[AI translation] This sermon is a direct continuation of last Sunday's sermon. Last time, in fact, James presented the degeneration and the peril of the believer's life, what we have called prideful, arrogant piety. He spoke of how this shows itself in our attitude towards men, our attitude towards God and our attitude towards the world - he scourged this degeneracy and inappropriateness of the life of faith in very strong words, and concluded this passage of his teaching with the words, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (Jas 4:6) He then goes on - but now positively - to say what the right attitude of faith of the Christian man should be in the face of this wrong belief. (Jas 4,10) So this is the right attitude of the believer: to humble himself before the Lord and he will exalt you. But so that this does not remain just an empty word, a pious phrase, he immediately goes into more detail, making it more concrete what he means by it.He shows us, almost in brief words, the way and means of this humility. So that everyone can understand what it is all about. These brief instructions sound almost like a heavy-handed commander dismantling an undisciplined military team. This is what our sagging, sagging, frayed faith needs! So let us take seriously what the Word of God is saying in this passage!
1) Humility before God is first and foremost expressed in obeying God! Ok, we know that this is the most important thing in the life of a believer, but how is this obedience to God to be done in practice?
Well, God has shown me that obedience has two parts: passive and active obedience. And these two are so closely related that they are actually one and the same. By passive obedience, I mean allowing myself to be drawn into God's love, into that community of love, that community of life that He has established with me in the person of Jesus Christ and in His redemptive work. I could say: to let myself be loved by God! It may sound strange, but it is not so obvious! Once there was a nice group of evangelical friends, including a quiet, taciturn man with a reserved nature. He liked to go among his friends and listen to their conversations, but he never really opened his heart to them. Friends would say to each other: we want to love this friend so much, but he won't let us! There is such a thing as longing to be loved, because that is what every human being longs for, but will not let himself be loved. He does not open his heart to love. He closes himself in.
The same closed attitude is possible towards God! It often happens that man does not allow himself to be loved by God. He does not let into his heart, into the depths of his soul, the love of God in Jesus Christ. But God wants to love us. Let us let him. Through the person of Christ, the love of God flows as truly as fresh air through an open window. Yes, the death and resurrection of Christ is indeed that: the opening of the door, the window of eternity on this world of ours; the vital air of God's love flows through him to us, to be breathed in, to be saturated like a flower by the sun. The love of God is greater than all my miseries, my helplessness, my sorrows, my greatest sin or my greatest sickness. God's love is empowering love, comforting love, healing love, cleansing love, restoring love, loving power from death to life. God's love is our life element. Let yourself be loved, let this heavenly current into your life, don't close yourself off to it! Open the window, believe that in every situation, in every state, whoever you are, whatever you have done, however you have lived: you are loved to death by God in Jesus Christ! Let yourself be loved. This is what I mean by passive obedience.
And this is what gives you the strength now for active obedience! To believe in God: not contemplation, not introspective contemplation, but action, action! Be careful: by finally saying the word Jesus; by finally saying, at the urging of the Word, that you believe that Christ died on the cross for you, you have not yet arrived at a sure point where you can rest assured, because your salvation is assured! No! But if you truly believe in Christ, then by the crucifying power of God's redeeming love, a new life now begins: a life of obedience to God's will! In the very concrete, in the everyday little and big things of life. If I truly call Christ my Lord, then let me know that my life is His from morning till night, and even at night! So I should seek and wait for His command of the day as soon as I wake up. Like the Huguenots, who are recorded to have appeared before their Lord at the beginning of each day, "Lord, behold your servant!"
Yes, that's what it's all about: in the silence of our day, praying through the day as we anticipate how our tasks will unfold. To think about the problems that need to be solved, the possibilities that appear. To begin again to work with that difficult boss, or clumsy subordinate, or unruly child. I wonder what God wants from me and through me in these situations, with these people, what is His specific provision, His specific plan? What is God's will for this day, for this or that situation? Ask Him. And so my obedience to Him will become concrete.
