Today the Spirit calls to our attention a seemingly strange exhortation to James’ Jewish-Christian brethren. In 4:7-9 he says (in summary,) submit yourself to God; come into God’s presence; wash your hands; and then grieve, mourn, and weep.
“Grieve, mourn, and weep,” really? This is a strange exhortation for people who should be the happiest on earth. We have been given the indescribable gifts of the very presence of God and eternal life, so why should we feel sad, let alone grieve, mourn, and weep?
May I submit that the answer lies not in the words, but in the REASONS for the words. The words are as follows.
James 4:7, 9 NIV. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you… Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Now, the reasons.
James presents us with a conundrum. We must be clean of heart and hands before we can approach God. But, how can we become so cleansed? James does not give us the answer and requires us to study other portions of the Bible for that answer.
In today’s passage, James presents us with another conundrum. How are we to appreciate and utilize God’s great temporal gifts to us as balanced against pride in the possession of these gifts and against the lack of temporal gifts by so many others, i.e., our relative wealth versus others’ poverty?
James begins with a Greek word for “grieve” that literally means “to bear affliction, hard times.” One can’t know or experience hard times when one lives in the lap of luxury. On the question of how do we balance enjoying God’s temporal gifts with not being controlled by them, Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.” Matthew 6:21.
To begin with, in this verse, James cautions us not to take pride in the gifts God has given us but rather to be sorrowful that others do not possess those gifts. James begins with a strange metaphor. He tells us rather than rejoice we should grieve. We should grieve over the fact that others do not possess the gifts that we do. Further, James tells us that we should remember our own sin. Remembering our sin should bring us to tears. Perhaps, if it does not, we are not truly sorrowful for our sins. To lose the ability to recognize and to be sorrowful for our sin is to take a step in the wrong direction toward greater sin and a step away from God and His will for our lives.
The word James uses for “mourn” comes from the Greek pentheos, the root word for penance and repentance, i.e. to be filled with remorse over and over again – to “keep on” being filled with remorse.
In his commentary on James, William Barclay writes:
In his demand for godly sorrow, James is going back to the fact that Jesus had said: ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted’ (Matthew 5:4; cf. Luke 6:20–6). We must not read into this passage something James does not mean. He is not denying the joy of the Christian life. He is not demanding that people should live a life filled with gloom in a shadowed world… [rather] He is pleading for a sober life in place of frivolity, and in doing so… he is describing not the end but the beginning of the Christian life.
Perhaps Professor Barclay’s “live a life filled with gloom in a shadowed world… is a reference to Plato’s “World of Shadows,” the prevalent Greek idea of death at the time of James’ writing. The mourning that James’ Jewish readers would know was found in their funerary customs. In Jesus’ time, Jewish funerary customs were fairly rigid. They included the tearing of the front of the mourners’ clothes and a type of weeping known as “wailing,” a half cry-half moan. The Jewish mourning period of seven days for the average person traditionally was accompanied by professional mourners who would play instruments such as flutes and chant funeral dirges. Rabbinical rules allowed for even the poorest person to have at least two flute-players provided, along with one mourning woman.
An example of such in found in Mark 5:38 where Jesus came to the home of the synagogue ruler whose daughter had just died. Mark writes that Jesus found much more than the minimum number of mourners: there was “a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly” (Mark 5:38 NIV.) That would have indicated a person of some elevated stature in the community or the family member of the high-ranking person.
All this funeral “folderol” could be summarized by saying that mourning for the dead was a big deal. It is to this “big deal” that James refers. He advises that when confronted with our sin, we should, inwardly, make a “big deal” of it because sin is a “big deal.”
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, gives us a visual picture of this type of mourning.
In 1739, James Whitefield, another founding father of Methodism, who had been preaching in the Welsh village of Kingswood called on John Wesley to help. Whitefield called upon Wesley to come out of his, Wesley’s, comfortable church pulpit and to use his preaching skills with the common miners and others in the open areas of the village as they gathered. This was a giant leap for Wesley, as until this time, he had preached primarily in church pulpits and in small, controlled gatherings. He had not preached to the masses. In fact, many of his Anglican denomination, believing that “church” was for the well-to-do, condemned preaching to the masses as a waste of time. They contended that the pastor’s efforts should be concentrated on caring for his immediate flock.
