Humility

Journey through James: 4:8-10

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. — James 4:8-10

James has shown us that our selfish desires lead to conflict and harm throughout this portion of his letter. When there is conflict, we often feel justified in treating people in kind. However, James reminds us how we should live. 

First, James urges us to draw near to God. That sounds good, but how does that work, how do we draw near to God? Simply put, we draw near to God by spending time with Him in His Word and through prayer. God has chosen to communicate to us through Scripture, and if we would draw near to Him, we need to read His Word and then follow what it says. 

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”— John 14:21

As we follow God’s Word, He continues to reveal Himself to us. He is near to those who seek Him. He communicates with us through His word, and we have the privilege of communicating with Him through prayer. If we want to have victory, joy, and peace in this life, we need to draw near to God. 

Part of drawing near to God is hating sin.

O you who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. — Psalm 97:10

God freed us from the power of sin, but now He has given us the responsibility to walk in purity. When we try and follow God and still coddle sin in our lives, we are living a double-minded life. As James told us in the first chapter, those who are double-minded are unstable in all their ways. We need to be single-minded in our focus. We need to seek God, and as we humbly draw near to Him, He will help us to walk free from sin. However, while God helps us through His Word and the Holy Spirit, He does not force us to walk in purity. 

James reinforces the seriousness of our responsibility. We need to understand the seriousness of our sin. There is an appropriate time to weep, mourn, and feel the weight of our sin. James is not advocating that we should always be sad; he is telling us that we need to take sin seriously. 

Humility is key to all of this. James tells us again that we need to humble ourselves before the Lord. While we have the responsibility to walk uprightly, we must humbly rely on the Lord to have ongoing victory. When we submit to Him and humble ourselves before Him, He will exalt us. Isn’t that a crazy thought? The Lord of all creation will exalt and help unworthy sinners like us when we humble ourselves before Him. May we walk humbly before God this week. 

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. — Isaiah 66:2