James - Becoming A Distinctive Community Week 4 • Donavon Hintz • James 4:1-10
Living as a distinctive people within the cultures of this world takes intentionality. What the world values is very different than what God’s Kingdom values. The book of James, like other wisdom literature in the Bible, aims to form and nurture this distinctive community. It is meant to shape us by teaching us the right way to live through short and forceful statements that are memorable.
James is contrasting the values of this world and the Kingdom community we are called to become. He is saying that when we adopt the values of the world, we are opposed to God. It is a theme that James runs through his entire letter, that double-mindedness doesn’t work. The ways in which the world sees success are not the ways of God’s Kingdom. We will either live by God’s values or by the dominant value system of the world.
A COMMUNITY OF HUMILITY IN A WORLD OF SELF-ASSERTIVE, SELF-PROMOTING PRIDE
Pride is one of those things we see in our text today that is handled and celebrated differently between the two value systems of God’s Kingdom and the world. If you are like me, when I think of pride, I think of pride as the action or outcome. However, the heart and motivations of the heart are the bigger deal here.
We see the words humility, grace, pride and opposition to God used to show this contrast. Yet, we know this world we live in and the effect it has on our lives. The world sees pride as strength and says to “trust yourself,” that “you deserve it,” and states this in so many ways. It is such a part of our world that it is hard to see it differently.
How do we push back against this tendency? How do we live out the values of a different kingdom and succeed when this current world sees it as a weakness?
We can only do this by the grace of God. Grace that isn’t earned. It is not as if the more humble we act the more grace we receive. Instead, it is the fact that the more we recognize we don’t deserve this grace we’ve received, the more we will live a life of humility in this world around us.
Humility begins with understanding that our lives are under the reign of Christ (1 Pet 5:6), and because of this we don’t think of ourselves more highly than we ought to (Rom 12:3, Phil 2:3). One way to word this is to use the word picture that humble people prefer windows to mirrors. Humble people view others as windows to God’s glory, not as mirrors that enhance or diminish their own self-image.
This is the beauty of the grace offered in Christ. Grace that gives us the ability to humble ourselves. Grace that is Holy Spirit enabled and Jesus centered. May we rely on God’s power and grace to enable us to lay down our pride and live a life of humility.
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