March 17 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 76—James 4:6–10

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.

Devotional:

To repent from worldliness involves, first, your submitting to God. Second, it involves your resisting the devil. Third, "draw near to God and he will draw near to you" (v. 8). Remember the parable of the prodigal son? The younger son took his inheritance prematurely and took off into the world, where he managed to lose it all. In sorrow over his lost condition, he determined to go home and cast himself on his father’s mercy. He planned to come and beg his father to take him back as a lowly servant. But before he even got that far, his father saw him coming and ran out to meet him. That, my friends, is how God treats repentant sinners. If you "draw near to God … he will draw near to you."

Fourth, "cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (v. 8). Repent both outwardly ("cleanse your hands") and inwardly ("purify your hearts"). Make a decisive break with both sinful behavior and sinful attitudes.

Fifth, "be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom" (v. 9). The notion is widespread today that repentance merely involves your adjusting your thoughts about Christ. But God says that genuine repentance goes much deeper. The repentance that God describes not only involves your mind, but also your emotions and your will. Repentance involves grieving and mourning over your spiritual condition. It entails seeing your sinful state the way God sees it. It includes hating and sorrowing over your sin with a genuine contrition.

But then, having cast yourself to the ground before the Lord, look at verse 10—"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." In sanctification—as well as in justification—it is the time of despair which opens the door to victory. It’s exactly when you come to the end of yourself and cry out to God in Christ that you experience the victory of God over sin and self and the world. When you seek to save your own life, you will lose it. But when you lose your life for the Lord’s sake, you will save it.

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.