James 4:7-10 - Nearness with God
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Passage
Passage
James 4:7–10“Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”
Introduction
Introduction
Illustration
Illustration
Imagine a soldier who has just been drafted into the army. He stands in a room filled with chaos—his personal belongings scattered, wearing civilian clothes, and holding onto habits of a carefree life. The commanding officer enters and says, “From this moment on, you are no longer your own. You belong to this army. You will submit to its rules, resist anything that threatens it, and dedicate yourself to its mission.”
The soldier faces a choice: submit fully, or continue to live as if he's a civilian—vulnerable, unprepared, and a danger to himself and others. His decision determines not just his effectiveness in the mission, but also his survival.
In the same way, James calls us to take a decisive stance. Are we soldiers in God’s army, submitting to His command and resisting the enemy, or are we clinging to the comforts of our spiritual "civilian life," leaving ourselves vulnerable to sin and separation from God? The battle is real, but so is the promise: if we submit to God, resist the devil, and draw near to Him, He will fight for us, cleanse us, and ultimately lift us up.
This image of enlistment frames the path of repentance that James lays out—a journey of humble submission, active resistance, intimate fellowship, and thorough cleansing, all leading to the joy and exaltation found in God's presence.
The Frame
The Frame
These next four verses outline a format for spiritual exercise, in a sense a “how to” for repentance.
These four verses contain ten commands, all given in the form of Greek aorist imperative verbs.
A call to repentance!
Lapses in the corporate and personal Christian faith of James’s audience now had redress in these steps of spiritual self-discipline.
Without these stages of true conversion in repentance and reconciliation with God, conversion is stillborn; true humility will always be thwarted. Interestingly, James did not call for a reorientation to any human authorities, even to his own. His addressees were to convert in and through direct communion with God.
The series of plural imperative verbs is stunning for its cumulative effect toward purifying faith. No doubt James understood repentance to be a lifelong practice for every believer. All fall into sins that undermine faith and relationship to God; all must return to him for the restoration of whole-hearted commitment.
On the one hand, the call to submit to God arises from the admonitions of the whole epistle so far. On the other hand, the ‘then’, or therefore (oun), at the beginning of verse 7 connects the sentence with what comes immediately before (‘God … shows favour to the humble’ verse 6). In other words, the promise of ‘grace’, just as much as the exposure of sin, provides the rationale for this exhortation to repentance.
God’s Word is clear that He sovereignly chose men for salvation “in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world … [and] predestined [them] to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Eph. 1:4–5) and that “those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). However, it is just as clear that the Lord commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9), and that He graciously “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Consequently, throughout His Word, God gives repeated calls for sinful men to repent and to turn to Him and be saved.
Through Moses, the Lord declared,
I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. (Deut. 30:19–20)
Through Isaiah, He implored, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:6–7).
Expository Points
Expository Points
1. Passive Submission - Active Obedience
1. Passive Submission - Active Obedience
Hook
Hook
v7 Be subject therefore to God.
Christians must have no doubt in their minds whose side they are on;
and by their lives they must leave no doubt in the minds of others that they are God’s enlisted subordinates - not ENEMY.
and the devil’s never quiting opponents.
Context
Context
The first of the ten commands is from hupotassō (submit), which was primarily a military term meaning literally “to rank under.”
The passive form indicates the submission is to be voluntary.
It is not passivity in the sense of idly doing nothing.
The english word is a little -TOO Passive...
But the word James uses is much more an ‘enlistment’ word, the taking up of allegiance to a great Superior in order to engage in the fight under his banner.
Repentance begins with the exhortation to submit to God.
The word hypotassō, “submit,” is the opposite of the word antitassomai, “oppose,” in the previous verse
The verb is used frequently in the New Testament. Luke uses it of Jesus’ submission to His parents when He was a boy (Luke 2:51). Paul uses it to indicate a Christian’s responsibility to human government (Rom. 13:1), of a wife’s responsibility to her husband (Eph. 5:21–24), and a slave’s to his master (Titus 2:9; cf. 1 Pet. 2:18).
Problem
Problem
Although there were conflicts within the community to whom James was writing that needed immediate resolution, he appealed to them to turn to God first.