Nevertheless, Wesley, no doubt led by the spirit, heeded the call of Whitefield and proceeded on to Kingswood where he was confronted by a scene that made an indelible impression on him. He saw the people of the town, miners and their families, as they were coming in from work gathered to hear what he had to say.
He preached a sermon on the topic of the Sermon on the Mount. Wesley states later that he was taken aback at the tears of sorrow for sin etched in the coal dust on the faces of the miners in recognition of and sorrow for their sin. That is what James insists that his readers should feel.
Harkening back to verse 7 where James tells us to “draw near to God,” we come to the conclusion that when we do so, inexorably we come to the conclusion that when we draw near to God, the first thing we notice is the contrast between God’s holiness and our own sin. There is a famous word picture drawn from Isaiah 6 where the Prophet has a vision of the very throne room of God. In a masterful presentation of language, the prophet describes God and the beings around him. His reaction is perhaps a universal one. He stands not agape at the glorious sight, rather, the prophet falls on his face and utters the only thing he can think to say,
Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty. (Isaiah 6:5 NIV.)
Recognition of our sin is the first step to Salvation. The old, unnamed preacher once said, “Before you can get a man saved, you first have to get him lost.” Obviously, what the old preacher meant was that a man had to first come to an understanding of the depth of his sinful, lost condition and to his desperate need of a savior before he could turn to the Savior and accept the salvation freely offered to him.
James means that we, as individuals, must grieve for our own sin. If we are not able to grieve our own sin, perhaps we have become to be too comfortable with our sin. That is a dangerous state in which to find oneself. It begins a slippery slope to greater sin.
Note the progression that the Psalmist points out in Psalm 1:1.
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers . . . (Psalm 1:1 NIV.)
The one about whom the psalmist writes first walks in step with the wicked, the sinners. Then, he stops, stands, and looks at what the wicked are doing. Finally, he sits down with the wicked and finds himself doing the same thing the wicked are doing. Sorrowful, mourning, and weeping for our own sin eventually leads us to personal salvation. When we realize that there is a log in our eye, we must first pluck it out, then we can see with spiritual eyes. See Matthew 7:5. But that’s only half of James’ story.
As Whitefield and Wesley recognized, we are not the centers in the world. We have a duty, according to James, to see the sin of other people in the world and rather than condemning, we should grieve, mourn, and weep for their sinful condition. But there is still more.
In the Gospel of John in chapter 11, the Apostle gives us the story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the tomb. As you will remember the story, Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus that their brother and Jesus’ dear friend, Lazarus, was sick unto death. Jesus waits for 2 days before he leaves to attend to Lazarus. The journey to Bethany, near Jerusalem, would take two days as Jesus and his disciples were in the Galilee. By the time Jesus and the disciples arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days.
There was a common belief among the Jews that the spirit of the dead person circled around the deceased for 3 days to see if he would revive and then flew away. Thus, after the third day, the person was absolutely and positively dead.
Jesus and the disciples arrived on the scene the day after Lazarus died. Jesus met the family members, four days into their seven-day period of mourning. He consoled them and asked them to take him to the tomb. At the site, Jesus gazed at the stone covered the cave. In verse 35, the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” This was not a show, not a façade. These were tears of true sorrow. Lazarus was His friend as were the sisters, Mary and Martha. Jesus mourned as did the family members.
This is exactly what James writes about. He wants us to mourn our sins. But there is more. Our mourning should lead to action.
In John 11, Jesus does something remarkable. Out of His grief, mourning, and tears, he is spurred to action. The King James Version captures Jesus’ words and actions with great poetry. “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.” (John 11:34 KJV.) I have heard it said, perhaps with a little hyperbole, that had Jesus not prefaced “come forth” with the name, “Lazarus,” all the tombs within the sound of Jesus’ voice would have opened and the dead would have “come forth.” I would add “like a zombie apocalypse.”
Be that as it may, Lazarus hopped out of the Grave still wrapped in the grave clothes. The Movie, “Jesus of Nazareth,” captures this drama of this even in the following clip. See the following. https://youtu.be/L0IbOJ0Acmg .
Lazarus was the living proof of the power of Jesus’ words. That is exactly the picture of where our mourning and grief should leave us. James urges us to grieve, mourn, whale, and weep for the sin of other people. But then, like Jesus, we should do something about their sin.
Obviously, we cannot save them from their sins. But we know Someone who can, that someone is Jesus. It then becomes incumbent upon us to lead them to Jesus, the One who can save them from their sins.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
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