The Test of Honest Self-Examination: James Lesson 21

 I want to invite you to open your Bible this morning to James 4. And I want to preface this message with a confession. I have struggled with this passage. James has left me scratching my head and wondering if the Holy Spirit went on vacation. I read more on this passage than I usually do and what I discovered is that most commentators were challenged by this passage. But with that acknowledgement on the table, let’s read these verses together. Read James 4:1-10.

 I am certain that James has been giving us tests of genuine saving faith from the beginning of this letter. We saw the test of trials, the test of temptation, the test of responding to the word of God, all in Chapter 1. In chapter 2 we looked at the test of impartial love, and the test of good works that prove our faith to be genuine saving faith. In chapter 3:1-12 we saw the test of the control of the tongue. Then, in verse 13 of chapter 3 we came to the test of wisdom. In the test of wisdom we had this vivid contrast between the wisdom from below and the wisdom from above. The wisdom from below is earthly, natural, and demonic. James shows us in attitudes and actions which reveal just how selfish and arrogant the practitioner of worldly wisdom will be. The influence of wisdom from below produces disorder and every evil thing. The wisdom from above is the exact opposite. It is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

 I know that most of you know this, but James did not put the chapter and verse divisions into this letter he has written to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad. What he wrote in what we call chapter 4 immediately follows what he just wrote about wisdom from below and wisdom from above. Having described the two sources of wisdom and the two characteristics these two sources produce, James then drives this home to the hearts of his readers. James moves from discussing abstract concepts like earthly and heavenly wisdom to talking directly to his readers. And he does this with these pointed, penetrating, very personal questions and observations.

 So, James asks directly and pointedly, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your own lusts…”

 With every test James has been instructing us on how to live the kind of life that demonstrates the validity and authenticity of saving faith. Saving faith is verified by wise living. It is validated by godly living. James asks these questions to drive his readers to the place of personal responsibility. What is the source of these evil things? Which kind of wisdom produces these things?

 You will know the answer to this question because it is obvious. What kind of wisdom has the one addressed in verses 1-4 embraced? Is it the wisdom from below or the wisdom from above? Obviously, these kinds of actions and attitudes are the result of the influence of the wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic. These sinful actions and attitudes flow from the one who is completely selfish, and arrogant, and who sows disorder and every evil thing. These things described in verses 1-4 are perfect examples of the very things produced by wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic.

 James is adding to the wisdom test, or following up the test of wisdom, with the test of honest self-evaluation. James is pulling the mask off of each one of us. He is forcing open the shutters so that the light of God’s truth can shine into the secret recesses of our hearts and he asks us these pointed, penetrating, personal questions. They are very personal in nature. James uses the personal pronouns of “you” and “your” 16 times in verses 1-5. So we can call this next section the test of honest self-evaluation.

 One of the things that will be true of a genuine follower of Christ is that he or she will not be afraid of honest self-examination. The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable. The true follower of Christ will want to deal with everything in his or her life that is not pleasing to the Lord and consistent with His holy character. They won’t be perfect but they will be driven toward purity. No true purity of heart is realized apart from honest self-examination.

 So, let’s be honest. It is painful, but necessary. If the wisdom from above is the wisdom we embrace, we will submit to the truth of the self-examination. After all, what we need is what is described in verse 6. We need the greater grace. The greater grace is given to the humble and withheld from the proud. The wisdom from above will lead us to submit to God. So we will look at ourselves as we examine the truth of James 4.

 But look at how awful the things are that James describes. Could James possibly be describing the one who has a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ? Are these things that describe us as Christians? 

Quarrels and conflicts are not hard to understand. James asks “what is the source?” Then he gives the answer. The source is your pleasures. The Greek word is the word from which we get “hedonist.” A hedonist is all about the gratification of selfish, sensual desires. We all understand the war going on between our fallen flesh and our desire to please God.

Lusts mentioned in verse 2 describes a longing or desire of any kind, but the context here reveals a desire that is selfish and misdirected. It results in murder. This does not necessarily mean the taking of another’s life, but as Jesus said in Matthew 5 that anger with a brother makes us guilty before God.

“You are envious and cannot obtain…” James says in verse 2. This results in fights and quarrels. The conflicts we find ourselves in are always the result of some unfulfilled desire or expectation we have.

