Tuesday 11th
NIV (vv6-8) – ‘But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded’.
ESV (vv6-8) – ‘But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.’
We come to the last of the phrases in this cluster today, ‘Cleanse your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded’ James continues in the next verses with ‘Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom’. This is serious stuff! James is talking to those who we assume are believers and yet he is having to talk serious words to them concerning sin and double mindedness, we can take from this that the laughter they had and the joy they were expressing was not based upon anything spiritual but rather based upon their ongoing friendship with the world, the worldliness that he is addressing in this chapter. Therefore, there needed to be a repenting, a turning away from it, a drawing near to God again, and the genuineness of it would be demonstrated by the weeping or sorrow for the sin, and a change of attitude toward the sin.
It is in the ‘sermon on the mount’ that we have the words of Jesus who said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ Being poor in spirit and the mourning here is all to do with repentance, it is a humbling of our hearts and a deep sorrow for our sin as we turn toward God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and James is encouraging the double-minded folk he is writing to here that they need to come to this place again of mourning for their sin, (their worldliness, friendship with the world) and of humbling themselves again before God, a returning back to their first love and commitment to him. James closes this little section with these words, ‘humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you’.
God does not like double mindedness, he does not allow and cannot allow us to sit on the fence, we have probably heard the phrase that Jesus is either Lord of all or not Lord at all, we cannot live in the kingdom of light and in the kingdom of darkness because it would require divided loyalty, we either serve Satan or live for Jesus, we cannot put our hand to the plough and look back, we cannot say we have decided to follow Jesus and yet live according to the model of the world, we cannot serve God and mammon.
I mentioned Joshua a few days ago, he called the people to make a choice, ‘Choose you this day whom you will serve’, may we choose Jesus, may we choose to draw near to God, may we choose to daily take up our cross and follow him.
Over the next couple of verses (4:11-12) James speaks of the need for integrity within our relationships with each other as brothers and sisters, we need to hold each other with respect and be honourable in the things we say about one another, it is a reminder again to guard our mouths.