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Nate Roten / James / James 4:13–17
Main Idea
God wants you to turn from saying ‘my will’ to ‘thy will.’
Imagine, if you will, a curious notation that once graced the letters and diaries of our Christian ancestors. Early Puritans, Methodists, and other faithful believers wrote two simple letters, D.V., often scribbled at the end of their written plan and daily correspondences. These initials carried a weight of humility and reverence that seems all but lost in our modern age of self-reliance and rigid schedules. Yet, hidden within this abbreviated Latin expression lies a profound biblical truth that challenges our notion of control and invites us into a deeper trust in God’s sovereign will. As we unpack the meaning behind these letters today, we’ll discover how this ancient adage can revolutionize our approach to the future, aligning our hearts with the wisdom of James and submitting our plans to the One who holds all our tomorrows in His hands.
Passage
James 4:13–17 CSB
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.
Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.
Chapter Review
Have you read this passage before and wondered how it fits in with everything else? At first glance, it seems James has moved onto a completely different subject. He has finished telling the church how to remain faithful to God, and now, he is cautioning us about the uncertainty of the future. Those don’t seem to connect logically. How many of us have quoted a verse like 14 that says, “You don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” when a friend is trying to plan too far ahead for the future, and you want them to take it one step at a time? Or maybe you quoted the later part of that verse, “You are like a vapor,” to drive home how momentarily life is, so you should seize the day! I think most of us have. And while that is certainly relevant, is that what James really had in mind, or is there something deeper for us to discover?
The key to understanding the flow of thought is James 4:4 –
James 4:4 CSB
You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.
Imagine standing in a room with God across the room to your left and a globe to your right. Since they are on opposite ends, you cannot move toward both simultaneously. You must choose to move toward one while simultaneously moving away from the other. Initially, that is the advice James gave concerning our relationship with God. You will either grow more intimate with Him or commit adultery against Him. But this theme runs throughout his warnings, rebukes, and nuggets of wisdom.
1. There is an internal war. You will either submit to God or submit to your evil desires and temptations.
2. There is a community war. The victor of the internal war makes themselves known in the Christian community. They are either growing together in Christ or letting the outpour of their tempted hearts create divisions.
3. There is a planning war. There is a war of selfish pursuits for one’s future or a submission to God’s providential plans. That is what James will now address.
And, let’s recap the main points of the chapter to see the broad perspective:
The Issues: Verses 1-5
• infighting
• bitter envy
• selfish ambition
• fighting that spiritually murders
• affinity to the world
• spiritual adultery
• becoming God’s enemy
• living out sinful carnal desires
The Remedy to a Broken Relationship with God: Verses 6-10
• Recognition that God’s grace is greater than our transgressions.
• The 10 Commandments of Fidelity, with humility as the core command.
The Re-focus on the Individual: Verses 11-12
• Stop criticizing/slandering other believers.
• Doing so makes you an unrighteous judge over them and God’s Royal Law of Love.
• Who are you to judge your neighbor?
The Future Plans of the Individual: verses 13-17
• We will unpack today – the impact of vv.1-5 and 11-12 in their present-day that still affects their plans for the future.
Context Summary
Unless you see this passage in its proper context with the rest of the chapter, it seems innocent enough – people are planning their business venture. Today, this could easily equate to creating a 5-year business plan. What’s the harm in that? The context answers the question.
The individual is still in view. But it is the individual in the current state of sinful influences.
These individuals bring the war of God and The World from their current circumstances into their future plans.
Envy, selfish ambition, slander, worldly pursuits, hedonistic passions, critical judgments, lack of humility, unsubmissiveness, impurity, unrepentantness, and wanderlust from God’s presence have created a person who is a prideful, self-centered, sinfully self-reliant pleasure seeker.
And, this is an elaboration of a seed planted in chapter one.
Ch 1 – warning against the futility of trusting in wealth instead of God.
Ch. 4 – warning against the futility of trusting in your plans for the future without God.
Arrogant Seeking Produces Arrogant Boasting
It is easier to see if you remove verses 14-15.
