To be double-minded is to break the first great command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37–38). The double-minded aren’t fully committed to God; they don’t truly love him with their whole selves.
We strive for perfection in our spiritual disciplines. Doesn’t Jesus himself say, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48)? The book of James appears to support this line of thinking when it states that an individual must pray “in faith, with no doubting,” because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6–8).
Portions of James’s letter are difficult to understand, and what he says about prayer appears unattainable. Do any of us truly possess perfect faith when we pray? James states that if we have doubts in our prayer life, we shouldn’t expect to “receive anything from the Lord” (v. 7).
To answer this pressing question requires us to identify the double-minded person. Once we understand who James has in view, then we can better understand what James says about prayer.
Who Are the Double-Minded?
James is the only New Testament writer to use the terminology “double-minded” (dipsychos), and he doesn’t come right out and define the term. So we must determine what it means from the context of James and by comparing his language to similar writings of his era.
It could be that the double-minded are immature believers—a view that would fit with James’s emphasis on the need to press on to maturity in our faith (1:4; 3:2). If so, the double-minded are those not yet mature in their faith. This is possible.
A better option is to understand the double-minded as hypocrites who outwardly behave as Christians but inwardly live as unbelievers. The double-minded in James are analogous to the “double-hearted” in the Psalms, who are the enemies of God’s people (see Ps. 12:2). In Psalm 119:113, the psalmist declares his love for God’s law in contrast to the “double-minded” person. Though James’s word for “double-minded” isn’t specifically used in the Psalms, the concept does seem to be there to describe those not truly committed to the Lord.
Another similar concept is “double-tongued,” an idea found in noncanonical Jewish literature (Sirach 5:9) and in the New Testament (1 Tim. 3:8). The double-tongued are fundamentally divided in the ways they use their tongues (see James 3:9).