Faith Without Works is Dead, James 2:14-26

When I was a kid and first started using paper money, I remember being puzzled about why stores would take it. After all, it’s just paper. Coins are at least made out of semi-precious metals. How is it possible for these pieces of paper to have so much value? Of course, the stores all accepted my money, even though I didn’t understand why, and I soon forgot my questions. But what I didn’t understand at the time is that there is more to paper money than appears at first glance. It’s been authorized by the Treasury Department for use in buying and selling. Bills don’t stand on their own as pieces of printed paper. They act as representatives of the Treasury Department, and their value is based upon the strength of the United States economy.

One characteristic of a counterfeit is that it’s less than the real thing. It’s an imitation.  It looks like the real thing, but something is missing. Counterfeit money looks real, which is why people are deceived by it. But it doesn’t have the authority of the U.S. Treasury behind it. So, in the end, it’s really just paper, with no value at all. A counterfeit dollar bill is not just worth less: a store won’t give you 50 cents worth of goods for a counterfeit dollar bill. Because it’s less than the real thing, it’s not worth anything at all. The thing that’s missing is the connection with governmental authority, the very thing that gives paper money value in the first place. So, counterfeit money is less than real money – there’s something essential that’s missing – and that renders it not less valuable, but completely worthless.

James is saying that this is true of what some in the early church were calling by the name “faith.” Their language sounds Christian; they use the right words and believe in the right doctrines. But something is missing. It’s less than the real thing. It’s a counterfeit. We saw in the last sermon that James is addressing the problem of antinomianism, the problem of saying that if we believe in Jesus for our salvation it really doesn’t matter what we do. Salvation is purely by faith, which means that as long as we have faith we are safe and don’t need to be concerned about the consequences of our actions. That’s antinomianism, and some in the early church were believing it. James’ argument is that this is a counterfeit. Genuine faith has both an inward and an outward dimension; both are necessary. If our faith has no outward dimension, if there are no works of obedience, it’s not the real thing. It has no more value than counterfeit money.

This is the section of James that caused Martin Luther to label it an “epistle of straw.” He never came to the point of saying that James doesn’t belong in the Bible, but because it seemed to contradict Paul’s teaching on justification by faith, Luther thought it was certainly of less value than other books in the New Testament. We saw, though, that this is a misunderstanding of James’ message. He’s not arguing against Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. He’s arguing against a counterfeit version of that doctrine. Listen to what Luther himself wrote in his preface to Romans: “O it is a living, busy active mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good things incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done this, and is constantly doing them. Whoever does not do such works, however is an unbeliever” (quoted by Douglas J. Moo, James, p. 117). That’s exactly the point James is making: “whoever does not do such works... is an unbeliever.”

The first thing he says is that faith that has no deeds, faith that doesn’t affect the way we live our lives, is useless. It’s not good for anything. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” The original language has a direct article with faith in the second clause, so translations like the NIV are probably right in translating, “can such faith save him?” It’s referring, not to faith in general, but to the faith of a person who doesn’t have works. The New Living Translation brings this out clearly: “that kind of faith can’t save anyone.”

He illustrates his point in verses 15-16: “For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, ‘Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!’ and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup – where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?” (The Message). What is the value of expressing concern to someone in this way? Imagine being a person in need on the receiving end of words like that. How would you respond? If you didn’t say it out loud, you’d be likely to at least think something like, “what a lot of worthless, empty talk!” James is saying that if our faith doesn’t lead us to do good works, it’s empty and worthless, like pious words that don’t offer any tangible help.

I had a friend in high school who was a compulsive liar. He lied about so many things that we suspected everything he said. If he said he was planning to come over for a visit, none of us bothered to stay home, because we knew he wouldn’t show up. He was the most consistently untruthful person I’ve ever met. What if he had said, “I firmly believe in the virtue of truthfulness; I believe with all my heart that it’s important to tell the truth.” He might be perfectly sincere, but if he didn’t follow that up with a genuine effort to stop lying and to tell the truth, we’d say that his belief was worthless. We’d say something like, “what’s the value of saying you believe in telling the truth if you never do it?” And we’d be right. When we say we believe in the importance of telling the truth we’re committing ourselves to a certain way of acting. Faith is the same way. It’s not the sort of thing that we can confine to our inner lives without allowing it to affect the way we act. When we say we believe the gospel, we’re saying that Jesus is Lord, we’re claiming that He is our Lord. If we don’t begin acting in obedience to Him, James says our faith is worthless.

But he goes even further than this. We might be tempted to say, “well, maybe my faith just hasn’t yet matured into the kind of faith that results in actions. It’s a genuine faith; it’s just weak.” Or, we might be inclined to say, “yes, I know my faith isn’t worth much; but I’m not interested in becoming a saint. All I want is to get into heaven when I die; surely my faith is good enough for that. After all, salvation is by faith, not by works.” So James goes further and makes it clear that this thing he’s describing is not really faith at all. People are calling it by that name, but it’s not genuine faith.

He compares it to a body that’s been separated from the spirit. What do people commonly say at a funeral, when they’re viewing the body of a loved one? They say, “the person we loved is not here.” The person has gone and left behind an empty shell. A dead body is not a person. James is saying that faith that is divorced from action is not faith at all. It’s dead. Here’s how verse 26 reads in The Message: “The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.”

He also compares this kind of faith to the faith of demons: “Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them?” (The Message). Demons believe the truth about God. In the gospels, they recognize Jesus right away. They know the truth, but they hate it and refuse to submit to it. James is saying that a purely internalized faith is no better than the faith of demons. It’s not faith at all. It’s nothing more than a superficial recognition of the truth. Salvation does come to us through faith, but this is not faith and it won’t save us.

That’s the negative teaching. This thing that goes by the name “faith,” but which doesn’t result in outward deeds, is worthless. It’s not worth less than genuine faith; it’s worth nothing at all. It’s not genuine faith, and it won’t save us. It’s not any better than the faith of demons, who recognize the truth about God, even though they hate Him and want to escape from His presence. Having demonstrated this, James also states the positive teaching: genuine faith is always accompanied by deeds. It’s not that we’re saved by a combination of faith and works; we’re saved by faith, but genuine faith always leads to good works.

He points to two things that happen in the relationship between faith and works. First, faith is made visible by deeds: “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” He’s saying, “you claim to have faith but you have no works; how are you going to demonstrate your faith? You can see the evidence of my faith by the things I do.” So deeds serve to make faith visible; without them, there’s no evidence that it’s there. But that’s not the only thing. Faith is also perfected, or completed, by deeds: “Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works.” Faith and obedience are two parts of a response to God. They’re inseparable. The initial response is an inner one, a turning of the heart and mind to God, but that response is completed by concrete acts of obedience.

Here’s a good definition of faith: “Faith is the surrender of the finite person in his entirety to the infinite Person” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology: I: The Word Made Flesh, p. 149). Faith is surrendering to God, which involves our whole person. The inward act of surrender comes to completion, is brought to maturity, in concrete acts of surrender to the revealed will of God. James demonstrates this with two Old Testament examples of faith. Abraham, the father of the nation, and Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, both demonstrated the reality of their faith by the things they did. Their faith was made visible by their deeds, and their faith was brought to completion by their deeds. They surrendered themselves to God and offered their lives to Him. Their obedience was a natural result of their faith.

As we saw in the last sermon, James is not arguing with Paul. He’s arguing with those who have distorted Paul’s message, who are saying, “as long as I have faith, I’m safe; it really doesn’t matter what I do, because salvation is by faith.” He’s saying that these people have accepted a counterfeit version of faith, that their faith is not really faith at all; it’s worthless, and it won’t save them. It’s like counterfeit money. There’s no authority behind it. The One who has the authority to save us won’t accept it as a valid response to the gospel.

