John Calvin Commentary James 1:3

"Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience." — James 1:3 (ASV)

Knowing this, that the trying. We now see why he called adversities trials or temptations: because they serve to test our faith. And a reason is given here to confirm the last sentence. For it might, on the other hand, be objected, “How is it that we judge as sweet what to our senses is bitter?” He then shows by the effect that we should rejoice in afflictions, because they produce fruit that ought to be highly valued—namely, patience.

If God then provides for our salvation, he gives us an occasion for rejoicing. Peter uses a similar argument at the beginning of his first Epistle: That the trial of your faith, more precious than gold, may be... (1 Peter 1:7). We certainly dread diseases, poverty, exile, prison, reproach, and death, because we regard them as evils; but when we understand that they are turned by God’s kindness into helps and aids for our salvation, it is ingratitude to murmur and not willingly submit to being treated in this fatherly way.

Paul says, in Romans 5:3, that we are to glory in tribulations; and James says here, that we are to rejoice. We glory, Paul says, in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience. What immediately follows in Paul's argument seems contrary to the words of James, for Paul mentions probation in the third place, as the effect of patience, while James puts probation (or trial) first, as if it were the cause.

But the solution is obvious: the word “probation” (or “trial”) has an active meaning in Paul’s context, but a passive meaning here in James. James says that probation or trial produces patience; for if God did not test us, but left us free from trouble, there would be no patience, which is nothing other than fortitude of mind in bearing evils.

Paul, however, means that while by enduring we conquer evils, we experience how much God’s help avails in times of need; for then the truth of God is, so to speak, truly manifested to us. Therefore, we dare to entertain more hope for the future, because the truth of God, known by experience, is more fully believed by us. Paul therefore teaches that by such a probation—that is, by such an experience of divine grace—hope is produced; not that hope only begins then, but that it increases and is confirmed. Both authors, however, mean that tribulation is the means by which patience is produced.

Moreover, human minds are not so formed by nature that affliction of itself produces patience in them. But Paul and Peter consider not so much human nature as the providence of God, through which it comes about that the faithful learn patience from troubles; for the ungodly are thereby more and more provoked to madness, as the example of Pharaoh proves.