We do not have because we do not ask. We are self-sufficient. We don’t think we need anything from anyone. When we do ask we ask with selfish motives. We want what we want so we can spend it on our own pleasures. 

In verse 4 James says “You adulteresses…”  What does God require? We are to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. If our hearts are drawn away from Him alone, we are guilty of  spiritual adultery, and acting like the enemies of God? 

This is some bad stuff. Are these questions and statements being directed at those who are the true children of God, or are they designed to confront the false convert, or the tare which has been sown among the wheat? John MacArthur believes these verses are dealing with the false convert. Clearly, if a person is only like this, and always like this, and never shows any evidence of a desire to pursue righteousness and selfless love of others, then that person can make no legitimate claim to salvation. But I don’t think James is addressing false converts.

 So to answer the question let’s ask another question. Are these the kinds of things we still struggle with?

 I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, but I want to ask you if you have, since you have become a Christians, grown and matured to the point that you never have any conflict of any kind with anyone? We all still deal with conflict. We all find ourselves in a quarrel from time to time. Let’s be honest. Remember, James is dragging us into this honest, self-examination. When you find yourself in conflict, is it not that you are asserting yourself and your right to have something your way, or have your point of view acknowledged, or you have, in some way, been wronged or offended? If I am similarly honest in my self-examination I have to acknowledge that James’ words speak to the truth about the sinful condition of my heart. I find it easy to be envious, and then fight when I cannot obtain what I want. I often ask for things that I might get what I want so I can satisfy my own selfish desires. If I am honest I must acknowledge that I am guilty of spiritual adultery because of my affection for some of the things of the world.

 James wants us to be completely honest regarding the source of wisdom we are allowing to influence our thinking. He is trying to motivate us to pursue the wisdom from above that we might be more and more like the wisdom, characterized by the wisdom from above. If we are, as Christians, letting these problems persist in our lives, it is because we have embraced the wisdom that is of this world.

 Look, the longer we are Christians, the more we grow in the faith. The more we grow, the more we are being conformed to the image of Christ. This is the work of progressive sanctification we are all experiencing. If it isn’t happening, we are false converts. He who began the work will bring it to completion. The fact that it is an ongoing work of God in our lives doesn’t mean that we are where we should be now. Our justification makes us judicially righteous in the sight of God. Our sanctification makes us progressively conformed to the righteousness we have received as a gift from God. This work of sanctification is, for most of us, a painfully slow process and for some there is still a lot of work to do. Honestly, I am sometimes shocked at the amount of work left to be done in me.

 No matter how much progress we make, we still live in a world that is corrupt, and we live in this fallen world as individuals who deal with the ongoing effects of corruption. The longer I am a Christian the more I long for Christlikeness in its completed form, but, I am also constantly and keenly more and more aware of just how comprehensive and extensive the problem of sin is within me. My growing awareness of residual sin causes me to fight harder for victory over that sin and the harder I fight the more I grow to hate the sin that still resides.

 But the cold, hard, ugly reality is that I still have a problem with sin. I cannot deny sin’s existence within me. I cannot deny sin’s presence, nor its pressure upon me, nor its pull on me. I cannot say I have no sin. John warns against us saying that anyway. “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” I cannot say I have no sin. In fact, the character in the New Testament with whom I can best identify is the tax collector in Luke 18. And Paul certainly recognized the reality of the presence of sin in his life in Romans 7:14-25.

 So we too must look at the truth with which James confronts us and we must decide how we are to respond to the problem of its continued existence. Remember, James never gives us these tests for informational purposes only. He always calls us to walk in the wisdom of a right relationship to Jesus Christ. Here he is calling us to walk in the wisdom from above. James exposes these issues in order that we might respond appropriately. This is his point in verse 5. “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us.” This is a very difficult verse to interpret. For one thing, the Scriptures don’t say this anywhere. The principle is illustrated in several places, but it never specifically says, “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us.”

 If the NASB rendering is correct, then the Holy Spirit is the Spirit He has made to dwell in us at the time of our salvation. And we know His role. He convicts of sin, righteousness and judgment. He teaches us the truth. He draws us into submission to the will of God and helps us align our lives with the word of God. The Holy Spirit is our Guide, Helper, and friend. He is the presence of God the Father and God the Son who resides within us. It is only because He is greater than the power of the world that we ever have the experience of victory over sin.