A.W. Tozer, writing in the mid-20th Century, felt the need to remind Evangelicals of what genuine faith is like: “The faith of Paul and Luther was a revolutionizing thing. It upset the whole life of the individual and made him into another person altogether. It laid hold on the life and brought it under obedience to Christ. It took up its cross and followed along after Jesus with no intention of going back. It said good-bye to its old friends as certainly as Elijah when he stepped into the fiery chariot and went away in the whirlwind. It had a finality about it. It snapped shut on a man’s heart like a trap; it captured the man and made him from that moment forward a happy love-servant of his Lord. It turned earth into a desert and drew heaven within sight of the believing soul. It realigned all life’s actions and brought them into accord with the will of God. It set its possessor on a pinnacle of truth from which spiritual vantage point he viewed everything that came into his field of experience. It made him little and God big and Christ unspeakably dear. All this and more happened to a man when he received the faith that justifies” (“Faith is a Perturbing Thing,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 46).

That’s a longer way of saying what Paul says in 2 Corinthians: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (5:17). What James is saying is that if there’s no evidence of a new creation, if our faith is not leading us into a life of obedience, we have nothing but a dead, counterfeit faith that won’t save us. The way to respond to a passage like this is to examine ourselves. The important thing is not to find a way to justify ourselves so that we feel better. The important thing is to listen attentively to what God wants to say to us through His Word. When He convicts us of sin, He’s inviting us to turn to Him in repentance. Come before Him, using these words from Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.... Then.... (vv. 1,2, 10, 13a); “then I will begin to order my life in obedience to your revealed will.” Turn to Him for mercy, and offer yourself to Him as a living sacrifice. Begin by offering yourself to Him and crying out for mercy, and follow up by offering yourself to Him each day with concrete acts of obedience, not because you expect to be saved by doing all the right things, but because you belong to His family and you want to bear the family likeness. “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.... Those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act — they will be blessed in their doing.”

Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself, James 2:1-13

When I was in the Navy, my ship spent several days on the French Riviera. We were stationed in Naples, a very poor part of Italy, so the Riviera was a big change for most of us. A friend of mine from New York City was looking at the yachts and saw one from New York, so he yelled to the man sitting on the deck, “hey, I’m from New York!” Being in a foreign country, there’s often a sense of identification between people who normally wouldn’t have much in common. But this man made no response at all. Mike thought maybe the man hadn’t heard him, even though he was only a few yards away, so he tried again. But the man just looked straight ahead and pretended no one was there. After a few tries, Mike said something more, to let the man know what he thought of him, and walked away. This man, sitting on his boat in the Riviera, refused to even acknowledge the presence of someone who obviously belonged to a different class. He thought having lots of money made him a better person. A similar problem was plaguing some of the churches of the first century. The rich and powerful were expecting to receive certain privileges in the church. They were expecting to be treated differently than poor people, and some in the church were giving in to them.

We saw, in the last sermon, that faith is more than a sense of inner conviction. Faith in the gospel brings us into fellowship with the living God, who then sets out to transform every area of our lives in preparation for the day when we will see Him face to face and live in His presence forever. Believing the gospel is the beginning of the process of purification and transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. By faith we become followers, disciples, of Jesus Christ. This means that we’re in the process of becoming more like Him. We've been bought with a price and our lives no longer belong to us.  We’ve died and been raised in identification with Christ. For the rest of our time on this earth, the central focus of our lives is to live in ways that please Him and bring Him glory.

In chapter two, James is concerned with the tangible outworking of our faith. This letter has a different feel than, for example, Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and people have often drawn the wrong conclusions from this difference. Paul was addressing a specific problem in Galatians, the problem of legalism. The churches in Galatia had come under the influence of false teachers who were telling them that in order to be saved they needed to obey the Law of Moses. The foundation of their acceptance with God, these teachers were claiming, is obedience to the law. So Paul spends much time in that letter talking about the centrality of grace, that we are saved by the mercy and grace of God, which come to us through faith.

James is addressing a different problem: the problem of antinomianism. James is addressing those who say, “as long as we believe the gospel and are saved by faith, it doesn’t matter what we do.” He sets out to show people like this that they’ve accepted a counterfeit; their religion is worthless. They’re self-deceived. Genuine faith leads to transformation. Faith can’t be contained to our inner lives. The emphasis is different than Paul’s, but there’s no contradiction. Even in Galatians, with all its emphasis on salvation by grace alone, Paul has some very strong things to say, in chapters 5 & 6, about the fact that faith is not something that exists only in our minds. So Paul and James are in complete agreement; they’re just addressing different problems.

James is concerned, in this chapter, with the idea that faith is more than a sense of inner conviction. Genuine faith leads us to act in ways that are consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In verses 1-13 he’s focusing on the ways we treat others in the church: we need to beware of treating others in ways that are inconsistent with our identity as followers of Jesus Christ. As Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to treat all people with love, even – especially – those we’re tempted to despise and look down on.

The first thing to notice is that he wants his readers to become imitators of God. When we begin talking about transformation, there are always those who will respond, “alright, just tell me what to do and I’ll get started.” They’re serious, and they fully intend to follow through. But they have the wrong idea. Our greatest need is not a list of things to do, but a model to look at. The place to start is not with a to-do list, but with a picture of the kind of people we’re to become. Christian discipleship is not following a set of behavioral principles, but following and imitating a Person. The transformation we’re seeking as Christian disciples is inherently personal. Paul says the same thing in Ephesians: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2). We’re not following a legal system. We’re following a Person. God has adopted us as His children, and we need, more and more, to bear the family likeness.

James, in urging us to be imitators of God, is confronting the problem of favoritism in the church: “My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, ‘Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!’ and either ignore the street person or say, ‘Better sit here in the back row,’ haven’t you segregated God’s children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted?” (The Message). That’s the problem: people are being treated differently in the church because of their status in the world. So the first thing James says about this is that it’s in conflict with the way God acts: “Isn’t it clear by now that God operates quite differently? He chose the world’s down-and-out as the kingdom’s first citizens, with full rights and privileges. This kingdom is promised to anyone who loves God. And here you are abusing these same citizens!” (The Message). He’s saying, “when you act in this way, you’re not imitators of God; you’re valuing things that He’s treated as unimportant.”

James is telling them that they’re judging by appearances; they’re evaluating peoples’ worth on the basis of how they look. They’re saying, “this man is worthy of honor in the church; just look at him! And obviously this other man is a second-class citizen.” About six months after I got out of the Navy, I stayed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a few days and visited some of the guys I’d known onboard ship. One of them was a new believer who’d been very hostile to the gospel when I’d known him, and we decided to go to church together, to the church I’d attended for a few months while I was in Norfolk. I, having just returned from California, dressed in casual clothes, and he wore a suit. The interesting thing was that even though I’d been part of this church just six months earlier, people assumed he was bringing me to church with the hope of converting me. They assumed I was an unbeliever and that he was witnessing to me, purely because of the way we were both dressed. James is saying, “become imitators of God in the way you look at other people. Don’t judge by outward appearances, and don’t evaluate people using standards that are used in the world. In the kingdom of God, everything is different. God has chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith, and He’s more concerned with the condition of our hearts than He is about the way we dress."

The second thing to notice is that love is the most important part of God’s law. “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The “royal law” is the law of the kingdom, and at the very center of that law is the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” James is saying that when we show partiality in the church, we’re violating the most important part of God’s law. We’re adopting an unloving attitude toward others who come into the church because we don’t like the way they look; they look like the kind of people we don’t want to associate with, so we treat them in an unloving way.

He elaborates on this idea in verses 10 & 11: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ has also said, ‘You shall not murder. Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.” Notice what he’s saying here. He’s not saying, “the whole law is a unit, and if you break one part you’ve broken the whole thing.” He’s saying, “the law expresses the will of God, and when you break any part you’ve violated His will.” That’s the stress in verse 11: “For the one who said... also said.” The law is not an abstract principle. As we saw earlier, God isn’t just giving us a list of things to do. Christian discipleship is inherently personal. Even obedience to the law is not following an impersonal list of demands, but conforming to the will of God, our heavenly Father. “God is love,” and the command to love one another is at the very center of His law.

The third thing is that James urges his readers to live in the light of the coming judgment: “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.” It’s clear that James often has the Sermon on the Mount in the back of his mind as he’s writing. These verses are very similar to, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7). In the coming judgment, are we going to be judged by whether we’ve perfectly fulfilled the law? No, the New Testament is clear that we’re accepted by God on the basis of Jesus’ perfect fulfillment of the law. But that doesn’t mean what we do is insignificant.

