"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes."
It is easy at times to fall into a habit of presumption. We presume we know more than we do. We presume we can predict the future. We presume to know what others are thinking. We presume to think we have some semblance of control in our lives. While there may be a degree of truth to each of these statements, the overlying point James makes is that we cannot arrogantly presume to know anything apart from the providential control of God Almighty. There is nothing wrong with planning or investing for the future. In truth, that is a wise decision. But if our presumptions become ammunition to boast about what we have, what we know, or who we are, we have fallen victim to leaning more on self-confidence than Scriptural truth.
James asks an extremely introspective question so that we might pause and look at our lives from God's perspective. For when we do wrestle with the question, "What is your life?" we begin to understand that time goes by very quickly and moments in time reflect specific purposes. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). God has anointed our lives with purpose that His will shall be done in us and through us at the moment He ordains for our sanctification and His glory. That is why boasting about tomorrow is futile. We cannot predict what tomorrow will bring, so let us walk in a manner that reflects that truth lest we become prideful and arrogant.
According to many commentaries, the primary audience James addresses in his example is wealthy, merchant Christians (i.e. those who have the means with which to plan and invest). Why would this be such a great concern though that James would need to address it? It could be related to the sermon on the mount where Jesus cautioned, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money" (Matthew 6:24). That would certainly give testimony to James emphasizing the role money plays in discerning to whom or what a man worships. Or perhaps James is indirectly touching on the role anxiety plays in our minds concerning the future (Ex: Have we saved enough for retirement, college tuition, or the future weddings of our children?) In this instance, Jesus would admonish us saying, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matthew 6:34). It may also be true that James is echoing Jesus' parable of the rich fool, who boasted in the plentiful harvest of his land and chose to tear down his storehouses to build bigger ones that he might relax, eat, drink and be merry for years to come. "But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:20-21). In either case, idolatry, worship, anxiety or laziness can all lead to self-reliance where God is no longer our all-encompassing sufficiency, but our secondary fall-back in times of want and need.
When we begin to realize how momentary our lives are, so as to be compared to a mist that temporarily appears and then vanishes, our countenance changes. We begin to understand as John the Baptist did that "He (Jesus) must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). We realize that time is is a precious gift to be appreciated here and now. Relationships become more valuable than worldly possessions, serving others trumps selfish desires, and living for personal glory is meaningless compared to the abundant provision of the Spirit's sufficiency. When coupled with perspective, time helps us realize how insignificant we are compared to the power and majesty of God. It destroys our stronghold of self-confidence that produces arrogant boasting because it is stripped of its false identity. Temporal satisfaction is exposed by the eternal Word of truth, Jesus Christ, and we are forced in that moment to acknowledge that our plans and presumptions of tomorrow are not consistent with God's Word.
In the end, we cannot assume we ultimately control time, events, and their outcome, nor allow any idol to be the object of our worship. We can certainly plan, hope and pray that God's will be done in any circumstance or situation we encounter, but the result may not be how we presume, assume or expect. The key is to relinquish control to God's sovereignty by abandoning our self-confidence and embracing humility over arrogance, for time is not subject to our rule and authority and we are not guaranteed each day's 24-hours if God so chooses. Therefore, we have no room to boast in ourselves but trust in the Holy Spirit. For "If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25), obeying the direction and trajectory God wills rather than presuming we know what the future holds. Perhaps then we will embrace the moments in time we are given as opportunities to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16), rather than being arrogant in our abilities or presumptuous of what we think we know.
No comments:
Post a Comment