Study of James week 9

Boasting

James 4:11 through 5:6 presents the great sin of boasting as the height of self-deception and a great evil.

Boasting and wealth go hand in hand throughout this section and unite its various segments.

James launches his final attack on self-exaltation and indifference to mercy as that which nourishes evil within the church.

The rich who live in total disregard of God’s standard of mercy and the many believers who envy them are guilty of knowing God’s will but not doing it.

James 4:11 NASB95

11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it.

James addresses his readers as Brothers or brethren in this verse, as he continues to speak to those in the church.

He states do not speak against, or some translations say slander in the first part of the verse.

The Greek word is used three times in this verse, and can be for slander or speak against.

James pronounced a judgment on their behavior that perhaps they had not expected.

Some readers had exchanged the rulership of God and His wisdom for the rulership of their own appetites, while maintaining that they were living in accord with the faith.

James continued with an explanation of the evil reality hidden within acts of speaking against.

Behind the act of speaking against - behind the back of the person being slandered - is an act of condemnation.

The person speaking against a brother has established his or her own measure of judgment that finds a brother lacking, and worthy of rejection.

Judging makes a presumptive statement about the destiny of a person or their works as a whole that really only God can make.

Only God, who knows the secrets of the heart, can judge the heart.

Only God, who sees what is done in secret, can judge these things long before they come to light.

There is more to speaking against, or slandering a person than judging them, but James focused on this connection in order to reveal another one: in slandering another, believers slander the law of God; when believers judge another, they judge God’s law.

James worked out a careful logic here, believers should accept the law of God, but this law requires them to exercise mercy toward others since they have received and are putting their hopes on the mercy of God.

In order to reinforce his point, James contrasted the one who judges the law with one who does the law.

He states, you are not doers of the law but judges of it.

The next verse shows that this position of judge is not theirs or any others’.

James 4:12 NASB95

12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

James point here is that God alone is the lawgiver, and only the one who gave the law is qualified to judge based upon the law.

The law of God is the instrument of God’s will by which some will be saved and some will be destroyed.

Biblical judgment is eternal judgement and should not be confused with human judgment of man’s law.

Divine judgment affects the eternal destiny of those who are judged.

God’s judgment is not moral judgment of the conscience but the final judgment of the obedient and disobedient, the merciful and the unmerciful.

As James continues this attack on boasting, he brings up how we can plan our own life without taking into account the will of God.

James 4:13 NASB95

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”

Come now, you who say, could be understood in this way: Think about what you are saying.

James is calling his readers to take note of all of their statements about the future.

James gives a hypothetical example that hangs on the stereotypical attitudes of the overconfident people.

James uses a series of future indicative verbs: we will go to this city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.

In this hypothetical example the person is predicting their own future.

The person was caught up in their own winning formula: the timing, the journey, the security of temporary residence, the possession of sufficient time to do business, and the expectation to turn a profit.

The problem is that God is left out of this formula entirely, just as He was left out of the compulsion to judge others.

Time and space belong only to God, and thus all the features necessary for human action are dependent upon him.

In the hypothetical example, the person thought and spoke as though the whole business enterprise required only self-assuredness for control of circumstances and the achievement of the desired ends.

James 4:14 NASB95

14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

James now questions the people’s view of time and human life within it.

Having spoken as though they had control over their own destinies and knew the outcome of a year, James reminded them of their ignorance of even tomorrow.

They did not know anything about their future experience.

Their ignorance was rooted not only in their immature faith but in their very nature as human creatures.

James asks, what is your life, you are a vapor or a mist.

Vapors do not last long.

No one knows the times of his or her own life.

Without trust in God, these believers become nearly indistinguishable from the wicked, who take no account of God.

James then shares how we should think about tomorrow.

James 4:15 NASB95

15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”

There is but one norm by which the life of faith is lived out in the world: if God wills.

This is an expression of trust in God for His ordering of every realm of human life.

James was reflecting one of the primary themes of his letter: trusting God with evidence in speech and action shaped by God’s will.

With that the second part of the phrase is just as important: we will live and also do this or that.

Life is lived, but only if God wills, just as assuredly as deeds are done only if God wills.

James 4:16–17 NASB95

16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Boasting has a place in the Christian life - if it is done in view of the work of God.

But such is not the case with the believers James was confronting.

Instead of confessing their dependence on the will of God, their arrogance erupted and overflowed with bragging.

To brag here means to manifest the pretense of the self-creation and sole causation of one’s own well-being.

For us as Americans we are tempted to participate in the celebration of the self-made man.

James not only prohibited boasting in possessions but also a person must not even boast in their plans for the future.

Such boasting stems from a prayerless, prideful, and pretentious way of life.

James declared that boasting was evil.

Then in verse 17, James summed up these thoughts with a reference to a fundamental principle of faith.

When first reading the verse it may seem like it does not go with the lesson on boasting.

But James connected it with, therefore.

The good that believers know they must do involves confessing dependence upon God’s will in everything they do.

The problem of disconnecting what one does from what one knows is another expression of the double-mindedness and inactive faith so rife within James’s audience.

Because they were believers and had heard the Word of God, they knew the good; but because they had not received it with meekness and humility, they contradicted what they knew and committed sin.

The principle of doing only what one knows to be good begins with placing all of the intentions of the heart before God.

Only this doing what is good can be whole-hearted trust in God.