James 1:1-18, How Did You Do on the Test?

James 1:1-18 and the Question of How We Respond to Testing

James, it's James chapter 1, starting in verse 1 to 18.

Hear the word of the Lord.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything.

From the Lord.

He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and let the rich man in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls, and its beauty perishes.

So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his treasures. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. The common question students ask, the conversation starter often after exams is, well, how'd you do on the test?

Was it hard? Was it on what you studied? Were you prepared? Maybe was it the kind of test you were expecting? You studied for a multiple choice test, but it was an essay test. Were you, or you just left up to yourself to figure out what to study?

Maybe you had figured you gotta study it all. And so you end up, there was a lot of stuff that you memorized, maybe you pulled an all-nighter to cram, and then a lot of that stuff wasn't on the exam.

And of course, maybe you can understand that, that you were made to study it all, so you learned more than what was on the test. After all, the purpose of a test is to learn, isn't it? Or maybe the teacher or assistant did prepare you, supposedly, but it was so misleading, the preparation, you know, this is on the test,.

This is a study for that.

It was so different from what was on the test that you wonder if the teacher wanted you to fail. Ever had a teacher who you think wanted to fail you? Actually, people who fail their test often blame their teacher.

Or maybe it's athletics or music. You wanna make the team or the orchestra, but you know, there are only so many spots. You have, so you have to go through tryouts, see if you're one of the best. You're, you should be in one of those spots.

The coach or conductor is going to watch or listen to you play. Some people would be so intimidated by that, so afraid to lose, afraid of being told that they're not good enough, not making it. Or maybe they're just so proud and they're not afraid.

Maybe they're just so proud that they can't believe they're being asked to prove they're good, to have, they have to have their skills appraised. Their attitude is, you know, don't you know who I am? I'm the next LeBron James or Yo-Yo Ma.

They've been told all their life that they're so good. They're so incredibly talented. You're amazing, sweetheart. Don't let anyone tell you any different. The idea of not being believed, of how great they are, of actually having to prove themselves, that offends them.

And they will not submit to it. They won't put up with such humiliation. The band, the team, the drama club, Broadway, the Supreme Court will just have to suffer without their brilliance. That'll show them, they think.

How do you react to being tested? Some people think that the very idea of being tested, of going through tryouts, having your skills or knowledge or character put on trial, that's just wrong. You know, you should be accepted as you are.

You know, unconditional love after all, right? And then in that atmosphere where you're accepted and you're told how great you are, so the philosophy goes,.

They will flourish.

If they're told they're geniuses, they'll naturally absorb knowledge like a sponge and soon they'll win a Nobel Prize. If they're told they're the next LeBron James, well, just go ahead, sign them up for the NBA and shoe contracts now.

The opposite is actually usually the case. Kids who are told that they're just great, they deserve the A, they deserve the spotting start on the team or the leading chair in the orchestra and if anyone doesn't give it to them, there's something wrong with them.

They often, kids raised with that, their heads stuffed with that kind of ideas, they often resent the obstacles that are put in their way. The long hours of practice that they have to do, the implied criticism, you know, you still need to practice, you need to work, that they're not perfect yet.

Then they get paranoid and maybe everyone's out to get them. And they give up. While on the other hand, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team after tryouts and used that as motivation to become the best basketball player he could be, which turned out to be arguably the best basketball player ever.

How do you react to being tested? Well, that's what James, the servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, that's what he calls himself, that's what he wants to tell you, how to react to it. He tells you, you of God's people, dispersed throughout the world, here in this passage, here's how you're to take testing.

Here's how to regard it. Here's how, what to count it as, what, how to think of it, how to categorize it. Where do you put it in your mind? This is just a horrible thing I'm going through. Why do horrible things happen to me or there's something better?

Here's how to take testing and how, what not to count it as, what to do when you're being tested and what it can do for you. And we see that here in two broad parts. First, there's testing for maturity and then there's testing for blessing.

How do you react to testing? Want me to test you and we'll see how you react? Well, you count it all joy. Well, that sounds great. There's joy in every circumstance, every test.

Really?

Really?