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
Submitting to God is obeying His Word about Christ and the fullness of the “gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1), as well as submitting to Jesus as Lord and God (Rom. 10:9–10).
He is my Master, commander, and sovereign to whom I voluntarily put myself under. To do EVERYTHING told and asked of me.
Discovery
Discovery
This beginning of restoration compares with the imperative to seek wisdom from God (1:4) rather than relying on one’s own ability.
Solution
Solution
What James was saying was that conflicts with one another are symptomatic of conflict with God.
All conflict resolution should begin by a renewed submission to God by the internal act of submission to him.
Result
Result
As unsaved, submission to God is placing all our faith and self under Him
The Result - Salvation
As the saved, submisison to God results in greater peace among others, ourselves, and ultimately God
A growth in Holiness and sanctificaiton
Action
Action
Submit to God. Conscieously place yourself under GOD. Do not be friends with the world.
Do not pursue your passions
Do what God Commands. And try to do ALL of it!
2. Active Resistance
2. Active Resistance
Hook
Hook
Virtually by definition, to submit to God, your new Lord, is to resist the devil, your old lord.
Context
Context
Resistance
If submit is a bit too passive, The English word RESIST is a bit to ACTIVE
It is not a word for one who is carrying the attack over into the enemy camp, but for one who is manning the defences, knowing that enemy pressure is ceaseless and that he is constantly under fire.
Resist translates anthisētmi, which means literally “to stand against,” “to oppose.” There is no middle ground, no neutrality.
The next admonition of this verse calls the believer to put up active resistance to the devil and his influence.
As James has just made clear, “friendship with the world [Satan’s domain] is hostility toward God. Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (4:4; cf. 1 John 2:15–17).
To stand with the Lord is to stand against everything sinful and worldly that formerly was appealing, corrupting, and enslaving. As Paul reminded believers in Ephesus,
You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. (Eph. 2:1–3; cf. Heb. 2:14–15)
The Devil
Diabolos (devil) means slanderer, or accuser, one of the most common titles of Satan in Scripture.
The devil is the active opponent of God and his people, but he resorts to his lying, deceptive capacities. Human creatures who believe these lies contribute their physical and mental strengths to his cause of influencing humanity for their destruction and his glory. The devil is not called the tempter within James, for temptation results from evil desire within the self (cf. 1:14). But the devil is close by the temptations and conflicts that humans cause.
Problem
Problem
James’s discussion of the nature of temptation (1:13–15) and the Gospels’ temptation narratives of Jesus (e.g., Matt 4:1–11) reveal absolute evil is never a positive force.
Evil cannot coerce the human will but is dependent upon it, much like a parasite.
Without
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
Just as the devil left Jesus after the temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:11), he will also flee from all those who resist him.
Result
Result
He will Flee from you.
But the devil is close by the temptations and conflicts that humans cause. Nevertheless, if he is consciously resisted, in submission to God, the devil cannot fight back and must flee the attack that is our resistance to him.
Lesson
Lesson
How do believers know that he is present? Wherever envy and selfish ambition are present in the conflicts and quarrels of the body of Christ, the devil is there.
Action
Action
He cannot hold a sinner against that sinner’s will. He can’t even lead a believer into sin without the consent of that believer’s will.
When confronted and resisted with the truth of the gospel, he flees, releasing his hold as that repentant sinner who believes is delivered from darkness to light.
After salvation he comes again and again through the world system’s working on the flesh,
but can be defeated repeatedly by the believer who has the “sword of the Spirit” and the rest of the armor (Eph. 6:10–17).
3. Deliberately Cultivated Fellowship
3. Deliberately Cultivated Fellowship
Hook
Hook
The third command is to draw near in intimate fellowship and communion with the living, eternal, almighty God.
Context
Context
Nearness to God is a basic call and claim of biblical faith. The language of opposition has characterized action performed by God, us and, by implication, the devil. Now the language of approach conveys the sense of reconciling action performed by God and us.
What James meant by drawing near to God is founded upon the approach of the priest to God in his temple for worship and sacrifice.
Problem
Problem
The nearness of God here is not referring to His Omnipresence. The fact that God is always present
Though possiblly over simplifying it. Hyperbolic, Omnipresence is God’s ‘Spacial’ presence.
