While in college, my brother visited a friend in Louisiana where they went crabbing. When his friend put the first crab in a large bucket, he put a top over the bucket to keep it from getting out. But when he caught the second crab, he left the top off. Evidently, every time a crab crawled near the top, the other crab would pull it down and get on top. This is the perfect picture of slander. We tear one another down to try to gain a position of authority.

James warns that there is no place for one-upmanship in the body of Christ. In yesterday’s reading, we were told: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (4:10). In today’s passage, James instructs, “Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another” (v. 11). Slander builds us up by putting others down.

When we do this, we make ourselves a judge over them. But more than that, we have become a judge of the Law. James picks up a theme from earlier in his letter. “If you really keep the royal Law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers” (2:8–9). When we slander our brother or sister, we are not only breaking the Law (by not loving them) but we are setting ourselves above the Law by acting as a judge.

A good judge has a full knowledge of the law. A qualified criminal law judge can assess a person’s behavior based upon criminal law. A qualified civil law judge can assess based upon civil law. But only a qualified judge of God’s divine Law can properly assess a person’s behavior, motives, and intent, and that Judge (who wrote and knows the Law fully) is not us.