Doers of Wisdom in Trials, 1
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“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” These words from Thomas Paine were written during some of the most difficult days of America’s Revolutionary War. In the beginning of the war, when shortly before the Declaration of Independence had been signed and sent to England, and George Washington’s troops had secured Boston Harbor for the Americans, it was easy to be an American patriot.
But as the war grew long and the Americans faced set backs, many of the initial patriots were beginning to turn back to England in an attempt to ensure they wouldn’t be hanged if America lost. Thomas Paine was calling for the true patriots to stand with their country no matter what. He was calling Americans to be patriots in deed, not merely in word. For those who only give verbal allegiance to the country were proving to be patriots only when the sun was shining and winning looked easy.
Like America in those early days, Christianity is filled with summer Christians and sunshine believers, who in crisis and persecution are shrinking from living the faith they profess.
James is about doing. James is less concerned about the theological foundation of our faith than he is about the practical outworking of our faith. He uses imperative commands twenty-one times in these five chapters. Compare that to a book like Romans that has 36 imperative commands with sixteen of those appearing in chapter 16 as Paul requests they greet someone he knows. James is intensely practical.
This why James tends to be such a popular book among Christians. We often react negatively to ethereal theological discussions about who God is and how He works; instead we want the nitty-gritty, rubber-meets-the-road kind of teaching that offers quick fixes that help us in our everyday lives.
However, even with all of that interest in the practical living of the Christian life, most of us are doing a rather poor job of putting James’s teachings into practice. Why is that?
One reason is because we want quick fixes. We are minimalists by nature which means we want a magic bullet of a command that will fix all of our problems. However, that isn’t the way the Christian life works. The Christian life is a process of transformation and most changes don’t take place in an instant.
We want our kids to follow God so we search endlessly for the one magic key that will ensure they won’t go astray.
6 Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Or we feel that because the constitution says that all men have the right to the pursuit of happiness, we look for anyway we can to be happy in the midst of the inevitable trials and struggles of life. We hear the commands of Scripture like the golden rule, and we expect everyone else to treat us how they want to be treated so our relationships won’t have any problems.
The Christian life is a not one of quick fixes and minimalistic secrets to the happy life. Eugene Peterson called it a long obedience in the same direction. The commands of Scripture do work at making us more like Jesus, but they take time and a lot of repentance before they produce the result we are looking and in some cases we will fail and repent until the day we die. James is not for quick fixes. It is for those who are seeking to endure to the end.
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Another reason is because of how we approach the Bible in general and books like James in particular. We look at Christian teaching like a self-help book. We want the Bible to tell us how to live long and prosper, but that is a significant misunderstanding of the Christian life and how to use and read the Bible. God’s purpose is to glorify Himself by saving a people for His name; therefore, God is less concerned with principles to live by and more concerned with what brings glory to His name.
It’s because we approach the Bible in general and books like James in particular like a self-help book. We want the Bible to tell us how to live long and prosper, but that is a significant misunderstanding of how to use and read the Bible, and ultimately of the Christian life in general. God’s purpose is to glorify Himself by saving a people for His name; therefore, God is less concerned with principles to live by and more concerned with what brings glory to His name.
This brings us back to James and its being about doing. The only way we can glorify God by living by faith and trusting Him. This faith and trust is not merely a belief that God exists and that the Bible is true, it is a fundamental submission to Him. Faith is aligning ourselves with God. This is exactly what God was asking the Israelites to do in the Old Testament: reject the so-called gods of the nations and align themselves with Him, who revealed Himself to them by delivering them from Egypt, the Red Sea, and covenanting with them at Sinai. It also exactly what Jesus means when calls people to follow Him; listen to
26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
This is the message of James. James is calling us to more than a mere profession of faith in Christ; he calls us to a demonstration of faith in Christ. Those twenty-one commands in James provide us with a practical ways that we demonstrate our faith in Jesus. We’ll see this emphasis throughout the epistle, but let me point out to you the emphasis on our demonstration of faith by what we do.
22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
14 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?
17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
13 Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.
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17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
And these are only the most obvious references to the Christian demonstration of faith. Each and every command throughout the epistle subtly emphasizes the same point: If you call yourself a Christian and follower of God, you must pursue a certain God-glorifying lifestyle.
This can make us Baptists a bit uncomfortable. We are the ones who have embraced the Reformation doctrine of sole fide, faith alone. We love to quote which reminds us that
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
However, while the doctrine of sole fide is immensely important, we cannot diminish the fact that when we truly believe something is true, we align our lives with it, and when we align our lives with anyone or anything, we must live differently. This is the message James.
James identifies himself in v1 as “a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” We have two possibilities in identifying this James. He’s either John’s brother of Peter, James, and John fame or he is James the pastor of the first church in Jerusalem who provided leadership in the council of . According to Herod had John’s brother James, put to death probably before this letter was written or at least at the same time, so he’s eliminated.
That leaves us with the other James, whom Paul identified as the brother of Jesus in . Now think about this: James is the brother of the most important person in the world and the pastor of the most influential church in the world, and he starts off his letter calling himself a slave of God. This shows James’s humility as he knew his status as a servant of God was far more important than who is brother was and what church he was at.
