Welcome to week 7 of our James sermon series! This week we will be reading the first section of James chapter 4, verses 1-10, where James teaches us an important lesson about humility.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
When you think of humility, what images come to mind? Maybe a dove or a lamb, or a person kneeling in prayer. But what if I told you that children are actually a prime example of Christian humility?
You might not think that, because children often do not understand what it means to be polite or patient; they might demand what they want and be upset when they do not get it. Does not sound very humble, right? But the Global Wesleyan Encyclopedia of Biblical Theology writes this about humility:
“Using a child as an example, Jesus placed more emphasis upon humility as an inward disposition or trait of the spirit (Matt. 18:4). For Jesus, humility meant a relationship of trust in and dependency upon God. For Paul, the humility required for membership in the family of God replaced the hierarchy that characterized the dominant-father family systems and patron-client systems of the Roman Empire. In the family of God, hierarchical relationships between Jew and Greek, between slave and free, and between male and female are removed in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Both Jesus and Paul saw humility as obedient behavior before God as expressed in the OT, but they also saw it as an inner quality posited by the Holy Spirit.”
Our text this morning is James pleading with the people of God to humble themselves. He is pleading for people not to fight with each other. And instead humble themselves. James is wanting His original audience to understand that hatred kills.
Pastor Makenzie shared this a couple weeks ago: There is no place for hatred among God’s people.
And might this still be timely for followers of Jesus today?
Are there any Christians who fight and quarrel today?
I have seen some Christians say, “You can’t be a Christian if you vote for Kamala.”
I have also seen some Christians say, “You can’t be a Christian if you vote for Trump.”
Well, they can't both be right, right?
Isn’t it interesting that both parties say messages like “If the other candidate wins, America will be destroyed, but if our candidate wins then America will be rescued…”
It is much more likely that they are both wrong about that. Church, do not give in to the fear. The enemy wants you to be afraid, but perfect love casts out fear!
I recently saw a brother share that he is not on the opposing side of anyone who votes differently than him because He is on the side of Jesus and Jesus is for everyone. If you are with Jesus you will not be against anyone; you are actually FOR everyone!
You can still disagree with others, but you are not against them.
But what about people who do evil? Aren't we against them?
We are absolutely against what they do, but we aren’t against them as people. One of Jesus’ hardest teachings was to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So if we love someone, we cannot be against them. We still want that person to find the shalom that comes from a relationship with God.
This might sound like, love the sinner, hate the sin. But that phrase isn't always the most helpful. Love and hate should not share the same breath. It's just not wise for us to try to do both of those at the same time.
This is especially true because this phrase tends to refer not to the general sin and evil in the world, but rather to a specific person's specific sin. And that can lead to a path of thinking of ourselves as more Christian, our sins less serious, than others. That is a dangerous mindset to have.
A slightly better way to say it might be, love the sinner, resist the sin. We should definitely resist the temptation of sin whenever it is present around us.
But even better might be to say, Live and love like Jesus, full of grace and truth. To fuel our choices and imaginations by love, not by hate. To allow God's love, rather than our hate, to compel us to action.
Jesus did not say “For God so hated the sin in the world that He sent His only begotten Son…”
Jesus did not say “the world will know that you are my disciples by the way that you hate sin.”
Jesus did not say, “A new commandment I give to you, love one another and hate each other’s sin.”
I think there is a place for hating evil. There are many scriptures that say hate evil or hate wickedness. But hating evil is different from hating someone’s sin.
This does not mean we are okay with sin. He said if, any of you cause a little one to sin, “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” Jesus isn’t soft on sin. Jesus said that if something causes you to sin, get rid of it.
But Jesus, Grace, and Truth are a lot more compatible in one breath than love and hate.
Disciples were literally meant to try and imitate their Rabbi. As His disciples today, we should also try to live and love like Jesus, full of grace and truth.
Original sermon by Pastor Mario Flores
Blog post adaptation by by Allison Freytes
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