The gospel sets us free from the destructive patterns of life in this fallen world. Believing the gospel leads us to a transformed life. This isn’t the first time James uses the expression “law of liberty.” He used it in chapter one, in verse 25: “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty;” this is the same as “the implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (v. 21). In all these expressions, James is talking about the gospel, the message of deliverance in Jesus Christ, which transfers us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Colossians 1). In believing the gospel, we become new creatures, and if we have no evidence in our lives of a new creation, we have reason to be concerned about the genuineness of our faith. The law we’re going to be judged by, James says, is this law of liberty, the law that sets us free. He’s saying we need to live in the light of the fact that one day we’re going to be examined by the one who knows our hearts and who will be asking whether we lived as members of His kingdom or whether we were self-deceived, mere hearers of the Word who never acted on it.

The basic message of these verses is this: genuine faith in Jesus Christ will transform the way we treat others. Seeing the truth about ourselves, knowing that we come to God in poverty, will affect our perception of others. Think about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The Pharisee was, in many ways, the spiritual equivalent of that man on the French Riviera who refused to acknowledge my friend’s presence. The Pharisee judged the other man by his appearance and had no idea what was going on in the spiritual realm; he was not an imitator of God. He looked at the man, not with love, the most important part of the law, but with disdain. And because of all this, he put himself in danger of the coming judgment, when God will judge the secrets of our hearts.

Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21). The Pharisee in the Temple, the man on the yacht on the Riviera and the people in the church who show favoritism are all people whose treasure is on earth. They show it by their actions, by the things that matter most to them: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Having treasure in heaven will transform the way we look at others.

James is saying, “don’t act like people whose treasure is on earth. Imitate God, who loved you and gave His Son to rescue you when you were His enemies, when there was nothing about you to make you worthy of His attention. Seek, with the help of God’s Spirit, to show love to those who don’t seem to deserve it (just as you didn’t deserve God’s love).” You don’t need to feel love for them; act toward them with love. C.S. Lewis said: “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him” (Mere Christianity, Bk. III, ch. 11). And do all this in the light of the fact that you will one day be called to give an account: “Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.”

Becoming Doers of the Word, James 1:22-27

When I was a young Christian, I talked with a man I had known all my life, who had never shown even the slightest interest in spiritual things. As I was talking with him, he informed me that he believed the gospel. He believed Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and he had read several books on the end times. I was so amazed by his response that I didn’t know what to say. I said, “so you believe it’s all true?” And he responded, “yes.” So I asked him whether he was ready to stand in God’s presence, and he said, “no.” But he didn’t seem to be terribly bothered by that fact. He believed in the truth of the gospel, but his belief had no connection at all to his life.

Satan’s goal is to destroy us spiritually, and if he can’t achieve that by preventing us from coming to faith, he’ll try to isolate our faith so that it’s purely inward, with no real connection to the rest of our life.  The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters from a senior demon to a junior demon. When the man they’re trying to destroy comes to repentance, Screwtape advises his nephew: “The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance” (p. 60). As long as it’s a purely inward thing, not ever converted into action, his repentance is in the realm of imagination.

That’s the problem James is addressing in these verses. Faith in the gospel is not just a sense of inner conviction. It’s not the sort of thing that can be confined to one dimension of our lives. God calls us, not only to hear His Word and believe it with our minds, but to respond to it in obedience. Those who don’t convert their faith into action are self-deceived, James says: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” They persuade themselves that because they like listening to the Word, because they enjoy learning about it, they must be OK spiritually. But Jesus gives a very stern warning about this in the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). James wants us to know that genuine faith involves more than saying, “Yes, I believe the Bible is true.” Faith in the gospel brings us into fellowship with the living God, who then sets out to transform every area of our lives in preparation for that day when we will see Him face to face and live in His presence forever. Believing the gospel is the beginning of the process of purification and transformation into the likeness of Jesus Christ.

The first thing James calls us to in this passage is attentiveness to God’s Word. There’s some discussion among commentators about the words James uses in verses 23-25. When he describes a person looking in a mirror he uses one word, and then he uses a different word to describe a person looking at the law of liberty. This contrast comes across in the NIV: “like a man who looks at his face in a mirror.... But the man who looks intently into the perfect law....” It’s even stronger in the NEB: “He glances at himself and goes away.... But the man who looks closely into the perfect law....” The first is a careless, superficial glance, and the second is a focused gaze. But other translations make no distinction at all. The NRSV, for example, uses the word “looks” in both places, and some commentators argue that there’s really no significance in the word change, that James used different words for the sake of variety but that they both mean the same thing.

The difficulty with a discussion like this is that all the commentators and translators are more familiar with the original languages than any of us, and our temptation is to simply choose the position we like best, the one that fits with our assumptions. I like the first idea better, that James is drawing a contrast between two different ways of listening. That fits more neatly into my sermon. But as I’ve read the various commentaries, the second position seems to have a slightly stronger case.

But that’s not terribly important anyway. Maybe there isn’t an intentional contrast between these two words, but the point is that some hear in a way that doesn’t lead to obedience. Their hearing remains on the surface of their minds. If we want to avoid falling into the same trap, the place to begin is with attentive listening to God’s Word. We need to know the truth before we can obey it. We can also say that obedience is rooted in attentiveness to God’s Word, and that mere hearing is often (though not always) rooted in superficial attention. The words pass through our minds, and we say, “oh yes, I believe that,” and then we go on with our lives. But the words never get any deeper. They don’t lead us to genuine repentance, which is a change of direction, a new way of living. They don’t connect with our lives in the world.

So, though it may be true that James isn’t contrasting two different ways of hearing, if we want to become doers of the Word, rather than mere hearers, we need to listen to God’s Word attentively. Psalm 1 describes people who are doing this: “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.” They take delight in God’s Word and meditate on it day and night. They’re attentive to it.

The second thing James emphasizes here is the importance of remembering. Those who are mere hearers look and then immediately forget what they’ve seen; “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget... they will be blessed in their doing.” This is a frequent emphasis in the Old Testament. When Moses was reminding Israel of the law, he said: “So be careful not to forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you....” (Deuteronomy 4:23). Later in the same book, Moses is confronting Israel with their stubbornness and he says: “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deut. 32:18). The prophets make the same complaint. Here’s one example from Jeremiah: “[The false prophets] plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal” (Jeremiah 23:27). Israel got into trouble again and again because they forgot the truth.

This kind of forgetfulness is a spiritual problem. We can be regular church attenders, we can even be consistent in our personal devotions, and be forgetful hearers at the same time. We go to church on Sunday, and even if we don’t say it this way our attitude is “well, now that’s out of the way and I can get on with the things I want to do.” Then we approach our personal devotions in the same way. Everything is compartmentalized; spiritual exercises may make us feel better, but they don’t connect with our lives. We spend time in Bible reading and prayer, then when we go to something else we leave it all behind. There’s no connection between the spiritual compartment of our lives and the other things we do.

If we want to become doers of the Word, we need to find ways to break down the walls of these compartments. One way we can begin to do this is by allowing God’s Word to confront the way we’re living our daily lives in the world, asking God for wisdom and direction in considering questions like: “what kinds of changes might God be calling me to make in response to this passage?” Or “what does this truth that I’ve just encountered have to say to some of the other compartments in my life?” “How can I put this into practice?” These kinds of questions can help us remember who we are and who we belong to as we leave our spiritual exercises and go out into the world.

This leads to the third thing James emphasizes, which is obedience. James is calling us to respond to God’s Word with concrete, specific acts of obedience. Mere hearers think it’s enough just to hear. Paul is confronting people like this in Romans 2 when he says, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law will be justified” (Romans 2:13). God calls us, not only to listen attentively and to carefully remember what we’ve heard, but to follow up on this with obedience.

That’s the point of verses 26-27, where James contrasts true religion and false religion. He’s not saying, “religion is a bad thing; all you really need is a relationship with Jesus.” He’s not contrasting religion and relationship. He’s contrasting true and false religion. Religion has to do with the outward implications of a relationship with God (see Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, pp. 210-11). Christian discipleship is not only an inward relationship, it’s a relationship with God that shows itself in outward actions. The word “religion” has to do with these outward actions. One commentator explains it this way: “Religion is... a comprehensive word for the specific ways in which a heart-relationship to God is expressed in our lives” (J.A. Motyer, The Message of James, p. 75).

