AUTONOMY VS. SOVEREIGNTY
Opening Prayer
Mighty God, help me to remember always that while you sustain all of creation, your Word tells me that you hold me in the palm of your hand.
Read JAMES 4:13–17
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
‘For I know the plans I have for you.’1 Thank God that he has a plan for your life and that he is working it out.
In this section, James returns to the theme of money, or rather the pursuit of wealth and the temptation to plan without any reference to God.
It would appear that there was a local group of rich merchants who were making plans and presuming that they had sovereignty over their lives (v. 13). Not only that, but they were boasting about the autonomy they had to act in this way (v. 16). The problem was, as the merchants knew, life is transitory. James uses the metaphor of ‘mist’ that appears and disappears to highlight the brevity of life (v. 14). The remedy for this is to recognize that all one’s plans need to be brought under God’s sovereignty (v. 15). Of course, ‘If it is the Lord’s will …’ could be used in a formulaic manner by Christians who simply add that to their plans, but James is using it to convince the merchants that God’s sovereignty extends over all areas of their lives. Verse 17 has wider implications but, in the context of the merchants, the verse is a reference to the fact that they know how they ought to act in their business lives but do not do so. This, as James says, is sin.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that, although we can make plans, God remains sovereign, the Covid-19 pandemic has done so. All our plans had to be readjusted or abandoned as a result. It is important to stress that Christians are not forbidden from making plans, but they need to be submitted to God’s will as a genuine act of surrender to the One who is sovereign. He is the Sovereign Lord who knows the ‘end from the beginning.’2 We must submit to him.
Apply
‘How do you make God laugh?’, so the saying goes: ‘Tell him your plans!’ Let’s submit our plans to him, recognizing the truth of ‘if it is the Lord’s will.’
Closing prayer
Lord God, thank you for the new life you have given me in Christ. In all that I do, help me use it in ways that bring you glory.
1 Jer 29:11 2 Isa 46:10
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