Here James is revering to God’s Experiential, relational nearness.
Therefore, While God is omnipresnent, the ‘awareness’ of His presnece and closeness of our relationship with Him depends on our spiritual condition
Just because God is omnipresent doesn’t mean everyone enjoy the same intimacy with Him. Just as how the unsaved is seperated.
Due to unrepented sin. Believers may experience a ‘sense’ of separation from Him.
Though a husband and wife are united. The joy of marriage fosters a closeness in the relationship. (The butterflies fly)
When the one party fights, quarrels, or sin without asking forgiveness. That relationship quickly turns from friendship to a feeling of enmity (enemies at war)
Despite their previous closeness there is now an ‘emotional’ seperation.
Of course, we find a tendency in ourselves to want to reverse this order.
How easy it would be to keep a daily time with God if only we had, to begin with, a more vivid sense of his presence
—in other words, we want the promise to come before the command!
But we learnt at the outset (6–7) that more grace is given to those who set their feet on the path of obedience.
Before salvation there is no fellowship with God. We are dead, enemies, and seperated from any form of fellowship. In Fact we won’t draw near to God in the first place. We don’t even seek God
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
God enriches with the grace of his presence those who obey his command to seek his presence.
Discovery
Discovery
Indeed, if we are true to James, we will see this command to draw near as the first obedience required of those who have subordinated themselves to God and propose to resist the devil. For James is not snatching haphazard commands out of the air. He is setting out for us an ordered programme of obedience.
David assures us that “the Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Ps. 145:18).
Solution
Solution
The first element in the conflict is this central battle to live near God,
the battle for regularity and discipline in Bible reading,
prayer,
private and public worship,
the Lord’s Table,
devoting ourselves to Christian fellowship,
cultivating every appointed avenue whereby we can draw near to him.
Fellowship with God—and its consequent blessing of his fellowship with us—does not ‘just happen’;
we cannot drift into it any more than we drift into holiness.
It is our first obedience.
Result
Result
Believers come near to God by focusing attention on him in the devout uttering of his name in the knowledge of God and his promises to be with them.
Action
Action
The believer goes to God in prayer ready to hear the will of God for service and made ready to go away from the encounter to perform that service.
As we draw near to Him through Prayer, Submission, and resistance to worldliness. Our relationship with God is strengthened.
4. Cleansing
4. Cleansing
Hook
Hook
Fourthly, we are commanded to put in hand a thoroughgoing purification of our lives (8b), to clean up the outer life of the hands and the inner life of our hearts. It touches our specific acts of wrong-doing
Context
Context
The fourth command in this invitation to salvation is Cleanse your hands, you sinners. The origin of this idea was in the Jewish ceremonial prescription for priests before they came before the Lord to offer sacrifices in the tabernacle or temple.
for the designation sinners points to individual sins; it touches too the inner disloyalty of the double mind.
Some commentators say that this word used specifically points to the idea that James is now speaking to unbelievers. But within the context of the book. And more specifically the command to (Cleanse your Hands) Something that we CANNOT DO as unbelievers. We can comfortably take the second option. This is referrring to SPECIFIC sins
Problem
Problem
The same figure was used by Isaiah to represent unrepented sin in those who presumed to worship God. Through that prophet the Lord warned His people: “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil” (Isa. 1:15–16; cf. 59:2).
We are already clean as believers. As an imperative we CANNOT cleanse our hands as unbelievers.
But now as those saved we have a daily command of cleansing our hands (Watching our ACTIONS)
Cleaning the hands and purifying the heart both recall first the ritual purity required of worshipers and of priests at the temple and second the prophetic call to the purification of the heart.
One might think that this cleansing must precede the approach to God, but such is not the case with the believers to whom James wrote.
God, their Father, had already planted his Word in them, had already chosen them for the new birth (cf. 1:18).
Cleansing themselves was allowing God to cleanse them.
Jesus’ statements upon washing of his disciples’ feet, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” (John 13:8) and then later, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you” (15:3; cf. Isa 1:16), combine the themes of washing and cleansing by the Word in a similar way.
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
As believers They are to be aiding sinners in repentance from sin (5:20), not in committing it themselves.
