This blog serves as an outreach for Pastor Randy Powell of the First Baptist Church of Franklin, PA. Feel free to ask questions or send me an e-mail at pastorpowell@hotmail.com
The modern trend toward labeling oneself "spiritual, but not religious" is in many ways a rebuttal of the failures of organized religion. If the practice of our collective faith in Jesus, i.e. the Church, was pleasing to God, as James calls it, "pure and faultless", it would certainly be worthy of joining. What do we need to do, as a church locally and as a Church universally to earn God's favor? The answer is simple, although it requires much work. The way in which a church (or The Church) can be judged for its effectiveness is by how it treats the least among us. James refers to "widows and orphans", the most vulnerable segments of his society, in ours those in need may be different, but our imperative to help those in need remains the same. As individual Christians, as a local church, as a denomination, and as a universal Church, we must be seriously about the business of helping those in need. This is not an optional part of Christianity, it is the heart of the fruit that the Gospel produces in us. It is not simply what we do, it must be who we are.
The second indicator of genuine religion offered by James is for us to keep from being polluted by the world. Moral filth exists in every society, for all mankind is in rebellion against God. How do we, as Christians, avoid this pollution? It isn't by avoiding society, how can we be helping those in need if we're hiding from the world? That method is of limited value anyway, for temptation comes from within, we take it with us wherever we go. The only effective means of avoiding moral pollution is to fill one's life with acts of righteousness, which will become righteous habits, and not allow sin the opportunity for a foothold.
When we as a church, locally or universally, are truly living our lives together in service to those in need and free from the pollution of immorality, we will not only attract those who need God's grace to us to hear the Gospel, we will by God's power at work in us, change our world.
We have all experienced the distinction between listening and hearing. Parents and wives of husbands watching football are familiar with this phenomenon. How do we know if somebody is actually hearing what has been communicated to them? For James, regarding the Word of God, the answer is simple: those who hear are those who obey. If we don't do what God's Word tells us to do, our knowledge is merely self-deception. We must be a people who live in obedience to God.
Humanity has a tremendous capacity for self-denial and refusal to accept even patently obvious truths in our willful stubbornness. However, as Christians, we cannot put our will above that of God. When we walked in darkness we were incapable of obedience to God, our sin nature enslaved us, but now that we've been transformed by the Holy Spirit, not only is our obedience possible, it is necessary.
In the end, our own will is not freedom, it is merely slavery to sin, and obeying God may be self-denial, but it is also self-fulfillment, for in obedience to God do we find freedom and a life of purpose.
How much better would our world be if everyone followed the advice of James that we ought to be, "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry"? Sadly, the opposite is often the case for many people as they are instead, slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry. For the Christian, this path is not optional, as we are commanded to be disciples of Jesus Christ, ever growing toward Christ-likeness by learning to value other people enough to put our own impulses and desires aside. When we make progress toward that goal we will be able to listen to other people, because we care about them, hold on to our tongue to avoid saying things we shouldn't, because we care about other people, and keep our anger in check, whatever its cause, because we care enough about other people that we aren't willing to hurt them to indulge our anger.
Anger is the key to the point that James is making about our attitude as Christians. Anger simply does not lead to righteousness. We are not the righteous judge that God is, nor do we have our anger under control, so that even our "righteous anger" at evil tends to run away with us. It is better for us, as Christians, to not allow anger a place in our hearts, we're in far less danger of giving in to the temptation to sin without it.
From the very beginning, man has sought to assign blame to somebody else. This isn't a tactic that we need to be taught, children figure it out on their own. The problem is, when blame truly does reside with us, foisting it off elsewhere doesn't make things better. Temptation is just such an item. People try to blame society, argue about nature vs. nurture, even go with, "the devil made me do it", all in a vain attempt to shift the blame for our moral failings elsewhere. Unfortunately for us, temptation comes from within us. External factors matter, as does parenting and a whole host of related positive and negative factors that affect a person's ability to resist temptation, but the origin of temptation is always from within. James makes it clear that the villain that is dragging us away toward sin is our own evil desires. The reason that Jesus successfully resisted temptation, from the devil himself, was his complete lack of wickedness in his heart. God is all-sufficient, in himself, and thus beyond temptation, we on the other hand, act all the time out of our real or perceived lack, thus our temptation to do evil. Correctly diagnosing the cause of temptation is an important step, it gives us hope that we can have victory over our temptation, by the power of the Holy Spirit, for we don't have to change the world to remove external temptations, we need only let God repair our damages hearts to remove them internally.
Continuing his discussion on perseverance, James brings the factors of wealth and poverty into the discussion by saying that the poor believer ought to take pride in his "high position" and the rich believer ought to take pride in his "low position". What makes poverty "high" and wealth "low"? We know that Jesus warned repeatedly about the dangers of wealth as a hindrance to entrance into the kingdom of God, so that can account for riches being called low, but what elevates poverty? The simple truth of the fallen nature of humanity is that we turn toward God more readily when we feel a greater dependence upon him for our survival. The more material things one has, the less likely he/she is to recognize the need for God in his/her life. There are exceptions, of course, but generally this principle holds true. The Church has always had far more poor people in it than rich people (of course the world contains far more poor people than rich, but they also believe at a higher rate than the rich do). If dependence upon God for daily needs leads to acceptance of the Gospel's call for repentance, it is certainly something worth taking pride in.
Those Christians who happen to be rich, while a minority they do exist, can take pride in knowing that their wealth had absolutely nothing to do with their salvation. They can to God by grace, just like the poorest among us, and they need God just as much.
In the end, rich or poor, high or low, we all need to persevere in our faith. Whatever the circumstances we must endure, however hard the test, by faith we must stand firm in our commitment to God. When we do stand, when our faith passes the test, we know that one day we will receive a reward from God.
