Humility and Your Relationship with God
James 4:4
There was once a man who wanted to live for God so he got a Bible and placed it in a brown bag along with a few of his most prized possessions in life. Every day the man would spend time reading his Bible. He especially like the parts where God loved him, would take care of him, and answer his prayers. One day the man found a verse that told him he had to "love his enemies". "Well that just doesn't make any sense to me!" the man said, and tore the page out of his Bible tossing it to the ground.
The next day the man came upon a verse that told him he needed to give part of his income back to the Lord. "I don't make enough money to do that!" he said aloud, "Let the folks who make more than me take care of that one" and again he tore the page from his Bible. Then he read "Husbands love your wives..." and angrily tore the page out before even finishing the sentence. "Nag, nag, nag", he thought to himself... "God just doesn't know my wife."
As the days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, the man continued to purge his beloved Bible of all the objectionable passages until he was at last... satisfied. "Now this is a bible a man can live by" he told himself, placing the now very thin bible back into his brown bag and walking happily down the path of his new found religion.
James 4:4
There was once a man who wanted to live for God so he got a Bible and placed it in a brown bag along with a few of his most prized possessions in life. Every day the man would spend time reading his Bible. He especially like the parts where God loved him, would take care of him, and answer his prayers. One day the man found a verse that told him he had to "love his enemies". "Well that just doesn't make any sense to me!" the man said, and tore the page out of his Bible tossing it to the ground.
The next day the man came upon a verse that told him he needed to give part of his income back to the Lord. "I don't make enough money to do that!" he said aloud, "Let the folks who make more than me take care of that one" and again he tore the page from his Bible. Then he read "Husbands love your wives..." and angrily tore the page out before even finishing the sentence. "Nag, nag, nag", he thought to himself... "God just doesn't know my wife."
As the days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, the man continued to purge his beloved Bible of all the objectionable passages until he was at last... satisfied. "Now this is a bible a man can live by" he told himself, placing the now very thin bible back into his brown bag and walking happily down the path of his new found religion.
“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."
When we fail the test of humility and live for ourselves something very ugly happens to our relationship with the Lord. God calls us adulterers. This may seem harsh and unfair, but when we look at the true meaning of word it is exactly what we need to hear. Adultery takes place when one person in a love based relationship leaves and offers himself or herself to another. We understand the term adultery best in the context of marriage, but the same concept applies to our relationship with God.
The Bible speaks of the Corporate church, all believers in the world, as the bride of Christ (ref: Matthew 25:1-13; John 3:25-30; Ephesians 25:25-27; Revelation 19:7-9). Our relationship with God is one of love, made possible by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. God chose to love us even while we were sinners, undeserving of His love (Romans 5:8). The highest price was paid to break the chains of sin. God sacrificed his one and only son in order to re-establish the relationship lost by sin (John 3:16). Therefore to leave this relationship with God and seek fulfillment another way is adultery in the mind of God. You may be asking who are these adulterers giving themselves to? James says when we live for self and seek to satisfy our own needs, we are leaving God and attaching ourselves to the world and its sinful pleasures. James calls it “friendship with the world”.
We live in a society that loves to see everything as grey. There is no black and white anymore. Everything is debatable, everything is questionable, and subject to interpretation. True and false...good and bad...right and wrong don’t exist anymore. There is no foundation of truth (God's principles) to base our decisions upon. Because of this thinking some believers are living their lives with one foot in the world and the other foot in the church. We pick and choose what parts of the Bible we will obey and what parts we will ignore or even reject. I call this "brown-bagging" the Bible (see introduction to this chapter). When we live in this way we become adulterers who are having an affair with the world.
We have a tendency to call people good, or faithful, or righteous because they attend a church and outwardly demonstrate a sense of self-initiated morality. But... how does that lifestyle compare to Jesus’ words when he said, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). The Pharisees and teachers of the law studied and recited Scriptures daily. They gave a tenth of everything they owned, down to the smallest spices, to the temple offerings. They prayed several times a day and were unmatched in their zeal for keeping the law of Moses.
Jesus told the people they would not enter heaven unless they surpassed the righteousness of these religious leaders. Can you imagine what those people were thinking when they heard this? They probably thought it was impossible for anyone to get to heaven. Let us compare the righteousness of modern day Christianity to the righteousness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law:
Too many Christians have "brown-bagged" the Scriptures and become friends with the world, and James calls this lifestyle adultery. People have customized their Christianity to suit themselves and their own lifestyle. They accept the things in Scripture they like and discard what they don’t like. They think they are righteous just like the religious leaders in Jesus time. Remember what James told us earlier, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves, do what it says.” (James 1:22).
Have we deceived ourselves and created an illusion of righteousness? Have we tricked ourselves into thinking we are in a healthy relationship with God? How is your faith? Can you claim a strong and loving relationship with God that displays your faith through obedience to His Word?
After calling the religious person an adulterer, James continues his harsh stance stating "that friendship with the world is hatred toward God" and how this person "becomes an enemy of God." In context we began chapter 4 of James