James 4:13 CSB
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.”
James 4:16–17 CSB
But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it.
It’s not so innocent now, is it? Do you see how the war between God and The World plays out, not only in their current circumstances but also in how they plan for the future? So, it’s not just about a few businessmen or businesswomen planning the following year. All of their heart issues are drawing out an arrogant boast about their accomplishment without God’s providential guidance. It’s not just about future planning but also about what they value as their most important pursuit. It certainly wasn’t God or the needs of others in the church community. Their eyes were on the profit they were going to make. Their focus was money, and they were bragging about it.
As a friend used to say at my previous job, “He is often wrong but never in doubt.” Have you ever had a friend like that? Maybe it was someone willing to sacrifice time with family to put in the extra work for the promotion, and they looked down on you because you weren’t willing to make the same ‘necessary’ sacrifices. Or maybe you’ve seen a co-worker beat their chest and take all the credit for a project that you knew involved the hard work of a team of people. As bad as it sounds, it’s not unheard of to hear pastors talk about taking a position like a children’s or youth pastor position so that they can get their foot in the door to work their way up to Senior Pastor as if those other positions were only valuable as stepping stones. It’s arrogant, and all such boasting of self-made progress is categorized as evil.
Even though the New Testament documents that testify that all boasting should be of Christ or his perfected power in our weakness had not yet been written down, they still had plenty of inspired Old Testament scriptures to point them away from such destructive motives. They should have remembered verses from their Bible (Old Testament), such as Proverbs 27 1, which says:
Proverbs 27:1 CSB
Don’t boast about tomorrow,
for you don’t know what a day might bring.
Or King Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation and exaltation found in Daniel 4:
Daniel 4:28–35 CSB
All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months, as he was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon, the king exclaimed, “Is this not Babylon the Great that I have built to be a royal residence by my vast power and for my majestic glory?”
While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared that the kingdom has departed from you. You will be driven away from people to live with the wild animals, and you will feed on grass like cattle for seven periods of time, until you acknowledge that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms, and he gives them to anyone he wants.”
At that moment the message against Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people. He ate grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with dew from the sky, until his hair grew like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.
But at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven, and my sanity returned to me. Then I praised the Most High and honored and glorified him who lives forever:
For his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom is from generation to generation.
All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing,
and he does what he wants with the army of heaven
and the inhabitants of the earth.
There is no one who can block his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”
They were committing the sin of selfish pursuits or the sin of godless presumption. God was nowhere in their planned future. They weren’t acknowledging Him in their hearts, community, or current lifestyles. If God isn’t in their present, He most assuredly wouldn’t be in their future.
When did you last sit down with your calendar and plan your week with God’s purposes in mind? What about the next quarter or the next year? Does God’s plan for your life fit into the equation at all? Don’t make the same mistakes as these early believers. It is not a sin to plan for the future, but as people who have submitted themselves to the God we serve and put ourselves under His authority and reign, we must seek out His intentions for us as we plan. We need to make the transition from ‘my will’ to ‘thy will.’ Don’t say you believe God exists and live like He doesn’t.
Takeaway #1: You cannot be a professing Christian but live like a practical atheist.
The Providence of God
The entrepreneurs’ arrogant hearts are due to their lack of recognition of God’s sovereignty, which is why James reminds them that they do not know what tomorrow will bring. As faithful Jews who have recognized Jesus as their savior, they would have deeply understood the nature of God’s sovereignty and providence.
For clarification, here are the definitions of these two terms:
God’s sovereignty – His absolute and unrivaled rule over all his creatures and their circumstances. As Creator and King, God has complete power and authority to do as He pleases in heaven and on earth… among the host of heaven, and humans on earth (Ps. 135:6). The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass…”
God’s providence – The governing power of God that oversees his creation and works out his plans for it. To unpack this a bit more, the Westminster Confession of Faith states, “God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.” God’s providential hand has guided human history since its inception and will continue until its conclusion.
