Charles Ellicott Commentary James 2:11

"For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law." — James 2:11 (ASV)

For he that said . . .—All people have favourite vices and indulgences; and most

“Compound for sins they have a mind to
By damning those they’re not inclined to;”

forgetful that the same Lawgiver has laid His restrictions upon every sort and kind. Not that we can believe all sins are the same in their deadening effect upon the soul, or, further, in their punishment. The point which St. James urges is that sin, as sin, involves the curse of the law; and that “respect of persons,” with its unloving and unlovely results, must bring its deceived possessor into condemnation before God. Just as our Lord referred the Sixth and Seventh Commandments (Matthew 5:21–32) to the first issues of the angry or lustful heart, and by no means confined them as did the Rabbinical teachers to the very act, so now in like manner the Apostle takes his stand upon the guiltiness of any breach whatever of the Law.

Love is its complete fulfillment, we are well informed (Romans 13:10), but in that startling briefness is comprehended all the Decalogue, with its utmost ramifications; and people of the world would find a rule of the most minute and rigid ceremony easier to follow than this simple all-embracing one. “The fulfilling of the Law” is very different from the substitution of a single plain command for a difficult code; this would seem to be the mistake of many, noisily asserting their freedom from the older obligations, who do not as evidently live under the mild bondage of the new.

A curious question may be raised about the inverted order of the Sixth and Seventh Commandments in this passage, as well as in Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, and Romans 13:9. (Observe, however, this is not so in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21–27.) Professor Plumptre says they are thus placed because “standing first in the second table, the Fifth being classed by most Jewish writers as belonging to the first,” and “there was, probably, a traditional order of the Tenth, varying from that currently found in the Hebrew Pentateuch.” The Greek version, known as the Septuagint, supports this theory, placing “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in James 2:13 of Exodus 20:0, and “Thou shalt not kill” in James 2:15.