A Word in Season: Draw Near to God (James 4:8)

Draw Near to God in James 4:8

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. That sounds like, and it is, a profoundly sweet assurance. And yet, especially in its context, it's also profoundly sobering, because of the serious way in which that exhortation and invitation is offered.

It's found in the fourth chapter of the letter that James wrote to Christians who had been largely scattered. He writes with straightforward intensity. They are believers. Some of them may only be professing believers, but James refers to them consistently as brothers, men and women who have turned from sin to follow after God.

But he's also sufficiently concerned about their behavior, their attitudes and their actions, to describe them in chapter four as adulterers and adulteresses. He's referring, in a spiritual sense, to their tendency to dally with the fallen world in all its rebellion and wretchedness and to distance themselves from God.

Pride and arrogance have crept in amongst them. They seem to be at odds one with another. They're fighting and they're warring with one another. And James so asks them, Do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously?

Don't you think, he asks, that God is concerned for our holiness and our faithfulness? But he gives more grace, says James. Therefore the Lord says God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

James’s Call to Repentance and Humility

And here then is James' conclusion. Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. James is writing to a drifting church, to men and women who've lost sight of the majesty and the glory of God, who are beginning to let go of the things that they know, who are happy to try and live to some extent with one foot in the church and one foot in the world.

And James is insisting that cannot be. We need to humble ourselves. We need to stop being so arrogant. We need to stop treating the relationship we have with our God so carelessly and casually and even carnally.

We need then to repent of our sins. It's a lamenting and a mourning and a weeping time, says James. You need to stop playing with sin. You need to stop dallying with the world. You need to take God seriously and you need therefore to be serious about pursuing him and communing with him.

And you can only do that if your friendship with the world comes to an end and your attachment to God is firm and pure and strong. And so, he says, draw near to God. Leave these things behind. Detach your hearts from this failing, fallible stuff and turn again to the God of mercy and of grace.

God Draws Near to the Humble

And when you come to God with penitence in humility, you will find that God is always ready to draw near to you. He delights to dwell with that broken and that contrite spirit. Where do we find ourselves then as churches and as individuals today?

What is the disposition of our hearts? What are we truly attached to? What are we attracted to? I think that if we're honest with ourselves, we're always too much attracted to and attached to this fallen world.

We're still wrestling with that remaining sin that finds the stuff of this life so engaging and so pleasant. And we need to turn away from the world in its sinfulness, not neglecting the good things that God has given to us, but not turning them into idols, and to draw near to God in all humility with submission and with the sweet and confident expectation that should we so draw near to him, then he is ready to draw near to us.

May we do what God calls us to do and so find God ever faithful to his gracious word.