My Last Comment On The Book of James

James 4 continues:

11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹²There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?

Here we read about everything we learn in nursery school, kindergarten, grade school and beyond.

Simple little rules about how we like others to treat us.  And yes, how we are to treat them.

Nothing really new here, love you neighbor as you would have them love you.

However I take issue with one thing James infers here.  We are not to be doers of the law.  At least not the law James is referring to.

¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1)

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)

James should have been very aware of the new covenant that God was to bring through Jesus’ grace and truth.

Then, what he writes next is kind of interesting.  At least it is interesting because of were it fits in the rest of Jame’s preceding conversation.

13 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ ¹⁴Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’  

There is something to be said for paying attention to this moment — today.  

At least when you get as chronologically  advantage as this Gramma.

We can never be sure, from one minute to another, what life will bring — or take for that matter.  

¹⁴Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?

We humans have this innately natural ability to think that we have forever to live.  We move through the life, we are given, without really thinking about it.  

We say, and do, things that often catch us up short.  And instead of immediately correcting our errors; we leave them to be settled for another, more convenient, time.

I think I have told this story before.  But it is a good example of our mode of living.  Marie was 90 years old.  She still lived in her own apartment on her own.  I asked her one day:  “Marie, when you wake up in the morning  do you ever think you are going to die?”  Her answer came quickly, and with great confidence:  “No, why would I?”

Often these days I find myself assessing my “life.” 

I talk to myself about what is important and essential. Over against what is just trivia.

I talk about how I want to live the days I have left.  

I think a lot about my desire to be real.  Like the Velveteen Rabbit.  Not fake or superficial.  

I am quiet focus on being comfortable in my clothes and with myself.

God has put us here on this earth to be our best self possible.  

That is what I have wanted to be, free to be, for years. 

However, I often found myself living up to  the expectation other thought I should be.  Always following the law; rather than enjoying the grace offered.

¹⁴Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?

A great question to ponder.

Now, that is all the attention I will be giving to the Book of James.  

If any of you who want to talk about chapter 5.  

Give me a comment.