 James is moving us toward what follows this catalogue of sinful behaviors. He is getting us to the place where we see the need for the greater grace. He is preparing our hearts to be humble and submit therefore to God. He calls us to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts and with a singular mind embrace the wisdom from above.

 The reality is that none of us can deny the presence of any of these sins. We cannot deny the pull. We cannot deny the persistence of sin. What we better be able to recognize as also true is the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Without Him we will not respond properly to this continuing problem with sin.

 So what is the proper response? James is going to teach us the right response. We will look deeply into that next week. But for now, I want to talk about how some respond. Again, in the context of wisdom from below, verses wisdom from above, this is a response consistent with the wisdom from below. But it is a response from many who call themselves Christians.

 Some decide that when it comes to the ongoing presence and pull of sin in this life, why fight it. It’s there. It’s a problem, but it really isn’t a big problem. It isn’t a problem that makes me as bad as most people. Most of my sins are respectable sins. This sin problem isn’t going away as long as I live on this earth, so I can just expect to fall victim to it from time to time. Anyway, I’m under grace, and where sin abounds, grace abounds more and more.

 This is the response of the person who will just keep making excuses, comparing themselves to everyone else, and justifying their frequent failures as normal. But this is the attitude and approach of a false convert. This is the evidence of one in whom the desires of the world have choked the word. This is part and parcel to loving the world and the things of the world and in whom the love of the Father does not exist. This is the one who yields to the desires of the flesh and lives according to the wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic. I hope this is the approach of none of you.

 You will either decide why fight it, or you will decide to fight sin. I pray that this is your approach. Those who decide to fight sin have come to understand that our existence is for the glory of God, and although we still struggle with sin, we will struggle. We will want to put off all things fleshly and natural. We will want to put on all things godly and spiritual. We will confess, repent, and seek to be holy. We will employ the wisdom from above and those things that describe the wisdom from above will become true of us. We will seek to be first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, and without hypocrisy.

 What will be my motive for fighting sin? I have a correct understanding of just how offensive my sin is to a holy God. Look, if James is doing anything with these vividly contrasting descriptions he is painting us a picture of the sinfulness of anything and everything that comes from the world’s wisdom. He doesn’t want us getting to the place where we are content with residual sin and complacent about it. He frames these sinful actions in these terms and assigns them on the personal level in order that we might be confronted by them and see them for what they are. They are unacceptable. They are offensive. They have no place in the life of God’s children. They belong to the world and the world’s wisdom.

 (The fact that James 4:1-4 describes me is a reminder that the gospel is not a one and done thing. This is why the gospel according to Jesus is such precious truth. It is life changing truth. I referenced this last week, and it is of no small importance. Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom and we have His gospel presentation in the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who recognize their spiritually bankrupt condition. Blessed are those know they are spiritual paupers. Blessed are those who see that there isn’t one thing they have to offer God that is going to make them acceptable in His holy presence.

 Blessed are those who mourn. We mourn over the fact that our sin has separated us from holy God and we stand in danger of eternal condemnation. I am comforted by the fact that God has chosen to punish my sin by placing them on His own Son and having Him be condemned in my place. But I still mourn because when I sin willfully I am bringing shame on the fair name by which I have been saved.

 Blessed are the gentle, or the humble. Blessed are those at salvation who, because of their spiritual bankruptcy, mourn over their sin until they are humbled before God to the point where they, like the tax collector in Luke 18, cry out to God for mercy. My ongoing struggles with sin make me continue to cry out to God for mercy. My ongoing struggle with sin makes me hunger and thirst for the righteousness that will make me like Jesus.)

God gives greater grace. He gives greater grace than just the grace that saves us. He gives the grace that helps us humble ourselves before Him daily, and submit to Him, and resist the devil and his worldly wisdom. He gives grace that enables us to draw near to Him and know He draws near to us. He gives greater grace that helps us cleanse our hands and purify our hearts.

 How did you do with the test of honest self-examination? Did you, like me, find that these problems James talks about in these verses are, sadly, still true of you? I suspect that you did.

 The test of honest self-examination has an objective. It is here for a purpose. It is here to humble us. It is here to strip us of all self-confidence, self-assurance, self-righteousness. It is here to prepare our hearts for what lies ahead. It gets us in the proper frame of mind to embrace the greater grace. That is for next time.

 Let’s pray.