“The more you do, the easier it is to let go.”
Download discussion questions: James 4:6-10
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I encourage you to look at the passage in James before you read this Blog entry. What do you see in the text yourself? What questions come to your mind? How would you interpret what the writer says? After even a few minutes examining and thinking about the text you will be much better prepared to evaluate the comments in the Blog.
The discussion this week continued our study of the passage from last week, and the handout took on a completely different format. The mixed language of grace and nearness to God intermixed with harsh reprimands and calls to lamentation needed more exploration.
The Heart of the Letter
James has addressed a variety of sins and problems earlier in the letter, and he will pick up that theme in later passages, pointing out a number of specific problems among his audience. However, this passage expresses a different perspective. The general (and harsh) terms James uses (“adulterous people,” “sinners,” “double-minded”) sound like a wide-ranging denunciation and a call for change. This section may be the application of the specific instructions that James writes before and after these few verses.
Several scholars highlight the significance of this passage. “Here, if anywhere, we find the heart of James’s letter.”[1] Another commenter suggests that this might be the “hortatory climax”[2] of the letter. As we discussed last week, this passage is not intended as a hammer to shame or scare believers into better behavior. Instead, James is “identifying the solution to these sinners’ plight.”[3] God gives more grace.
Categories
Yet the passage does contain more than its share of commands. “These four verses, in fact, contain the largest concentration of imperatives in the entire letter – a rapid-fire salvo of ten…”[4]
To help us clarify that “rapid fire salvo,” this week’s handout reproduced the passage with five categories added in the margins. The added categories are shown below in bold type:
6 But he gives us more grace. RELEASE
That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. ABANDONMENT
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 REPENTANCE
purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Grieve, mourn and wail. BROKENNESS
Change your laughter to mourning and
your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will lift you up. CONFIDENCE
As I thought about our discussion of this passage last week, these five categories seem to be a good summary of the points James is making.
The Cycle of Spiritual Formation
These categories are used in the “Cycle of Spiritual Formation” suggested by Larry Crabb.[5] He describes the cycle as the way we move from self obsession to God obsession.
“From brokenness, through repentance, into abandonment, toward confidence, resulting in release.” In brokenness over sin, we seek God as our first thing, pleading for his mercy, not screaming for our rights.
-
- from brokenness: “I’ve sinned against [someone] who sinned against me. My sin is as offensive to God as is his. And I’ve sinned against God by treating him like a second thing.”
- through repentance: “I’ve been on the religious journey, trying to do what it takes to make my life work and to feel alive. I want to trade in all that self-obsession for God-obsession.”
- into abandonment: “I’ll follow the Spirit wherever he tells me to go because I am willing to risk trusting God, even when he does nothing visible to warrant my trust.”
- toward confidence: “God’s been dancing all along. And now I’m walking onto the dance floor. I can hear the music. Look! I’m actually dancing, and I feel alive. Communion with the Trinity is real and fills the center of my soul. This is life!”
- resulting in release: “Now I want to bless those who have hurt me. My pain isn’t the point. Yes, I still hurt, but I’m becoming God-obsessed! I’m a little more like Jesus! And it’s who I really am. I’m discovering my true self. This is joy!”
(You can see a summary of the categories and the cycle in “James 4:6-10 Categories and the Cycle.” A more detailed explanation of the development of the cycle is in “The Cycle of Spiritual Formation.”)
The Cycle Continues
A critical detail for understanding the cycle is that it indeed is a cycle, not a “one-and-done” shortcut to spiritual maturity. We had watched a video of Larry Crabb describing the cycle, so that aspect was clear from the beginning of our discussion. As someone said, each of us can be dealing with multiple issues, different expressions of our self obsession. One person can be at different points of the cycle, dealing with different issues.
Someone else commented that even as we experience the joy and freedom of release in trusting God, the cycle doesn’t end. As our spiritual formation continues, we discover new areas where our self obsession obstructs our love for God and our love for people. Sometimes it may be a new issue, or it may be something we have dealt with in the past. As Larry said in the video,[6] “When does it end? Heaven. We shall see Him, and second things will lose their attraction.”