He wrote this letter to the twelve dispersed tribes. I believe these Jewish believers were those who had been scattered from Jerusalem during the inter-testamental period following the exile and before Christ. These had been reached with the good news about Jesus by those Jewish believers who had scattered from Jerusalem when the persecution of Saul recorded in .
1 James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad: Greetings.
Many of these believers faced a difficult road in their journey to follow Christ. Not only were they Jews, who have received the ire of the nations for nearly their entire existence as a nation, but they were also Christians, who perplexed their world with their belief in a God who died and then rose again.
With this in mind, James starts off his letter with instructions for how they should face these trials, which he also calls the testing of their faith, and his instruction could not be clearer. It’s right there in the beginning of v2
2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
But this begs another question, what does it mean to be joyful when we encounter trials? Most of the time when we think of joy, we associate it with happiness and feeling good, but that just doesn’t add up because we see Paul saying that he can sorrow and rejoice at the same time in . Although a few New Testament verses imply a connection between joy and happiness, the majority point to something far deeper and longer lasting: contentment.
9 as unknown yet well-known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death, 10 as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.
Joy is based more on our satisfaction with God and what He is doing in our lives than it is on how we feel about our circumstances. The reason why we often associate joy with happiness more than contentment is because when we are satisfied in God, it will often show itself in a happy demeanor. But to be able to sorrow and yet rejoice as Paul says he does, means that we sometimes face circumstances that remove our smile, but never destroy our satisfaction in God.
So
This also implies the impossibility of saying we have joy but never showing it on our faces. The key is that joy has little to do with how you feel and much more to do with your faith and confidence in God.
Thus when James says, consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, he means that we must be content in the midst of trials. And that is the truth I want you take home with you this week.
26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. 28 “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 “For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. 37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.
We must be content in the midst of trials.
We must be content in the midst of trials.
Now this is really easy to say, and I haven’t said anything earth-shattering in this, but it is much easier to live. So since James is more about doing than the theology behind what we do, we need to address the questions this raises: I hope that our discussion on the meaning of joy has helped with what may frustrate you about feeling happy in trials. This isn’t some hypocritical “put on a smiling face while the world crashes down around you” joy; it is a deep seated satisfaction and contentment in God.
But this raises at least two other questions as well. One is why we should be content in the midst of trials. That question is answered by our discussion of the purpose of James earlier: our joy in the midst of trials is the kind of living that makes our faith known and God’s glory seen. I believe you will see this fleshed out as we look at the rest of this passage, but ultimately, if our contentment or joy in difficult times, reveals the reality of our faith.
A perhaps even more substantial question that may hit us is how. How are we supposed to be content in the midst of trials. This is the question that I want to answer as we unpack this passage which reveals for us three means for contentment in the midst of trials. (We’ll only get to the first of these three this week; next week we will address the second two). I am going to give you all three of them, even though I’ve already given you the last two reasons there on your notes.
Three means for contentment in the midst of trials. (We’ll only get to the first of these three this week; next week we will address the second two).
Recognize the necessity of trials (v2-4); Request the wisdom of God (v5-8); Refuse the transience of earth (v9-11).
Recognize the necessity of trials (v2-4); Request the wisdom of God (v5-8); Refuse the transience of earth (v9-11).
So today, let’s consider the first means to being content in the midst of trials: Recognizing the necessity of trials.
Look at v2-4
2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
V3 begins with the word knowing. By using this word, James emphasizes that our contentment in the midst of trials comes by means of something that we know or should know.
The necessity of trials is emphasized in the imperative verb in v4. In English we have imperatives but they are only in the second person. If I say to my kids, “Go clean your room.” I am implying “You, go clean your room.” We don’t really have third person imperatives. So when we see one in Greek or Hebrew like we see in v4, we usually translate it, “Let someone do something,” as v4 does in the NASB. But I prefer to bring out the emphasis of the imperative a bit more: “Endurance must have its perfect result.” The imperative provides a necessity to the action of the verb.
Here he reminds us of two facts we know or should know about trials that reveal their necessity:
First, we know the process of trials. Trials are part of a larger process and only one step in that process. We can see that process outlined for us here; it starts with the trial which produces patient endurance, which produces a perfect result. That word result translates the Greek word that we usually translate work. I prefer the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation better which says, “endurance must do its complete work,” because this emphasizes the process. James’s point here is that we have a process going on.
We see similar outlines of the process of trials in other New Testament passages as well.
We see similar outlines of the process of trials in other New Testament passages as well.
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; 4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Paul emphasizes a few more steps in the process here. He starts with tribulation and moves to perseverance, which is synonymous with James’s endurance of v3, but Paul unpacks the perfect result a bit more for us here emphasizing the proven character and hope that result it. Peter also sees a similar progression.
6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, 7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
Peter’s focus is more on the outcome too as he emphasizes that the trials will prove our faith which will result in reciprocal praise and glory and honor in the end.
The truth that we can take away from each one of these passages is that trials are the initiating element of a process by which God changes us.