How about your mother's funeral? How about if you catch your spouse in an affair? How about if you're served divorce papers? How about if the diagnosis is you have a month to live? How about if your son is sentenced to 20 years in prison?

How about a miscarriage? How about if you're fired? How about if you fail? You won't get the degree you were working for. You won't get the career you've dreamed of. How about if you're alone in a quiet house because you've just returned from burying your spouse?

Count it all joy? That sounds almost insulting, doesn't it? Are you just supposed to put on a plastic smile, say, praise the Lord, and pretend it is well with my soul? Well, not quite. First, this is not what you tell other people when they're going through trials of various kinds.

That phrase, various kinds, it literally means multicolored trials. It's a funny phrase, isn't it? Multicolored trials. Maybe blue ones, blue trials of grief, of depression. Red ones, temptations to passion, of lust or anger, violent hatred.

Yellow ones, of cowardice, afraid to stand up for what you believe. Pressure's being put on. Maybe green ones, of greed and envy, always wanting more things, more cash. All kinds of trials. Not just temptations to sin, not just persecutions from opponents of the faith, but every variety of trying experience.

Maybe from the boredom and the sleepiness as you wake up in the morning and it keeps you from praying and reading the Bible. Or the worst, the funeral of a loved one. Maybe the doctor giving you the bad news.

It is all maturing experience that God works good out of for us. Those who love him, says in Romans 8, 28. So yes, count it all joy that you're being matured by God. God is working good out of it. But don't, don't, some advice, don't tell that to other people, at least not at first, when they're going through a horrible trial.

Don't show up at a funeral with their mother in a casket and say, count it all joy. Don't do that. If you do, you might be in a trial yourself, but you need to take your own advice. Now, sure, they should look eventually for the maturing that they can get out of this experience, the work that God is doing through it for their good, they should, but your test at that moment is whether you will now grieve with those who grieve and weep with those who weep.

James can tell them and you later to count it all joy. And notice he addresses his readers, us, as brothers, later as beloved brothers. He's affectionate. He's compassionate to those going through all kinds of trials.

And so should we be. Count it all joy, because in verse three, you know, notice that, you know. I hope you know. Do you know? You know the sovereignty of God that he, God controls the trials. The original readers knew why to count it all joy.

They knew that God was testing their faith, whether their faith was in the Lord and not in people, not in family, not in money, not in whatever it is you're being tested about. They knew God was in control of this test that they're going through.

They knew that.

Do you know that?

Notice how that is implied here, that God is in control of it. Why should you count all kinds of trials? Health trials, career trials, family trials, money trials, you're running low. You're temper tried by a nagging child.

The trial of not having enough cash. The trial of being in another country where hardly anyone speaks your language. And so you have to read notes to help you understand.

What's going on in sermon.

That's a trial. The trial of a cold, distant husband. The trial of a disrespectful, argumentative wife. The trial of some unfulfilled desire. The trial of not having any ice cream in the freezer.

Oh, it's a trial.

The trial of gaining too much weight when you eat too much ice cream. The trial of a boring preacher.

He talks too long.

Why should you count all of it without exception?

It's joy.

That's where you put it, categorize it. This is joy because your faith is being tested to produce steadfastness, endurance. Well, tested by who? By God. Of course, that's ensumed here. That's what they know.

Do you know that?

It's implied here that God is in perfect control of these trials, that they are for his purpose. You can count his purpose joy because he works good out of everything for us, for the 12 tribes in the dispersion, for those who love him, for the church.

The original audience knew that God was in control and so they could look to God for his maturing work in every trial.

Do you know that?

You know, when we say God is sovereign, is in control, talked about this in Sunday school, that not one molecule in the universe moves without his permission. Some say, even some well-meaning Christians say, and they think they're defending God's honor.

They say, well, if you say that, you see the sovereignty of God, then that makes God responsible for evil. Particularly here, it's trials. Somebody's trying means it's something you don't like and you're being put through.

Sometimes those things are evil. So you're saying God is responsible for that evil? For disasters? For Hurricane Florence? For all the destruction? For the one-year-old baby that was swept out of a car and drowned somewhere near Wilmington last week?