He Gives More Grace
Our discussion had begun with the central theme from last week, God’s unending, inexhaustible grace, His “mega-grace” (v. 6). One person pointed out the problem between pride and grace in verse 6. The essence of pride is self – self control, self worth, self sufficiency. Pride doesn’t need grace. In C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce a tourist from hell visiting the outskirts of heaven hears the offer of grace. His response expresses his prideful choice to return to hell, “I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity.”[7]
Only the humble soul acknowledges their absolute inability to earn God’s favor. Only the submissive soul gratefully receives the “bleeding charity” God offers through the blood of Christ. That “bleeding charity” provides the release from sin and the release from the bondage of earning God’s favor. Both were fully and finally accomplished in the bleeding charity on the cross.
Submit Yourselves
One suggestion from our group was that James intentionally starts with submission (v. 7) as the expression of the humility in verse 6.
Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Submission requires abandoning our own efforts as a solution to our sin. Submission also means abandoning our self-reliance as a route to making life work, improving or maintaining second thing blessings as a higher priority than coming near to God (v.8). That abandonment fits with the startling opening of the letter,
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. (James 1:2)
Submissive abandonment means that even (or especially) in times of trials our first-thing focus is on drawing near to God rather than eliminating our distress.
Someone asked a logical question, “Is it wrong to want second-thing blessings? Is it wrong to want life to work?” We unanimously agreed that the answer is “No.” God delights for us to enjoy the blessings He provides. The problem starts when we subtly begin to value blessings as our source of satisfaction and fulfillment and joy. Whatever we say that we believe, we may actually complete Paul’s assertion with something other than Christ; “For to me, to live is _______” (Philippians 1:21). We depend on counterfeit sources of fulfillment. “I need that for life to be OK.”
Second things in second place are blessings from God, but they are not the “end point” as one person put it. “They are the gravy, not the steak,” offered another. James makes it clear that the ultimate joy is found in coming near to God and His resulting nearness to us (v.8a). Trusting God involves abandoning our desperate determination to manage life and manipulate people to get the second things that we believe will “make life OK.”
Hands and Hearts
James’s tone takes a turn (v.8b).
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and
purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Washing hands and purifying hearts illustrate the repentance of coming near to God. James is not giving a prescription for drawing near to God but a description of what coming near looks like.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like.[8]
Repentance means recognizing and rejecting any and all of the lies about our ability and our obligation to win God’s favor. Repentance means realizing than none of the second things that might “make life work a little better” will actually bring joy.
One person pointed back to verse 7.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Whatever else James had in mind with this statement, it is easy to imagine that the devil plants the seeds that grow into thoughts like, “I know I need to do something to earn God’s favor” or “I’m just not doing enough. I’ll try harder.” Those lies of the devil substitute our efforts for God’s grace. Resisting the devil’s lies enables us to see just how amazing grace is.
Grieve, Mourn, Wail
Another reasonable question came out of verse 9.
Be wretched and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and
your joy to gloom.
“What kind of a God is this? Wouldn’t He want me to be happy? This makes no sense!” The questioner put those doubts into the form that a new believer (or non-believer) might express on first reading this passage in the letter of James. Another member tearfully recounted painful past experiences in a cult where this whole passage was used to instill guilt and shame and to coerce control, a practice he described as “weaponizing the Bible.” The wounds from the misuse of God’s Word are deep.
In contrast, as we have discussed before, the context of James (or any part of the Bible) is essential. Mistaken distortions and intentional misrepresentations require isolating difficult verses from their context. Good inductive study avoids these errors by careful exploration of the text. Further safeguards are inherent in corporate discussion where each member acts as a corrective check to question inconsistent interpretations.
James precedes this section and follows this section addressing his audience affectionately as brothers (3:10, 12; 4:11). He emphasizes the joyful anticipation of deepening communion with God (grace, favor, nearness, lifting up). Coercion was not in James’s thinking. He sets the available joy (even in trials, 1:2) against the self-obsessed behavior that offered a counterfeit substitute for that joy. Joy as the preferred alternative should be obvious. Unfortunately, sometimes the self obsession for immediate fulfilment from second things blurs the beauty of joy. Another comment from Lewis’ The Great Divorce explains why most of the “tourists” choose to return to hell instead of remaining in heaven.
There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy.[9]
Grieving and mourning and wailing express the brokenness we experience when we begin to see what we are missing. The counterfeit laughter and joy focused on second things are overshadowed in mourning and gloom compared to the “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8) of communion with the Living God. Brokenness is the formative beginning of spiritual formation. Brokenness is seeing our self obsession as an overwhelming obstacle to the joy of loving God and loving others.
