Fattened for the Slaughter
Introduction: The War Over Wealth
We live in an age that is profoundly confused about money. On the one hand, you have the frothy-mouthed Marxists and their softer socialist cousins who believe that wealth itself is the original sin. In their worldview, every successful business is a crime scene, and profit is just a fancy word for theft. Their solution is envy, codified into law. On the other hand, you have the practical atheists of the free market, the worshippers of Mammon who have been catechized by the Wall Street Journal. For them, the bottom line is the final word, and the accumulation of wealth is the whole duty of man. Both are idolaters, bowing at different ends of the same profane altar.
Into this confusion, the Word of God speaks with a sharp, two-edged clarity. The Bible is not a socialist manifesto, and it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Scripture treats wealth as a tool, a blessing from God that comes with heavy responsibilities of stewardship. But it also treats wealth as a profound spiritual danger, a snare, and a terrible master. And when wealth is obtained through injustice and hoarded with pride, God takes it personally.
James, the brother of our Lord, is not writing here as a class warrior. He is writing as a Hebrew prophet in the grand tradition of Isaiah and Amos. He is not condemning the rich for being rich; he is pronouncing a prophetic lawsuit against a particular kind of rich man, the man who gets wealthy through fraud and lives in godless luxury. This is not a suggestion. It is a summons. It is a declaration of war from the throne room of the universe.
The Text
Come now, you rich, cry, howling over your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days! Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, that which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcries of those who did the harvesting have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and lived in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a DAY OF SLAUGHTER. You have condemned and murdered the righteous man; he does not resist you.
(James 5:1-6 LSB)
A Prophetic Summons (v. 1)
The passage opens not with a gentle invitation, but with a sharp, arresting command.
"Come now, you rich, cry, howling over your miseries which are coming upon you." (James 5:1)
This phrase "Come now" is a divine summons. It is God grabbing these men by the lapels and forcing them to pay attention. He is calling them onto the carpet. And what are they summoned to do? They are to "cry, howling." This is the language of a funeral dirge, of utter desolation. James is telling them to begin mourning their own destruction now, because it is an absolute certainty. The miseries are not a possibility; they are "coming upon you." In the prophetic sense, the judgment is so certain that it can be spoken of as an accomplished fact. The gavel has fallen in the court of heaven, and the sentence is being read.
The Treason of Treasure (v. 2-3)
Next, James details the utter futility of their trust in material things. Their entire portfolio is bankrupt before God.
"Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days!" (James 5:2-3 LSB)
Notice the tense. From God's perspective, their wealth has already decayed. The grain in their silos has rotted. Their designer clothes, their symbols of status, are moth-eaten rags. This is a direct assault on the illusion of permanence that wealth provides. But James goes further. "Your gold and your silver have rusted." Now, as any high school chemistry student knows, gold and silver do not rust. And that is precisely the point. James is using a chemical impossibility to describe a spiritual reality. When wealth is idolized, even the most stable and incorruptible of assets become corrupted in God's economy. They become spiritually toxic.
And this corrosion does two things. First, it becomes "a witness against you." The very thing they loved and trusted and hoarded will stand up in court and testify against them. Their bank statements will be read into the record as evidence for the prosecution. Second, this rust will "consume your flesh like fire." The idol always turns on the idolater. The thing you worship apart from God will, in the end, devour you. The fires of hell are stoked with the treasures of earth.
The specific charge is this: "You have stored up such treasure in the last days!" This is not just poor financial planning; it is eschatological treason. To hoard wealth for yourself in the "last days", the era between Christ's first and second coming, is to fundamentally misunderstand what time it is. The King is returning. The age is hurtling toward its consummation. It is a time for kingdom investment, for laying up treasure in heaven, for generosity, for war. And these men are behaving as though it is a time for selfishly stuffing their mattresses. It is an act of cosmic foolishness.
The Accusation of the Lord of Armies (v. 4)
Now James gets to the heart of their sin. This is not about being rich; it is about how they got rich.
"Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, that which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcries of those who did the harvesting have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." (James 5:4 LSB)
Their wealth was built on a foundation of fraud. They withheld the wages of their workers, a direct and flagrant violation of God's law (Deut. 24:14-15). This is not a gray area. This is theft. And notice that in God's world, injustice has a voice. The stolen wages themselves "cry out" like the blood of Abel from the ground. The cries of the exploited harvesters are not lost in the wind; they have an audience. They "have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."
This title is critically important. "Sabaoth" means "hosts" or "armies." This is the Lord of the Armies of Heaven. This is a military title. The cries of the oppressed have not reached the celestial department of social services. They have reached the command tent of the Commander-in-Chief of the angelic legions. When the Lord of Armies hears the cries of the poor He has sworn to protect, He does not form a committee. He marshals His troops. This is a declaration that God is going to war on behalf of the defrauded.
The Banquet on Death Row (v. 5-6)
James concludes his indictment with a truly terrifying image. He describes their lifestyle and then reveals what it truly is.
"You have lived luxuriously on the earth and lived in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a DAY OF SLAUGHTER. You have condemned and murdered the righteous man; he does not resist you." (James 5:5-6 LSB)
Their life is one of luxury and self-indulgence, completely deaf to the cries of those they have cheated. They are absorbed in their own pleasure. And then comes the punch to the gut: "You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter." They think they are the guests at the banquet, but they are the main course. They are like cattle in a lush pasture, contentedly munching away, oblivious to the fact that the day of their feasting is the very day the butcher has marked on his calendar. Their luxury is not a sign of God's blessing; it is the preparation for their own destruction.
And their sin escalates. It moves from fraud to murder. "You have condemned and murdered the righteous man." They use their power, their influence, and their control of the legal system to eliminate those who stand in their way, those who cannot be bought. The righteous man's refusal to participate in their corruption makes him a target. And the final phrase, "he does not resist you," underscores the depravity of their crime. It highlights the innocence of the victim and the cowardly abuse of power by the oppressor. It is the ultimate picture of injustice, and it cannot help but remind us of the ultimate righteous man, Jesus Christ, who was condemned by corrupt men and, like a sheep before its shearers is silent, did not open His mouth.
Conclusion: The Gospel for Mammon's Slaves
This passage is law, and it is a severe law. It should land on us with real weight. While we may not be guilty of the specific sins James describes, we live in a world of unprecedented wealth, and we are all tempted to trust in it, to live for our own comfort, and to turn a blind eye to injustice. We are tempted to think our 401(k) is more secure than the promises of God. This passage is a divine warning against that idolatry.
But the warning is a grace. God warns before He strikes because He is a God who delights in repentance. The call to "weep and howl" over coming misery is an implicit call to weep and howl in repentance now, so that misery does not have to come. The only escape from this judgment is to flee to the only righteous man who was ever murdered and did not resist, but who also did not stay dead.
The gospel is the good news that there is a treasure that does not rot, a garment that is never moth-eaten, and a gold that never rusts. That treasure is Christ Himself. His blood is the only currency that can pay our moral debts. His righteousness is the only portfolio that is secure for eternity. For the Christian, wealth is not a means of self-indulgence, but a weapon for the kingdom. It is for building, for generosity, for justice, for defending the righteous, and for providing for the laborer. The Lord of Armies has heard the cries of the oppressed, and He answered them definitively at the cross and the empty tomb. He has defeated sin and death and Mammon, and He calls us now to live as citizens of His kingdom, storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.