A godless life.

Among professing Christians this godlessness is manifested. I will go. I will do. I will accomplish. He does not retain God in his thoughts. An example of the faithless pride of men who masquerade as believers in the church and so also another temptation to which believers themselves are prone in the world.

The life of the believer with God in the covenant is not a life of friendship with the world. Ye adulterer and adulteress, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity against God? Rather, the covenant is the believer’s life of walking with God, of living before the face of God, and of resting and relying upon Christ’s perfect righteousness alone. The believer is in this world, not being of it but seeking the life that is to come. He is a pilgrim and a stranger here. In this world he has no abiding place. His home and citizenship are in heaven. Walking with God and living before God, the believer must become a sinner before God every day. He must walk in the forgiveness and righteousness that is his in Christ. So daily he draws near to God, fights against sin and evil, and resists the devil as God’s enemy.

Life with God is also a life of submission to the only rule of life that God reveals in his word. The friend of God makes all his judgments based on the word of God alone. So when the friend of God judges, he is a doer of the law and not a judge. Because he judges based on the word of God, he does not judge, but God judges by his word. No one may call the friend of God a judge or judgmental because it is not he but God, the only lawgiver, who judges.

So when anyone departs from the word of God and contrary to that word calls evil good and good evil, he manifests a monstrous pride in which he demonstrates that he faithlessly will not submit to God, the only lawgiver.

Submission to God’s word will manifest itself in the believer’s humble dependence upon God every day. God is in his thoughts, and he relies on God for all things. The believer does that because he knows what his life is: he is dead, and his life is hid with God in Jesus Christ. This life is not his goal, his joy, and his treasure; but God and life with God is his goal, his joy, and his treasure.

What is your life? In all your considering do you consider what your life is? Do you consider who you are?

The text answers these sobering questions with an equally sobering answer: you are a vapor that appears for a time and vanishes away! Just a vapor, a puff of smoke, that appears and is gone. In all your decisions do you consider that?

So in light of who you are—just a vapor—James says that you must live soberly in this world: “If the Lord will, I will live,” and only then do you also say, “If the Lord will, I will do this or that.” If the Lord will. If the Lord—the Lord himself and eternal life with him—is in the thoughts of the godly man, he will say, “If the Lord will!” Because his life is a vapor that is vanishing. Thus James puts your life in the proper perspective for you.

Over against that is the proud boast of dying man: “Today or tomorrow I’ll go into such and such a city and buy and sell and get gain.”

You ought to say, “Today and tomorrow and every day of my life and in all things, ‘If the Lord will.’” That is the thought on the mind of the believer, the covenant friend of God, as he lives his life in this world. If Jehovah will!

When the friend of God says that, he shows that God is on his mind every day and that he does all his thinking in relationship to the ultimate reality of all things—the Lord God himself. So also God’s friend makes himself nothing in his life and God everything. Indeed, he makes the Lord God himself his life, his goal, and his all in this life.

The believer understands the controlling importance of God’s will. God is, and God is absolutely sovereign over all; so that nothing comes by chance, but all things happen according to God’s eternal counsel. All things in time and history and all things in the life of every man are the unfolding of the eternal will of God.

When the believer speaks of the Lord, he speaks of the triune God. When the believer speaks of God as the Lord, he emphasizes the sovereignty of God. The name Lord especially reveals that God is the sovereign who has authority over all things. All authority is his, all things are in his hand, all things are the product of his will, and all things are determined by him. Jehovah’s relationship to history is not that he sees in advance, but his relationship is that he determines and brings to pass. He does all his pleasure.

The Lord of all is a willing God. The Lord’s will is his eternal good pleasure concerning all things. God decreed and determined all things before he created the world. His will is as eternal as God is. In his counsel God determined all that would be and how all would happen and how all would end up. He determined the end from the beginning! He determined in his counsel that Christ would be the head of all things and that God would perfect all things in Christ for God’s glory and the revelation of God as the covenant God in a new heaven and a new earth. He determined who would be saved and who would be damned, so that the eternal destinies of all men are determined by the will of God. He determined their salvation and their damnation not because they did something or were something but only because he loved some and hated others. He determined, therefore, creation and the fall and all things to serve Christ and the salvation of his elect people for the revelation of the glory of God in Christ. God determined the rise and fall of nations and the course of the sun in the heavens and the falling of a single hair, when that hair would fall and where that hair would fall.

