This is our second week in the book of James, a book that is all about life. It’s a book that shows us so clearly that our faith is meant to be lived out. James 1:5-11 continues that theme. It’s a passage where we get a few different ideas in rapid fire, but I actually think there’s something tying them together that is really, really important for us to understand for our faith in the Lord. Let’s get into it.
1. Lack and supply (v.5)
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5
If you recall the first four verses of James, he provides us with some radical thoughts regarding enduring trials. James declares that we can persevere and even count it joy when we encounter trials of all kinds. He promises if we do that, we’ll grow into maturity, and ultimately that we’ll lack nothing. But here in verse 5, James says there is something that you might lack right now, and that something is wisdom. Wisdom is what you really need in order to persevere. Let me give you a second here to turn to answer this question: what would be your definition of wisdom?
Now that you’ve come up with your wrong answer, let me give you the right answer. I’m just kidding, I’m sure what you came up with was profound and very wise. You could go in a bunch of directions with this. The link I would see with enduring trials is that wisdom is about seeing things accurately. It’s about recognizing what’s truly going on. Let’s say you’re in marriage counseling, talking about some longstanding conflict. If the counselor was able to pinpoint what was actually going on, if they could identify the issue under the issues, you’d say they were wise, right? And so wisdom in trials means seeing what’s really going: recognizing the potential for God to work in this situation for transformation into maturity, seeing how this trial is ultimately temporary. You can see how a lack of wisdom in various trials would inhibit your ability to persevere.
James writes that if you find yourself in this place of trials and you’re lacking in wisdom, you should ask God for it. This is, in fact, a very wise thing to do. There’s a famous story in the Old Testament that you might have heard before. King Solomon of Israel was the son of the great King David. His path to the throne was hardly easy or straightforward, but he made it. At the beginning of his reign, he had a dream where God spoke to him and said, “ask for whatever you want me to give you.” Put yourself in Solomon’s shoes. What an opportunity. Whatever you want me to give you. Blank cheque. Write in the amount, it’s yours. What would you do? Money, romantic happiness, athletic success, the ability to exist on a diet of Honey’s doughnuts while gaining no weight? Even at that point early in his reign, Solomon had experienced enough to know that none of those things were what he really needed. Instead, he asks God for a discerning heart to govern God’s people and to distinguish between right and wrong- in other words, he seeks wisdom. God is so pleased that He gives Solomon wisdom as well as all the things Solomon didn’t ask for. The point is, Solomon asked for wisdom and God was so glad to give it. It was probably Solomon himself in Proverbs 2:6 who urged his son to seek wisdom above all else, “for the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.”
You should ask the Lord for wisdom, because it comes from Him and He’s eager to give it. That’s exactly what James says. God will answer this request because of His character. He says that God gives “without finding fault.” The idea here is that God doesn’t “reprove” those who ask for wisdom. Maybe you had this experience in school where you asked a question and other kids snickered because they thought it was a dumb question. Maybe the teacher even made a snide comment in reply. Snickery and snidery, that’s a bad combination. Some people are afraid that God is like that. They won’t ask for something in prayer because they think it’s silly or that God might be upset with them for asking for help. But God isn’t like that. He doesn’t say, “that’s a stupid question, why are you bothering me with this?”
Actually, James says, He is a giving God, a generous God. That’s who He is, that’s His character. I want to say something here about the word that James uses for “generosity.” The word is more often translated as something like “oneness,” as in “single-mindedness.” It’s about having an undivided intention to do something. The word came to mean generosity in some cases because it was about someone’s single-minded determination to bless others. That’s who God is. He is so determined, so focused on blessing us and giving us wisdom, assuming we want it. Hold on to that idea of single-mindedness, because it’s going to come up a few times. Here’s where James goes next:
6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
James 1:6-8
2. Doubt and faith (1:6-8)
So yes, ask for wisdom, but it’s crucial how you ask: you need to ask in faith, in belief, rather than doubt. In this passage, it sure seems like faith and doubt are opposites to each other, doesn’t it? I’ve heard a lot of reaction against that. There’s a quote out there that I’ve seen from Ann Lamott, Brene Brown, and even Russell Brand: “the opposite of faith isn’t doubt, the opposite of faith is certainty.” It’s catchy, probably because it’s so counterintuitive. On face value, it’s also so counter-biblical. Flip back two pages in your Bible and you come across this in Hebrews 11: “now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” If we’re going to figure out the right relationship between faith and doubt when it comes to prayer, we need to understand what James means by those words.
