Worldliness & Conflict (VII)
This is a transcript. It may contain some inaccuracies.
Those verses in chapter 4, the 10 verses of James, deal with the issue of arguing and fighting and conflicts and quarreling. The sinful conflicts are so much a part of our lives here in this world, this broken world, this fallen world, this sin-cursed world. And in this passage, James—by now you know this by heart, I trust—outlines for us three very practical steps for dealing with conflict in a way that honors God, that glorifies God.
We've gone through each of these three practical, great steps carefully, I trust, and just to remind us of them, the first one in terms of dealing with sinful conflict in our lives is, he says, first you have to identify the source of conflict. And that's found in the first three verses of chapter 4. The true source that lies behind arguing and fighting and quarreling, he says, is our ‘hēdonōn’, pleasures, or more exactly, the craving of our hearts for those sinful pleasures and fulfillment of them. We want them, we want them bad, and don't stand in my way—I'm going to get them. Or else, you know, you'll suffer the consequences.
So we come into conflict with others because they stand in the way of what we want, and that's what James wants us to see. He says if we're going to overcome sinful conflict, we have to understand that the true source of conflict ultimately lies within our hearts because of what we want that is not being fulfilled.
The second practical step for dealing with sinful conflict in our lives is found in verses 4 and 5, and we put it this way: we need to magnify or amplify the real sin behind the conflict so we can see it. We need to really amplify it. We need to magnify it. You see, when we look back as far as we can look back at what lies behind the sin of quarreling and arguing, we find fundamentally that it's the sin of spiritual adultery. James uses the word "adulteresses." James begins verse 4 by saying, "Adulteresses," and you see, he says when we are engaged in a pattern of sinful arguing and fighting in our lives, it shows that we love the pleasures of this world, the fulfillment of those sinful pleasures, more than we love God. And that, at its heart, is, as James says, friendship with the world, and it is hostility, enmity with God. It is spiritual adultery.
The third practical step that we saw together is found in verses 6 through 10. We began to look at this the last couple of weeks: identify the right solution to the conflict. Identify the remedy, the right remedy to the conflict. Understand exactly what the remedy is. And the remedy, as we've seen together, is simply bound up in one word, that beautiful word that you and I are familiar with, but we can never become too familiar with it, and we shouldn't. It's that word ‘charin’ grace, grace, the grace of God. Verse 6 says, "But He," – that is God, – "is giving”-- literally is giving, continually giving a – “greater grace”.
Beloved, whatever our sinful struggles may be, our only hope is the grace of God. Our only hope is the grace of God. The God of grace—grace that will forgive us, grace that will give us full restoration to fellowship with God, and grace that will empower us, enable us for future obedience.
The problem is, the very thing we need, which is grace, comes only on one condition. There's a prerequisite, if you will, and that prerequisite, that condition for receiving grace, as we saw last time, is what? Humility. Humility. James makes this point clearly by quoting Proverbs 3:34 at the end of verse 6: "Therefore, it," referring to the Scripture—that the word "it" is a reference to the Scripture—"it says, 'God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"
James wants us to know that pride not only puts us on a collision course with other people—we see that all the time—but pride also puts us on a collision course first and foremost with God Himself. On the other hand, God is constantly, graciously giving grace to the humble. It's hard to imagine James stressing the priority of humility any more than that. The very thing that we most need to deal with our sin, both for forgiveness and restoration of fellowship and for future obedience, is grace—grace from Him who is full of grace. And the one way to get grace is through the virtue of humility.
I was reminded this week in preparation of the prophet Micah, Micah 6:8, who underscores the priority of this wonderful virtue of humility. Micah 6:8—we're familiar with this verse—where we read, "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, to love lovingkindness,” – and here it is, – “And to walk humbly with your God?" That's it. To do justice, love lovingkindness, and walk humbly with your God. I love the picture of walking—to walk with God. Let that be your lifestyle. Let that be the pattern of life. That's what God requires.
Augustine, the early church father, in one of his famous sayings, put it this way. He said, and I quote, "For those who would learn God's ways, for those who would learn God's ways, humility is the first thing. Humility is second, and humility is the third." There it is—humility. That's walking humbly with your God. So you want to learn God's ways? Humility is first. And then, humility is second, and humility is third. You've heard the little saying about real estate, that the key to real estate is what? Location, location, location. Well, the key to spiritual life in the kingdom of God is humility, humility, humility.
James points us to one of the really bedrock laws of God's moral universe. You see, we can only come to benefit from God's grace through what? Humility. The only way to benefit from God's grace is to humble ourselves, to develop that posture, to cultivate that posture. So that immediately raises another crucial question, and that is, how is it that we can humble ourselves before God? How is it that we could do that?
You see, the truth is that we're all, by nature, very proud. So how is it that we can humble ourselves so that we can receive that grace? The answer James gives us is very straightforward and very simple. We humble ourselves before God so that we can receive His grace by—ready for this? ‘Metanoia’—repentance. Repentance. That's how we humble ourselves. That's how we humble ourselves before God so we can become the recipients of His grace. The path that leads from sin and pride to humility is what? Repentance. There's no other way around it. There's no other way around it. The path that leads from sin and pride to humility is repentance.
Remember the flow of the passage here. James began by rebuking us for quarreling and fighting and for sinful arguments among ourselves. And by the way, the language is very strong. Keep this in mind—he's really pushing the professing believers to examine their faith. He wants to distinguish between, to separate, the wheat from the weed, and he really wants to make sure that we examine our faith and make sure that it's not a spurious faith, but that it is a real faith. And so, it is a double-edged sword here. Keep that in mind.
So remember the flow of the passage. James began by rebuking us for quarreling and fighting and sinful arguments among ourselves and then explained that the source of that arguing is a heart—really, the source of the heart. The heart of the man is the man of the heart, and the source of arguing is a heart that is intent on satisfying its own pleasure. Beware of becoming self-absorbed, self-centered, self-focused.
And so here he says that the source is a heart that's intent on satisfying its own pleasures, and that means that the real sin at the heart level is what? Loving our own pleasures more than we love God. In other words, spiritual adultery. That's what it is. When you love yourself more than God, when you love someone else more than God, when you love something else more than God, that's spiritual adultery.
But now James, as it were, peels another layer off the onion to take us to the true center, the real heart of our problems, the root that lies beneath spiritual adultery and ultimately of all sin, and it is pride. Pride is ugly. Pride is sickening. Let's speak that together because ultimately, every time we sin, fundamentally, ultimately, every time we sin, we have concluded in our own minds that we know better than God knows. We're making a deliberate choice against God.
So that means that whether we are the sinning children of God or whether we are complete strangers to God—let me say that again—whether you sit here this evening guilty of a besetting sin of some kind in your life and you're a child of God who's dealing with that, and you know you belong to God but you have continually engaged yourself in some particular sin, or whether you sit here this evening never having really bowed your knee to Jesus Christ, never having embraced Him as Lord and Savior. Either way, the way home is essentially the same, and it is to humble ourselves in genuine repentance before God. One, obviously, in regeneration salvation. The other is in repentance and cleansing renewal.
In James 4:7–10, we have a series of commands. These commands flow out of the proverb that occurs in verse 6, and as we'll see, this series of commands is an exposition of humble, heartfelt repentance. So we're going to zero in tonight on repentance. Amazingly, this passage is practically identical to 1 Peter 5:5–9. What that probably means, as one commentator says, is “that what James tells us here is really a widespread Christian call to repentance”.
In other words, in the early church, when you wanted to explain repentance to someone, you laid out this path. You said, "You want to know what repentance is? You want to understand what real repentance is as opposed to counterfeit repentance? Here it is. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like.”
Now, when you look at verses 7 through 10, the structure of these verses is very deliberate by James under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It's also very clear. Let's look at the big picture first before we delve into the details. Notice that verses 7 through 10, the section that we're going to deal with, begins and ends with a summary statement. Verse 7: "Be subject therefore to God." You see it? "Be subject therefore to God." Notice the word "therefore" then links this command back to the proverb quoted in verse 6. Then notice now verse 10: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord." Now, it's clear that this command also is linked back to the proverb that is quoted in verse 6 because the verb "humble" in verse 10 and the noun "humble" in verse 6 are different forms of the same Greek word.
So you have these two statements in verse 7, "Be subject to God," and in verse 10, "Humble yourselves." They are essentially synonymous, and so they serve as, if you will, bookends, supporting the rest of the description of repentance. In these two summary statements in verses 7 and 10, we have really captured for us the essence of repentance in two words. It's distilled in two words. Look at them for a moment. The first word, translated in English, "Be subject" (verse 7), and the second word in verse 10, "Humble." Be subject and humble. These two words are essentially synonyms that begin and end the passage and explain for us in the simplest terms a sketch of true biblical repentance. You want to understand what true biblical repentance is about? Be subject, humble.
