James 4:7–10
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
Pride shows up in the chest-beating celebration of a professional athlete and the swagger of a savvy lawyer. It looks like the air of superiority some exude toward those of other ethnicities or the dismissive sneer of a smug scholar. It is fairly easy to spot pride in other people but rather difficult to recognize and reject it personally. But if pride precipitates destruction (Prov. 16:18), we must soberly assess our propensity for it and actively pursue a life of humility. Drawing from the teaching of John Owen, J. I. Packer writes, “Self-confidence and self-satisfaction argue self-ignorance. The only healthy Christian is the humble, broken-hearted Christian.”¹
In the previous chapter we discovered that God grants us grace as we submit ourselves to Him in humility. In this chapter we need to delve more deeply into what this humility looks like. Sometimes we view humility as being quiet or being critical of ourselves. But Scripture speaks of humility as a God-dependent mindset that displays itself through certain pursuits. With the commands in between “submit yourselves” (4:7) and “humble yourselves” (4:10), James paints a portrait of a humble response to God’s rebuke about worldliness. Just as true faith is active (see James 2), true humility is also active. The humble Christian pursues divine fellowship, which requires spiritual cleansing and begins with godly sorrow.
Fellowship with God Instead of the Devil
James 4:7–8
… Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.
WORD STUDY
Resist — to withstand or stand up against; to stand up to; to set oneself against
Flee — to run away; to take flight
Draw near — to approach; to come close; a return to communion with God
The first set of commands involves our position relative to God and to Satan. Negatively, we are to take a stance in opposition to the Devil — “Resist the devil” (4:7). Believers whom God formerly resisted because of their pride (4:6) are now commanded to resist the influences of the Devil. Remember, it is this Devil’s world with which James’ readers had become intimate friends (4:4). Opposing Satan involves positioning ourselves defensively against his attacks (Eph. 6:10–19). Christ demonstrated this in real life as He withstood the Devil’s temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11). James’s readers would have to reject the earthly wisdom that produced envy and selfish ambition (James 3:14–16).
We must realize that our allegiance to God means, in part, that we will face the attacks of Satan. We are naturally fearful to stand up against someone who is armed to fight and defeat us, and Satan is a real adversary. He prowls around looking for opportunities to devour us (1 Pet. 5:8). He has schemes that he hurls like fiery darts against us (Eph. 6:11). Part of humbling ourselves is having a sober awareness of the real danger of a real Devil and committing ourselves to oppose him by standing strong in the strength of our Savior (1 Pet. 5:8; Eph. 6:10, 13).
Positively, we are to cultivate a close fellowship with God — “Draw nigh to God” (4:8). Like an Old Testament priest who drew close to the presence of God as he entered into the temple, so God commands believers to come close to Him. But how can we have true communion with an infinitely holy God? We can come directly into His glorious presence because of the sacrifice and cleansing blood of Christ (Heb. 10:19–22). We can boldly approach God’s throne of grace (Heb. 4:16), because Christ boldly entered the holy of holies with a perfect, one-time sacrifice to atone for our sin (Heb. 10:19).
Spiritual warfare is just as real as your next meal (Eph. 6:12), but it cannot be waged successfully with mere human strength. We need divine power (2 Cor. 10:4–5). That is why both opposing the Devil and living close to God are impossible without consistent Bible reading, prayer, worship and intimate fellowship with other believers. We cannot view these habits as ways to gain God’s favor but as channels through which He supplies grace. They are God’s appointed weapons for victory. Notice that in both commands, there is a corresponding response to the believer’s obedience. In the case of the Devil, he will take flight and run away from us. In the case of God, He will come close to us as we seek to come close to Him. God will fulfill His promise of giving us grace as we humble ourselves in relationship to Him and to the Devil.