So also we must see that everything, absolutely everything—good and evil, fruitful years and barren, sickness and health, all events and the outcomes of all events in all of history and in the entire universe—in heaven, in hell, on the earth, and in the farthest reaches of the cosmos is determined by God. All is the result of God’s will. The will of God is not a blueprint according to which God designed the universe, but his will is living, abiding, and active now and at every moment in history.

James places your and my lives in their entirety within the scope of God’s will. James says, “If the Lord will, we will live. If the Lord will, we will do this or that.” God’s will is active in our lives as God gives to us every heartbeat, gives our strengths and weaknesses and our health and sicknesses, gives us all the works that we do, and puts us in every situation in which we find ourselves. Our lives are nothing except the unfolding of the deliberately appointed and eternally decided will of God. So James places all of our activities and thoughts in the scope of God’s eternal will. The Lord wills our births; he determines the entire lengths and the whole courses of our lives; he determines every thought and deed of our lives and the precise moments of our deaths. We are, and every man is, wholly subject to the will of God.

The God-determined life has a God-appointed goal. For the wicked it is hell. For the righteous it is heaven. The goal is not the here and now. Not for any man. It is salvation or damnation. It is eternity with God or eternity under the wrath of God.

So God knows all things that are and that will be. He knows all these things because he determined them. He knows where you will be and who you will be today, tomorrow, ten years from now, and to the end of your life.

Over against the reality and denying the reality that God is and that all things are the product of the will of God stands the evil boast of godless men in the church. Of these men James speaks when he says, “Ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.” The word “rejoicing” means to boast. These godless men boast in their godless lives.

James gives an example of the boasting that he condemns when he says that these men say, “To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain.” These members of the church and professing Christians—in the presence of their wives, their friends, and their families—on the job, in the office, or in the back of church confidently lay out their lives for a year. They state their goals for the year and when and how they will accomplish those goals. “We will leave today or tomorrow. We are traveling to this city and that city. We are going to continue there for a year. We are going to buy and sell these things and those things. We are going to make a lot of money. It is going to be a great year!”

Do not change James’ admonition to be against crooks whose businesses are built on fraud and deceit. The boasting men James exposes are impeccable in their business relationships, as far as men are concerned. They are going to buy and sell. They are doing so with a number of business associates. They will get gain by buying and selling, not by fraud and deceit. They surely have outstanding reputations.

Their sin is not their business practices but that they themselves are godless. They live godless lives. These boasting men hold their lives and all that happens to them in their lives in their own hands. They talk, plan, and live without a thought of God. They do all their figuring and calculating without God. “We will do this and that. We will go here and there. We will accomplish all this or that. We have goals, and we will bring these goals to completion.” But God is not in their plans and in their thoughts. They have arrogantly excluded God from all their plans.

Belonging to their godless lives are their carnal plans. Their goals are to increase in wealth. They have set their affections on worldly gain and will become rich in the world. Listen to them boast: “We will get gain!” To get and to have and to increase in riches are the high points of their achievements and the goals of all their plans. The success of their work is measured by the level of their increases in the earth.

Where are heaven and eternal life in all their thoughts? Where are the saints and church of God in all their plans? What of all the good they could do in the church instead of being so busy making money? What of all the missed worship services, all the unattended church and school meetings, and ignorance regarding important church matters in their deranged and godless pursuits of gain?

While they serve mammon, they make pretenses of serving God. God is not in their thoughts.

Godless professing Christians.

James rebukes the businessmen who make the building of their businesses the chief goals of their lives and who confidently lay out huge expenditures of money but do so with no thoughts of God.

James rebukes those who for their vacations forsake God’s church for long periods of time. Their relaxation is more important than God and his church and their souls.