The question is not whether or not we’re religious. The question is whether our religion is true or false. In describing the difference, James focuses on three areas: bridling the tongue, showing compassion for those who are vulnerable and in need, and avoiding the pollution of the world. False religion is confined to the spiritual compartment; it doesn’t lead to transformation of the way we use the gift of speech, the way we respond to people who are in need, or our attitude toward the world. We may be very diligent in our religious duties, but otherwise we look no different than those around us who make no profession of faith at all. James is saying that when this happens we’ve accepted a counterfeit religion. We’ve been self-deceived and our religion is worthless.

He wants us to know that Christian salvation is about more than going to church and having devotions. God calls us, not only to hear His Word and believe it with our minds, but to respond to it with obedience. He calls us to grow in obedience in each area of our lives: in our relationships, in learning to bridle our tongues; in the ways we use our resources, sharing with those who are vulnerable and in need; and in the way we relate to the world, being in this world but not being polluted by it. When we cultivate a life of obedience, James says we are blessed: “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.”

Notice how he describes God’s Word. He calls it the “law of liberty.” It sets us free to live the kind of life we were created to live. God’s Word isn’t like a straightjacket which keeps us from doing what we want to do. It’s the Word of the God who created us and who knows what is best for us. “True freedom is the opportunity and the ability to give expression to what we truly are. We are truly free when we live the life appropriate to those who are created in the image of God.... The law of God is the law of liberty because it safeguards, expresses and enables the life of true freedom into which Christ has brought us. This is the blessing of which James speaks (25), the blessing of a full life, a true humanity. Obedience is the key factor in our enjoyment of it” (Motyer, p. 71). Being doers of the Word is the best thing for us; it leads to the kind of life God created us for, a fully human life.

This passage is closely related to the one we looked at two sermons ago, where James urges his readers to “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” This Word that we’re being called to obey is the Word that saves us. James is saying that if we claim to believe this Word but aren’t growing in obedience we’ve deceived ourselves. Our faith is worthless and will not save us. This doesn’t contradict Paul’s teaching on justification by faith. James is saying that genuine faith can’t be confined to our inner lives; it will manifest itself in outward acts of obedience.

How we respond to this “word that has the power to save” our souls is of the greatest importance. We can’t afford to allow more “urgent” things to crowd this out. C.S. Lewis reminds us of the infinite dimension of our lives: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal” (The Business of Heaven, pp. 147-48). Each of us is headed in one direction or the other, and we are influencing the direction of others. None of us are mere mortals. In the light of such overwhelming possibilities, how can we allow ourselves to be deceived? Since we live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, since we are all moving, and are influencing one another, in one direction or the other: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Listen attentively to the Word, then remember what you’ve heard as you go about your duties, and order your life in obedience to His commands. Those who do this are blessed.

Making Room for God's Word, James 1:19-21

When Annie and I were on our way to the OM ship, Logos, we spent several weeks with one of the teams in England. During that time we ended up staying with an American family, in the top floor of their home. I got the impression that they weren’t happy living in England, and maybe they resented having someone else in their home. Anyway, it was clear from the moment we arrived that they didn’t want us there. They hardly spoke to us unless they had to, and one day while we were climbing the stairs, one of their young sons said, “you know, my dad doesn’t want you here; he really doesn’t.”  I don’t know what this little boy overheard from his parents, but we already knew how they felt. They were hostile to the idea of us being there. It was an inhospitable environment, and we couldn’t wait to leave.

Our hearts are often like that. Rather than welcoming God into our lives, we resent His intrusion. We don’t really want Him there, at least not all the time, and we cultivate habits that create an unwelcome, inhospitable environment. We want Him to comfort us when we’re sad. We’re happy for Him to come and make us feel good, peaceful and happy. But when He comes to us through His Word, confronting us with His absolute lordship over every area of our lives, He often doesn’t find a welcome reception.

Why does God’s Word often bear so little fruit in our lives? I believe part of the problem is that we don’t create a hospitable environment for it. Our hearts are too full of other things, things that fill up all the space so that there’s no room for God’s Word. One writer puts it this way: “We know from daily experience that it is not enough to hear a biblical reading in order to automatically derive spiritual fruit from it. It is not the material sound of the syllables that is life-giving. The hearer must understand with an enlightened faith the meaning of the message God is conveying. The soul’s doors must be opened to the One who makes himself lovingly available in his Word.... The discussion is similar to that usually had concerning the eucharistic bread. Received without preparation, without faith and love, the Bread of Life is no longer lifegiving. God’s saving initiative is frustrated. God stops in front of doors that are shut” (Mariano Magrassi, Praying the Bible, p. 5). God stops in front of doors that are shut. When the environment of our hearts is inhospitable, God’s Word doesn’t bear fruit in our lives.

The thing is that there was really plenty of room for us in that house in England. The top floor wasn’t being used, so we weren’t taking any space away from the family. And we didn’t have to enter their living space; we went down a hallway and up the stairs, and most of the time we didn’t see them at all. But it felt crowded there, like there wasn’t enough room. The inhospitable atmosphere made the house shrink. When we were there we felt closed in, claustrophobic. The same thing is true in the atmosphere of our hearts. The things we fill our hearts with, which create an inhospitable environment for God’s Word, take up space by shrinking our hearts. It’s just the opposite of what God does. He enlarges our hearts, so that there is room for Him and for everything else He calls us to embrace. But when we allow other things to crowd Him out, our hearts shrink. Our inner environment says to God, “we really don’t want you here.”

That’s part of what is going on in these verses in James. James wants us to receive God’s Word, as he says at the end of the passage, but in order to do that we need to recognize, and repent of, those things that prevent us from welcoming God’s Word. The first thing he mentions is in verse 19: the careless use of the tongue, especially the careless use of the tongue in anger. “You must understand this, my beloved;” he’s putting some emphasis on this, because he wants them to listen carefully and take his words seriously. This comes across clearly in The Message: “Post this at all the intersections, dear friends”.

He wants them to take it seriously, and he’s afraid they won’t. Our words seem like such small things. It’s easy to minimize the significance of our speech. I’m sure you've all heard this saying that kids often say to one another: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Everyone seems to know this isn’t really true. Our words are significant, and they can have a major effect on our spiritual life by creating an environment that is inhospitable to the Word of God.

Our words are significant because they often have a very profound effect on those who are listening. But, also, speaking raises things to a different level. We may be harboring anger and resentment in our hearts for awhile, but once we express it in speech it becomes more tangible and real. We become committed to it in a way that we weren’t before we spoke. We’re familiar with this idea on the positive side. Why isn’t it enough to simply believe the gospel in our hearts? Why is it necessary to confess our allegiance to Jesus Christ? Because until we speak about it, there’s something indefinite and unreal about our faith. It’s all inside our heads. Speaking, taking ownership of it in our speech, commits us at a different level. That’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 10: “With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: ‘God has set everything right between him and me!’” (Romans 10:10, The Message). And the same thing is true on the negative side. When we speak carelessly in anger, we’ve brought things to a different level. We’ve committed ourselves.

Is James saying, “never be angry”? No. Anger is part of our natural response to situations, and sometimes anger is a justified response. It’s part of the way God has made us. We see Jesus, in the gospels, becoming angry. It’s what we do with our anger that is important. Rather than immediately lashing out in anger, James tells us to slow down. Rather than reacting right away, as we’re tempted to do, he tells us, “slow down; step back.” Here it is in The Message: “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.” 1) Be quick to listen. Often we don’t know the whole story, and we react prematurely. James is saying, “slow down; listen; take in all the information.” 2) Be slow to speak. We tend to reverse these two things; we’re slow to listen and quick to speak. James is saying: “don’t be hasty; take some time before you respond.” And then, 3) Be slow to become angry. We can’t control our emotional responses. But we can take ourselves in hand, so that our initial response of anger doesn’t get away from us. We do that, with God’s help, by following these steps James has given us: “lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.”

