, and spirit” (Compare to 1 Thessalonians 5:23); and psychologists distinguish between the animal branch of their subject and the rational or intellectual (ψυχή, νοῦς).

The second of these methods of division is known as the trilogy and is of most importance to the Christian reader. By it is understood:

1. The body, wholly and entirely material, of and belonging to this world;
2. The mind or reason, also corporeal—that is, arising from the body and depending in its exquisite balance upon it;
3. The true soul or spirit, the breath, as it were, of God, immaterial and immortal.

Our bodily nature, of course, is shared with the lower creation, and our spiritual nature with the higher, while the intellectual is peculiar to mankind. If it is hard to draw a line between vegetable and animal, it is harder still to separate instinct from reason, the difference being of degree rather than kind. But if one side of the mental soul—namely, the rational—is closely related to what is termed instinctive in the brute, the other, the intellectual, however it may, as it does, soar upward, still does not approach the angels, for the difference here is of kind and not degree. Now, strange to say, the Apostle does not treat of the spirit but the natural soul. Many other texts assure us that God is able to save the one; from this we can learn that salvation is for both, for such is the work of “the engrafted Word.”

Reason and intellect consecrated to divine service have an eternity before them—one of activity and not repose. The highest conception of God to the Greek mind was the Aristotelian idea of intellectual self-sufficiency and contemplation; Eastern thought strives, as it has striven for ages, for extinction and nothingness; but to the Christian is given the sure and certain hope of the glorified body, the enlightened soul, the perfected spirit—three in one, and one in three—working the will and praise of its Maker and Redeemer forever.