Leaving and Letting Go of This World: a Remonstrant’s Reflections

J. D. Gallé | Tuesday, 22 June 2021

        It was not long ago that we entered this world, and it will no doubt not be long ere we shall depart, never again to partake in the bad or the good under the sun. All that we have here we will soon leave behind. We shall take nothing and no one with us from this world.
        This life is very much one of loss. There is nothing here we were intended to keep for ever. Yet it is hard not to cling when this world is all we have ever known. We may seek our happiness here, but it is ever elusive and fleeting.
        Christ or the world? Is the one whom we cannot now see truly worth more than the entire visible created order? Is the one through whom all things were made greater than all that has ever been or will come to be?

        What can we give to the Lord of all that he has not given to us? What is it he desires? It is our hearts, our lives, our very selves, that we must yield and return wholly to him. For love of the world and love of God are mutually exclusive; they cannot coexist. To find the Lord Jesus Christ, one must lose and let go of the world, being crucified to it while still living in it. And this is very hard.

Copyright © J. D. Gallé, 2021. All rights reserved.

The Boasting of a Vapour: Temporal Preoccupation and the ‘Sin of Omission’ in James 4.13–17

J. D. Gallé | Wednesday, 4 May 2016

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”—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. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. 

(James 4.13–17, ESV*)

        The creator–creature distinction is implicit throughout James 4.13–17. As is common in wisdom literature, James rebukes human pride and presumptuousness. The remedy to this improper attitude is proper humility before God (see vv. 6, 10) and sober recognition of God’s sovereignty (v. 15). The imperative is that humans live in humble acknowledgement of their mortality and the tenuous nature of existence. Verse 14 is crucial: ‘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.’ By contrast, God is immortal and ultimately sovereign over all human and creaturely affairs. Nothing whatever can occur apart from the decree or permission of God.

        What James is condemning is preoccupation with the temporal or transient (i.e. living primarily for the here and now), not planning or making provision for the future per se (see also Matt. 6.19–34). If I may employ a Johannine expression, ‘the pride of life‘ (1 Jn 2.16) that James speaks of leads humans to exclude consideration of God in their day-to-day affairs. Far from being a morally neutral area, humans living their lives for their own pleasures and pursuits without any thought of God is arrogant and evil (v. 16). Failure to humble oneself and acknowledge God and his sovereignty (not merely in abstraction, but in one’s personal life) is specifically the ‘sin of omission’ that James has in mind in verse 17.

Note

        * English Standard Version (2001–2016).

Copyright © J. D. Gallé, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2023. All rights reserved.

        

Addendum.  The above piece was originally written on Saturday, 2 January 2016. It has only been very slightly revised as you see it now in its present form.


Latest revisions: 16 November 2016 (converted ‘cf.’s to ‘see’s in brackets); 17 February 2018 (converted five colons to full stops); altered one scriptural abbreviation (20 Nov. 2021); added note (16 Aug. 2023).