He says one additional thing about anger, in verse 20: “for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” The capacity for anger is part of being made in God’s image. Anger, in itself, is not sinful. But we are sinners, and it’s very difficult for us to hold onto anger for any length of time without ending up in sin. That’s why Paul gives this advice in Ephesians: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (4:26). Anger is a dangerous emotion, and if we don’t handle it carefully it will lead us into sin. It may be justified initially, but it is very easily and quickly corrupted. “God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger” (The Message).

James’ main concern is not anger, but the careless use of the tongue. But it’s often in anger that we use our tongues carelessly. When we reverse the order James has given, when our habit is to speak carelessly out of a resentful, bitter spirit, we create an environment that is inhospitable to God’s Word. God’s Word calls us to repentance, and we respond: “but I was in the right! I have every reason to be angry!” It may be true that the other person is more in the wrong than we are. We may be 95% in the right. The other person may be 95% wrong and unwilling to repent. But God calls us to repent of our own sin, and when we refuse to do so we harden our hearts to His Word; we shut His Word out of our hearts.

The second thing James mentions that will create an inhospitable environment for God’s Word is in verse 21: sinful habits, things we do that are contrary to God’s will: “Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness.” Or, as it reads in The Message: “So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage.” If we’re holding onto evil habits, refusing to let go of them, our hearts will be hostile to God’s Word. The same idea comes across clearly in John’s gospel: “And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (3:19-21). “All who do evil hate the light.” They don’t want the light of God’s Word invading the privacy of their hearts. They don’t want God intruding.

Persistent disobedience drives us away from God’s Word. Several years ago I met with a man who had left his wife and was living with another woman. He had been part of another church in town, but when he left his wife he came to our church and tried to start over there. He very enthusiastically entered into the programs of the church and tried to assure everyone that he was following God’s direction. When I confronted him about what he was doing, he told me that he had prayed about it and was sure he was dong the right thing. He had felt miserable before he left his wife, and how he felt happy. At first, he came to church every Sunday. Then he started slacking off little by little until eventually he stopped coming altogether. People were very gracious to him; he didn’t leave because no one ever talked to him. He left because he couldn’t survive in an environment where the Word of God was being preached regularly, and the pastor of that church faithfully preaches the Word each Sunday. His persistent disobedience drove him away from God’s Word. James doesn’t want that to happen to us, so he tells us, “get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent” (NIV).

We clear the way for welcoming God’s Word into our hearts by following James’ instructions in verses 19-21a. That’s the negative side. He gives us one additional thing at the end of verse 21: “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” Receive God’s Word in meekness and humility. If you read the story of Israel in the Old Testament, you’ll come across the words “stiff-necked” again and again. Over and over again, God tells them that they are a stiff-necked people. They persistently refused to bow before His lordship over their lives. The insisted on going their own way, rather than submitting to God’s way. They were stubborn, stiff-necked. Meekness is just the opposite. When we receive God’s Word with meekness, we receive it as people who are under God’s authority and are willing to submit to His sovereign will.

Meekness is very similar to humility. If we’ve been humbled before God, if we’ve seen our spiritual poverty and come to Him with empty hands, we’ll be meek in our attitude toward others. We won’t be proud, and self-protective. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has a good description of meekness: “Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others. It is therefore two things. It is my attitude towards myself; and it is an expression of that in my relationship to others” (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, p. 72). And, most important of all, it’s an expression of that in our relationship with God. We see the truth about ourselves; we acknowledge our absolute poverty before God; and we bow before His authority, knowing that we owe Him our souls, our lives, and our all. We welcome God’s Word with meekness, welcoming it into our hearts as those who have every intention of ordering our lives in obedience to it. That’s the positive side: “welcome with meekness the implanted word.”

Those people in England didn’t intend to do us any harm. I really don’t think they had any personal animosity toward us at all. I suspect they were going through some kind of a crisis as a family, and having us there under the same roof made things more difficult. In the long run, it was a very minor thing. But our response to God’s Word is not minor. That Word is the Word “which can save you,” James says at the end of verse 21. When we cultivate an inhospitable atmosphere in our hearts, we’re endangering the welfare of our souls. God’s Word is the Word that saves us. We’re desperately in need of that Word. We can’t afford to do anything but welcome it. Put away those things that make it impossible for you to live with His Word: beware of how you make use of the gift of speech, and beware of persisting in sin and refusing to repent. Continue in repentance and in crying out to God for mercy. But don’t stop with this negative step. The whole point of the negative is to make room for what James says at the end of verse 21: “In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life” (The Message). God’s landscaping takes time; He doesn’t set everything in place all at once. The question is, which direction are you headed? Are you welcoming God’s Word into your heart, repenting when He convicts you of sin? Or are you hardening your heart, because you don’t like the things He’s saying to you? If you continue moving in the direction you’re going now, where will you be in ten years? Is your heart a place where God’s Word is welcome? “Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.”

Enduring Temptation, James 1:12-18

Alister McGrath has a book about the Christian life entitled The Journey. That’s a helpful image. Too often I’ve heard the Christian life described more like a destination; you make a decision to trust Jesus Christ for salvation, which ensures that you have a place in heaven, and that’s pretty-much the end of what you need to do. If you’re the kind of person who goes in for that kind of thing, you may cultivate a life of prayer and discipleship, but it’s not really necessary. Your place in heaven is assured, since you’ve accepted the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.

The problem with this view is that it’s completely alien to the New Testament. In the New Testament, turning to Jesus Christ is the beginning of a lifelong journey. When we accept the free gift, what we’ve done is enter the path of discipleship, which we’re committed to following for the rest of our lives. Turning to Jesus Christ for salvation is the beginning of the journey. One of the classic books describing this journey of discipleship is The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan.

Christian, the main character in the book, starts out with a horrible burden on his back (which represents sin). He starts running up the hill of salvation, but he’s hardly able to make it because of the burden he’s carrying. Then, when he approaches the cross, the burden rolls off his back and falls into a tomb. He’s been traveling for awhile, but he hasn’t yet reached his destination. He’s on the path, and his burden has been removed. But there’s still a long way to go.

A little before this, a man named Pliable begins traveling with him. Christian tells him that he’s leaving the City of Destruction and traveling to the Celestial City, and Pliable decides to go along. But right away they both fall into the Slough of Despond, a place where those who are convicted of sin become filled with fears and doubts. And as they’re wallowing in the mire, Pliable begins to question the wisdom of the journey: “At this Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect ‘twixt this and our journey’s end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me. And with that he gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough which was next to his own house: so away he went, and Christian saw him no more” (p. 7). Pliable, like many others in the history of the Church, turns back as soon as he encounters difficulties along the way.

James, in these early verses of chapter 1, is deliberately ambiguous in the word he uses for temptation. The word he’s using in verses 12-18 is the same one he used in verse 3, when he was talking about trials. The word means either trial or temptation. In the early part of the chapter, James is clearly thinking about trials and difficulties. And in verse 13, he’s clearly talking about temptations to evil. But in verse 12, it’s not so clear, and the translations are divided on whether this verse is talking about the blessing of persevering under trials, or the blessing of resisting temptation. James allows the discussion to slide from one use of the word to the other, but he’s not clear on where the transition actually takes place.

Why does he do this? Because there’s a strong connection between trials and temptations. Trials weaken us and expose us to temptation. That’s what happened with Pliable. He was determined to make the journey, but he became discouraged by the difficulties he encountered along the way, so he turned back. When we’ve been beaten down by trials and difficulties, we’re more susceptible to temptation. So James allows these two ideas to flow together, with no clear separation between them. Verse 12 can either be connected with the earlier verses in the chapter, saying that those who endure trials are blessed (as the NIV translates), or it can be connected with the following verses, saying that those who resist temptation are blessed (as the NRSV has it).

James says it’s a good thing to keep going and resist temptation. Those who resist are blessed. Those who say “no” to temptation are better off than those who give in. They’ve done something they won’t regret in the long run. The advertising industry tells us just the opposite: “indulge yourself;” “you deserve it.” They don’t say these things because they want us to become better people, or because they think we’ve been too hard on ourselves and need to take a break. They tell us these things because they want us to spend money on their products. James says it’s a good thing to resist; those who resist are blessed.