James rebukes the couple whose chief and controlling goal in life is to have as many experiences in this life as possible or whose whole goal is their retirement planning.

James rebukes the young person who for the sake of his college education, his job, and his success in life forsakes God’s church and the fellowship of the truth.

James rebukes the young person whose plans for dating, marriage, and life are all made without God and his word. I will marry so-and-so, and I will finish my education, then we will have this many children, and we will do this and that in our lives.

James rebukes the man who for the pursuit of gain lets the church offices go vacant, the seats on the school board go unfilled, and the pew at the worship services sit empty. Gain, gain, gain controls everything.

Thus James rebukes in general a godlessness and an earthly-mindedness that make the pursuit of wealth the highest ideal in life so that all things are subjected to it. He rebukes the earthly-mindedness in which this life and the things of this life are the highest good. He rebukes the godless planning to which we and all men are so prone, so that we plan our days, weeks, months, and years without a thought of God.

It is all godless.

Godlessness is not first of all gross wickedness. Godlessness is not first of all that a man is a thief or obviously carnal in his living. Godlessness is God-forgetfulness. It is to do, to plan, and to live as though God is not and as though all things do not depend in every detail upon the plan of the living God. It is to live and plan as though our every heartbeat and every breath do not depend on God. It is to live as though our lives and our destinies are in our own hands.

A God-forgetter talks, acts, and plans as if he were God. A God-forgetter makes himself god of his own life. His plan is determinative, and his strength will bring him to the end of what he wants to do.

Being godless, it is folly, especially for the professing Christian.

Such a God-forgetting man does not even consider who he is. What is your life, proud boaster? It is a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Your life is a vapor that is disappearing the moment it is breathed out. Man is nothing. He appears for a little time. He has no strength of himself. He cannot think one thought apart from God. Man can do nothing without God’s upholding and preserving him in all things that he does and giving him his life from moment to moment. And man thinks, plans, and acts as though his life were in his own hands.

But worse than his failure to recognize and believe that he is a vapor is his failure to recognize that he vanishes away. Indeed, James says that man is being destroyed. Man in this world, all men in this world, does not merely pass away as a vapor passes away. This would mean that man is born with a certain amount of strength and that because of his exertion he uses up his strength. But man does not merely vanish away. He is destroyed. As Moses said, “We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our…secret sins in the light of thy countenance” (Ps. 90:7–8). The preacher said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2).

There is a power in the world that pulls man to destruction. That power gnaws on him, tears at every fiber of his being, pulls him apart, and pulls him down until that power rips him apart and drags him into the dust. That power is the curse of God. Because God made all things in this world vanity, man is a fool when he makes earthly gain and this life his goals. God made all things vanity in Adam and through his fall. The will that controls all things is God’s will that all things become vanity in Adam, that all things groan and travail under the curse, and that all things in this life be destroyed in order that all things might be made perfect in Jesus Christ in a new heaven and a new earth. And lighter than vanity itself, the chief of vanities, is man. Man became a sinner by his fall and by the instigation of the devil. Now all exists under the curse of God that turns man to destruction. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, man perishes in that vanity and under that curse.

What is your life? It is nothing apart from Christ, faith, and his word. Your life is less than nothing. Your life is being torn to pieces by the curse of God. Does not every pain in the body, every creak of the joint, every fading away of strength—does that not all speak loudly to man of God and his curse?

Not to the proud, boasting, godless man! Not reckoning with God, proud man does not reckon with sin—his own sin and his sin in Adam. So such a man has no room in his heart and in his life for God, Jesus Christ, the word, and the eternal things that matter. Proud, godless man has no wisdom to see and plan and live in light of God, Jesus Christ, and eternity.

Proud, godless, boasting man is thoroughly carnal. A carnal man in the church. He sets his affections on things here below. What is his life? It consists in food and raiment, in investments and business ventures, and in successes here below as man measures them. His god is his belly, mammon is his lord, and for him the good life is the successful life here in this world. That is carnality, even though there be nothing outwardly impeachable in that man’s life.