These two attributes of God culminate in a reality we need to see and apply to our daily lives:
1. He knows the future (because He has ordained it).
2. He is actively present and guiding human history toward that end.
3. He has a plan for you individually in the greater scheme of human history.
Ephesians 2:8–10 CSB
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
You may think you know what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next year, but you really don’t. But HE DOES! In light of eternity, your life is like a puff of vapor that is here one second and gone the next. God designed a beautiful life for you. Why waste precious time chasing after meaningless things without Him? What kind of life is that, anyway?
Be honest with yourself for a moment. Do you really believe what Ephesians 2:8-10 says? Do you understand that God has a plan for your life? Then, why is it that your plans don’t include His? Do you not think that small plans add up to big plans? It’s not that we are not free to dream and make choices about our future. Still, as we strive to align our will with His, we should also want our choices to align, knowing that a loving Father is directing everything we experience toward strengthening our faith and making it whole, complete, lacking nothing.
This is very similar to the concept of submission mentioned earlier in the chapter.
- First, we submit, then we resist.
- First, we submit, then we plan.
As you set out on your next adventure, don’t forget your navigation tools. Every experienced journeyman consults maps beforehand and keeps a compass for direction throughout the journey.
Takeaway #2: God’s sovereign providence is the true North of every meaningful journey.
The Sin of Omission
James ends his exhortation by reminding them that they can sin just as severely by not doing what they know they should, just as much as they can by doing sinful things. Doing what is wrong is called a sin of commission, and not doing what you know to be right is a sin of omission.
Both are sinful, and both drive a wedge between you and God.
So, what was the early church neglecting to do? The text doesn’t spell it out for us, but we can look at the chapter for clues. First, they were fighting one another while knowing the Royal Law of Love, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. So, they were neglecting one of the two core commands of Christ. They were also planning for the future with an arrogant spirit that failed to recognize God’s plans, so they didn’t love God either, which is the other core command of Christ.
These two sins of omission lead to further neglect in areas such as humble service and care for one another, submission to God, and resisting temptation.
What areas in your life are you willfully NOT doing what you know you should? This isn’t a rebuke for not knowing the right thing to do. Often, you will be in situations where the line between right and wrong is blurry and gray. This is a rebuke for knowing what is right but consciously choosing not to do it.
The Solution
So, in light of all this… the issues James has outlined in chapter four, the advice of his 10 Commandments of Fidelity, and the recognition of our arrogant inclination to plan our lives without much thought being given to God’s providential care over my life… what is the answer? How do we refrain from these sins of commission and omission?
D.V.
No, it doesn’t stand for Deer Valley, Digital Video, Domestic Violence, or Dear Valentine.
These two letters that Christians used to write at the end of correspondence letters, event planning cards, and diary entries stand for the Latin phrase: Deo Volente, which means… God willing, or to paraphrase… If the Lord wills. They would write these letters as a visual reminder that whatever I plan to do, I will do it “if the Lord wills.” What a simple phrase to keep our lives on track!
We would do well to adopt this practice, at least in function, if not in form. The early believers did this for everyday tasks. I will plan our next family gathering, DV. I will go on a date with this new person, DV. I will pursue this new eating habit or lifestyle change, DV. I will search for a new job, DV. From the minute to the monumental, we should always say, “If the Lord Wills.”
This is a solution because when you say these words, you are doing several things.
1. You. recognize God’s sovereign reign and providence over your life.
2. It’s a call back to submission already expressed in verse 7.
3. It’s a call back to humility, which is the key to remaining faithful to God.
When your heart is constantly pointed toward God’s plan and purpose, it can’t help but produce it.
Final Takeaway: God wants you to turn from saying ‘my will’ to ‘thy will.’
Questions to Consider
- In what practical ways can you submit your future plans to God’s will?
- What steps can you take to ensure that your ambitions align with God’s purposes for your life?
- What specific areas in your life require you to shift from ‘my will’ to ‘thy will?’
- How can understanding the transient nature of life (as mentioned in James 4) influence your day-to-day choices?
- Can you identify a recent instance where you acted in arrogance or self-reliance? How might you approach a similar situation differently in the future?