James 4:7-12
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.
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?
It Starts with the Heart
Do you know who this is?
It’s Superman!
What makes Superman so super?
How does the old cartoon intro go? Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can fly. He can shoot lasers out of his eyes. There are lots of reasons that Superman is so super.
What if we asked a similar question about Christians? What would make Joe Christian a super-Christian?
We started this James series talking about how important it is to be quick to listen. You have to have ears that listen, first of all, to God, but then also to each other. Of course, in that same passage we also heard that you can’t just be a hearer of the Word; you have to be a doer of the Word, i.e. faith without deeds is dead. James also talks quite a bit about the tongue. A super-Christian will keep a tight rein on his tongue and only use it to glorify God, tell other people about Jesus, build other people up. There are lots of things that would make Joe Christian into a super-Christian.
But let me go back to Superman for a second. We talked about his superspeed, superstrength, superhuman abilities like flight and x-ray vision. But we may have missed Superman’s most important characteristic – he has a good heart. Without a good heart, Superman would just be superhuman at best, or a supervillain at worst.
It’s the same thing for Christians. Does God care about what you do and say? Does he want you to have all these characteristics of the “super-Christian”? Absolutely he does! But do you know what he wants even more? He wants your heart.
God wants you to do the things he tells you to do because you want to do them. He wants you to avoid the things he forbids because they’re as hateful and abhorrent to you as they are to him. He wants you to submit yourself to him, to humble yourself before him, not out of a sense of obligation or fear but because you love him and because it grieves your heart to think that you’ve done anything to hurt him.
That’s what James means when he says:
“Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.”[1]
God doesn’t want you to be depressed. He wants you to sincerely repent when you do something wrong.
I’ll give you an example. A Christian is addicted to pornography. She knows it’s wrong. She knows God tells her not to do it. She feels awful every time that she does it. She tries to wash her hands of this sin, as James tells us to do in verse 8, but she has to keep washing her hands of this behaviour because she just can’t put it behind her. She tries and she tries not to sin, but she keeps falling back into it.
If we only focus on our behaviours and forget to “purify our hearts,” it’s like trying to stop your boat from sinking by bailing the water without plugging the leak. The problem is not with our eyes or our hands; it’s with our hearts.
That’s what Jesus says in Matthew 15:
Out of the heart come evil thoughts – murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.[2]
We have to change our hearts to have any hope of changing our behaviour.
Have you ever gone skiing or mountain biking through the woods? It can be kind of dangerous to avoid all those trees. If you’re not careful you could crash and break a bone. But do you know what advice skiers and mountain bikers follow? As you’re plummeting down that mountain at high speeds, don’t think, “OK, I’ve got to avoid this tree and that tree. Oh, there’s another one coming up; I’ve got to avoid hitting that one too.” Think to yourself, “Stay on the path. Stay on the path. Stay on the path. Where does the path go? Here’s another turn. Stay on the path.”
In a similar way, if a Christian wants to change their behaviour, it’s not a mind-over-matter kind of moment; it’s a matter of the heart. What do I love? Whom do I love? What does my love for God make me to want to do?
If I just focus on avoiding the sin, I might be able to avoid it 7,8,9 times out of 10, but there will always be at least one tree I’m not strong enough to steer clear of, one tree I didn’t see, one corner I couldn’t make. But if I focus on my love for God and if I learn to love the things that God wants me to love, then I can change from the source and allow my actions to follow.
And look at the promises God makes you!
Resist the devil.[3]
Boy, that sounds hard. How could we ever possibly resist the most powerful, real supervillain? If we tried to do it on our own, we’d fail every time. But when you submit yourself to God, when you make God the King of your heart, when you let him sit on the throne and give him the reins to your life, James says,
“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”[4]
The devil will run away from you! Not because you’re stronger than the devil, but because God is, and by submitting to God you’re letting him rule your life.
Come near to God.[5]
That sounds hard too! I know what I’ve done. I know that I don’t deserve God’s love. But God has given me an invitation. Jesus himself said,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”[6]
Peter invites us,
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”[7]
Coming near to God doesn’t mean “making the first step.” It doesn’t mean trying to convince him to like you. It means accepting his invitation and receiving his promise:
Come near to God and he will come near to you.[8]
Confess your sins to God. Humble your heart before the Lord and know that
he will lift you up.[9]
That’s where our hope and confidence come from. That’s what our relationship with God is based on – the forgiving love that we see on full display in the sacrifice he was willing to make for us.
We are not super-Christians. We often fail to resist the devil, but Jesus didn’t. He was tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.[10] We are not clean or pure; we’re sinners who need to confess our sins every week, every day. But Jesus was the sinless, Son of God, the spotless Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.
It’s no laughing matter what our sins did to Jesus. The sacrifice he made for us was as serious as death itself. It breaks our hearts to think of the price he paid on the cross. But Jesus picks up the broken pieces of our humbled hearts and lifts us up in his forgiving love. He reminds us that he doesn’t love us only when we’re on our best behaviour or because of the good things we do. He loves us purely by grace.
And it’s only the love that God holds for us in his heart that can ever hope to change our hearts. I mean, think about that. If God had no love for you, i.e. if God was an unrelenting task master who only cared about his commandments and your obedience to them, how would you feel when James tells you to submit to him? That’s a terrifying prospect!
But now that you know that your God is a God of love and forgiveness and grace and mercy, a God who is not results-oriented, but relationship-oriented – now that you know who your God is, how much more freeing is it to submit to him? You don’t have to fear punishment; that’s been taken care of by Jesus. You can expect acceptance and compassion because of Jesus.
That’s the power God gives you to change your heart, and once your heart is changed to let your actions follow. God does care about what you say and do, but that’s not what he’s after. He’s after your heart. That’s where Christianity starts. Humble your hearts before the Lord, and know that he will lift you up. Amen.
[1] James 4:9
[2] Matthew 15:19
[3] James 4:7
[4] Ibid
[5] James 4:8
[6] Matthew 11:28
[7] 1 Peter 5:7
[8] James 4:8
[9] James 4:10
[10] Hebrews 4:15