A.W. Tozer has a good description of this: “To want a thing, or feel that we want it, and then to turn from it because we see that it is contrary to the will of God, is to win a great battle on a field larger than Gettysburg or Bunker Hill. To bring our desires to the cross and allow them to be nailed there with Christ is a good and a beautiful thing. To be tempted and yet to glorify God in the midst of it is to honor Him where it counts. This is more pleasing to God than any amount of sheltered and untempted piety could ever be. To fight and to win in the name of Christ is always better than to have known no conflict” (“The Sanctification of Our Desires,” in The Root of the Righteous, pp. 117-18). It’s a good and beautiful thing to persevere in resisting temptation. It’s a thing that pleases God and that brings honor to Him.

And yet, this doesn’t just happen. We don’t persevere in resisting temptation by “going with the flow,” doing whatever we feel like doing at the moment. Like everything else in the Christian life, we learn to resist temptation by training ourselves. We try our best to resist, but eventually we fail. So we think, “next time I’ll have to try harder.” But, of course, this gets us nowhere. Trying harder doesn’t help. Imagine what would happen if I decided to become a ski jumper. I could read books on ski jumping; I could buy all the necessary equipment and then travel to a place that has a ramp. But the fact is that I’ve never been on skis in my life. I don’t even know how to ski on a gentle slope. Unless I went through the necessary training, I’d be likely to kill myself on the first try. It’s not a matter of trying hard, but of training wisely. It’s the same in other areas. If you want to play classical piano, you don’t just listen to a recording and then try with all your might to play what you’ve just listened to. You go through a period of training, which will lead you through a series of steps, and then, eventually, you’ll be able to play. You don’t just keep trying harder. You equip yourself through training.

It’s the same in the Christian life. We don’t persevere in resisting temptation by trying harder each time we fail. We learn to keep going through temptation by training ourselves. And James gives us some ways of training ourselves in these verses, some things which will help us learn to say “no” to temptation.

The first thing he says is to recognize the source of temptation. James is thinking about temptation to evil, but he has in mind those who’ve been weakened by trials and difficulties and are tempted to find relief in sin. When that happens, God is not trying to trip you; he’s not the one who is tempting you to give up. If you become confused and begin thinking that God is tempting you, the next logical step will be to turn away from Him. One thing that happens when we’re facing temptation is that we’re often in a sort of fog. We can’t see clearly. We’re confused and have lost our bearings. When that begins to happen, we need to step back and remind ourselves that this confusion, this feeling that it’s not worth it continuing to resist, is not from God. God does not ever tempt us to evil.

Where does the temptation come from? From our evil desires: “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” James isn’t denying the presence of our spiritual enemies in temptation. He’s saying that temptation finds a foothold in our evil desires. The problem is not with God. The problem is in ourselves. The temptation comes to us and we find ourselves wanting to give in. Our own desires begin leading us away. We can’t say, as Flip Wilson used to say, “the devil made me do it.” The devil may tempt us, but he can’t make us do anything. Here’s how these verses read in The Message: “The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.” Those evil spiritual forces that want to destroy us find a willing ally in our own evil desires. We need to begin by taking responsibility for ourselves, confessing that we often give in to temptation because that’s what we really want to do.

The next thing James says is that we need to understand where temptation is leading. Notice that there’s more here than just praying “Lord, help me.” We need to pray, but sometimes just repeating this kind of prayer actually strengthens the force of the temptation. We’re praying over and over, but at the same time we’re obsessing about this thing we want to do. James wants us to seek help from God, but part of seeking help from God is stepping back and reminding ourselves of some things. One of the ways God helps us is by reminding us of the truth: 1) this temptation is not from God; 2) this temptation has the ultimate purpose of leading me away from God completely.

Why does Satan tempt us? Do you think he’s going to all that trouble for the mere pleasure of seeing us commit certain acts of sin? No. He wants us to turn completely away from God. His purpose in tempting us is to lead us into destruction. He wants to destroy us absolutely. The whole point of temptation is to bring us to death. In The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape, who is advising his demon nephew in how to destroy his human victim, shows very little interest in any specific sins. In one of the letters, he says: “Nothing matters at all except the tendency of a given state of mind, in given circumstances, to move a particular patient at a particular moment nearer to the Enemy or nearer to us” (C.S. Lewis, pp. 87-88).

James has a very graphic picture of the process in these verses. It begins with evil desire. The temptation finds a foothold in our desires; we’re “dragged away and enticed” by our own evil desires. “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The purpose of temptation is to destroy us, to harden our hearts by a series of steps that lead us further and further away from God. The apostle Paul says the same thing with a different image in Galatians 6: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit” (vv. 7-8).

The third thing James says is that we need to know God. We need to know who He is, what He is like. The first step in temptation is very often to make us doubt the character of God. If we’re in doubt about God’s goodness, we’ll be more likely to turn away from Him. That was Satan’s strategy with Eve. He came to her in the garden and said, “God knows that when you eat [the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). He convinced her that God was trying to deprive them of a good thing, so she gave in to the temptation.

So James assures us that God is the source of all good. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” He wants us to remember what God is like, so we won’t be drawn away from Him by doubting His character. He is the source of all good things. And He doesn’t change; He doesn’t go back and forth, good one day and cruel the next, depending on His mood. I’ve worked for bosses who were like that. They loved being in charge, lording it over those under their power. They could be very gracious at times, even kind. But you never knew when their mood might change, then they’d become cruel and vindictive. God is not like that. His goodness is unchanging. He is gracious and kind to us, not because He’s in a good mood today, but because He is good. He is always good. He’s proven His goodness by giving us life. Listen to these verses in The Message: “So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”

Those who resist temptation ultimately resist because they love God. Their perseverance is an active demonstration of their love. That’s the point at the end of verse 12: “Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” Jesus says the same thing in John 14: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.... Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.”

As we respond to Him in obedient love, Jesus promises that He will come to us and make Himself known to us. We’ll know Him, the source of all goodness. And as we grow to know Him more truly as He is, we’ll be strengthened to resist temptation. If we see clearly who He is and what He’s done for us, we will love Him. And if we love Him, we will want to bring every area of our life into obedience. But it doesn’t happen all at once. We need to train ourselves in a life of obedience, which involves: 1) recognizing the source of temptation, and taking responsibility for our evil inclinations; 2) understanding that temptation is meant to destroy us; and 3) growing to know God more truly as He is. As we bring ourselves back to these things over and over again, we’ll be growing in obedience, and at the end of our lives, when we reach the end of our journey, we won’t be full of shame and regret. “Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”

How to Think About Material Wealth, James 1:9-11

I talked once with a woman who was part of a ministry team witnessing on the streets of Amsterdam, Holland. She was standing on a street corner, sharing the gospel with a prostitute, when a man walked up to her and said, “how much is it going to cost.” She replied, “it’s going to cost you your life.” As he stood there with his mouth open, thinking maybe she was going to kill him, she added, “Jesus wants your whole life.” That wasn’t what he had in mind, so he made a very quick exit. But her answer was a good one; when we come to Jesus Christ, He calls us to lay down our lives. Our lives belong to Him, and He has the right to do with them what He wills. We’ve been bought with a price; from now on everything we have and everything we are belongs to Him.

We saw, in our last sermon, that James is concerned with how his readers think, how they look at their lives in this world. Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in our outlook toward trials and difficulties; we’re to look at trials in terms of what they’re accomplishing rather than how they feel, and are to “count it pure joy” when we encounter trials of all sorts. In verses 9-11, James is continuing this same general approach. He’s concerned here with how we think about material wealth, and the same general principle applies here: Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in the way we value the things of this world.

The singer-songwriter Ken Medema has a song called “Flying Upside Down.” It begins with these words: “All your life you have been learnin’/ Every kinda way to get ahead/ You’ve got to build yourself a future/ Those are the words your daddy said/ Now there is another calling/ It’s tellin’ you to change your mind/ Tells you finding leads to losing/ Tells you losing lets you find.” He’s paraphrasing Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:39: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for me, you will find it” (NLT). Medema goes on: “The bottom line of your survival/ is you better take care of number one/ You don’t want to hurt somebody/ but you’re gonna do what must be done/ There’s a message on the wire/ And you’ve ignored it in the past/ It says the least will be the greatest/ it says the first will be the last/ Yeah the first will be the last/ Turn it over/ turn it round/ Raise the humble and free the bound/ Down is up and up is down/ This world looks different to ya/ When you’re flying upside down.”