Solution
Solution
Paul also used the condition of the hands to represent the external behavior of the life, saying, “I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension” (1 Tim. 2:8).
“Holy hands” represent a spiritually and morally pure life, apart from which God cannot be approached. It is sin that separates depraved man from the holy God.
Therefore, “No one who abides in Him sins,” John declares; “[and] no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him” (1 John 3:6).
But although we can resist sin, temptation, and the devil, it is not in any person’s power—even the power of a believer—to cleanse himself spiritually.
That is why our gracious Lord promises that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Action:
Action:
This is a call to repentance of specific sins!
5. Thorough Purification
5. Thorough Purification
Context
Context
In this Hebraic parallelism,
purify your hearts corresponds to “cleanse your hands” and you double-minded corresponds to “you sinners,” the second phrases adding a more specific dimension.
Like David, James associates the outward sins of the hands with the inner sins of the heart.
“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?” David asks. “And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully” (Ps. 24:3–4; cf. 51:10).
The unbeliever not only is to turn from outward sin but, even more important, from the inner sin of the heart from which all outward sin springs. “Out of the heart,” Jesus said, “come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:19).
Problem
Problem
In this purification process, notice who is to be the agent: cleanse your hands. you sinners.
This is not the work of the Holy Spirit; it is the work of the energized believer.
Just as James said to us in 1:21
James 1:21 “Therefore, laying aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in gentleness receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
that we are to go to it like a gardener, and hoe out the weeds from our lives, so here we are commanded to clean up our conduct and our hearts.
But again, we must keep this command at its proper place in the sequence. Logic might suggest that we must clean up our lives and then draw near to God.
James’ logic is otherwise, for it is when we know the reality of his presence and come under its holy influence that we are at last in a position to face the demands of holiness, and find ourselves motivated by the desire to be like our God.
6. Be Sad About our Sin and Repent of it
6. Be Sad About our Sin and Repent of it
Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
The next 4 commands are a series of single verbs, without modifiers. The first is talaipōreō (be miserable)
The four imperatives that follow in this verse together call for a deep transformation of attitude toward God. Nothing short of an attack upon the inner self and its hypocritical attitude will do. The exhortation to attack one’s own heart begins with the call to “grieve” its wretchedness.
Such an awareness of our wretchedness is, of course, beyond us.
But then, equally so is every command in the sequence!
It is in fact grace alone which makes it possible for us to obey any of God’s commands.
Our position is one of perpetual supplication for grace to obey in order that we may experience the more grace which God gives to the obedient.
6. Misery
6. Misery
Hook
Hook
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “There is a vital connection between soul-distress and sound doctrine. Sovereign grace is dear to those who have groaned deeply because they see what grievous sinners they are.”
Context
This misery has to do with the brokenness over one’s sin and violation of God’s holy law and the fear of judgment.
Afflicted, wretched, miserable. To endure toil and hardship, be afflicted, distressed, miserable, to lament or mourn. In the NT, used only in Jas_4:9 metaphorically meaning to endure affliction, distress.
Problem
Problem
It carries the idea of being broken and feeling wretched because of one’s circumstances—in this case, that of being sinful, lost, and separated from God.
The misery James is speaking of here has nothing to do with being sad about bad circumstances in life and wanting God to help you have better ones.
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
Just as humans experience the devastation of war, the heart is “wretched” because of its rebelliousness against God.
7. Sorrow
7. Sorrow
Hook
Hook
Context
Context
The grief that results is expressed through active mourning over sin.
This exhortation is an expression of self-humiliation or the humbling of the self before the Lord.
Several grounds for mourning in the Old Testament shape the New Testament understanding.
First, mourning over one’s own sin usually occurs when the Word of God has exposed the truth of transgression.
Second, the mourning by God’s prophets and the teachers of the law over the people’s sin, especially their rebellion against God, is a prophetic act of solidarity with God’s people in their coming judgment.
The act of mourning for others’ sins is part of intercession for them, that they might repent and be restored to the joyful service of God. Indeed, mourning is the precise opposite of joy.