Now, the Greek word "be subject"—we've come across this word before in our studies in the New Testament—’hypotagēte’ in verse 7, translated "be subject," literally means to put in order under, to rank under. It's a word that describes willingly submitting your will to the will of someone else in authority over you, to come under that person's authority, to place yourself under someone else's authority. It is a passive form here, and the passive form indicates the submission is therefore to be voluntary from the heart. In secular Greek, it was used of a soldier who willingly submitted his will to the will of his commanding officer, so he submitted himself to the commanding officer's will to do their bidding.
One commentator, writing of verse 7, says this in his commentary, and I quote, "To submit to God means to place ourselves under His Lordship, and therefore to commit ourselves to obey Him in all things." In all things, not selective obedience. But this is comprehensive obedience. Then, when you come to verse 10, the word "humble"—’tapeinōthēte’—this word means simply to make oneself low, to bring low, to lay low. It was often used in the septuagint of literally making yourself low or prostrating yourself before someone else, recognizing your utter need, and absolutely throwing your body flat before another person.
Those attitudes are the heart of repentance, beloved. The essence of repentance is a willing submission of our rebel hearts to God, casting ourselves, as it were, before His feet, begging for His mercy and His grace. That's what repentance is. This is a picture in those two words of what ‘metanoia’, repentance, really is.
Now, sandwiched between those two bookends are a series of imperatives, a series of commands grouped deliberately under inspiration by James into three couplets. So think of "Be subject to God" and "Humble yourselves" as summaries, bookends, and all of those commands in between are grouped into sets of twos—couplets. Let's look at them together.
Couplet number one: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." Couplet number two: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." Couplet number three: "Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom."
Three couplets.
Now, here's the key to understanding this passage. Each of those couplets provides us with a fresh insight into genuine, biblical, authentic repentance. Each couplet tells us how to submit to God and how to humble ourselves before God. So those three couplets outline for us three components—essential components—of repentance. Three essential components of genuine repentance.
All right, now let us roll up our sleeves and let's begin. The first component, genuine repentance, is found in the first couplet, and we could summarize it this way under this first heading: turn your heart to God. Turn your heart to God. Notice the end of verse seven: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
Let's look at those two together. They tell us that we must turn toward God—turn from sin toward God. Notice the first one: “Resist the devil”. This simply means to refuse to bow to Satan's authority. It is a call to change allegiances. You see, what James is saying is that when we are sinning, it's as if we have changed our alliances from God to Satan in that instance, and repentance begins by severing our alliances with Satan by saying, I will not live in his ways, I will not live in his paths anymore, and I'm going to turn and instead realign myself with God. I'm going to turn my heart toward God.
And the word "resist"—’antistēte’ to me is not an offensive word, by the way; it is a defensive word. It means to stand against. It means to hold your ground, to cut off any vestige of the loyalties that we've had with Satan, to cut off any vestige of alliances with the enemy, and to stand really against him and really renew our alliances with God and make our alliances with Him crystal clear.
Now, Paul gives us a graphic picture of what that means—to stand against Satan or resist the devil—in Ephesians chapter six. And I was tempted to tell us to turn there, but I would refer us to the messages, several messages on that. The armor of God in Ephesians 6:10, and we do well really to go back to it and refresh our minds there and our hearts with that as well.
But in James 4, James gives this promise: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." If you stand against Satan with those weapons—the weapons outlined in that divine panoply that God gives us in Ephesians six—if you stand against the enemy with those weapons, he will flee. Resist him, and he will flee. Resist the devil. Cut off your compliance with the enemy. Stand firm against him. Declare whose side you're really on.
Now, notice the second half of the first couplet: "Draw near to God." Draw near to Him. The septuagint, by the way, often uses this word—the Greek word ‘engisate’, translated draw near—particularly to describe approaching God in worship. I think more likely here, it's used like in Hosea 12:6, where we read, "Therefore, return to your God, Keep lovingkindness and justice, And hope in your God continually." That word in the septuagint is translated "return"—return to your God, draw near. It's really, in other words, saying, turn your heart toward God afresh. Turn your heart to Him.
Let me show us a couple of other texts where this point is made. Turn with me to Malachi, Malachi chapter three. In the fifth century before Christ, Malachi writes in verse seven, urging the people of Israel to repent. And we read the following, Malachi 3:7: "From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them.” – here it is – “Return to Me, and I will return to you, says Yahweh of hosts." This is what He's calling us to do—draw near to God. Return to God. Turn our hearts toward God.
And I love the way Psalm 145:18 puts it: "Yahweh is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth." That's how you draw near to God. You turn to God by calling out to Him, severing your alliances—the last vestige or every vestige of alliance with the enemy and his ways—and turning to God.
Now, did you catch the implication of James 4:8? "Draw near to God." And the implication is that when we are given to quarreling, to fighting, to conflict, to arguing, therefore to the pursuit of pleasure and cravings and to friendship with the world and to spiritual adultery, that we have actually created a very real separation between ourselves and God. That's the implication. We've put a wedge.
Ever thought about your sin doing that, my sin doing that? When you sin, there's a separation—not severance for the child of God, but for the non-believer, obviously, they're separated from God, period. In that sense, they're severed. But when you sin, there's a separation that occurs.
God is, of course, everywhere, every moment in time. He fills all of space that He's created. This separation is a separation of fellowship, relationship, intimacy. Remember, a grieved Spirit is a withdrawn Spirit in His felt presence and power and intervention in our lives. There's a distance that occurs between us and God when we are engaging ourselves in sin. The hand of the Lord is not shortened that He can't save, and His ear is not heavy that He can't hear, but your sins have separated from your God. So He will not hear, He will not listen. You see, but if we will draw near or return to God in repentance, then here is His amazing promise James gives us. Look at the middle of verse 8: "And He will draw near to you."
God is eager. Remember that bulging door we talked about when David sinned and God sent the prophet Nathan, right? It's just bulging. You know, God is just eager. He wants that door open, but the latch is on the other side where David is. God is ready. He wants to give it. Just open the door. And what is the key? Repentance. Repentance. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you."
You know, I think we see a dramatic picture of this promise in the words of Christ. In Luke 15:20, you remember what Jesus said about the father's response to the prodigal son? Listen carefully to it. "while he," – we read, this is Jesus saying this—"while he," – that is, the prodigal, – "was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion,” – for him – “and ran and embraced him and kissed him."
So much to be said here. What you need to know is this; In the ancient Middle East, it was absolutely, completely shameful for a man, an adult, a father, to run in this way. It was not acceptable. And here, God is pictured as running to the prodigal who's willing to turn back to Him, to turn back home, who's willing to turn to God. That's God's response to the repentant sinner.
And if you're here this evening and you've never come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I promise you on the authority of the Word of God—not on my own authority, but the authority of the Word of God—that if you're willing to turn away from what you've been pursuing and to turn toward God and to draw near to God, just like the prodigal son did, to come to your senses, realize where you have been, and be willing to return to your Creator, to acknowledge your sin and seek forgiveness in the person of His Son, oh, He's eager and ready to run, as it were, and meet you and embrace you and forgive you and receive you to Himself.
But James 4 is also a promise of restored fellowship for the repentant Christian. You see, God always responds to the believer who turns his heart toward God. The first couplet teaches us that repentance, the path to humility, begins by choosing to turn to God, not run away from God. You don't run away from God. When David tried to run away from God, those months, almost a year, I mean, he just could not bear it. My vitality was sucked from me. It wasn't until he says, yes, I'm the man. You're right, Nathan. You said, you're the man. I am. I've sinned. I'm guilty.
Well, the second couplet identifies a second component of genuine repentance. Not only do we need to turn toward God, but number two, we need to turn from all known sin. We need to turn from all known sin. Notice the end of verse eight: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."
Cleanse, purify—cleanse, ‘katharisate’. Cleanse from filth, purify from pollution, and then ‘hagnisate’ is to consecrate, to consecrate oneself, to cleanse from defilement. Both those terms, cleanse and purify, were originally used in the Old Testament to describe the priest's ceremonial cleansing before they could come in and serve in the temple. And they're used together in several contexts where that's what they refer to—that ceremonial cleansing that was necessary before you went in and served the Lord.
But both of these terms eventually came to describe something much different. Not merely ceremonial cleansing, but they came to describe spiritual repentance. And that's what we need to understand.
