March 23 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 82—James 4:13–17

¹³ Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"—¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Devotional:

Presumption might be common and expected by human beings, but it is not at all acceptable to God. It amounts to boasting in arrogance. "As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil" (v. 16). If you plan without considering the ultimate reality of God and his providence, then you are being arrogant; and if you are being arrogant, then you are boasting; and if you are boasting, then you are sinning.

And so God shows us something fairly commonplace—the act of thinking and planning without adequately depending upon him. And he says that this, in fact, is the sin of arrogance and boasting before the living God. And "all such boasting is evil." You are a redeemed child of God. Do not think and speak presumptuously like that.

Someone once said if you want to know what water is, the last person that you should ask is a fish. Why? Because it is so much his environment that he just takes it for granted and is unconscious of it. And, dear brothers and sisters, that is what presumption over against God is for us. It’s so normal both around us and within us, that we take it for granted. We are unconscious of it.

But in his mercy God comes to us and he says, "This is sin!" And, dear brothers and sisters, the fact that this sin—which in God's eyes is boasting and arrogance and evil—seems so normal to us shows us just how desperately we really do need the grace of God in Christ.

Presumption is not only sin, but indeed, presumption is the ultimate sin of omission. "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (v. 17). This verse doesn’t hang in thin air. The word "so" means "therefore." The NEB renders it "Well then…" God is showing us that what we might consider to be trivial and ordinary feature of life—forgetfulness of our utter dependence on him—is actually the ugly and filthy pride which is the heart of sinfulness. So repent of your imagined independence of God. Recognize presumption for what it really is and consciously put off walking in the worldliness of presumption.

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