Prayer is to consciously surrender my thoughts to the Lordship of Christ and try to think His thoughts, to will His will. God has a plan for this world, and that is to unfold in it the redemptive work of Christ. Now a part of that plan He wants to accomplish with you, so in your quietness with Him, try to know what God wants you to do in relation to His plan for your daily life. If you seek it with a truly obedient heart, God will reveal His specific will through His Word. And then obey! Go forth, and you will experience the supernatural power of God's life flowing through you in that moment. The demonic forces that were previously fearsome will be paralyzed because your act of obedience to God will connect you to God and His redemptive power! That is why James says that in obeying God, just calmly "resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." (James 4:7b-8a)
2) This would be the positive, living Christian life. So actively serving God in all the relational aspects of our lives! Where are we from that? From this life directed to the will of God?! It is a dismal, disheartening thing to see the terrible difference between such a life truly dedicated to God and our own so-called Christian life. Well, if it is truly disheartening, let us not be sorry to be bitter about it! That's why he goes on to say (in another translation), "See how miserable you are, mourn and weep, let your laughter turn to mourning, and your joy to sorrow" (Jas 4:9). For if we could only once truly repent of our sins, of our disobedience to God, then our renewal in faith would not be so hopeless. See how empty a concept this word repentance has become. How incapable we are of doing with honest sincerity what James calls us to do: 'See how wretched you are!
Let me give you just one example! In answer to the first question of the Lord's Supper, "Do you believe that you are sinners who cannot stand on your own merits and deserve punishment, death and damnation?", we are accustomed to say, "I believe and confess that". And when we do suffer some kind of punishment, such as a loss of a job, or some material loss, or something that we see as an injustice or an insult, we are already full of indignation, complaints, such outbursts: what injustice has been done to me, why did I deserve this fate, this treatment! And where is this from the death and damnation to which we so calmly say that I believe and confess that I deserve this? So, indeed, we do not believe and confess at all that we are sinners who deserve punishment, death and damnation - and therefore we cannot appreciate God's saving grace! That is why we cannot experience its power to raise us from death to life! And it is in such humiliation that God exalts us. As our Word says: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:10)
In the crushing realization of my life of rebellion against God, of bankruptcy, of ruin, in which one has the urge to weep - as the apostle Peter wept bitterly when the crowing in the courtyard of the high priest made him realize how wretchedly, how cowardly he had denied Jesus - we need such brokenness at times, such mourning, such weeping over our own wickedness. Well go on, says James, weep! Let the tears come! This is not the weeping of weakness, but the beginning of every spiritual renewal, of every new beginning! Blessed is the man who now hears the word of God in the Word, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you."
3) And again, this humbling before God has a salutary effect in the human context. This is why James immediately continues, "Do not rebuke one another, brethren. He that reproveth his brother, and he that condemneth his brother, speaketh against the law, and condemneth the law. But if you condemn the law, you are not a keeper of the law, but a judge of it. One is the lawgiver, who is mighty to save and to destroy: who are you that you condemn another?" (James 4:11-12) It is by this that I can know whether my humility before God is true, that I cannot then look any man up and down, I cannot look down on any man! Not even the most despicable!
I was talking to a very serious Christian man the other day, who, humanly speaking, would have every reason to look down on the little people who hurt him, in his spiritual superiority and moral highness. From him I heard this statement: 'I have learned to be careful in judging others, for I find just enough to judge in myself! The only way to learn this is to humble yourself before God! But there I can learn to see even those whom I do not like, who are not to my liking, whom I have always so easily condemned, as if God had entrusted to me the office of judge of the last judgment: to see them as my brothers and sisters, as within the circle of God's redeeming love!
How positive, how concrete is humiliation? Let us not wait until God is forced to humble us before Himself! Look, even now the exhortation is, "Humble yourselves before the Lord" - and it even adds the promise, "and He will exalt you."
So let us now try to sing this beautiful old penitential hymn:
"A perfect heart, O Lord, Thou lovest,
The obedient soul Thou never despisest,
With this hope we long for Thee,
Be, we beseech thee, our help and our mercy.
(Canto 180, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 19 July 1953.