James 5:1-6

James 5:1-6

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!

This is a warning to a group of people who are rich.  The question is what did they do wrong and why are they being punished.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.

Here is a clue.  This particular group of wealthy people have a corruption problem.  Maybe excepting bribes or not paying their employees fairly?  Let's keep reading.

Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.  You have heaped up treasure in the last days.

Things generally get corroded or rusty or dusty when they are not used.  It sounds like someone stockpiled wealth and didn't use it.  Maybe the next part will help clarify this.

Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.

Here is it.  People who gain wealth or livelihood through such means as these are who this warning is for.  It doesn't matter if you run a local newspaper and hire boys and girls to deliver on their routes.  It doesn't matter if you are a small town farmer or business with a few men working for you.  It doesn't matter if you have a secretary working overtime in your office.  It doesn't matter if you are a large corporation with thousands of workers.  If you pay them as little as you can, with as little benefits (if any) that you can, or even fire people without paying them for what they did do... then this dire warning is for you.

If those in your care (and anyone whose lives you touch are in your care) are unhappy or miserable, then you should be helping them.  Forget those "techniques" for making them work harder by making them struggle.  It is pointless and unChristian.

You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.

Here is it.  If you are self-centered and do things to only make you feel happy, then you might fall into the group.

You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.

Those under you have no choice but to go along with your decisions that affect them.  In the recent movie that was released, Les Miserables, there is a young lady working in a factory.  She is working hard when the other ladies at the factory learn she has a young child.  They, out of their spite, accuse her of being a whore when in reality her husband left her.  The foreman and the owner of the clothing factory come onto the scene.  Another important person comes along and demands the attention of the owner.  So the foreman asked what was going on and then kicked the young lady out onto the street.  The young lady had no other way to earn an income and ended up selling her hair, her side teeth, and finally her body in order to support her daughter.  Later the factory owner found her near death, learned how his actions led to her current state, and promised to care for her daughter in her place.

What you do affects those around you.  Sometimes in very drastic ways.  Beware of that and know you will be judged.