James 4 - What Does It Mean to Be Sorry for Your Sin?

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Submit Yourselves to God

4 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.

James again addresses behavioral issues with Jewish believers who were spread across world. They were arguing, quarreling, and fighting. We usually argue and fight due to pride. We want to be right, or in this case he says we are catering to, "The desires that battle within". 

Usually this phrase "desires within you" is related to sexual desires. It is the root word for our word "hedonism".  But lust can also be related to wanting something that isn't yours. Basically he is comparing them to little kids who fight because they don't get what they want, They are impulsive, impetous and use their prayers for selfish reasons on top of it. We often try to justify bad things we do in God's name. 

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.”

These believers were what we call "worldly". They dabbled in the world. But James makes it clear you can't have it both ways. I heard a great analogy once when I was keeping one foot in the world and one foot in my Christian faith. The analogy went like this:

A man is going down a river with his feet in two different boats and at some point the stream splits into two directions. Up to this point was able to have one foot in each boat, but when the river parted it was time to make a decision. Either he was going to be in boat with Christ or in the boat with the world. When we make Jesus the Lord of our lives, we turn away from the ways of the world. We are "in the world but not of the world". We can't have it both ways.

When I made that decision in my life to jump in the boat with Jesus, my Christian life really took off. I started experiencing the peace, joy and love that Jesus showed us in his life and promised to us in ours. 

Jesus said, 

"I have come to give you life and life abundantly." John 10:10

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.

James then gives them a strategy for resisting the urge to submit to their desires and join the ways of the world. He introduces the fact that the devil is a big part of the temptation we face in being worldly. The devil's main goal is to move us a way from following and obeying God and giving in to hiim. 

I love this next verse. A great verse to remember, 

"Come near to God and he will come near to you."

The opposite is true. "If you feel far from God guess who moved!"

The key to our life as a Christian is drawing near to God. God is always wanting to draw near to us, but He won't force himself on us. He counsels them to grieve, wail, and mourn. Why is that?

 As we draw near to God, we will be convicted of our sin. So we lament and mourn and weep as appropriate under the conviction of sin, and we are compelled to find cleansing at the cross. - Guzik

In using terms like lament and mourn and weep, “James speaks in terms of the Hebrew prophets’ language about the anguish of repentance.” (Moffatt)

We can't fake being sorry for our sin. Sometimes we are sorry for our sin because of the consequences it has brought upon us. We are sorry for ourselves. But this is really more about us than God. When we truly understand the holiness of God and comprehend the depth of Jesus' suffering and death on the cross for us, we have a better chance to experience sorrow that leads to repentance. 

11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

Again James talks about the relationships within the body of Christ, especially when we make judgmental comments about each other. Or, we make statements about others that demean their character. Jesus said in Matthew 7:2 on the Sermon on the Mount, 

"The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged."

The most judgmental people are usually the people who should be the least judgmental people based on their own character. 

Boasting About Tomorrow

13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. 

James closes out this chapter by warning them about boasting or making presumptive statements about the future. While there is certainly nothing wrong with planning for the future, we need to always submit our plans to the Lord first. I know I get excited about somethingm and I want to get it going, communicate how exctied I am about it, and start recruiting to get people on board. After, all there is no time like the present. 

But in my impulsivity I forget to submit to God and wait on the Lord for his answer if this is really He wants me to do. James gives us a simple way to avoid making statements like this. He says whenever communicate you think you believe God is calling you to do say, "If It is the Lord's will ....". 

It sounds like a simple thing to say but it serves as a check in our spirit when we say this. Jesus also said in Matthew 5:37 in his Sermon on the Mount, 

"Let your "yes" be "yes", and your "no' be "no". Anything beyond that comes from the devil." 

Do you tend to make rash statements, without bringing it before the Lord? Have you made decisions that have come back to haunt you because you did not offer it to the Lord first?