Turn to Psalm 24, and you'll see in the words of David how these words can be used and are used. Psalm 24:3, he's talking about: "Who may ascend into the mountain of Yahweh? And who may rise in His holy place?" Verse four: "He who has,” – what? – “innocent” – or clean – “hands and a pure heart." You see it? He's now taking those words which describe ceremonial cleansing, and he's saying there's something much more needed than ceremony. There must be real, genuine cleansing at a deep level. What level? Heart level.
You come to the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 7:1, we come there and you see the same thing, still used of spiritual repentance. He's just said we shouldn't touch what's unclean in the previous chapter, 2 Corinthians 6:17. And in 2 Corinthians 7:1, he says: "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." So James is saying to all of us in verse eight: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded." He's saying you have dirty hands and a divided heart.
And notice now, this is not a reference to our need of God's cleansing—that's true. We do need God's cleansing, but that's not what he's saying here. He's saying we need to clean up ourselves: "Cleanse your hands." Now you say, what about the word sinners? James uses the word sinners, a term, granted, usually reserved for unbelievers. And remember, it's a double-edged sword. But he also uses it here because it describes the reality that although we have been forgiven, although we have been delivered from the wrath of God, we're still guilty of sinful actions against God.
And here, it's in the context of those who are engaged in this quarreling and conflict, and really having those ‘hēdonais’—the pleasures, the cravings that are sought to be satisfied—and if someone gets in the way, well, we're gonna deal with them. And he says: "Cleanse your hands." Hands is an obvious reference to our deeds, to our actions, to our behavior, and so to clean our hands means that we must repent of, we must turn from, we must leave all behavior that's against God's character and His law.
And in the context of James 4, the specific sins that James is referring to are what? Arguing and fighting and living for sinful cravings and pleasure, being self-absorbed and self-centered. And he says, “Cleanse your hands”. And James adds, “purify your hearts”, you ‘dipsychoi’, you double-minded, you two-souled. Hearts, of course, refers to our thoughts, our attitudes, our affections—those things going on inside of us at the deepest level. And he calls us double-minded, a reference to someone who's torn between two, someone who is torn between, really in this context, his love for the Lord and love for his darling sin, someone with divided loyalties.
So to purify a double-minded heart means that we must cleanse ourselves from all of those sinful thoughts, all of those sinful desires and attitudes that stand opposed to Christ. Again, in the context of James 4, he's urging us to repent of our divided allegiances, our spiritual adultery, loving the things of the world—to put it, as Jeremiah does, from worshiping the idols of our hearts, really.
And the question that comes to mind, and I'm sure perhaps you're thinking about it: Okay, great, I understand, this is important, we need to turn from sin, but how do we do that? How do you cleanse yourself of external behavior? How do you purify your heart of sinful thoughts and divided loyalties? How do you do that?
Well, it's very simple. You cleanse your hands from sinful deeds by refusing to carry out those deeds. You refuse to do it. And you clean your heart by refusing to let your mind dwell—the key word is dwell—on ungodly things. See, ungodly thoughts will come into our minds. They will pop in, they will find their way because of our remaining corruption. But you clean your heart by refusing to let your mind dwell on ungodly things.
Turn with me, if you will, to see the context, to see this in the context of the Old Testament, Isaiah 1. Isaiah 1. Isaiah is rebuking God's people, Judah, for their sin. Verse 15, he says—and again, he's dealing with a mixed bag, right? Faithful, believing Jews, and you have those who are associated with them who have a spurious faith, so it is a double-edged sword. So when he says in verse 15, "So when you spread out your hands in prayer," – God is speaking through the prophet, look at God's reaction: – "I will hide My eyes from you." – Shocking, isn't it? – "Indeed, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen." – And why? He tells them, –"Your hands are full of blood."
Cleanse your hands. Verse 16: "Wash yourselves, purify yourselves." – How? Well, he goes on to explain –"Remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Execute justice for the orphan, Plead for the widow." This is what it means to cleanse our hands. It means to let go of our sin and go on the path of obedience. Cleanse your hands.
Well, what about the heart? What about the heart? Turn to Jeremiah 4. Jeremiah 4. Jeremiah is talking to the people of Israel, particularly to Judah. And he says in verse 14—Jeremiah 4—here it is: "Wash your heart from evil." – You see it? – "Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem, that you may be saved." – What does that mean? Well, he defines it in the second half of the verse – "How long will your wicked thoughts Lodge within you?" You see it? He says, listen, get rid of those evil thoughts, evil things, don't allow them in your head. And when they come in, don't dwell on them, don't entertain them.
Maybe you're still wondering exactly how that happens, how that fleshes out in real life. I'm so thankful for Peter because Peter makes it very clear for us. 1 Peter 1. Turn with me to 1 Peter 1.
Here's how it happens. Here's how it happens. He says in 1 Peter 1:22, You've purified your souls. Verse 22, You've purified your souls. How, Peter, how? Here it is: “in obedience to the truth”. You see it? In obedience to the truth. Here's how you cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. You turn from what you know to be sin, and you strive by the grace of God to obey God. You get on the path of obedience. You make a commitment to obey God. You purify your soul in obedience to the truth.
So the first component of repentance is turning your heart back to God. The second one is turning from all known sin. And the third element of repentance is found in James 4:9: cultivate godly sorrow. Cultivate godly sorrow. Notice what James says back in James 4: "Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom." Now, let me say this, beloved. It doesn't mean, as Christians, that we ought to walk around gloomy and glum all the time. And it doesn't mean that laughter is sinful or prohibited.
In fact, Psalm 126:2 says, "Then our mouth was filled with laughter And our tongue with shouts of joy;" – Why? – "Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.”” Yahweh has done great things for us; we are glad. Of course, we rejoice. We laugh, we shout, we're filled with joy because of all that God has done for us. And we are with Paul, saying, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice."
Nothing, absolutely nothing— in fact, we ought to be joyful and rejoicing people. But here's what James is saying. To paraphrase: there's a time to laugh, and there's a time to weep.
It's like our Lord's words in Luke 6:25: "Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and cry." See, what both Jesus and James are warning about is the kind of superficial happiness and laughter and joy that still tolerates sin in our life—duplicity, hypocrisy.
One commentator put it this way, and I quote: "When a Christian compromises with the world and is double-minded, it's a sure sign that his sense of the gravity of sin has become blunted." May it never be. God forbid that this would be you and I, that we're so dabbling with the world and become tossed to and fro, so much so that our sense of the gravity of sin has become blunted.
James is saying, listen, when we've been tolerating sin in our lives, it's not a time for lightheartedness. Genuine repentance cuts, and it cuts deep. Notice the words that he uses in verse 9: "Be miserable." He's calling for a state of feeling miserable and wretched. A good translation of this word ‘talaipōrēsate’ would be this: be devastated with shame over your sin. Be devastated with shame over your sin.
Before we continue, let me be quick to say at the same time, as this is absolutely part of genuine repentance, beloved, let me caution us. We need to be devastated with shame over our sin and mourn, but be careful—don't stay there. Don't stay there. Failure is never final. Because there's the cross. Because there's grace. So we need to be devastated with shame over our sin. And then look at the word "mourn." ‘penthēsate’, the Greek verb, refers to a deep kind of inner grief. And then he uses the word ‘klausate’ to describe the sort of violent wails that often accompanied funerals in the Middle East, both in the ancient world and even today, by the way—it continues. As they mourn and they wail over the loss of a loved one, he uses those three words: "Be miserable and mourn and cry." Together, these terms speak of an utterly broken heart.
The sad thing is, some professing Christians are so out of touch with their spiritual condition that they're laughing when they ought to be weeping. And they're in that state for so long, they don't even blush because their sense of sensitivity, their sense of the gravity of sin, has become indeed blunted. God help us. God insulate us, so that we keep our cutting edge, that we're not blunted. And so James adds in verse 9, "Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom."
Beloved, when God calls His sinning people to Himself, it always involves, always, always, a deep sorrow for sin. Repentance is not a frivolous, "Sorry, God," while you're on your way doing other things. Well, let us see what it looks like. Turn back to the prophet Joel. In Joel's prophecy, he's telling the people that judgment is coming, a plague is coming. In chapter 2, in the middle of the prophesying of this judgment, notice what he says in chapter 2 of Joel, verse 12. We read, "”Yet even now,” declares Yahweh,” – even while I am prophesying this judgment, “”Yet even now,” declares Yahweh, “Return to Me,"” – look at this, – "with all your heart."
This is not a frivolous, "Sorry, God." This is not a half-hearted, "Sorry, God." "Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping and wailing; And tear your heart and not your garments."
