286 MARIAM J. KAMELL acknowledging, confessing and removing the areas of compromise that prevent them from single-minded devotion to the redemptive word of God. By participating in the process, they clear the ground for the planting of the word, as in Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seeds in Matt 13 (par. Luke 8,5-8; Mark 4,3-9). There, the seeds that fell among entangling commitments were choked out and failed to bear fruit. Only the seeds that fell upon the prepared ground bore the fruit that they were intended to bear. Here, James urges his audience to prepare their hearts so that they can receive the word “which has the power to save [their] souls ”. For the word to bear its fruit, the moral impurities of a faulty worldview — a preference for wealth, tendencies toward greed, envy, argumentativeness — must be pruned out. This command, remember, comes after the triumphant pronouncement of God’s willingness to redeem by his word. This is a call to respond, to participate, and to accept the work that God is doing. Likewise in Jas 4,4-10, after a harsh repri- mand and labeling his audience adulteresses for their moral infidelity to God, the author calls them to “repent,” “wash,” and “purify” themselves in strongly ritualistic and covenantal language. Much as in Hosea and the other prophets, the audience members have scattered their loves abroad and have garnered this violent condemnation by James. He calls them to repent of their love affair with the kosmov and to seek the purity that God ¥ wants for his people: purity in speech, deed, and worldview. * * * These three areas of ethics, namely speech, social, and moral, all emanate from God’s own character and are required behavior of those who claim to have been reborn by his word. God is shown in the text to be wholly consistent, and his singleness of nature means that he cannot endure duplicitous speech. Likewise, as the one who will execute justice against the oppressors on behalf of those suffering, those in the church must care for the poor and helpless of society. And finally, because of the purity in goodness that is a central aspect of God’s nature, God’s people are called to moral purity in their thoughts, choices, and relationships. James 1,4 presents the telos of the Christian life as becoming teleioi kaı ¥ ù oloklhroi, living representatives of the very character of God. Ω¥ James gives his audience a two-fold warning against self-deception: they ought to know who God is in all his generosity and purity and be transformed in obedience to the word by which he rebirthed them. The ethics of James are not some sort of “works-righteousness” but a trium- phant acceptance of God’s grace. God has given birth to his “firstfruits” by the “word of truth”, but this is the same “word” which must be