Charles Ellicott Commentary James 1:4

"And let patience have [its] perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing." — James 1:4 (ASV)

Let patience have her perfect work.—Do not think the grace will come to its full beauty in an hour. Emotion and sentiment may have their place in the beginning of a Christian career, but its end is not yet. Until the soul is quite unmoved by any attack of Satan, the work cannot be considered “perfect.” The doctrine is not mere quietism, much less one of apathy. Rather, it is this: that the conscious strength of patient trust in God is able to say at all times ()—

“My soul has followed hard on You;
Your right hand has upheld me.”

And if in this patience we can learn to possess our souls (Luke 21:19), the perfect work of God will be worked within us.

That you may be perfect and entire (or, complete).—A special proof in this for religious people may be taken with regard to temper. Few trials are harder; and sweetness of disposition often melts away from physical causes, such as ill-health or fatigue. But the great test remains, and it is one which the world will always apply with scorn to the nominally Christian, refusing to admit the claims of saintliness on the part of any whose religion is not lived out in the household as well as in the Church. The entirety and completeness of the life hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3) are manifested most by self-restraint.

Wanting nothing.—The older version, “lacking,” found in Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan Bible, seems decidedly better. This is not a wish that the faithful should be free from care, heeding nothing. Rather, it is a wish that their whole lives might be without fault or flaw: a perfect sacrifice, as it were, offered up to God. And this idea is confirmed by reflecting on the original meaning of the word translated “entire” above in the Authorized Version (which translates it as “complete”), i.e., as an offering, with no blemish.