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Jam_2:12. To what has hitherto been said the general exhortation is annexed: So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. A new section does not here begin, as Wetstein, Semler, and others assume; but with this and the following verse the course of thought commenced at Jam_2:1 is concluded; not until Jam_2:14 does the thought take a new turn. The connection with what has gone before is to be thus explained, that Jam_2:13 evidently points to the respect of persons with regard to the poor, and refers to chap. Jam_1:27.
οὕτως ] “is not to be referred to what precedes, but to the following ὡς , thus: so as is necessary for those who,” etc.; thus in former editions. But by this explanation the thought is too abruptly introduced; therefore it would be more correct to refer οὕτως to what precedes ( οὕτως , i.e. according to the rule stated in Jam_2:10 f., Brückner), and to take ὡς not as an explication, but as “a confirmation” (Lange).
James takes up not only the doing ( ποιεῖτε ), but also the speaking ( λαλεῖτε ), to which not only the conduct of his readers, specified in Jam_2:2 ff., but their sinful volubility of tongue generally led; see Jam_1:19, Jam_3:1-12. The repetition of οὕτω serves for the heightening of the thought; διά here is the same as in Rom_2:12; see also Joh_12:48; Joh_5:45 : correctly Wiesinger: “the law is a means because a measure;” incorrectly Kern: vi ac jure leges. The νόμος ἐλευθερίας is also here not the gospel, as the publication of the grace of God, or the Christian religion (Semler, Pott, Gebser), also not specially the νόμος βασιλικός mentioned in Jam_2:7 as a single command, but it is the same as is mentioned in chap. Jam_1:25.[129] The demand which James here expresses is that Christians as such, who shall be judged by the νόμος ἐλευθερίας , must regulate by it the whole course of their lives. From what has directly gone before, one might infer that James wishes particularly to warn against the pretext combated in Jam_2:10, but Jam_2:13 shows that he has rather in view the want of compassionate love, forming the heart and pulse of the νόμος ἐλευθερίας , which was renounced by his readers in their ἀτιμάζειν τὸν πτωχόν (Jam_2:6).
[129] Kern: “James, by the expression διὰ ν . ἐλ ., reminds them that the νόμος for Christians is indeed according to form a new one, being converted into a willing impulse, but that it does not on this account cease, according to its nature, to be the rule of moral action, and thus also of judgment.”