Back then, in the ancient world, a sign that you were weeping over some devastating event in your life was to tear your outer garment. It was clear to everyone around you that you were truly repentant. Obviously, it was supposed to be a reflection of what was going on in the heart. The Lord says, "I'm not interested in your outer garment." He says, "What I'm really interested in is your heart. Tear your heart before Me."
And He goes on to say, "Now return to Yahweh your God, For He is," – I love this, – "gracious." Yes, mourn and weep and tear your heart and not your garment and wail and fast and all of this. Return, because “I’m gracious and compassionate”. My arms are wide open. I'm slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting concerning evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him." Such is our God. He's by nature, what? Forgiving. He's ready to pardon.
That's what we're to do. We're to be filled with fasting and mourning and weeping, and we're to tear our hearts, as it were, before God. The truth is, Scripture says every single sinner, every sinner without exception, will eventually mourn his sin. Every single one. Every single one. Did you hear that? The Scripture is clear. Every single sinner, without exception, will eventually mourn his sin. It will either be now or it will be when it's too late, when God has already begun to display His wrath.
It's amazing, really, how unbelievers laugh about their sin. They're often so proud of it, laugh about it, think it's a joke. And some of them even make some joke about having a good time in hell, a party in hell, as if it were sort of the ultimate party. Either they're ignorant or they dismiss what Jesus describes as a place of eternal torment, where there is wailing and grinding of teeth, where there's fire that never is quenched.
And sadly, sadly, tragically, even Christians can become lighthearted about their sin over time—baby steps of compromise. Douglas Moore writes in his commentary, and I quote, "A carefree, devil-may-care attitude is typical of those who are friends of the world. They live the hedonist philosophy, eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die, a worldview that ignores the terrifying reality of God's judgment." Then he says this, "But even the committed Christian can slip into a casual attitude towards sin, perhaps presuming too much on God's forgiving and merciful nature. James's words in this passage directly counter any such attitude. He wants us to see sin for what it is, a serious breach in our relationship with a loving Heavenly Father, a breach that, if not healed, can lead to both temporal and spiritual disaster".
Contrast the casual attitude towards sin with the kind of true repentance that Paul describes for us in 2 Corinthians 7. We'll close with that. Let's look at that together, and we need to see this. In the interest of time, I won't take much time here, but I just want us to see this in verse 8. This is a marvelous study—one day I'll probably go to that passage on repentance. In verse 8, he says, I wrote you a letter, and it made you sorrowful, but then he says, but I'm glad, verse 9, because it made you “sorrowful to repentance."
Verse 10 says there are two kinds of sorrow about sin. There's one that isn't true repentance and one that it not. It's just being sorry for the trouble it causes, sorry that you got caught, sorry that there are consequences, whatever. And then he says there's this true godly sorrow that leads to true repentance. Let me tell you what godly sorrow looks like, he says. Verse 11—here it is. Here's what true biblical repentance produces and what godly sorrow looks like: "For behold what earnestness”, – what eagerness, this very thing, – “this godly sorrow –has brought about in you." When there's true repentance, Paul says, there's an eagerness to deal with it. There's an eagerness to deal with sin.
And he goes on to say, "what vindication of yourselves" When there's true sorrow toward repentance—real sorrow, godly sorrow, you want to set the stigma of sin that's been attached to you right. You want to deal with it. "what indignation" This is the word for righteous anger, not against others, but against ourselves, our own sin. And he says, "what fear" True repentance produces a genuine fear of God, who holds our breath in His hand. And then he says, "what longing" This word longing describes the intense desire for a relationship with God to be restored. "what zeal" This is the word for jealousy—what jealousy! And then he says, "what avenging of wrong!" This doesn't mean carrying out vengeance on others; it means dealing with sin, being absolutely ruthless in our dealing with the sin in our lives—the strike of the first rising of sin, to hack it to pieces, to use Pastor MacArthur's words.
That's what true repentance looks like. That's what godly sorrow looks like. Now, here's the question: How can we cultivate that kind of godly sorrow in our hearts? Well, as we bring this to a conclusion, there are a couple of things we can do. First of all, contemplate the goodness of God, the kindness of God. Contemplate. Meditate. Let that sink in. Let that marinate your mind and your heart. Contemplate God's kindness, God's goodness.
Romans 2:4—Paul tells us that "the kindness" – ‘chrēstotētos’, the benevolence, the goodness of God leads us where? "to repentance." To repentance. Isn't that good of God? You know, He didn't say the judgment of God—He says the goodness of God. The kindness of God. Contemplate the kindness of God, the goodness of God to you, and if you really think about it, if you dwell on it, your response to Him—it will drive you to a godly sorrow over your sin.
Lord, You are good. You sent Your one and only Son. You did not spare Your one and only Son but delivered Him for—Lord, that’s how much You—oh, You're good, Lord, You're good. I repent of my sin.
Secondly, you want to cultivate a godly sorrow. Come to a full understanding of who God is and His holiness. He is the thrice-holy God. Remember Isaiah 6? He sees God for all that He is in His marvelous, infinite, great holiness, and how does he respond? Woe is me. Damned is me. Woe is me, for I am undone. For my eyes have what? Seen the King. You want a godly sorrow about your sin? Then behold God's goodness. Behold God's holiness. Behold God's holiness.
And finally, look at your own sinfulness and see it the way God sees it. Come to a full understanding of your own sinfulness through the Word of God. Several passages drive this point home—that the Word of God leads us to appreciate and understand our sinfulness for what it is. In Acts chapter 2, you remember Peter preaches this marvelous sermon, and after he's done preaching, it says, "when they heard this," – when they heard the sermon, the Word of God, the message of God, they heard the Word of God taught, what happened? It says in chapter 2, verse 37, "they were pierced.", “they were pierced to the heart”. They were stabbed in their heart.
My prayer, beloved, all week and this evening and now, even as I say this, is that if you're sitting here this evening and you're living in a pattern of unrepentant sin, that the Word of God would pierce you to the heart and make you appreciate your true condition before a holy God. In 2 Corinthians 7:8, Paul says, My letter filled you with godly sorrow. The Word of God produces that in us.
Beloved, back to James 4. He ends this paragraph in verse 10 with a summary command that takes us back to verse 6: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord." You see, if God gives grace to the humble, then the way to experience God's grace is to humble ourselves before Him. And as we've seen this evening, the way to humble ourselves is to repent and turn to God, to turn from our sin and to cultivate godly sorrow for sin, to recognize our spiritual poverty, our desperate need of God's grace.
But when I hear that, my response is, what yours should be as well. How can we repent like that, both of us? How? You see, even our repentance needs to be repented of. You know what's incredible? Even genuine repentance is a gift of grace. God has granted, granted, granted repentance. Acts 11:18—free gift. That's what the promise in verse 10 means: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you." In context, God's promise that He would exalt us or lift us up refers back to the promise of grace in verse 6. In other words, "He will exalt you" means He will give you the grace He promised if you humble yourself in repentance.
I love what one commentator said about this. He said this, and I quote, "James is telling us to expect that God will come near to forgive sin, to restore joy, to strengthen the repentant sinner to live in purity and righteousness. He will acknowledge you if you will humble yourself."
So what's the solution? The remedy to quarreling and fighting? It's the same remedy as every other sin—God's grace. God's grace. And God gives it to the one who humbles his heart before Him in genuine repentance. But here's the really amazing part, and don't miss this. God always responds to genuine repentance with grace. Write it down, especially because you and I will need it. God always responds to genuine repentance with grace.
And there are so many places where this is clear. I love Isaiah 55:7: "Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to Yahweh, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, for He will” – pardon? No, – “He will abundantly pardon." This is God. This is our God. When we turn in genuine repentance to Him, He always responds in grace. God always welcomes home the prodigal who's willing to leave his sin and return home to the Father.
Let's pray.
Our Father, I pray this evening that You would use Your word in our hearts. I pray for the person here this evening who perhaps never repented, never bowed the knee to Christ, never acknowledged their sin, never cried out for Your forgiveness. Lord, I pray today would be the day that You would humble them before Your word and before Yourself. That they would find a place, even tonight, where they could fall down before You, prostrate themselves before You, Lord. Humble themselves, submit their will to Yours, and follow the path of repentance laid out in this amazing passage.
And I pray, O Lord, for the one who professes Christ but has been living a pattern of unrepentant sin. I pray this evening that You would strip away all the facade and the hypocrisy that they have concocted. And that You would bring them to the place where they see themselves as You see them, to see their sin for what it is before You. That they would mourn and weep and cry and wail and cry out for Your forgiveness. That they would turn from it to You.
