When we think about blessings and curses discussed in the last devotion, we need wisdom from God. This daily devotion looks at how wisdom helps us stay focused on God.
Nuggets
- We need wisdom to determine what is right in the eyes of God.
- Jealousy and selfish ambition bring chaos.
Devotions in Living Out Our Faith series
James had been talking about the tongue in the previous verses in Chapter 3. In the last devotion, we talked about how we use it for blessings or curses.
In order to use our tongues for blessings and not curses, we need wisdom. This wisdom should keep us from jealousy and selfish ambition.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Let's Put It into Context #2
Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles, gained through knowledge, fear, discernment, and good sense, that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- God’s goodness is His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- God’s holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- God’s purity stems from the fact that He cannot sin.
- God’s righteousness is the result of His being pure.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
How Are We Wise?
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom” (Jas. 3: 13 ESV)
We need wisdom to determine what is right in the eyes of God.
To me, there are two different ideas to which we can tie the wisdom. We can tie it to James’ discussion of the tongue. Or we can tie it to his discussion of works.
James had just been discussing the tongue being used to bless or curse God and others. “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God” (Jas. 3: 9 ESV).
Oh, we do need wisdom there! Can we say discernment?
We need to know what is right and what is wrong in what we say. We also need to know the right and wrong time to say it.
But in verse 13, James talks about works. Now remember, this isn’t the Matthew 25: 35-36 do-in-my-name works. It is the Philippians 2: 12 work-out-your-salvation works.
We definitely need God’s wisdom for that!
Brewster believed we gain the wisdom by reading the word and being in the spirit of Christ. Bottom line is this wisdom must grow us to be better disciples.
Oh, yeah. This wisdom is hard to come by. It comes through the trials.
But remember, James has already told us that we have to persevere and endure. This is what grows our faith.
Wisdom has to produce the good fruit in our relationships with God in purser to purify our hearts.
Brewster tied that back to the tongue. Wisdom helps us in our conversations with God and others. Brewster also equated conversation with our manner of life.
Let me process where Brewster went next.
- We have a holy calling from God.
- He provides wisdom, which is holy and pure.
- The purpose of giving us wisdom is for our salvation and purification.
- The call is for us to choose to be purified.
We touched on inconsistency in the previous devotion. Brewster took up that topic. He wrote, “No inconsistency can be greater, no delusion more fatal, than to suppose it possible for you to be guided by ‘the wisdom which is from above,’ while you show not ‘a good conversation’: or manner of life.”
Resource
Verse 6 talked about unrighteousness. “And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell” (Jas. 3: 6 ESV).
The flip side of that is righteousness. Righteousness is the indwelling goodness that is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments and from which all virtues flow.
When the sin is cut out of us, the void left needs to be filled with righteousness. Some of this is automatic, because we are recipients of Jesus’ righteousness. “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1: 9-11 ESV).
There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is the intellectual comprehension of a fact or gaining familiarity with something by experiencing it.
Knowledge is understanding the information. Wisdom is what you do with it.
Most worldview people, today, only want knowledge. They think they want the wisdom — the next step in what we do with that knowledge.
They just don’t want the God part.
Not going to happen. We can only acquire wisdom through God.
James ended the verse by talking about meekness of wisdom. Meekness is a personality trait exhibiting a mild or moderate disposition that places dependence on God. Brewster called meekness unassuming and unoffending.
Meekness of wisdom makes sense. Even though we put this high value on wisdom, its usage should make us more dependent on God, not less.
Brewster put it this way. He wrote, “Such a spirit is not only a duty in itself, a part of the Christian character, but is in a manner the appropriate dress in which every heavenly grace and good work should be arrayed.”
Resource
We have to incorporate this meekness into every aspect of being a disciple.
- In our walk.
- In our response to God.
- In our interactions with others.
- In our efforts to make disciples.
Envy and Strife
“But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (Jas. 3: 14-16 ESV)
Jealousy and selfish ambition bring chaos.
Here, it is translated jealousy and ambition. It is also translated envy and strife.
Paul made many connections between envy and strife.
- “They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips” (Rom. 1: 29 ESV).
- “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (I Cor. 3: 2-3 ESV).
- “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions” (Gal. 5: 19-20 ESV).
The works of the flesh all comes out of the heart (Mt. 15: 19 ESV). Manton felt the worst to have was strife.
Resource
This bitterness is often caused by anger. Anger often leads to us sinful pursuits.
Envy can really mess us up. We can’t be content in our own accomplishments because we are comparing ourselves to others. (And we sure aren’t offering them grace.)
Most importantly, the envy takes our focus off God and puts it onto ourselves. That is far away from being meek.
South called envy depraved affection. That is a very good definition!
Resource
I like the depraved because envy makes us mistakenly label someone else unworthy of that which we want. It can make use do wrong things to get what we want. It makes us unreasonably grasp at those things.
I like the affection because we put whatever that is up on a pedestal. We elevate it’s worth.
At times, it can be an indulgence. We desire position, fame, and fortune. What we have may be good, but we want more. We may know what we want is not the best for us.
We want it anyway.
Envy is totally the opposite of the second greatest commandment. We can’t love others when we want what they have.
James said that envy is strictly from Satan. He admonished us not to turn away from God and think of ourselves.
How can we tell which wisdom is from God? Plummer gave us the signs for which to look. He wrote, “The heavenly wisdom is fruitful of good deeds, and inspires those who possess it with gentleness. The other wisdom is productive of nothing really valuable, and inspires those who possess it with contentiousness.”
Resource
Sin is in envy and strife — jealousy and selfish ambition. It brings disorder or confusion.
Think about how we feel when our life is full of chaos. We are unhappy, distracted, and sometimes downright scared.
Don’t we feel that when we are jealous? It seems a little strange, but we do feel that way to when we focus on our ambition.
We need to focus on pure wisdom from God. We will be looking at that in the next devotion.
Making the Connections
Remember James started Chapter 3 off by talking to teachers. Plummer reminded us that teachers should be meek. He wrote, “It (Meekness) includes submissiveness towards God, as well as gentleness towards men; and it exhibits itself in a special way in giving and receiving instruction, and in administering and accepting rebuke. It was, therefore, just the grace which the many would-be teachers, with their loud professions of correct faith and superior knowledge, specially needed to acquire.”
Resource
God does want teachers, especially, to focus on Him. Teaching does take grace.
How Do We Apply This?
- Follow God’s direction when we find ourselves in arguments and controversies with others.
- Be confident that God’s truth will prevail, even if we are proven wrong.
- Be meek and gentle.
- Submit to God.
Resource
Father God. We thank You that all we need do is ask for Your wisdom, and You will supply it. Lord, we want to be filled with You wisdom rather than jealousy and selfishness ambition. We want our focus to be on You. Amen.
What do you think?
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