Indeed, James calls it godlessness of the worst kind. It is the expression of the arrogance of man. James says that such men are arrogant boasters, and their boasting is evil. That is what James means when he says, “Ye rejoice in your boastings.”

This means that in their God-forgetting, foolish, and carnal planning they are arrogant. And in arrogance they boast as though all things depend on them. But they are nothing, and their lives are nothing; indeed, they are being torn to pieces by God as all creation labors and travails under vanity.

And James says that such godless living is evil of the worst kind: “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James means that when such a man is confronted with his godless, foolish, and carnal living, he defends himself and says, “Yes, I know. I know, but I have to get what is mine in the world. I know what opportunities I have been given, and I have to seize on those opportunities.” And he says this while he knows to do good. He knows that the Christian life is not only saying no to obvious sin but also loving God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. He knows that, but he does not do it.

So when James says, “To him it is sin,” James not merely points out that knowing to do good and not doing it is sin, but he also points out how wicked that sin is. It is sin against knowledge, not simply the knowledge that all men have to lead an externally orderly life but the knowledge of the gospel and of heaven and of hell and of God and of his counsel and will. That is all nothing to such a godless man. God is nothing to him. He listens to sermons on Sunday. He sits in church before God and Jesus Christ, and it is all nothing to him.

So his godless, foolish, and carnal life is against the knowledge of God Most High, whom the man deliberately and consciously puts out of his life, whose goodness he abuses, whose commands he ignores, and whose gospel he despises; and so he becomes the worst of sinners.

For by his place in the church he confesses to believe in God, but by his life he denies God in all that he thinks, plans, and does.

Rather, he ought to say, “If the Lord will, I shall live and do this or that. How must I live in light of the reality that God wills all things and knows all things, also all things about me?” Say and mean it, “If the Lord will, I shall live.” That is a profound statement of true faith. My whole life is in God’s hands. All its twists and turns and ups and downs and all things that befall me in this life come from his fatherly hand. I, my life, and all that I am are subject to the will of God.

What is your life? You do not know if you will be alive at the end of this day, let alone tomorrow or in ten years. If the Lord will, I will live. You and I do not know what will happen the next minute; how can we possibly know what will happen in the next year? We must live that way. We must say that of our hearts: “If the Lord will, we will live this day.”

Does that not also bring peace? How man is full of anxiety and frustration and fear when he puts his life in his own hands. But what peace it brings to say, “If the Lord will, I will live.” If you and I actually say that and live that way, how much more peace we would have in our lives. It is true faith to say that and actually to live that way every day. That takes away fear for the future: fear about what we will eat, what we will drink, what we will wear, and how we will pay the bills. If the Lord will, we will live.

And because our lives are wholly in God’s hand and wholly determined by him, then if the Lord will, we will live and do this or that. All our doing, all our thoughts, and all our planning are in God’s hand.

You see that James does not forbid planning. That is how the boasting fools that James rebukes try to defend their godless and carnal lives. “But James,” they say, “would have us live without a plan, without foresight, and without hard work.” That is a lie. A man who actually says, “If the Lord will, I will live” will also say, “If the Lord will, I will do this or that.” That is a plan. I will do this or that. That man only can make the best plan for his life because he makes that plan, carries it out, and orders all things in his life in subjection to God and his glory. Then that man does this or that in view of God and by faith in God and with a view to God’s eternal counsel and will that all things be subject to Christ and to the glory of God in Christ.

So James does not say, “Have no plan.” Rather, James demands that we plan in faith and subject all our planning to God’s will as that will becomes known to us in his word and in the circumstances of our lives.

Also then, because our lives here are vapors, our planning may not be merely carnal and devilish planning that has to do with only this life. This life is nothing more than preparation for eternity. We think ninety years is a long time, but they are nothing compared to eternal life and the endless joys of life with God forever. All our purposes that only have to do with this life are also then vapors. All our plans and purposes must be subject to the same goal as God himself has in all his planning and purposes: his glory in the salvation of his church and the exaltation of Jesus Christ.

That is true life with God.