2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
The next few sections of the book of James deal with warnings that he issues. JAS 4: 11-12, “Do not criticize one another, my brothers. Whoever criticizes a Christian brother or judges him, criticizes the Law and judges it. If you judge the Law, then you are no longer one who obeys the Law, but one who judges it. God is the only Lawgiver and Judge. He alone can save and destroy. Who do you think you are, to judge your fellow-man?” Our parent-apostle is asking us to go against what is human nature, to take an approach that doesn’t come easy to some of us. What he doesn’t mention here is what a great weight is lifted off the shoulders of an obedient believer who leaves the judging to God where it belongs. I was raised in by a generation of my family that were criticized themselves by their parents and who were experts at making snap judgments. They didn’t do it out of meanness or stupidity; they did the only thing they knew, what their parents did. The result for a lot of people in my generation was to grow up with an inferiority complex and without feelings of self-worth. As I matured, it was necessary for me to review this approach and to try to eliminate it from the way I raised my own family.
Look at a few citations that show the basis of the concept that God is the ultimate judge and how He authorized His Son to carry out this function. God spoke to Moses in EX 33: 19, saying, “I will make all My splendor pass before you and in your presence, I will pronounce My sacred name. I am the Lord and I show mercy and compassion on those whom I choose.” JER 23: 5-6, “The time is coming when I [God] will choose as King a righteous descendant of David. The King will rule wisely and will do what is right and just throughout the land. When He is King, the people of Judah will be safe, and the people of Israel will live in peace. He will be called the Lord of salvation.” PR 21: 12, “God, the righteous One, knows what goes on in the homes of the wicked, and He will bring the wicked down to ruin.” David in PS 7, a prayer for help in time of need, acknowledges God as the Judge. PS 7: 8, “You are the Judge of all mankind. Judge in my favor, O Lord. You know that I am innocent.” DN 7: 14, “He [Christ] was given authority, honor, and royal power, so that the people of all nations, races, and languages would serve Him. His authority would last forever, and His Kingdom would never end.” (This last citation was part of Daniel’s prophetic vision of the future). Christ’s attitude toward the authority He was given is shown in JN 5: 30, “I can do nothing on My own authority; I judge only as God tells Me, so that My judgment is right, because I am not trying to do what I want, but only what He Who send Me wants. “
So when James asserts in JAS 4: 12 that we have no right to judge, he is only repeating the consistent teaching of all these citations I shared in the last paragraph. Humans have difficulty in recognizing the two parallel truths of our universe: God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility to respond to it. Our fleshly natures want to arrogantly usurp God’s sovereign right to judge, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of belief that we are more important than God, and sometimes out of outright Satan-based unbelief. Our parent-apostle is reminding us that we must reject the urge to judge. Inherent in this reminder is another one, that God gives us the ability to make this choice. That God-given ability comes to us through the Holy Spirit and is a wonderful gift we often forget to use. When we remember to use it, we remember that He will carry our burdens [ MT 11: 28-30].
JAS 4: 13-17 takes up another human trait our parent-apostle warns us about, boasting. JAS 4: 14-15, “You do not even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears. What you should say is this: ‘If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.’ ” I have written about boasting in previous messages. Suffice it to say that, except when we boast about Godly things, our Lord finds boasting abhorrent. The quintessential examples of wrongful boasting are that done by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and that which will be done by the antichrist as discussed in DN 11. These two are by no means the only examples in the Scriptures or throughout human history. JAS 4: 17, “So then, the person who does not do the good he knows he should do is guilty of sin.” All of this has caused me to reflect on what our lives could be like if we never judged others or boasted about human things. It boggles the mind to realize how much better the quality of our lives could be.
PRAYER: O Lord, when You put the words in James’ mouth that are warnings to us of the folly of giving in to our fleshliness, You are sending us a love letter. Your motive is to guide us toward perfection. We are blessed when we take the advice of our parent-apostle, although it isn’t always easy for us to do. We need to understand the extent of Your sovereign rights, which certainly include the right to judge and to appoint Your Son, Who died on the cross for us, to be the Judge. When we obey You, a great weight is lifted off our shoulders. We can know a peace that can only come from You. That same peace can come to us when we choose not to boast about human accomplishments and position. You have commanded us to love one another, including our enemies, as You love us. We are grateful that Your love for us manifests itself in Your patience and compassion. You are to be praised, adored, honored, glorified, and thanked for wanting the real and personal relationship with us that You do. We dedicate ourselves to trusting and obeying You. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will look at James’ teaching about materialism and how it can corrupt our lives. In the meanwhile, we can feel the warmth of our loving Abba when we think of His compassion and patience with our struggle against the flesh. Collectively, we Jews are spoken of as “Israel.” I mention this because this word in Hebrew means, “He struggles with God.” Because believing Christians are grafted in [see RO 11: 12,17], you share the spiritual lives of believing Jews. In accordance with RO 1: 16-17, there is no more division or separation between believing Jews and Christians. We are all held to the same commands from God and given the same privileges, two of them being God’s compassion and His patience while we struggle. As long as we continue to obey and believe, none of us ever has to go another day in his life thinking we are not loved. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace, Peace, and Love Always,
Lynn