Following Jesus leads us to live in ways that don’t make sense to the world. As we seek to live in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves valuing things that the world thinks are worthless, ordering our lives according to priorities that are exactly opposite those of the world. Donald Kraybill, who works at Elizabethtown College, wrote a book on the Kingdom of God entitled The Upside Down Kingdom. Here’s something he says in the book: “The Gospels portray the kingdom of God as inverted or upside down in comparison with both ancient Palestine and modern ways.... Kingdom players follow new rules. They listen to another coach. Kingdom values challenge patterns of social life taken for granted in modern culture. Kingdom habits don’t mesh smoothly with dominant cultural trends. They may, in fact, look foolish” (p. 19). James knows the dominant cultural trends, and he wants his readers to realize that following Jesus turns those things upside down. Submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ changes the way we think about our lives in this world.

The first thing James says is that the poor, rather than envying the rich, have reason to boast: “The brother who is poor may be glad because God has called him to the true riches” (J.B. Phillips). The temptation is always for the poor to envy the rich. Politicians capitalize on this. They know that it’s easy to get support for anything that penalizes the rich. So, when they want to raise taxes, they’ll often put it in terms of making the rich pay their fair share, because they know this is a popular idea. They’re capitalizing on the sin of envy, and they end up doing harm by encouraging people to cultivate a destructive vice. Envy may be good for winning votes, but it destroys our souls.

James is saying to his readers, “if you envy the rich, you really don’t understand what’s going on. God has given you reason to boast.” He’s telling them, “you need to stop listening to what the world is telling you is important; the world has everything backwards.” In chapter one, James introduces a number of subjects that he comes back to and develops later on. In chapter two, he says this about the poor: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” (2:5). It’s not that poverty in itself is a virtue. He’s not praising all the poor here; he’s speaking to “the brother in humble circumstances.” He’s speaking to believers who are poor. And he’s saying to them, “God has given you great riches in Himself; He’s made you heirs of His kingdom.” Contrary to all appearances, they have an exalted position in the Church.

Francis Bernardone was born into a prosperous family. His father was a cloth merchant, who naturally expected his son to work at the same trade. But Francis experienced a powerful conversion when he was in his early twenties, and committed his life to radical discipleship. This brought him into conflict with his father, who couldn’t understand the choices he was making. He was doing things that didn’t make sense economically. After a series of incidents, they were both summoned before the bishop. Here’s how one biographer describes the scene: “He stood up before them all and said, ‘Up to this time I have called Pierre Bernardone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.’ And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that that was a hair shirt. He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society.... He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees; a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, p. 48).

Francis made what looked like a very imprudent financial decision. He had it made, in many ways, if he had been willing to follow in his father’s footsteps. But God had taken hold of his life and was calling him to lay all that aside. We know him today as St. Francis of Assisi, but to the people of the town of Assisi on that day, no doubt he looked like an unbalanced fanatic, maybe even a fool. For the next twenty-one years, he lived a life of voluntary poverty in identification with Jesus, who was born in a stable and died on a common criminal’s cross. Here’s what he said about himself and his followers: “If we had any possessions we should be forced to have arms to protect them, since possessions are a cause of disputes and strife, and in many ways we should be hindered from loving God and our neighbor. Therefore, in this life, we wish to have no temporal possessions” (quoted by John Michael Talbot, The Lessons of St. Francis, p. 20). “Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up.” Why? Because God has given us great riches in Himself. If we envy the rich, we don’t understand what’s going on. We don’t understand the riches we have in Christ.

But not all believers are poor, and not all are called to embrace a life of voluntary poverty, like St. Francis of Assisi. So James goes on to say that the rich, rather than being puffed up with pride, have reason to be humbled. Although in the eyes of the society they may be highly esteemed because of their wealth, in the church they have no special status. They’ve been brought down to size. They’ve seen themselves as poor in spirit, sinners in need of God’s mercy. They’ve been humbled by realizing the truth about themselves.

Why is James concerned about the rich being humbled? Because their wealth exposes them to temptation and spiritual danger. Unless they’re humbled before God, their wealth is likely to destroy them spiritually. He wants them to boast in their low position, in the fact that their wealth is of no eternal value and is insignificant to their status in the Church. Rather than boasting in their wealth and prestige, he wants them to boast in their weakness and spiritual poverty as a protection against the temptation to pride.

Two things can help them keep their wealth in perspective. First, their riches are precarious and uncertain. The translations and commentators are slightly divided about the end of verse 10. The NRSV has “the rich will disappear like a flower of the field.” The majority of translations I consulted are similar. But in a few the phrase refers, not to the rich person, but to his wealth: “Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it” (The Message). Or the Jerusalem Bible: “because riches last no longer than the flowers in the grass.” Among commentators, John Calvin supports this idea that the phrase refers to the precariousness of riches, not of the rich person. Either translation is possible, but I lean slightly toward this second option. James seems to be saying, in verse 10, “don’t boast about your riches, because they won’t last.”

Whether or not he has this in mind in verse 10, James understood that material wealth is precarious and uncertain. That was Jesus’ point in the Sermon on the Mount (and James often seems to have the Sermon on the Mount in the back of his mind as he’s writing): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). Treasures on earth are subject to corruption and loss. They’re subject to powers that are beyond our control. When the OM ship Doulos was in South America in the late 70's, they had a dramatic experience of this. Over one weekend they had very strong book sales; on Sunday night they had the equivalent of $30,000 or so onboard the ship. But the economy crashed, and by the time they got to the bank, the value of the local currency had dropped by more than 50 per cent. In a matter of hours, they had lost more than $15,000. Material wealth is precarious and uncertain. It’s subject to powers that are beyond our control. Even if we acquire great wealth, we could be reduced to poverty by the end of our lives.

The other thing that helps us keep wealth in perspective is knowing that our lives are precarious and uncertain. That’s James’ main point in verse 11: “Well, that’s a picture of the ‘prosperous life.’ At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing” (The Message). Our lives are quickly passing by, and we can’t take our earthly treasures with us. Jesus makes the same point in Luke 12: “‘Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.’ Then he told them this story: ‘The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.” Then he said, “Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of our life.” Just then God showed up and said, “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods – who gets it?” (Luke 12:15-20, The Message). Knowing these two things: that our wealth is uncertain and can be lost at any time, and that our lives are quickly passing by, can help us keep material possessions in the proper perspective. Rather than being puffed up with pride, we have reason to humble ourselves before God, before whom we will one day, maybe one day very soon, give an account.

The third thing isn’t stated explicitly in verses 9-11. James is building on what he said in verse 2: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” God is present in your life and is doing things that you can’t see. The same thing is true with our material possessions. The really important thing is not how much you have, but faithfulness to God who is the source of all good things and who will call us to account, not for how much we’ve made, but for how we’ve made use of the resources He’s entrusted to us. So, in the light of this, cultivate an attitude of contentment with His provision.

That’s Paul’s point near the end of Philippians: “Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am” (Philippians 4:11-13, The Message). He can do that, not because he’s resigned himself to accept the things he can’t change. He can do this “in the One who makes me who I am,” in Christ. This contentment is something Paul has learned, something he’s cultivated as he’s grown in obedience to Christ.

As we saw in the last sermon, James wants us to experience a transformation in our outlook. He wants us to have a longer-term perspective on our lives in this world. He’s reminding us of something we tend to forget. He has these verses from Isaiah in mind as he’s writing: “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). Our lives are passing by very quickly. Our material possessions are unstable and can be lost in an instant. In the long run, none of it means much. What matters is obedience to God; what matters is that we learn to give thanks to Him in every situation, knowing that He is purifying us and preparing us to live with Him in eternity. If you’re poor, know that God has given you great riches. If you’re wealthy, humble yourself before God, acknowledging your spiritual poverty, coming to Him with empty hands. Either way, cultivate an attitude of contentment and gratitude for God’s gracious care and provision. During this Lenten season we’re celebrating the fact that Jesus, though He was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9). So, as James says in verse 2, “consider it pure joy” whether He’s provided you, at this point in your life, with little or with much.