And Father, I pray for the rest of us, Your children who know You, who aren't living in a pattern of unrepentant sin. Nevertheless, our lives every day need repentance. We contend with the world, the devil, and the remains of corruption. We sin constantly against You. Father, I pray that You would help us understand what repentance is. That You would help us to live a life of repentance before You and humility. O Lord, we ask all of these things to the glory of Your great Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen
We've gone through each of these three practical, great steps carefully, I trust, and just to remind us of them, the first one in terms of dealing with sinful conflict in our lives is, he says, first you have to identify the source of conflict. And that's found in the first three verses of chapter 4. The true source that lies behind arguing and fighting and quarreling, he says, is our ‘hēdonōn’, pleasures, or more exactly, the craving of our hearts for those sinful pleasures and fulfillment of them. We want them, we want them bad, and don't stand in my way—I'm going to get them. Or else, you know, you'll suffer the consequences.
So we come into conflict with others because they stand in the way of what we want, and that's what James wants us to see. He says if we're going to overcome sinful conflict, we have to understand that the true source of conflict ultimately lies within our hearts because of what we want that is not being fulfilled.
The second practical step for dealing with sinful conflict in our lives is found in verses 4 and 5, and we put it this way: we need to magnify or amplify the real sin behind the conflict so we can see it. We need to really amplify it. We need to magnify it. You see, when we look back as far as we can look back at what lies behind the sin of quarreling and arguing, we find fundamentally that it's the sin of spiritual adultery. James uses the word "adulteresses." James begins verse 4 by saying, "Adulteresses," and you see, he says when we are engaged in a pattern of sinful arguing and fighting in our lives, it shows that we love the pleasures of this world, the fulfillment of those sinful pleasures, more than we love God. And that, at its heart, is, as James says, friendship with the world, and it is hostility, enmity with God. It is spiritual adultery.
The third practical step that we saw together is found in verses 6 through 10. We began to look at this the last couple of weeks: identify the right solution to the conflict. Identify the remedy, the right remedy to the conflict. Understand exactly what the remedy is. And the remedy, as we've seen together, is simply bound up in one word, that beautiful word that you and I are familiar with, but we can never become too familiar with it, and we shouldn't. It's that word ‘charin’ grace, grace, the grace of God. Verse 6 says, "But He," – that is God, – "is giving”-- literally is giving, continually giving a – “greater grace”.
Beloved, whatever our sinful struggles may be, our only hope is the grace of God. Our only hope is the grace of God. The God of grace—grace that will forgive us, grace that will give us full restoration to fellowship with God, and grace that will empower us, enable us for future obedience.
The problem is, the very thing we need, which is grace, comes only on one condition. There's a prerequisite, if you will, and that prerequisite, that condition for receiving grace, as we saw last time, is what? Humility. Humility. James makes this point clearly by quoting Proverbs 3:34 at the end of verse 6: "Therefore, it," referring to the Scripture—that the word "it" is a reference to the Scripture—"it says, 'God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"
James wants us to know that pride not only puts us on a collision course with other people—we see that all the time—but pride also puts us on a collision course first and foremost with God Himself. On the other hand, God is constantly, graciously giving grace to the humble. It's hard to imagine James stressing the priority of humility any more than that. The very thing that we most need to deal with our sin, both for forgiveness and restoration of fellowship and for future obedience, is grace—grace from Him who is full of grace. And the one way to get grace is through the virtue of humility.
I was reminded this week in preparation of the prophet Micah, Micah 6:8, who underscores the priority of this wonderful virtue of humility. Micah 6:8—we're familiar with this verse—where we read, "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, to love lovingkindness,” – and here it is, – “And to walk humbly with your God?" That's it. To do justice, love lovingkindness, and walk humbly with your God. I love the picture of walking—to walk with God. Let that be your lifestyle. Let that be the pattern of life. That's what God requires.
Augustine, the early church father, in one of his famous sayings, put it this way. He said, and I quote, "For those who would learn God's ways, for those who would learn God's ways, humility is the first thing. Humility is second, and humility is the third." There it is—humility. That's walking humbly with your God. So you want to learn God's ways? Humility is first. And then, humility is second, and humility is third. You've heard the little saying about real estate, that the key to real estate is what? Location, location, location. Well, the key to spiritual life in the kingdom of God is humility, humility, humility.
James points us to one of the really bedrock laws of God's moral universe. You see, we can only come to benefit from God's grace through what? Humility. The only way to benefit from God's grace is to humble ourselves, to develop that posture, to cultivate that posture. So that immediately raises another crucial question, and that is, how is it that we can humble ourselves before God? How is it that we could do that?
You see, the truth is that we're all, by nature, very proud. So how is it that we can humble ourselves so that we can receive that grace? The answer James gives us is very straightforward and very simple. We humble ourselves before God so that we can receive His grace by—ready for this? ‘Metanoia’—repentance. Repentance. That's how we humble ourselves. That's how we humble ourselves before God so we can become the recipients of His grace. The path that leads from sin and pride to humility is what? Repentance. There's no other way around it. There's no other way around it. The path that leads from sin and pride to humility is repentance.
Remember the flow of the passage here. James began by rebuking us for quarreling and fighting and for sinful arguments among ourselves. And by the way, the language is very strong. Keep this in mind—he's really pushing the professing believers to examine their faith. He wants to distinguish between, to separate, the wheat from the weed, and he really wants to make sure that we examine our faith and make sure that it's not a spurious faith, but that it is a real faith. And so, it is a double-edged sword here. Keep that in mind.
So remember the flow of the passage. James began by rebuking us for quarreling and fighting and sinful arguments among ourselves and then explained that the source of that arguing is a heart—really, the source of the heart. The heart of the man is the man of the heart, and the source of arguing is a heart that is intent on satisfying its own pleasure. Beware of becoming self-absorbed, self-centered, self-focused.
And so here he says that the source is a heart that's intent on satisfying its own pleasures, and that means that the real sin at the heart level is what? Loving our own pleasures more than we love God. In other words, spiritual adultery. That's what it is. When you love yourself more than God, when you love someone else more than God, when you love something else more than God, that's spiritual adultery.
But now James, as it were, peels another layer off the onion to take us to the true center, the real heart of our problems, the root that lies beneath spiritual adultery and ultimately of all sin, and it is pride. Pride is ugly. Pride is sickening. Let's speak that together because ultimately, every time we sin, fundamentally, ultimately, every time we sin, we have concluded in our own minds that we know better than God knows. We're making a deliberate choice against God.
So that means that whether we are the sinning children of God or whether we are complete strangers to God—let me say that again—whether you sit here this evening guilty of a besetting sin of some kind in your life and you're a child of God who's dealing with that, and you know you belong to God but you have continually engaged yourself in some particular sin, or whether you sit here this evening never having really bowed your knee to Jesus Christ, never having embraced Him as Lord and Savior. Either way, the way home is essentially the same, and it is to humble ourselves in genuine repentance before God. One, obviously, in regeneration salvation. The other is in repentance and cleansing renewal.
In James 4:7–10, we have a series of commands. These commands flow out of the proverb that occurs in verse 6, and as we'll see, this series of commands is an exposition of humble, heartfelt repentance. So we're going to zero in tonight on repentance. Amazingly, this passage is practically identical to 1 Peter 5:5–9. What that probably means, as one commentator says, is “that what James tells us here is really a widespread Christian call to repentance”.
In other words, in the early church, when you wanted to explain repentance to someone, you laid out this path. You said, "You want to know what repentance is? You want to understand what real repentance is as opposed to counterfeit repentance? Here it is. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like.”
Now, when you look at verses 7 through 10, the structure of these verses is very deliberate by James under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It's also very clear. Let's look at the big picture first before we delve into the details. Notice that verses 7 through 10, the section that we're going to deal with, begins and ends with a summary statement. Verse 7: "Be subject therefore to God." You see it? "Be subject therefore to God." Notice the word "therefore" then links this command back to the proverb quoted in verse 6. Then notice now verse 10: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord." Now, it's clear that this command also is linked back to the proverb that is quoted in verse 6 because the verb "humble" in verse 10 and the noun "humble" in verse 6 are different forms of the same Greek word.
So you have these two statements in verse 7, "Be subject to God," and in verse 10, "Humble yourselves." They are essentially synonymous, and so they serve as, if you will, bookends, supporting the rest of the description of repentance. In these two summary statements in verses 7 and 10, we have really captured for us the essence of repentance in two words. It's distilled in two words. Look at them for a moment. The first word, translated in English, "Be subject" (verse 7), and the second word in verse 10, "Humble." Be subject and humble. These two words are essentially synonyms that begin and end the passage and explain for us in the simplest terms a sketch of true biblical repentance. You want to understand what true biblical repentance is about? Be subject, humble.