He makes God responsible for the brain tumors and the car wrecks and the terrorist attacks, everything. And so they say, well, that can't be. God just let the world go because of, to honor our free will.

There's two problems with that. First, they say, well, they say, if they're Christians, that God is all-powerful. Therefore, then he could stop these things. He could have stopped Hurricane Florence.

He could stop terrorism. But he does that to protect our free will. Well, how does that protect God's honor? How is that any better than what we believe? If God sees Al-Qaeda plotting a terrorist attack, he's God, he knows all things, and he sees that they're plotting a terrorist attack, and God doesn't expose that to the FBI so that they can stop it, how is that preserving our free will?

You know, I don't get that. Particularly if you're one of the people on the plane that they hijacked. I didn't choose, I chose to take a flight in a plane. I didn't choose to get hijacked. How's my free will protected?

They say God can't be in control because that makes him responsible for evil, but still they say, well, he knows about the evil. He sees it coming. He has the power to stop it, but he doesn't do it to protect our free will.

How's that work? And how's that any better for his honor? How does that make God look better than what I'm saying and what the Bible's saying? How have they really protected God's reputation? Put it this way.

If one of you, and I'm not picking on those of you who have children, but just as an example, if one of you parents allowed your child just to run amuck in here, I mean, making a total mess, tearing everything that could be torn, this tablecloth and ripping it up and spilling drinks everywhere and throwing food and deflating our basketballs and whatever, all that, ripping stuff down from the wall.

And you just sit back and say, well, I've got to let my little darling have his or her free will. How is that any better than if you had caused the mess yourself? I don't get it. You had the power to stop it, but you didn't.

It's still your mess. And no, I'm not telling Justin to go back there and look after his kid. I'm not giving a hint to him to make sure he's not causing a mess back there.

I'm not doing that.

But even more importantly, so that's sort of philosophically, more relevant to this passage here is if God is not in control of Hurricane Florence or the tumors or the wrecks and all of it, then how do we count them as all joy?

I mean, how are they joy? How are they trying our faith? How are they producing endurance, something good for us? Because God's not in control of them. They're just things that happen and God wishes that they didn't happen.

God is just as horrified and just as victimized as we are when they happen. So they are then purposeless suffering. Like there's that joke Joe told in Sunday school that some people say, well, we believe God is sovereign.

When fall down a flight of stairs, they say, well, thank God that's over. But they tell that to say how ridiculous your position is. Everything is foreordained by God. What's the alternative? Alternative is just random events out of God's control.

And then you fall down a flight of stairs and why couldn't God stop me? He doesn't care about me or he's not able. It's just random suffering. There's nothing good out of it. How's that better? How have you improved things by this idea that God has let creation go amok?

But maybe you think disaster happened. Maybe he'll rescue us out of some disaster if we let him rescue us, but there's nothing good in the trials themselves. He's not tying our faith because he's not in control of the trials.

There's nothing good he's working out of them for us for those who love him. And so you can then, if that's the way things are, you can tell your friend at the funeral of their mother,.

This is just horrible.

And you can weep like the heathen who have no hope. Because there isn't any. You have a God who either can't stop the tragedies. He's just wringing his hands and biting his nails, hoping that bad things won't happen to us, hoping that that little storm in the Atlantic Ocean doesn't turn into a big hurricane and start a lot of floods.

But he can't do anything about it because he's got to preserve our free will. Or, so you have a God either who can't stop anything or he can stop it and just doesn't care. He just doesn't care about the disasters.

So then count all the trials, if that's the case, just count them as hopeless tragedies. That's worse, isn't it? But the point here is that we are to count all kinds of trials, all the multicolored trials as joy because we are to know that our faith is being tested by God, who is in control of them.

And he's doing it to produce steadfastness, endurance, staying power, because he loves us. We can count all trials joy because God is working good out of them for us because he is in control of them. You know, you need trials to strengthen your endurance.

In athletics, the only way to produce endurance, physical endurance, is by trying, stretching, exhausting, pushing your endurance about as far as it will go, and then trying to push it harder. Now, there comes a point in a workout, whether you're running or swimming or biking or lifting or whatever you're doing, when you cross the line into pushing your endurance, and a lot of the workout really is building up to that point, it's that crucial moment when you're really exhausted and are you gonna keep going?