Faith
First, faith or belief- the word in the Greek can be translated either way. When I was down in California a couple of weeks ago for some studies I’m doing, our cohort talked at length about the phenomenon of deconstruction or deconversion. People who have “deconverted” are those who have left Christian faith. One of the things we talked about is how in the Bible, faith is a “whole-person commitment.” A common way of looking at personhood from a philosophical perspective is that it is made up of the intellect, the will, and the emotions. If faith is a total person commitment, that means commitment in all three of those realms: that we believe intellectually, we obey Him in how we live, and we have an emotional connection with Him. In other words, as Jesus says, we are to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.
However, what often happens is that someone puts all the focus of their faith in just one area. It’s like someone who only ever exercises one leg. Imagine what that would look like: their right leg is a massive heap of muscle while the left leg is a toothpick. That person is going to be very unbalanced, and if anything ever happens to that uber muscular leg, the other leg won’t be in a position to carry any weight. In the realm of faith, someone might put all their focus on the intellect. They try to understand every mystery, studying every apologetics issue and question, knowing the facts inside and out. I suspect this is similar to the certainty that some of those authors speak against. It’s an intellectually-focused faith that tries to understand everything completely. Like with the exercise metaphor, the problem is that not only is this person imbalanced with atrophied muscles everywhere else, but if the intellectual component hits a wall, they’re a goner. There’s a famous scholar named Bart Ehrman who was a Christian until, during his studies, he came across a biblical contradiction he couldn’t figure out. He said that once that happened, his faith fell apart pretty quickly.
Or think about the will, that determination to obey and live in a certain way. If that’s the entirety of faith, it quickly slips into legalism and you lose the plot altogether. Of course, in today’s day and age in the modern West, the danger is to place all of faith in the emotional component. It’s all about experience, which means that if you go for a while without feeling anything, if church just isn’t doing it for you anymore, or if you just don’t feel like praying anymore, you decide the whole thing is a sham and you disconnect. Again, faith is a total person commitment. It’s loyalty to Jesus in every way. It’s a single-mindedness in every aspect of life that you’re going to follow him no matter the circumstances. It’s rugged commitment.
Going back to Hebrews 11, that’s exactly what we find. That’s the great hall of faith chapter that goes through a number of figures in the Old Testament and examines how they lived by faith. What comes across so clearly in that chapter is how these men and women lived in a way that didn’t make sense to the world. It might not have always made sense to themselves either. However, they lived that way because of a rugged, total person commitment to God. This is how the author summarizes it at one point:
“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”
Hebrews 11:13
Faith means trusting that even if you can’t make sense of it right now, even if you don’t see the whole picture, even if it’s hard and you don’t feel like following, God will fulfill His promises. He will come through. He will make all things new in the end, and you keep moving forward on that basis. You’ve made the decision to trust Him and you do it through thick and thin. If you ask for wisdom in the midst of trials, if you ask for anything really, ask with faith, ask with a single-minded commitment to trusting God that He’ll do what’s right and will fulfill His promises, even when you don’t see the reality yet.
Doubt
Now look at that word “doubt.” James says the one who doubts when they’re asking is unstable and unsteady, double-minded, unable to receive anything from the Lord. If you were to do a word study on the word for doubt here, you’d find that this word often means to judge or dispute. The word in James is used in what’s called the middle voice, which means that it’s reflexive. It’s a verb that’s directed back on itself. In other words, doubt means that you’re disputing with yourself. There’s a severe internal division involved. To put it more mildly, you’re riding the fence. To put it more severely, you’ve become like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, wavering unpredictably between serving the nice “hobbitses” or killing them in cold blood to get your “precious.” That’s the kind of doubt that James is talking about. It’s the opposite of a rugged, single-minded commitment. It’s an internal dispute that refuses to make a final decision and commit to anything.
I want to tell you a piece of my testimony, and I don’t do this to make myself look like a spiritual hero, but instead to clarify what this doubt is and what it isn’t. That’s because I think some people bear guilt for having questions, for going through doubt, and in many cases I don’t think that’s what James means here. I grew up in a solidly Christian family, accepting what my parents and church had taught me as a kid. When I was 14, though, without asking for it, I was plunged into a series of intense questions about my faith. I hadn’t asked for this. There were no bad influences in my life. I hadn’t stumbled across an atheistic book in my Christian school library or watched a debate on a yet-to-be-invented YouTube channel. I was the farthest thing from a rebellious child. The questions were uninvited, but they came hard and fast. Did God exist? What evidence was there for that? Was the Bible actually trustworthy? Wasn’t Jesus simply a man? What evidence was there for his resurrection? What assurance could I have that I was “saved”? Would I have been a Christian if I hadn’t grown up in a Christian home? These questions attached themselves to my thinking and seemed relentless. I was the bone, the doubts were the dog, and they would not let me go.