How to Think About Trials, James 1:1-8

When I was a young Christian, I often struggled with my lack of effectiveness in witnessing to others. I was living onboard a ship in the U.S. Navy, and all my friends knew I was a Christian; I had personally shared the gospel with many of them, but very few had shown any real interest. I had been taught that successful “soul winning” was a necessary part of Christian discipleship, and I was worried about my lack of visible fruit.

So I started looking for ways to improve my witnessing. One of the tools I used began with these words: “did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” I read about many people who made use of this booklet and who had led dozens, or even hundreds, of people to make a commitment to the Lord. So I tried it for awhile. But I could never get comfortable with it. What if someone comes to faith through this booklet, then experiences horrible things? Is it right to say to people, “God... has a wonderful plan for your life”? What they’ll understand by these words is that God is going to make everything turn out well: God is going to make you happy, and prosperous, and successful. Whatever we may mean by these words, it’s really not fair to say to someone who has no understanding of Christian discipleship, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Once they begin to experience it, they may not think His plan is so wonderful.

The world is full of people who are embittered against God because things haven’t turned out well in their lives. They committed their lives to Jesus Christ and sought to follow Him, but then things had gone wrong. God didn’t take care of them. He hadn’t delivered on His promise to give them an “abundant life.” They say things like, “I thought God would watch out for me, and He hasn’t.” Or, “what is the good of following Jesus if bad things happen to me, just like everyone else?” “How can you claim that God is good when He allows His people to experience such horrible things?”

For Christians in the first century, things often went very badly. They were following a man who had been condemned and crucified by the Romans and who had been hated by the Jewish religious leaders. They experienced the literal fulfillment of Jesus’ words: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20). James is writing to people like this. This letter is called one of the “catholic epistles,” because it’s not addressed to any particular church. It’s simply addressed to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations,” not the twelve tribes of Israel, but the Church, which Peter describes as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9).

James is writing to the Church, a body of people who live in this world as strangers and aliens. And he assumes that suffering is a prominent part of their lives. That’s the thing he begins with, right after the greeting: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He assumes that they will experience trials; he doesn’t promise anything different. He knows they’re going to suffer, but he wants them to look at suffering differently than they’ve been in the habit of doing. He wants them to reevaluate their attitude toward trials and difficulties. He wants them to begin looking at these things in the light of what they’re accomplishing, rather than how they make them feel. He wants them to take a longer-range view of their lives.

The first thing he says is in verses 2&3: Because the outcome is going to be good, consider it pure joy when you encounter trials. Notice that he’s not saying, “you need to feel good about all the things that happen to you.” He’s saying “you need to think differently about your life.” “Consider it pure joy.” He’s calling them to a completely different way of looking at things.

Why should they consider it pure joy? Because the things that are happening to them will prove the genuineness of their faith and will develop perseverance: “You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.” God is going to do good things in their lives through these experiences. They wouldn’t choose for things to go this way. Jesus recoiled from going to the cross; it wasn’t what He wanted to experience. But He said to the Father, “let your will, not mine, be done.” We can’t feel happy about suffering (and if we do there’s something wrong with us). But we can rejoice that our loving Father is using these things to transform us into the image of Jesus and to prepare us for the life of eternity. God isn’t just making us into better people. He’s purifying us, so that we’ll be able to live in His presence and see Him face to face.

We need to know that true spiritual joy is compatible with deep sorrow. Both can be present at the same time. Peter’s outlook, in his first letter, is very similar to that of James. He’s writing to encourage Christians who are being persecuted: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. [This is what they’ve received from God – but listen to what he says next:] In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of much greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:3-7). They greatly rejoice, and they’re suffering grief in all kinds of trials. They’re rejoicing in the Lord in the midst of sorrow.

James wants his readers to take a longer-term view of things. The trials they’re facing don’t feel good at present. And he’s not trying to talk them into feeling better. These things are painful. But they’re also temporary. They’re passing by, and God is going to do good things in their lives as they continue walking with Him. He’s going to do things that will spill over into the life of eternity, so that Paul can say: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). As we encounter trials, we need to know this: these trials are temporary, and God is going to do such things that one day, when we’re looking back on all that’s happened, we’ll be able to say it was all worth it.

The second thing he says is in verse 4: because this takes time – and there are no short-cuts – don’t try to rush the process. You only learn perseverance by persevering. And perseverance accomplishes its work slowly. Listen to this verse in The Message: “So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” We in America may be in a hurry, but God isn’t. So part of Christian discipleship is submitting to His schedule, rather than insisting on ours.

The spiritual director I had when we lived in Collegeville gave me this quote: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.... We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stage of instability – and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make them tomorrow.... Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). We can’t be today what we will be after a lifetime of walking with God. Right now we’re in the middle of the process.

God is doing things that we can’t see. We may feel like we’re floundering, like there’s no discernible evidence of progress. Just keep going, and rest in the certainty that God is at work. He’s not in a hurry, and He works in ways that we can’t discern, using methods that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. Our own judgement in this area is not trustworthy (which is why it’s so often helpful to meet with someone who can help us see what God is doing). God is carrying on His work, even though we may feel, at present, “in suspense and incomplete.” Rushing ahead, trying to find a shortcut, will lead to deformity. It’s only by perseverance that we become “mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” So, whatever else is happening, keep going forward in obedience, trusting in the “slow work of God.”

The third thing he says is in verses 5-8: because this is not our natural way of looking at things, because this goes so much against the grain of our natural mind set, we need to cry out to God and ask Him for wisdom. The ability to “consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds” is beyond us. It’s not the sort of thing that we can just talk ourselves into. This is more than an exercise in positive thinking, and it’s more than a stoic acceptance of the things we can’t change. James is calling us to a completely different way of looking at our lives.

When we find that we’re powerless to look at our trials in the way James is describing, we need to cry out to God for wisdom. And God will answer, because He “gives generously to all without finding fault.” God is a God who delights in generosity. The temptation is to say to ourselves, “a good God wouldn’t permit these kinds of things to happen, so maybe there isn’t a God after all, or maybe He isn’t good and kind.” And when we do this, we’re putting ourselves outside the realm of God’s help. Or when we waver back and forth, demanding that God prove Himself by taking away the trials we’re enduring, we’re not coming to Him in faith. We’re saying, “I’ll trust you as long as you do what I’m asking.” We’re really not looking to be transformed in the way James describes: “Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open” (The Message).

The ability to look at our trials in the way James is describing is not within us. We don’t have the resources within ourselves to effect this kind of change in perspective. We need the wisdom that comes from God, so we can’t afford to cut ourselves off from Him by doubting His goodness and generosity. The author of Proverbs says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (9:10). When we find ourselves facing trials and difficulties, we need the wisdom that finds its origins in the “fear of the Lord.”

The thing we’re celebrating during this Lenten season is that God isn’t asking us to do something He hasn’t done Himself. He’s not sitting up in heaven, looking impassively on our sufferings, saying “oh, come on, just get over it. It’s not such a big deal; the whole thing will be over soon.” He knows what it is to suffer. One theologian says this about the Incarnation: “If God really became one of us, then God bears all the pain and suffering that human nature knows. That means that God is able to relate to us as human beings. God has trodden the road of pain, suffering and death before us as one of us” (Alister McGrath, Christian Spirituality, p. 60). God knows what it is to suffer, and He delights in giving wisdom to those who come to Him in faith.

Our problem is that we don’t see the whole picture. That’s why James begins in this way. We need a transformation in our outlook.  We need, like the prodigal son, to come to our senses. And the thing that will bring us to our senses is fellowship with Jesus, our suffering Lord and Savior.  “Good Friday brings us to our senses. Our senses come to us as we sense that in this life and in this death is our life and our death. The truth about the crucified Lord is the truth about ourselves.... The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home. We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self.... His cross is the way home to the waiting Father. ‘If you would come to your senses,’ he says, ‘come, follow me’” (Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p. 4). In Him, and in fellowship with Him, we see what we need to know about suffering as Christians. Does God have a “wonderful plan” for our lives? Yes, but in this life it often doesn’t feel that way. Jesus’ “cross is the way home to the waiting Father.” And through our sharing in the sufferings of Christ, God is purifying us and preparing us for the life of heaven, where we will see Him face to face. Therefore, because we know this is true, “Consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds.”