That's when your endurance is stretched. Just last Tuesday night, I swam with a group, a workout, and we did 20 100-yard repeats, one 100-yard sprint every two minutes. There's a clock going. Every two minutes, we start another 100 yards.

The good swimmers, of which I'm not one, good swimmers swim 100 yards in about a minute 15, a minute 20, they're really good. It takes me about a minute 40, and I slow to about a 145 when I get really tired.

And that means that I only have about 20 to 15 seconds until the next, gotta start the next repeat, the next 100 yards. Now, at first, the first few, it's not hard. 100 yards, not bad. Can sprint it. The first five or so, not difficult.

But it's when we get to 10, 11, I'm exhausted. There's still 10 and nine more to go. The end is not in sight to give you hope. And it's then you wanna quit. But it's then, that crucial moment, your arms, your muscles are burning, exhausted.

You don't feel like you can go. Get to the end, you're breathing.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

It's then when your endurance is stretched, if you keep doing it. You wanna get better than when the feeling of burning sets in, when you're breathing hard, when you really wanna stop. Then, when that feeling comes, if you really want endurance, well, you count that feeling as joy.

This is what I'm after. This time right now, this is what I've been building for because I want more endurance. You need trials to strengthen your endurance. You know, you don't feel like reading the Bible anymore, especially if you're on Leviticus, you know?

Okay, I understand that. Or you're praying, you don't feel like praying anymore, especially when it's in the morning. I gotta get to work. I'm gonna sleep a little longer. Or going to church or giving.

You don't feel like turning away from pornography. You don't feel like denying yourself. But you've gotta keep doing it. And I think Christians these days, well-meaning, but they often try to, how to say, prevent this in the wrong way.

Instead of saying, you need to be faithful to your marriage. And instead of saying, well, what you need to learn is endurance. You need to learn faithfulness. Keep going. Instead of saying that, they'll often teach, what you need to do is you need to revive that first feeling of love and passion.

And they're always trying to revive that. Or with the Lord. Instead of teaching, you gotta have endurance. You just need to always go back to, trying to go back to that first new experience when it was all new.

Okay, I can kind of understand that. But you need to learn endurance. And sometimes you need to tell people that. You may not have the feelings anymore. You need to persevere. And that's what Christians often need to be told.

In 1 Samuel chapter 30, David hit bottom. And you think about it, he's been promised for years that he will be the king. That's that promise he has. But he spent years instead running away from Saul, being chased over the countryside like an outlaw.

He's had to sleep in caves and on the ground. You know, this is, he's probably thinking, God told me I was gonna be a king. I'm assuming I'm gonna have a palace and I'm a big bed. Instead, I'm lying on the ground in this cave trying to hide out.

And he eventually had to retreat to Philistine territory because there Saul couldn't get to him with his band of mostly riffraff, you know, men who were just discontent with Saul. There are always people like that who are always discontent with whoever's in charge at the time.

And these men attracted to David were like that. They were discontent. And they thought it would be fun to join David's outlaw gang. And one day they came back to find, to their camp, that the Amalekites had raided their home base in Philistine territory while they were away, taking away all their family and their wives and their children and all their stuff, everything they had.

It says in 2 Samuel 30, verse six, that David was greatly distressed. His gang of malcontents was now discontent with him. They were thinking of stoning him. It says all the people were bitter in soul.

All these trials, I was supposed to be a king, I was supposed to be on top, but now I'm treated like a fugitive. And now after all that I've been through, now I'm robbed and my family's been kidnapped.

Now even the few followers that I have, I'm supposed to be leading a whole nation, but these few followers I have are wanting to turn against me. Oh, I want to give up. But the end of 2 Samuel 30, verse six, it says David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God.

He counted it all joy. He reminded himself of the promises of God. He believed those promises. Then he got up and went out and rescued his family and the families of his men.

Got to step back too.

If you hit bottom, strengthen yourself in the Lord, your God. Then get up and be more than a conqueror. Let your steadfastness, your perseverance mature. And when it does, you'll finally be mature. Perfectly mature.

