The other word, “faction” or “party spirit,” has an uncertain etymology, probably from the word for hireling. At any rate, the word is soon applied to partisans who court and bribe adherents to their candidate. It presents the very quintessence of partisanship and of narrow-mindedness. This is not a mark of wisdom and is not a thing to boast of, at any rate. “Glory not” about it, “do not pride yourselves on that” (Moffatt). And yet this is precisely what many of the Jewish Christians were doing already. Thus they lied against the truth, were “false to the truth,” as Moffatt has it. Such partisan triumph is usually obtained by underhand methods and by the suppression of part of the truth. There is such a thing as “poisoned truth.” So partisan victory often leaves a bitter sting, because those in defeat know that an unfair advantage has been taken of them and of the truth of God. It is clear that these opening chapters in the Epistle of James reveal a pitiful condition of controversy among some of the Jewish churches, such as Paul has to rebuke in Corinth later (cf. 1 Cor. 1-4). “The whole Christianity of many a devotee consists only, we may say, in a bitter contempt for the sins of sinners, in a proud and loveless contention with what it calls the wicked world” (Stier). The point of James is precisely this. The very contentiousness which they regarded as supreme proof of their qualifications as exponents of the faith is here urged by James as absolute proof that they are disqualified for the position of teachers. Their bitterness makes it improper for them to talk about love and gentleness. Sometimes the very fierceness of one’s contention for orthodoxy drives some people into heresy. It is a sad outcome when one’s high and holy ambition to teach the things of Christ is frustrated by a Christless spirit of wrangling and personal abuse. The Wisdom from Below (3:15 f.) Wisdom is precisely what we all need and desire, but the bitter self-seeking partisans just described “do not cherish the truth except as a possession of their own, or a missile of their own” (Hort). “This wisdom,” claimed by the pompous bigots in verse 14, can only be so described in terms of courtesy or, more exactly, of irony. It is only wisdom so-called and is real folly. It is at best worldly wisdom, “earthly,” not merely in the sense of taking place on earth rather than in heaven (John 3:12) but with the earthly horizon and outlook as opposed to the heavenly, like those who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). Such a wisdom passes for “the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 1:20; 3:19) but is distinctly not “God’s wisdom,” “a wisdom not of this world” (1 Cor. 2:6 f.).