Yesterday we celebrated Christa’s grandmother’s ninety-fifth birthday with many of her aunts and uncles and cousins. Anne Miller had thirteen children so the party drew a large number of people, several of which I hadn’t met before. So we all had name tags that we were to put on and explain our connection to Anne. One of Christa’s cousins revealed his process oriented thinking on his name tag by putting his name, then listing his mother and Anne with little production marks by leading from one to other. His name tag explained that the process of getting to him had a starting point at least relative to yesterday that began with Anne Miller.
So also suffering is a beginning point for us. When we suffer, a process is begun that is producing something desirable. Peter’s explanation of the process compares it to a refiner’s fire’s effect on gold. The fire is hot and destructive, but the purified gold that comes out in the end makes the fire worth it. Trials and suffering are only one step in the process, and while they may be the least comfortable or most destructive part of the process, we must recognize that they are a necessary part of that process, a process that cannot be accomplished with out them.
The second fact we know or should know is the productivity of trials. Once we see the process, we can see the outcome of the process. I’ve already alluded to the outcome of the process because to talk about the process is to talk about the outcome, but this is where we see the real benefit of our trials. Most of us never see the refining process that goes into producing fine metals like gold, but we all appreciate the product.
James calls the end of this perfection, Paul calls it proven character and hope, and Peter calls it a proven faith. And Peter, Paul, and James are all speaking of the same thing: Christian maturity.
Don’t get discouraged by James’s emphasis on perfection, thinking “Well I’m not perfect, will I ever be perfect?” James isn’t speaking of moral perfection per se, although that will eventually be the result of Christian maturity. James is speaking of completion or wholeness. The trials will make us more spiritually whole, they will fill in some of the gaps in our spiritual lives.
I want you to notice that James says this three different ways in v4. Look at your Bibles. He says these trials happen so that we will be perfect, that means mature or complete, and complete, that is a synonym for the previous word, and lacking in nothing, a definition of what means in case we were confused. James piles up these synonyms to make his point. Trials are going to fill in the gaps between you and your Christlikeness.
Think about how Paul and Peter say the same thing. Paul emphasizes that trials produce a proven character. Where does proven character come from? How is it proven? It comes from Jesus. Paul sees trials filling in those same gaps. Peter emphasizes that trials are like a refiners fire. What does a refiner’s fire do? It removes the impurities from the precious metal, the gaps in its purity.
So let me bring these two facts together. Trials are part of a process that is necessary for us to fill in the gaps in our Christlikeness. James’s point is not that each trial is going to fill the same gaps. He isn’t saying that once you’ve gone through a trial, you will be perfect. He is saying that every trial we go through will add another finishing touch to the process. I hope to round out this picture for you a bit more in the coming weeks, but for now, know this: trials are a necessary part of the process of your becoming more like Jesus. Trials must do their work to fill in the gaps between who I am and who God wants me to be.
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Coming to this recognition will help us be content in the midst of trials.
Coming to this recognition will help us be content in the midst of trials.
Horatio Spafford had established a very successful legal practice as a young businessman and was also a devout Christian.
However, Spafford’s fortune evaporated in the wake of the great Chicago Fire of 1871. Having invested heavily in real estate along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, he lost everything overnight. In a saga reminiscent of Job, his son died a short time before his financial disaster. But the worst was yet to come.
Desiring a rest for his wife and four daughters, Spafford planned a European trip for his family in 1873. In November of that year, due to unexpected last-minute business developments, he had to remain in Chicago, but sent his wife and four daughters on ahead as scheduled. He expected to follow in a few days. On November 22 the ship was struck by another boat and sank in twelve minutes. Several days later the survivors were finally landed at Cardiff, Wales, and Mrs. Spafford cabled her husband two words, ‘Saved alone.’
Spafford left immediately to join his wife. And as he approached the area of the ocean thought to be where the ship carrying his daughters had sunk he penned the words we sang today: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well, with my soul.’”
This is contentment in the midst of trials. It is saying in the midst of tears, “It is well with my soul.” It is saying in the midst of pain, “It is well with my soul.” It is saying in the midst of each and every trial we face, “It is well with my soul.”
Why can we say, “It is well with my soul?” Because we recognize the process and we see its end. We see God making us whole, removing the gaps.
And let us not lose sight of the One who said, “It is well with my soul,” in the midst of trials and pain better than anyone of us ever could: Jesus. Jesus faced the cross and said, “Let this pass, but not my will, but Yours be done.” He hung on the cross being mistreated and falsely accused and said, “Father, forgive them.”
But what is even more remarkable is the fact that Jesus didn’t have any gaps that needed filling. He was already whole and complete, but He suffered anyway. He did this to fill the gap that was between us and Him as well, but in a different way. If Jesus hadn’t suffered, then we would have a God who is immune from suffering, who cannot feel our pain, and hasn’t experienced our trials.
When Jesus died, He showed us the suffering God, but even more, He suffered when as God He could have stopped it. He was still sovereign over everything while He suffered. He is the suffering sovereign. When God causes Himself to suffer for the benefit of others, we can trust that the suffering He allows in our lives is for our benefit too.
Surely, contentment in the midst of trials will not come easy
May we suffer with joy as God wholly refines us to be like Jesus who suffered for us.
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