Now, the Greek word "be subject"—we've come across this word before in our studies in the New Testament—’hypotagēte’ in verse 7, translated "be subject," literally means to put in order under, to rank under. It's a word that describes willingly submitting your will to the will of someone else in authority over you, to come under that person's authority, to place yourself under someone else's authority. It is a passive form here, and the passive form indicates the submission is therefore to be voluntary from the heart. In secular Greek, it was used of a soldier who willingly submitted his will to the will of his commanding officer, so he submitted himself to the commanding officer's will to do their bidding.
One commentator, writing of verse 7, says this in his commentary, and I quote, "To submit to God means to place ourselves under His Lordship, and therefore to commit ourselves to obey Him in all things." In all things, not selective obedience. But this is comprehensive obedience. Then, when you come to verse 10, the word "humble"—’tapeinōthēte’—this word means simply to make oneself low, to bring low, to lay low. It was often used in the septuagint of literally making yourself low or prostrating yourself before someone else, recognizing your utter need, and absolutely throwing your body flat before another person.
Those attitudes are the heart of repentance, beloved. The essence of repentance is a willing submission of our rebel hearts to God, casting ourselves, as it were, before His feet, begging for His mercy and His grace. That's what repentance is. This is a picture in those two words of what ‘metanoia’, repentance, really is.
Now, sandwiched between those two bookends are a series of imperatives, a series of commands grouped deliberately under inspiration by James into three couplets. So think of "Be subject to God" and "Humble yourselves" as summaries, bookends, and all of those commands in between are grouped into sets of twos—couplets. Let's look at them together.
Couplet number one: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." Couplet number two: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." Couplet number three: "Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom."
Three couplets.
Now, here's the key to understanding this passage. Each of those couplets provides us with a fresh insight into genuine, biblical, authentic repentance. Each couplet tells us how to submit to God and how to humble ourselves before God. So those three couplets outline for us three components—essential components—of repentance. Three essential components of genuine repentance.
All right, now let us roll up our sleeves and let's begin. The first component, genuine repentance, is found in the first couplet, and we could summarize it this way under this first heading: turn your heart to God. Turn your heart to God. Notice the end of verse seven: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
Let's look at those two together. They tell us that we must turn toward God—turn from sin toward God. Notice the first one: “Resist the devil”. This simply means to refuse to bow to Satan's authority. It is a call to change allegiances. You see, what James is saying is that when we are sinning, it's as if we have changed our alliances from God to Satan in that instance, and repentance begins by severing our alliances with Satan by saying, I will not live in his ways, I will not live in his paths anymore, and I'm going to turn and instead realign myself with God. I'm going to turn my heart toward God.
And the word "resist"—’antistēte’ to me is not an offensive word, by the way; it is a defensive word. It means to stand against. It means to hold your ground, to cut off any vestige of the loyalties that we've had with Satan, to cut off any vestige of alliances with the enemy, and to stand really against him and really renew our alliances with God and make our alliances with Him crystal clear.
Now, Paul gives us a graphic picture of what that means—to stand against Satan or resist the devil—in Ephesians chapter six. And I was tempted to tell us to turn there, but I would refer us to the messages, several messages on that. The armor of God in Ephesians 6:10, and we do well really to go back to it and refresh our minds there and our hearts with that as well.
But in James 4, James gives this promise: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." If you stand against Satan with those weapons—the weapons outlined in that divine panoply that God gives us in Ephesians six—if you stand against the enemy with those weapons, he will flee. Resist him, and he will flee. Resist the devil. Cut off your compliance with the enemy. Stand firm against him. Declare whose side you're really on.
Now, notice the second half of the first couplet: "Draw near to God." Draw near to Him. The septuagint, by the way, often uses this word—the Greek word ‘engisate’, translated draw near—particularly to describe approaching God in worship. I think more likely here, it's used like in Hosea 12:6, where we read, "Therefore, return to your God, Keep lovingkindness and justice, And hope in your God continually." That word in the septuagint is translated "return"—return to your God, draw near. It's really, in other words, saying, turn your heart toward God afresh. Turn your heart to Him.
Let me show us a couple of other texts where this point is made. Turn with me to Malachi, Malachi chapter three. In the fifth century before Christ, Malachi writes in verse seven, urging the people of Israel to repent. And we read the following, Malachi 3:7: "From the days of your fathers, you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them.” – here it is – “Return to Me, and I will return to you, says Yahweh of hosts." This is what He's calling us to do—draw near to God. Return to God. Turn our hearts toward God.
And I love the way Psalm 145:18 puts it: "Yahweh is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth." That's how you draw near to God. You turn to God by calling out to Him, severing your alliances—the last vestige or every vestige of alliance with the enemy and his ways—and turning to God.
Now, did you catch the implication of James 4:8? "Draw near to God." And the implication is that when we are given to quarreling, to fighting, to conflict, to arguing, therefore to the pursuit of pleasure and cravings and to friendship with the world and to spiritual adultery, that we have actually created a very real separation between ourselves and God. That's the implication. We've put a wedge.
Ever thought about your sin doing that, my sin doing that? When you sin, there's a separation—not severance for the child of God, but for the non-believer, obviously, they're separated from God, period. In that sense, they're severed. But when you sin, there's a separation that occurs.
God is, of course, everywhere, every moment in time. He fills all of space that He's created. This separation is a separation of fellowship, relationship, intimacy. Remember, a grieved Spirit is a withdrawn Spirit in His felt presence and power and intervention in our lives. There's a distance that occurs between us and God when we are engaging ourselves in sin. The hand of the Lord is not shortened that He can't save, and His ear is not heavy that He can't hear, but your sins have separated from your God. So He will not hear, He will not listen. You see, but if we will draw near or return to God in repentance, then here is His amazing promise James gives us. Look at the middle of verse 8: "And He will draw near to you."
God is eager. Remember that bulging door we talked about when David sinned and God sent the prophet Nathan, right? It's just bulging. You know, God is just eager. He wants that door open, but the latch is on the other side where David is. God is ready. He wants to give it. Just open the door. And what is the key? Repentance. Repentance. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you."
You know, I think we see a dramatic picture of this promise in the words of Christ. In Luke 15:20, you remember what Jesus said about the father's response to the prodigal son? Listen carefully to it. "while he," – we read, this is Jesus saying this—"while he," – that is, the prodigal, – "was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion,” – for him – “and ran and embraced him and kissed him."
So much to be said here. What you need to know is this; In the ancient Middle East, it was absolutely, completely shameful for a man, an adult, a father, to run in this way. It was not acceptable. And here, God is pictured as running to the prodigal who's willing to turn back to Him, to turn back home, who's willing to turn to God. That's God's response to the repentant sinner.
And if you're here this evening and you've never come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I promise you on the authority of the Word of God—not on my own authority, but the authority of the Word of God—that if you're willing to turn away from what you've been pursuing and to turn toward God and to draw near to God, just like the prodigal son did, to come to your senses, realize where you have been, and be willing to return to your Creator, to acknowledge your sin and seek forgiveness in the person of His Son, oh, He's eager and ready to run, as it were, and meet you and embrace you and forgive you and receive you to Himself.
But James 4 is also a promise of restored fellowship for the repentant Christian. You see, God always responds to the believer who turns his heart toward God. The first couplet teaches us that repentance, the path to humility, begins by choosing to turn to God, not run away from God. You don't run away from God. When David tried to run away from God, those months, almost a year, I mean, he just could not bear it. My vitality was sucked from me. It wasn't until he says, yes, I'm the man. You're right, Nathan. You said, you're the man. I am. I've sinned. I'm guilty.
Well, the second couplet identifies a second component of genuine repentance. Not only do we need to turn toward God, but number two, we need to turn from all known sin. We need to turn from all known sin. Notice the end of verse eight: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."
Cleanse, purify—cleanse, ‘katharisate’. Cleanse from filth, purify from pollution, and then ‘hagnisate’ is to consecrate, to consecrate oneself, to cleanse from defilement. Both those terms, cleanse and purify, were originally used in the Old Testament to describe the priest's ceremonial cleansing before they could come in and serve in the temple. And they're used together in several contexts where that's what they refer to—that ceremonial cleansing that was necessary before you went in and served the Lord.
But both of these terms eventually came to describe something much different. Not merely ceremonial cleansing, but they came to describe spiritual repentance. And that's what we need to understand.
Turn to Psalm 24, and you'll see in the words of David how these words can be used and are used. Psalm 24:3, he's talking about: "Who may ascend into the mountain of Yahweh? And who may rise in His holy place?" Verse four: "He who has,” – what? – “innocent” – or clean – “hands and a pure heart." You see it? He's now taking those words which describe ceremonial cleansing, and he's saying there's something much more needed than ceremony. There must be real, genuine cleansing at a deep level. What level? Heart level.
