God Can Not Be Limited

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ²You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, ‘God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’? ⁶But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says,‘God opposes the proud,

but gives grace to the humble.’  ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.(James 4)

I don’t know about you, but I am getting weary of Jame’s finger pointing at me. 

James offer very little grace in his theology.  And the little grace he does allow always has a limits. 

However I do think the question he begins with is interesting.  And important:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?

I would add on to that question, by asking, about the kind of grace we offer each other.

According to the writer of John’s Gospel God offers grace in abundance:

¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.(John 1)

And again in John 10:

7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.(John 10)

The God I believe in, is limitless.  And His understanding of the human limitations is much greater than James gives Him credit for. 

Two Old Testament writer put it this way:

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.(Jere. 31) 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

   nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

   so are my ways higher than your ways

   and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Is. 55)

I am thinking that James has forgotten that God created the world/earth.  

And, God put the human being in the world.  

And.  Soon after, that major event, God came to realize that both the world and the human were less that perfect — less than “very good.”  

God, in my understanding, made it very clear throughout scripture that His children were to be kind, and just and humble to each other.  

All of the other rules and rituals were from human thinking.

⁶ ‘With what shall I come before the Lord,

   and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,

   with calves a year old? 

⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ 

⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

   and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

   and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6)

So the one thing James write that seems in line with God’s will is this: 

¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Maybe we should take some time to explore the power of humility.  

What do you think?