Looking back, I think there were a few reasons that that crisis led to a strong faith, instead of an abandoned faith. One was that I didn’t struggle with the doubts in silence. I had parents and other wise adults I could bring my questions to. In particular, I had a father who had worked through many of these questions himself and could offer me some intellectual resources to think through them. However, I think the most important factor was that I wanted to believe. I was determined to hold on. This was crucial because as helpful as all my father’s insights were, they were not enough. Apologetics may have placated my questioning mind, but it was always temporary. For example, I might go to bed one night, satisfied that the explosive growth of the early church was clear evidence that something had happened after the crucifixion of Jesus. Within minutes, the doubts would roar back in: yeah, but what about this? Have you ever thought about that? That was when prayer entered in, a very particular biblical prayer: “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Over and over again, night after night, I prayed this prayer. There were numerous points at which the doubt felt overwhelming, where I felt inches away from leaving faith behind. Those moments were the ones I cried out to God most vigorously. “I can’t do this, God, I can’t figure this out, but I want to! Please help me!” And over and over again, in my very last gasp of faith, I would experience a flooding of deep peace in my mind. I have often described it like the sudden breaking of gloomy clouds like we get here in Vancouver. One minute, you’re being blasted by a deluge; the next, you’re basking in the warm, bright rays of the sun. That cycle repeated itself many times that year. It wasn’t fun. But the result was a strengthening and a thickening of my faith.
Returning to faith and doubt, you might say that in one sense, I struggled with doubt. However, thanks to God’s grace, I dealt with that doubt through faith, through a commitment to the Lord even when everything seemed to be falling apart around me. Faith in Jesus- not simply an intellectual belief, but a total person commitment involving the will, intellect, and emotions- was the anchor that kept me grounded in the midst of the storm. Faith through doubts, rather than a refusal to believe because of doubt. That’s the key.
If we think again about James 1, I hope that helps make sense of what we read here. The doubt is not questions that are met with faith, the doubt here is the undecided, internal dispute that leaves someone like the ocean swells. People who doubt in this way are constantly shifting in their disposition towards God, depending on the winds and the tides. They’re easily moved and blown around by circumstances. The result is that without that commitment, without that determined intention to trust God, they are unable to receive what God, in His determined, single-minded intention, wants to generously give them.
3. Riches and humility (1:9-11)
Let’s move on to the last three verses that we’ll look at today. One of the reasons that people are double-minded, trying to ride the fence and avoid any commitment, is because they’re afraid that if they do commit, they’ll miss out on other opportunities. They’re afraid they’ll get tied down to what ended up being an inferior option. Maybe they never get married because they think a more attractive person might come along. Maybe they never commit to any social gathering in case a more desirable group of people is getting together. You’ve probably heard of “FOMO”- the fear of missing out. This is slightly different. It’s “FOBO”- the fear of better options. And when you think about double-mindedness and doubt in that way, it makes sense why James says what he does next.
9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
James 1:9-11
Believers in humble circumstances
There are two groups of people being represented here. The first is believers in humble circumstances. These are probably the primary people James is writing to. Remember from last week, there’s a chance James is writing this to Jewish followers of Jesus who have just been forced to flee Jerusalem because of persecution. They’re becoming more alienated from friends and family because of their faith in Jesus. They’ve been dislocated and are being forced to make a new life in new places. And they’re facing the financial consequences of all of that. Socially and economically, they’re at the bottom of the ladder.
What does James say to them? He doesn’t tell them: do whatever it takes to climb that ladder! Make sure you don’t associate with anyone who might be perceived to be lower than you! That’s how a lot of people approach it socially, right? Attach yourself to people who will get you somewhere, avoid people who will make you look bad. This is what drives some of the FOBO, some of the inability to commit. It’s the double-mindedness again. James doesn’t say, work 70 hour weeks and neglect your family so that you become financially wealthy. That’s another strategy for working your way up. Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with working hard or with happening to have friends in high places. However, according to James, that’s definitely not to be the focus of a believer. Instead, he instructs them to take pride in their high position.