Cliffs and Ropes
James begins and ends this central “hortatory climax,” the “heart of his letter,” with astonishing affirmations.
But He gives us more grace (v. 6)
…
and He will lift you up. (v. 10; cf. 1 Peter 5:6))
There is no hammer here but a cushion of confidence. The wording “lift up” (ὑψόω, hypsoō) is often translated “exalt” (Matthew 11:23, 23:12). The word is used for both Jesus’ crucifixion (John 3:14, 8:28, 12:32) and His exaltation at the right hand of God (Acts 2:33, 5:31). That confidence in exaltation as our ultimate destiny should affect our daily lives now. One member of our group reminded us of a related passage about Jesus in Hebrews.
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
Jesus’ endurance on the cross resulted from His anticipation of the joy awaiting Him, exalted at the right hand of the Father. Throughout His earthly ministry He was anticipating that joy. His act of humility in washing the disciples’ feet grew from that hope.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3-5, emphasis added)
That anticipation, that “He had come from God and was going back to God” enabled His entire earthly endurance. Most especially that anticipation enabled endurance through His final hours, from the service fit for a slave to the crucifixion fit for a criminal.
Following the example of Jesus, our anticipation enables our endurance. A common problem, as someone noted, is that we tend to focus on the pain, the discomfort, even the inconvenience of our circumstances. As a result, we grasp at second things to make life work better. But Jesus experienced more intense physical, mental, and spiritual pain than we can imagine. Yet He intentionally focused on that joy awaiting Him. Anticipation enabled His endurance. As we struggle with endurance, our response is best focused on the anticipation of being lifted up into His presence. That anticipation of future joy creates current confidence.
C. S. Lewis used the metaphor of a rope for our confidence.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?[10]
Larry Crabb expanded Lewis’ metaphor. He described a “cliff of safety” where we like to stay, where life works reasonably well as we avoid relational risks. We know God loves us, like a “rope of His love” holding us. On the secure cliff we don’t really depend on the rope. It hangs loosely on us, slack with no tension or strain on the strength of the rope. But there is a chasm just over the edge of the cliff. The risk of sharing our heart with someone who might not respond well, or the uncertainty of trusting God in a financial crisis or a health scare, that kind of chasm is terrifying. Abandoning the safety of the cliff, moving beyond the security of our own resources, means plunging into the risks of the chasm. Only then do we actually know and experience and rejoice in the strength of the rope, the absolute faithfulness of God’s love. We all continually choose between managing a life of seeming security on the cliff, or we become confident cliff jumpers. Our trust grows as we see more evidence of His love, wisdom, and providence in our life.
A few verses back, James described boats driven by waves and winds yet controlled by a rudder (James 3:4). In that discussion our group had the benefit of a former alternate on an Olympic rowing team who provided insights into James’s image. This week, one of our members, a rock-climbing instructor, likewise added depth to our discussion.
We understood that even when the rope holds there may be scrapes and bruises, but we are not destroyed. Likewise, the strong rope doesn’t eliminate the possibility of pain in our life as we trust God. But our instructor pointed out the benefit of increased experience. Climbing involves not just a one-time abandonment of a cliff, but constant movements from one secure position to another grip that may be more difficult. “The more you do, the easier it is to let go.” He also clarified that, as important as the rope is, the ultimate trust is in the person (or Person) on the other end of the rope. The confidence builds, in rock climbing or in following God through trials, as we take risks. Only then do we actually experience the reliability of the rope. Risks reveal the reliability of the rope holder. That reliability emboldens us to abandon our own efforts to make life work and to trust God in any circumstance. As in rock climbing, “The more you do, the easier it is to let go.”
[1] Douglas Moo, The Letter of James (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2000), 186.
[2] Chris A. Vlachos, James: Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013),142.
[3] Craig L. Blomberg, and Mariam J. Kamell, James, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 185.
[4] Chris A. Vlachos, James: Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013),142.
[5] Larry Crabb, Soul Talk (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 235.
cf. Larry Crabb, The Pressure’s Off: There’s A New Way to Live (New York: Waterbrook, 2018), 180
[6] Larry Crabb, “Think Movement: The Cycle of Spiritual Formation” (Session 7) The Soul Care Experience video series (NewWay Ministries, 2006).
[7] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), Kindle Edition, location 304, page 13.
[8] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2021) Kindle Edition, location 850, page 57.
[9] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), Kindle Edition, location 682, page 31.
[10] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 1996), Kindle edition location 331, page 17.