James series – “The Litmus Test for life”

James 4:7-12

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. ¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

After looking at the first two solutions to selfish pride, resisting the devil and drawing near to God we come to the third:

• humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. 

Does that mean to grovel around in sackcloth and ashes? No James paints a picture of what it looks like in verse 11: it means to treat other people right. The way to humble yourself in the sight of God is to treat people right. Instead of engaging in trash talk start speaking truth and treating people right. Jesus said, they will know we are Christians by our love. It is impossible to treat yourself better than other people and be humble before the Lord. If you elevate yourself above people that God cared enough to send His Son to die for, you are elevating yourself above the sacrifice of Christ. But if you humble yourself in the sight of the Lord by treating other people right, God Himself will elevate you. He will lift you up. Trash talk is not only divisive it is destructive, we actually hurt two people, the person who is the object of our condemnation as well as ourselves. But James makes it clear that there is an even deeper harm that occurs, because it usurps the role that rightly belongs to God. God alone has the authority to judge in this sense. So, when we condemn others in the way these people were doing we actually attempt to take on a role that doesn’t belong to us. Humbling ourselves means letting God be in charge because we trust Him. If we don’t deal with the poison of pride like Satan we will position self as number one. The solution to destroying pride in your life is really very simple; resist the devil, draw near to God, and humble yourself in His sight. Three simple things that will take you the rest of your life to work on. But these three things are not something that you can accomplish on your own. You need God’s grace. He gives the grace for you to overcome the symptoms of selfish pride. He even gives the grace for you to overcome yourself as the source of your selfish pride. And he gives the grace to enable you to accomplish the solutions for your selfish pride. The marvelous thing about our God is that He has extended His grace to whoever will receive it. He desired that you would receive His grace so much that He gave His only begotten Son to suffer and bleed and die on a cruel cross so you wouldn’t have to. Knowing that, why would you allow your pride to get in the way of accepting His grace? Swallow your pride and accept His grace today.