You come to the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 7:1, we come there and you see the same thing, still used of spiritual repentance. He's just said we shouldn't touch what's unclean in the previous chapter, 2 Corinthians 6:17. And in 2 Corinthians 7:1, he says: "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." So James is saying to all of us in verse eight: "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded." He's saying you have dirty hands and a divided heart.
And notice now, this is not a reference to our need of God's cleansing—that's true. We do need God's cleansing, but that's not what he's saying here. He's saying we need to clean up ourselves: "Cleanse your hands." Now you say, what about the word sinners? James uses the word sinners, a term, granted, usually reserved for unbelievers. And remember, it's a double-edged sword. But he also uses it here because it describes the reality that although we have been forgiven, although we have been delivered from the wrath of God, we're still guilty of sinful actions against God.
And here, it's in the context of those who are engaged in this quarreling and conflict, and really having those ‘hēdonais’—the pleasures, the cravings that are sought to be satisfied—and if someone gets in the way, well, we're gonna deal with them. And he says: "Cleanse your hands." Hands is an obvious reference to our deeds, to our actions, to our behavior, and so to clean our hands means that we must repent of, we must turn from, we must leave all behavior that's against God's character and His law.
And in the context of James 4, the specific sins that James is referring to are what? Arguing and fighting and living for sinful cravings and pleasure, being self-absorbed and self-centered. And he says, “Cleanse your hands”. And James adds, “purify your hearts”, you ‘dipsychoi’, you double-minded, you two-souled. Hearts, of course, refers to our thoughts, our attitudes, our affections—those things going on inside of us at the deepest level. And he calls us double-minded, a reference to someone who's torn between two, someone who is torn between, really in this context, his love for the Lord and love for his darling sin, someone with divided loyalties.
So to purify a double-minded heart means that we must cleanse ourselves from all of those sinful thoughts, all of those sinful desires and attitudes that stand opposed to Christ. Again, in the context of James 4, he's urging us to repent of our divided allegiances, our spiritual adultery, loving the things of the world—to put it, as Jeremiah does, from worshiping the idols of our hearts, really.
And the question that comes to mind, and I'm sure perhaps you're thinking about it: Okay, great, I understand, this is important, we need to turn from sin, but how do we do that? How do you cleanse yourself of external behavior? How do you purify your heart of sinful thoughts and divided loyalties? How do you do that?
Well, it's very simple. You cleanse your hands from sinful deeds by refusing to carry out those deeds. You refuse to do it. And you clean your heart by refusing to let your mind dwell—the key word is dwell—on ungodly things. See, ungodly thoughts will come into our minds. They will pop in, they will find their way because of our remaining corruption. But you clean your heart by refusing to let your mind dwell on ungodly things.
Turn with me, if you will, to see the context, to see this in the context of the Old Testament, Isaiah 1. Isaiah 1. Isaiah is rebuking God's people, Judah, for their sin. Verse 15, he says—and again, he's dealing with a mixed bag, right? Faithful, believing Jews, and you have those who are associated with them who have a spurious faith, so it is a double-edged sword. So when he says in verse 15, "So when you spread out your hands in prayer," – God is speaking through the prophet, look at God's reaction: – "I will hide My eyes from you." – Shocking, isn't it? – "Indeed, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen." – And why? He tells them, –"Your hands are full of blood."
Cleanse your hands. Verse 16: "Wash yourselves, purify yourselves." – How? Well, he goes on to explain –"Remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Execute justice for the orphan, Plead for the widow." This is what it means to cleanse our hands. It means to let go of our sin and go on the path of obedience. Cleanse your hands.
Well, what about the heart? What about the heart? Turn to Jeremiah 4. Jeremiah 4. Jeremiah is talking to the people of Israel, particularly to Judah. And he says in verse 14—Jeremiah 4—here it is: "Wash your heart from evil." – You see it? – "Wash your heart from evil, O Jerusalem, that you may be saved." – What does that mean? Well, he defines it in the second half of the verse – "How long will your wicked thoughts Lodge within you?" You see it? He says, listen, get rid of those evil thoughts, evil things, don't allow them in your head. And when they come in, don't dwell on them, don't entertain them.
Maybe you're still wondering exactly how that happens, how that fleshes out in real life. I'm so thankful for Peter because Peter makes it very clear for us. 1 Peter 1. Turn with me to 1 Peter 1.
Here's how it happens. Here's how it happens. He says in 1 Peter 1:22, You've purified your souls. Verse 22, You've purified your souls. How, Peter, how? Here it is: “in obedience to the truth”. You see it? In obedience to the truth. Here's how you cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. You turn from what you know to be sin, and you strive by the grace of God to obey God. You get on the path of obedience. You make a commitment to obey God. You purify your soul in obedience to the truth.
So the first component of repentance is turning your heart back to God. The second one is turning from all known sin. And the third element of repentance is found in James 4:9: cultivate godly sorrow. Cultivate godly sorrow. Notice what James says back in James 4: "Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom." Now, let me say this, beloved. It doesn't mean, as Christians, that we ought to walk around gloomy and glum all the time. And it doesn't mean that laughter is sinful or prohibited.
In fact, Psalm 126:2 says, "Then our mouth was filled with laughter And our tongue with shouts of joy;" – Why? – "Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.”” Yahweh has done great things for us; we are glad. Of course, we rejoice. We laugh, we shout, we're filled with joy because of all that God has done for us. And we are with Paul, saying, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice."
Nothing, absolutely nothing— in fact, we ought to be joyful and rejoicing people. But here's what James is saying. To paraphrase: there's a time to laugh, and there's a time to weep.
It's like our Lord's words in Luke 6:25: "Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and cry." See, what both Jesus and James are warning about is the kind of superficial happiness and laughter and joy that still tolerates sin in our life—duplicity, hypocrisy.
One commentator put it this way, and I quote: "When a Christian compromises with the world and is double-minded, it's a sure sign that his sense of the gravity of sin has become blunted." May it never be. God forbid that this would be you and I, that we're so dabbling with the world and become tossed to and fro, so much so that our sense of the gravity of sin has become blunted.
James is saying, listen, when we've been tolerating sin in our lives, it's not a time for lightheartedness. Genuine repentance cuts, and it cuts deep. Notice the words that he uses in verse 9: "Be miserable." He's calling for a state of feeling miserable and wretched. A good translation of this word ‘talaipōrēsate’ would be this: be devastated with shame over your sin. Be devastated with shame over your sin.
Before we continue, let me be quick to say at the same time, as this is absolutely part of genuine repentance, beloved, let me caution us. We need to be devastated with shame over our sin and mourn, but be careful—don't stay there. Don't stay there. Failure is never final. Because there's the cross. Because there's grace. So we need to be devastated with shame over our sin. And then look at the word "mourn." ‘penthēsate’, the Greek verb, refers to a deep kind of inner grief. And then he uses the word ‘klausate’ to describe the sort of violent wails that often accompanied funerals in the Middle East, both in the ancient world and even today, by the way—it continues. As they mourn and they wail over the loss of a loved one, he uses those three words: "Be miserable and mourn and cry." Together, these terms speak of an utterly broken heart.
The sad thing is, some professing Christians are so out of touch with their spiritual condition that they're laughing when they ought to be weeping. And they're in that state for so long, they don't even blush because their sense of sensitivity, their sense of the gravity of sin, has become indeed blunted. God help us. God insulate us, so that we keep our cutting edge, that we're not blunted. And so James adds in verse 9, "Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom."
Beloved, when God calls His sinning people to Himself, it always involves, always, always, a deep sorrow for sin. Repentance is not a frivolous, "Sorry, God," while you're on your way doing other things. Well, let us see what it looks like. Turn back to the prophet Joel. In Joel's prophecy, he's telling the people that judgment is coming, a plague is coming. In chapter 2, in the middle of the prophesying of this judgment, notice what he says in chapter 2 of Joel, verse 12. We read, "”Yet even now,” declares Yahweh,” – even while I am prophesying this judgment, “”Yet even now,” declares Yahweh, “Return to Me,"” – look at this, – "with all your heart."
This is not a frivolous, "Sorry, God." This is not a half-hearted, "Sorry, God." "Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping and wailing; And tear your heart and not your garments."
Back then, in the ancient world, a sign that you were weeping over some devastating event in your life was to tear your outer garment. It was clear to everyone around you that you were truly repentant. Obviously, it was supposed to be a reflection of what was going on in the heart. The Lord says, "I'm not interested in your outer garment." He says, "What I'm really interested in is your heart. Tear your heart before Me."
