By David Guzik
@davidguzik
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)
As a child grows it becomes more and more independent of the parent. A baby in the womb is completely dependent upon the mother; a newborn is virtually so. Yet as time goes on, so does the progress to independence. Our Christian life is not like this at all; as we progress in the Christian life we become more dependent upon God, not less.
That's what James had in mind when he wrote, "You who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit.'" James rebuked the kind of heart that lives and makes its plans apart from a constant awareness of the hand of God, and with an underestimation of our own limitations ("you do not know what will happen tomorrow").
Those days were much like our own. Businessmen and merchants traveled widely and made their plans far in advance, to be from city to city. When we put too much trust in such plans, it shows a sinful independence from God.
This attitude that James challenged goes far beyond making wise plans for the future. According to Matthew Poole (and others) the grammar of James' original writing implies great certainty; presuming upon things and times in the future that were not in their power to control.
James counsels us to take a more humble attitude: "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." James asked us to consider the fragility of human life, and the fact that we live and move only at the permission of God. James does not discourage us from planning and doing, only from planning and doing apart from a reliance on God.
In our easy-going pride, many think their life is secure. Yet people pass from this life to eternity from all sorts of small things. They slip on a grape; they choke on a bone; a microbe brings a fatal disease. This shouldn't make us paranoid, marking every step with fear; but it should make us humble, and always rely on God and His goodness.
"Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'" It is nothing but sheer arrogance that makes us think that we can live and move and have our being independent of God. Paul knew and lived this principle: "I will return again to you, God willing" (Acts 18:21); "But I will come to you shortly if the Lord wills" (1 Corinthians 4:19); "I hope to stay a while with you if the Lord permits" (1 Corinthians 16:7).
We know two things for certain about the future: that God knows it, and that we do not. The key to all this isn't fear or worry; it is a humble dependence upon God. We make every day of this life count when we live this way, and we also prepare for eternity.
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