October 24, 2012 – Day 17 – James 4:13-17

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins. ^[1]

James turns his admonition now to the business merchants in the community to which he was writing. These few verses are perhaps the most important for extolling a Christian business ethic that can be found. The presumption that is evident in them is consistent with those James addresses in earlier verses. It is one of self-reliance and self-sufficiency as if one accomplished anything good in life on their own. While God knows the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts, James would only have known about it because of the boasting and bragging the business owners.

“Boasting has a place in the Christian life—if it is done in view of the work of God (cf. 1:9). But such is not the case with the believers James was confronting (cf. 2:13; 3:14). Instead of confessing their dependence on the will of God, their arrogance erupted and overflowed with bragging. More precisely, to brag here means to manifest the pretense of the self-creation and sole causation of one’s own well-being.”^[2] This emphasis on self is epidemic in our society today, and it is rampant in the church. The Apostle Paul would tell us that ‘anything that does not come from faith is sin’ (Romans 14:23).

Friends, we are not our own! Everything we do is wrapped up in the will of God. We have no confidence in the future beyond the knowledge of who it is that controls it, yet we plan our lives as if we were the authors of it. There is, therefore, an obvious danger in focusing on self, what it desires or what we think it needs. Instead, we should look to God and His will for our lives and our businesses. Such a standard is not popular in the marketplace, but it is the standard of the body of Christ and not the world. Let us resolve, therefore, to do the good we know to do.

Dear Father, forgive us today of our presumptuous self-reliance. Thank You for the reminder that all of our help comes from You. We grieve that we have not done the good we know to do and have instead done that which we thought best and right for us. Help us today to sift through the multitude of sounds that assault our ears with ungodly counsel to hear Your voice leading and directing our steps. May everything we attempt and everything we do conform to Your will for our lives, give glory to Your Name, and build up your body. Amen.