At face value, that’s a contradiction. You’ve got nothing, so take pride in how rich you are. It also sounds un-spiritual to take pride in anything, doesn’t it? Generally speaking, pride is not a virtue in the Bible, which is one of many things that should mark out Christian faith as different from our world. There’s really only one circumstance where pride or boasting is encouraged. Jeremiah 9:23-24 says,
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah 9:23-24
What are you to boast about? You are to boast about the Lord, about His character, about having the privilege of knowing Him. It’s empty to boast about your riches, wisdom, or strength. Those things are fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow. But the Lord is everlasting, He’s steady. Don’t glory in yourself, which leads to double-mindedness and un-committedness. Glory in Him who is rock solid.
As James points out, this is an insight that tends to be more accessible to those in humble circumstances. When everything else has already been stripped away, they’ve learned that their anchor is the Lord, and that this is far more valuable than worldly wealth. That’s why Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s not impossible, but it’s so easy for the rich to glory in themselves and think that they don’t need God.
The rich
That’s the other group of people James addresses: the rich. James compares their fate to a wild flower. It looks beautiful and strong in the moment, but it is easily scorched and withered. A prolonged drought means death to that flower. It’s life is so fleeting, so temporary. James teaches that in the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
The point that James makes about the fading of riches is true even in a this-world, temporal perspective. Wealth is never certain to last even in your lifetime. You’re one accident or one bad investment away from catastrophe, an anxiety that causes people to pour even more money into insurance so they can keep that possibility at bay as long as possible. But it is of course true from an eternal perspective as well. You don’t take your toys and status with you when you die. There are stories of people who have tried and been buried with their money. I read one story about a Ugandan government official who was buried with over $5000 because he thought he could appease God on judgment day. That’s real. I heard another story that probably isn’t real about an old miser who died and told his wife to bury him with all his money. She placed an envelope in the casket and a friend asked her in disbelief, “you really put all his money in that?” She replied, “yep, I put all the money in my account and wrote him a cheque for it.” You get the point. Riches fade away.
You see, the rich often glory in their wealth. But James says that the rich- assuming these are believers who are rich- should glory in their humiliation. What he means, probably, is similar to the poor. Their pride is not in their accomplishments, it’s in their association with Christ. And look, for the rich, Christ might not seem like a great look. He was not one of the elites. He was a carpenter’s son who grew up in the boonies. He hung out with fishermen and tax collectors, and was ultimately crucified as a convicted criminal. Committing your life to him in the first century (and really, this is the case in many parts of the world today) was to invite ridicule. It was to embrace what looked to the world like weakness. And James exhorts the rich to glory in that. Take pride in the low position that faith in Christ may cause you in society. I like how one commentator sums up these verses: ”to financial adversities, the poor believer says, ‘but how rich I am!’ To earthly glories, the rich believer says, ‘but what a wretch I am!’”
Conclusion
Now what does that have to do with the verses that come before? The connection I see that ties all these verses together, is this question: what is your anchor?
The result of the internal dispute of doubt is the same as the result of glorying in worldly status and wealth. You notice that? In both cases in James, the result is to be unstable. It is to be unrooted. It is to be completely dependent on momentary circumstances for any sense of personal well-being. The doubter drifts in the sea like the ocean swells, the rich wither up and die. You need an anchor in life that will be able to withstand the storms, that will be rooted through the scorching hot wind. Living in doubt keeps you from any anchor, and wealth and status inevitably fails as an anchor. Instead, James proclaims that the anchor we need is faith in the Lord Jesus. It’s a faith that approaches God and asks Him for wisdom with confidence that He will give it. It’s a faith that is rugged, a faith that engages the mind, heart, and will, a faith that sticks with Jesus through thick and thin. It’s a faith that is more valuable to the believer than any worldly wealth or status could be. It’s a faith that doesn’t boast in fleeting things, but in the everlasting God, who is the Rock. Faith in Jesus is the anchor for the soul, an anchor that is firm and secure. And what we see throughout the Scriptures is that this faith is based on God’s own faithfulness.
God is the Rock. He is steady, He is unchanging, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He is single-mindedly determined to bless. Despite human sin, despite calling Israel and seeing them fail spectacularly and repeatedly in the Old Testament, despite the wickedness of humanity as a whole, he was so committed to us that the Son of God took on flesh and made His dwelling among us. Even when faced with temptation, even when faced with the cross, Jesus saw His calling all the way through. He came for you, He died for you, He rose from the dead for you, because of His faithful, committed love for you. I want to invite you to put your faith in Him today because He is faithful. Let your anchor in life be a single-minded, whole person commitment to Him, because of His commitment to you.