By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There’s a great old country song with the lead of the chorus, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.”
James wants us to recognize the seriousness of the harm our pride can do against how much more seriously God wants our devotion to Him.
James 4:5-10 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
This is hard to comprehend if we look at it like our own often broken or struggling relationships. Our jealousy leads to conflict among our friends, family or others we share connections with. It can lead to evil acts like murder as James taught us in the previous verses in James 4.
Since pride can lead to evil acts, it places us in opposition to God. According the Gospel, God’s plan for salvation, it’s our sin that separates us from Him and that without a saving faith in Jesus, leads to God’s judgment and wrath against us. He is jealous of anything we let come between us and His love for us because we were created to worship Him. Adam and Eve chose for there to be sin and the separation it created but God still wants us with Him for eternity.
Those who do not have a saving faith in Jesus are destined to Hell but God loves us enough that He sent Jesus to take the punishment meant for our sins. When we have belief in Jesus and what he did for us, repentance of our sin and by asking to be forgiven, we can have a perfect eternity filled with worship of God waiting for us. God is jealous enough of us to send Jesus to die for us. That’s a different kind of jealousy than what we typically experience in relationships.
When we do have a saving faith, God knows we are still going to sin and that temptation from the devil can cause us to fall away. He will still receive us into Heaven through his grace, after we’ve humbled ourselves and chosen to submit to Jesus as Lord through our salvation, but He wants us to resist the devil and temptation and turn to Him in order to receive that salvation.
Once saved from the judgment of our sin, God still wants our devotion and He will lift us to a higher position. Once in Heaven, we are made perfect, but until then, God wants us to fight sin as seriously as He wants us to be with Him for eternity. To have God jealous for us to want to give us a perfect eternity full of a joy we can’t comprehend–that’s a great kind of jealousy.
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