Third, mourning is the response to great loss of property or life, sometimes as the punishment for sin. Whatever the basis, in the Old Testament mourning is always stimulated by the realization of the destructiveness of sin; whether in relation to God or in relation to others.
Discovery
Discovery
The spiritual exercise is completed when they “wail” through inducement of tears. Externalizing grief through mourning now takes on its full expression in production of sound in loud crying and exclamation.
8. Tears
8. Tears
Hook
Hook
James did not stop here, however; he exhorted his addressees to express their mourning bodily through wailing.
Externalizing grief through mourning now takes on its full expression in production of sound in loud crying and exclamation.
If the same weeping should be done already by the unjust rich who are to anticipate their own punishment (5:1), double-minded believers here are to do so as if their destiny were a wretched punishment.
James did not say that it is; they were, after all, his brothers.
But their sin was so deeply rooted and so destructive that they needed to release the torment of the conscience in repentance toward God.
Weeping then is the full measure of the expression of sorrow over human sin.
Again noting the logical position in which James addresses this.
9. Seriousness
9. Seriousness
James thus clarified what he meant by the three imperatives, lament, mourn, weep: they should transform their laughter into sorrowful weeping and their joy into gloom.
Here is another example of the self-deception of James’s addressees.
What they believed about themselves was precisely opposite from the truth.
Thus, what had caused them to laugh should actually have caused them to cry.
What had caused them to rejoice should have brought them remorse.
James’s imperatives are quite similar of Jesus’ statements in Luke: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh … Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep” (Luke 6:21, 25).
Reversal of thinking and acting has been a characteristic call of James’s letter, and this call for reversal is perhaps felt most keenly here.
James’s addressees were terribly mistaken about their state.
Instead of enjoying well-being,
they should know that they are like those the Lord described in Revelation: “You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Rev 3:18).
Instead of making jokes James’s hearers should have been making war against the passions that were at war within them (cf. 4:1).
Intereset Peak
What an ironic presentation of joy harkening back to the beginning of the letter (1:2)! Like the other kind of “wisdom” (cf. 3:13–15), this is another kind of joy, an earthly, demonic joy, the delight in wielding the power of wealth and winning battles of personal honor and favor.
10. Humility
10. Humility
Hook
Hook
It is in the context of sorrowful repentance that James offers the wonderful promise of verse 10: ‘Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.’
The words, of course, recall the quotation from Proverbs 3:34 back in verse 6, ‘God … shows favour to the humble’.
Those who submit to God, who humble themselves before him, will be granted a high place in God’s eyes: they will be lifted up.
Since ‘to humble’ oneself literally means to lower oneself, the language of ‘lifting’ is intended as a resolution.
Tapeinoō (humble yourselves) means literally to make low. Here it means to make oneself low, not in the self-put-downs that many people use in order to induce others to build them up, but in a genuine realization of complete unworthiness and lostness because of sin.
Those who bow down before the great King prostrating their lives before him in sorrowful repentance will be raised up to stand tall and forgiven in his presence.
Interest Peak
Interest Peak
Note that it is at this moment in James’ login that the position of the audience change. From God’s enemy to the Presence of the LORD
James returns to verse 7, calling for a complete abandonment of worldly pride and a casting of ourselves totally at the feet of the Godhead in repentance and submission. The poles were set in 3:13–14—selfish ambition versus humility.
Exalt self or glorify God; you cannot have both in your life (as with praising God and cursing people in 3:9–10).
If the two sides in conflict (4:1–2) discover humility, the infighting will cease as love takes over. Once you “humble yourselves before the Lord,” James tells his readers, power struggles will dissipate and turn into love fests as a spirit of fellowship envelops both sides.
As Jesus says in Mark 9:35, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (see also Mark 10:43; Matt 23:12).
Action
Action
When we stop seeking our own power and glory and get right with God and those around us, then we will truly find our greatness.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The purpose of God is to lead us down into the lowest place of self-awareness and lamentation (9).
This is the goal of the programme: the decisive taking of sides (7) leads into the practice of the presence of God (8a).
This in turn prompts the longing (8b) to be like him in holiness.
As always, the more we pursue his likeness, the more deeply and sorrowfully our sinfulness and shortcomings are exposed (9).
But the Lord sets the downward path before us because there is no other way up (10).