And He goes on to say, "Now return to Yahweh your God, For He is," – I love this, – "gracious." Yes, mourn and weep and tear your heart and not your garment and wail and fast and all of this. Return, because “I’m gracious and compassionate”. My arms are wide open. I'm slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting concerning evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him." Such is our God. He's by nature, what? Forgiving. He's ready to pardon.
That's what we're to do. We're to be filled with fasting and mourning and weeping, and we're to tear our hearts, as it were, before God. The truth is, Scripture says every single sinner, every sinner without exception, will eventually mourn his sin. Every single one. Every single one. Did you hear that? The Scripture is clear. Every single sinner, without exception, will eventually mourn his sin. It will either be now or it will be when it's too late, when God has already begun to display His wrath.
It's amazing, really, how unbelievers laugh about their sin. They're often so proud of it, laugh about it, think it's a joke. And some of them even make some joke about having a good time in hell, a party in hell, as if it were sort of the ultimate party. Either they're ignorant or they dismiss what Jesus describes as a place of eternal torment, where there is wailing and grinding of teeth, where there's fire that never is quenched.
And sadly, sadly, tragically, even Christians can become lighthearted about their sin over time—baby steps of compromise. Douglas Moore writes in his commentary, and I quote, "A carefree, devil-may-care attitude is typical of those who are friends of the world. They live the hedonist philosophy, eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die, a worldview that ignores the terrifying reality of God's judgment." Then he says this, "But even the committed Christian can slip into a casual attitude towards sin, perhaps presuming too much on God's forgiving and merciful nature. James's words in this passage directly counter any such attitude. He wants us to see sin for what it is, a serious breach in our relationship with a loving Heavenly Father, a breach that, if not healed, can lead to both temporal and spiritual disaster".
Contrast the casual attitude towards sin with the kind of true repentance that Paul describes for us in 2 Corinthians 7. We'll close with that. Let's look at that together, and we need to see this. In the interest of time, I won't take much time here, but I just want us to see this in verse 8. This is a marvelous study—one day I'll probably go to that passage on repentance. In verse 8, he says, I wrote you a letter, and it made you sorrowful, but then he says, but I'm glad, verse 9, because it made you “sorrowful to repentance."
Verse 10 says there are two kinds of sorrow about sin. There's one that isn't true repentance and one that it not. It's just being sorry for the trouble it causes, sorry that you got caught, sorry that there are consequences, whatever. And then he says there's this true godly sorrow that leads to true repentance. Let me tell you what godly sorrow looks like, he says. Verse 11—here it is. Here's what true biblical repentance produces and what godly sorrow looks like: "For behold what earnestness”, – what eagerness, this very thing, – “this godly sorrow –has brought about in you." When there's true repentance, Paul says, there's an eagerness to deal with it. There's an eagerness to deal with sin.
And he goes on to say, "what vindication of yourselves" When there's true sorrow toward repentance—real sorrow, godly sorrow, you want to set the stigma of sin that's been attached to you right. You want to deal with it. "what indignation" This is the word for righteous anger, not against others, but against ourselves, our own sin. And he says, "what fear" True repentance produces a genuine fear of God, who holds our breath in His hand. And then he says, "what longing" This word longing describes the intense desire for a relationship with God to be restored. "what zeal" This is the word for jealousy—what jealousy! And then he says, "what avenging of wrong!" This doesn't mean carrying out vengeance on others; it means dealing with sin, being absolutely ruthless in our dealing with the sin in our lives—the strike of the first rising of sin, to hack it to pieces, to use Pastor MacArthur's words.
That's what true repentance looks like. That's what godly sorrow looks like. Now, here's the question: How can we cultivate that kind of godly sorrow in our hearts? Well, as we bring this to a conclusion, there are a couple of things we can do. First of all, contemplate the goodness of God, the kindness of God. Contemplate. Meditate. Let that sink in. Let that marinate your mind and your heart. Contemplate God's kindness, God's goodness.
Romans 2:4—Paul tells us that "the kindness" – ‘chrēstotētos’, the benevolence, the goodness of God leads us where? "to repentance." To repentance. Isn't that good of God? You know, He didn't say the judgment of God—He says the goodness of God. The kindness of God. Contemplate the kindness of God, the goodness of God to you, and if you really think about it, if you dwell on it, your response to Him—it will drive you to a godly sorrow over your sin.
Lord, You are good. You sent Your one and only Son. You did not spare Your one and only Son but delivered Him for—Lord, that’s how much You—oh, You're good, Lord, You're good. I repent of my sin.
Secondly, you want to cultivate a godly sorrow. Come to a full understanding of who God is and His holiness. He is the thrice-holy God. Remember Isaiah 6? He sees God for all that He is in His marvelous, infinite, great holiness, and how does he respond? Woe is me. Damned is me. Woe is me, for I am undone. For my eyes have what? Seen the King. You want a godly sorrow about your sin? Then behold God's goodness. Behold God's holiness. Behold God's holiness.
And finally, look at your own sinfulness and see it the way God sees it. Come to a full understanding of your own sinfulness through the Word of God. Several passages drive this point home—that the Word of God leads us to appreciate and understand our sinfulness for what it is. In Acts chapter 2, you remember Peter preaches this marvelous sermon, and after he's done preaching, it says, "when they heard this," – when they heard the sermon, the Word of God, the message of God, they heard the Word of God taught, what happened? It says in chapter 2, verse 37, "they were pierced.", “they were pierced to the heart”. They were stabbed in their heart.
My prayer, beloved, all week and this evening and now, even as I say this, is that if you're sitting here this evening and you're living in a pattern of unrepentant sin, that the Word of God would pierce you to the heart and make you appreciate your true condition before a holy God. In 2 Corinthians 7:8, Paul says, My letter filled you with godly sorrow. The Word of God produces that in us.
Beloved, back to James 4. He ends this paragraph in verse 10 with a summary command that takes us back to verse 6: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord." You see, if God gives grace to the humble, then the way to experience God's grace is to humble ourselves before Him. And as we've seen this evening, the way to humble ourselves is to repent and turn to God, to turn from our sin and to cultivate godly sorrow for sin, to recognize our spiritual poverty, our desperate need of God's grace.
But when I hear that, my response is, what yours should be as well. How can we repent like that, both of us? How? You see, even our repentance needs to be repented of. You know what's incredible? Even genuine repentance is a gift of grace. God has granted, granted, granted repentance. Acts 11:18—free gift. That's what the promise in verse 10 means: "Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you." In context, God's promise that He would exalt us or lift us up refers back to the promise of grace in verse 6. In other words, "He will exalt you" means He will give you the grace He promised if you humble yourself in repentance.
I love what one commentator said about this. He said this, and I quote, "James is telling us to expect that God will come near to forgive sin, to restore joy, to strengthen the repentant sinner to live in purity and righteousness. He will acknowledge you if you will humble yourself."
So what's the solution? The remedy to quarreling and fighting? It's the same remedy as every other sin—God's grace. God's grace. And God gives it to the one who humbles his heart before Him in genuine repentance. But here's the really amazing part, and don't miss this. God always responds to genuine repentance with grace. Write it down, especially because you and I will need it. God always responds to genuine repentance with grace.
And there are so many places where this is clear. I love Isaiah 55:7: "Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to Yahweh, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, for He will” – pardon? No, – “He will abundantly pardon." This is God. This is our God. When we turn in genuine repentance to Him, He always responds in grace. God always welcomes home the prodigal who's willing to leave his sin and return home to the Father.
Let's pray.
Our Father, I pray this evening that You would use Your word in our hearts. I pray for the person here this evening who perhaps never repented, never bowed the knee to Christ, never acknowledged their sin, never cried out for Your forgiveness. Lord, I pray today would be the day that You would humble them before Your word and before Yourself. That they would find a place, even tonight, where they could fall down before You, prostrate themselves before You, Lord. Humble themselves, submit their will to Yours, and follow the path of repentance laid out in this amazing passage.
And I pray, O Lord, for the one who professes Christ but has been living a pattern of unrepentant sin. I pray this evening that You would strip away all the facade and the hypocrisy that they have concocted. And that You would bring them to the place where they see themselves as You see them, to see their sin for what it is before You. That they would mourn and weep and cry and wail and cry out for Your forgiveness. That they would turn from it to You.
And Father, I pray for the rest of us, Your children who know You, who aren't living in a pattern of unrepentant sin. Nevertheless, our lives every day need repentance. We contend with the world, the devil, and the remains of corruption. We sin constantly against You. Father, I pray that You would help us understand what repentance is. That You would help us to live a life of repentance before You and humility. O Lord, we ask all of these things to the glory of Your great Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen
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