Purity Outwardly and Inwardly
James 4:8
… Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
WORD STUDY
Cleanse — to make clean; implies personal duty to confess and forsake sins
Purify — to purge; to see that something is pure
Heart — inner self
Double-minded — doubting or wavering, having mixed motives; unstable or fickle
The second set of commands involves thorough, ongoing purification in our lives. Outwardly, we are commanded to clean up our actions: “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners.” James is calling his readers sinners, not because they were unsaved, but because he wanted to expose the true nature of their desires and choices. Their actions were being driven by their passion to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the world, just like unbelieving sinners who live “according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2–3). Consequently, sin was very much alive in their lives. In order to remove the stains of the world, cleansing was absolutely necessary. When we live according to worldly wisdom and adopt worldly affinities, James calls us to confess our sins and turn from our worldly behavior. This summons resembles Isaiah’s prophetic message to Israel seven centuries earlier:
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil. (Isa. 1:16)
Inwardly, we are commanded by James to purify our thoughts and motives: “Purify your hearts, ye double minded” (4:8). Double-minded (literally, double-souled) indicates a divided loyalty between God and the world. The only answer for this dual spiritual allegiance is genuine purging of self-centered motives.
These commands show that the process of purification is the responsibility of every Christian. James may have Psalm 24 in view, where David asks the question, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?” (24:3). The first part of his answer is “He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (24:4). Those who desire to dwell with God cannot take their sin lightly, whether thoughts or words or actions. God calls for wholehearted commitment and single-focused living for His glory. Is the kind of purity David describes possible? Can we cleanse our own hands or purify our own hearts? We cannot sanctify ourselves, but we can come to Christ for cleansing, and we must. Consider Hebrews 9:13–14.
For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Repentance Instead of Carelessness
James 4:9
Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
WORD STUDY
Be afflicted — to be sorrowful; to be miserable; to make oneself wretched and weep in misery over sin
Mourn — to be sad; to grieve; to weep; refers to the outward demeanor of those who grieve inwardly
Weep — to sob; to cry; to sorrow tearfully over sin
Mourning — sorrow; sadness; grief
Turned — changed inwardly by another’s power
Heaviness — dejection; gloominess; despair
The last set of commands is a serious call to deep, heartfelt repentance. We must respond to our sin with a spirit of genuine remorse. Paul calls it “godly sorrow” in 2 Corinthians 7:10. James announces like an Old Testament prophet the appropriate heart attitudes that accompany repentance. The first three commands denote the depths of sorrow believers should manifest. To be afflicted is to suffer a wretched feeling of misery. James calls for a deep, inner sense of distress and shame over sin. To mourn is to display the intense grief and sadness one feels concerning his sin, a grief often displayed at a funeral. To weep includes the crying and sobbing of one whose heart has been broken over sin. Again, these commands echo an earlier Scripture:
Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. (Joel 2:12)
Christ said that this mourning is a proper spiritual attitude (Matt. 5:4). Peter manifested all of these attitudes when he denied the Lord and afterward went out and wept bitterly over his sin (Luke 22:62). The last command calls for a noticeable change in public expressions. “Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness” (4:9). When we are close to God, we feel gravity about sin; but when we are worldly, our attitude is more carefree and nonchalant — an attitude that needs to change! The imperative turn means to turn around or reverse direction. Laughter is the outward expression of a lighthearted attitude toward sins. Spiritually shallow believers seek joy in the world’s desires; but in contrast, genuine change comes only through mourning over sin. The tax collector exemplified this response when he entered the temple to pray and would not even lift up his eyes to God because of his shame. In a public yet humble response, he beat upon his chest over his sin (Luke 18:13).
So, what happens when these commands are obeyed? The result is a deep sense of humility before God and a heart genuinely broken over sin. When we are in this position, God responds in grace by lifting us up and restoring us to a place of friendship with God. We must draw near to Him while resisting the Devil. We must seek both inward and outward purity. We must truly repent of our sins. Godly sorrow is a litmus test of humility.
¹ J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 196.
This post is from Wisdom from Above: A Study in James by Steve Pettit. Copyright 2015 by BJU Press. Printed by permission of BJU Press.
This post is part of the study designed to correspond with the 2020 Spring Chapel Series. Watch the chapel message:
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