Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. James 4:17 (N.K.J.V.)

The book of James will always have a special place in my heart because it is the first book I ever preached through as a pastor. What I found out, though, is that the book is kind of hard to outline. The problem is that James will clearly talk about one topic for a while and then make a quick jump to another one. And sometimes you don’t know if he is still on his previous topic or if he has moved on to a new one.

As for my text verse for this post, it can easily stand alone as a one-verse sermon. Trust me, any preacher worth his salt can apply the words “…to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” to a myriad of real-life situations. For example, the words can be applied to you: believing in Jesus as your Savior, repenting of your sins, loving your spouse, raising your kids as you should, praying, reading your Bible, getting involved in church work, putting money in church, witnessing, showing love to others, reading Russell Mckinney’s blog….. (Okay, maybe I went a little too far with that last one.) But you get the point.

Please notice, however, that the verse actually begins with a very important word. It’s the word: “Therefore.” And what’s the famous line about that word? “Anytime you see the word ‘Therefore’ you need to figure out what it’s there for.” Okay, so what is the word “Therefore” there for in James 4:17? Answer: It’s there to link the verse up with what James has been talking about previously.

Of course, this raises the question of just how far back James wants his readers to go. If we take things all the way back to chapter 1, we can apply James 4:17 to counting it all joy when we fall into various trials (1:2-4), asking God for wisdom (1:5-8), keeping a proper perspective on life (1:9-11), enduring temptation (1:12-16), and all the topics that follow between there and James 4:17. But then again, it might make sense just to go back only as far as James’ most recent change of topic, and a new topic begins in James 4:13 and runs through James 4:16. The topic in those verses is that of foolish, arrogant self-confidence concerning assumptions made about future events. Those verses, including our James 4:17, read as follows:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. (N.K.J.V.)

So, by reading James 4:17 in its immediate context we learn that the specific good we know to do is to live our lives with the understanding that God, rather than us, is ultimately in control. Seriously, it’s absurd for us to talk about all the things we are going to do tomorrow, next month, or next year when we won’t even live to see tomorrow, next month, or next year unless God wills it. This doesn’t mean that it’s a sin for you to set a lunch date for tomorrow, schedule a doctor’s appointment for three months from now, make a hotel reservation for six months from now, or contribute to a retirement account that you won’t be able to use for several more years. But it does mean that you should do all these things with the understanding that you don’t have the final say about any of your plans coming to fruition. After all, your life is just a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes, and vapors don’t have any strength of their own.

Therefore (see what I did there?), as you make your plans, schedule your appointments, talk your talk, and dream your dreams, you should do it all with the understanding that God might have something completely different in mind for you. Putting it simply, you don’t run the universe; He does. And to believe otherwise is to, as James describes it, “boast in your arrogance.” You see, what we are really talking about here is you understanding just how small you are in comparison to how big God is. That’s a lesson we all need to learn, and according to James our failure to learn it is sin.