Not perfect as in sinless, but having at least to some degree, every strength, every quality that you need. The love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the faithfulness, the gentleness, the self-control.

Every one you need. Maybe not each one perfectly, fully, but you won't be completely lacking in any of them if you let your endurance grow. So if you want that, like an athlete pushing himself during a workout, you want that endurance to grow, to strengthen.

First count testing, categorize it as joy. You think this is what I'm after. I'm after being a faithful, persevering Christian. Then in verses five to eight, ask for wisdom. If you're being tested, and you are, then you need wisdom.

If you lack wisdom, then ask God for it. Wisdom is practical righteousness in everyday living. Okay, you may think I've accepted that God's in control, that he's working good out of this trial. I'm praising him in the storm, as the song goes.

Now, what do I do?

There's a disaster.

There's a failure in the family. There's a bad report from the blood test, from the MRI. There's the demand that I have to support what the Bible calls a perversion. If not, I lose my job or whatever.

Now, how do I handle it practically? Pray for wisdom. God gives wisdom generously. He might reveal it directly in his word. The Bible might address it. He might give wisdom through the advice of a doctor or a friend or some book that you read.

He has thrown out a lot of wisdom out there for you to pick up. He's filled the universe with wisdom, if you can see it, available to you, if you're open to it. So believe that God gives wisdom generously.

He's not stingy about dispensing wisdom. He's not gonna be scolding you. Oh, you're so stupid. You didn't know what to do in this test. Don't be double-minded about it, believing the Lord in one mind, but not in the other.

You know, the double-minded person says it's unstable because he has two minds, and he's shifting back and forth between the two. There's one a believing mind that looks to God's word, the other a doubting mind that thinks just like the world.

So we have people who, in one mind, believe all, they might believe all the promises of God's word about salvation, about Christ, and then are completely worldly about practical things, maybe like giving.

Eh, okay, I understand.

You gotta give them a minimum. You gotta pay your dues, after all, like any club. But you don't have to be generous. Our relationship with the church, it's just for my consuming, like a restaurant, what the world's taught them.

So he's unstable. He's going back and forth between thinking and living like a Christian on the one hand and like a worldly pagan on the other. In time of testing, he doesn't know what to do. So he's paralyzed.

He's kind of stunned, like a deer in the headlights.

What do I do?

I see this thing with lights coming right at me. I'll stand here in the road, figure out what's happening. God's word says maybe something like, purge the evil person from among you, but the culture says, no way.

You're an individualist to each his own. He can't decide because he's still partly, in one mind, worldly. So he won't receive anything from the Lord, not until he becomes single-minded, wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord, willing to live practically by the Lord's wisdom.

Money is a test. It shows what you desire, where your hope is. Whether you're poor or rich or somewhere in between, you're being tested by what you do with your money. Every cent you have or want to have is putting you on trial, showing you what you're made of.

If you want to see how you're doing in this test so far, well, look at your checkbook or your credit card statement or your daydreams about what you wish you could have. Oh, if I could only have that mansion.

If you're poor and lowly, you're being tested by whether your hope is in the Lord, whether you believe that's where your exaltation will come from. You're tired of being one of these lowly people that has to drive some car that's barely getting by.

You want to have the BMW. That's where your exaltation will come from, the money that you can buy it with, that dream of being rich. So gambling, the lottery appeals to you. If you only hit it big, and that's what is always appealing to people, then you'll be rich and then you'll be exalted and then you can boast.

That's what you need. You need enough money to have your own BMW and plane and all that. So spend that dollar for a ticket. That's your ticket out of your lowliness. Or maybe if you're too smart to fall for that, because you know the statistics that you're almost bound to lose, but you'll spend your whole life chasing dollars.

You still think it's the money that's your way to be exalted, the way to the life that you want, but you realize it's going to take work day in and day out, and you're willing to do it because that's where your exaltation comes from.

You're going after that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow because you're sure that your money, that your exaltation comes from money. James says, boast in the exaltation from the Lord, that he has already promised you a crown and will lift you up out of death and gather you around the throne.

Come we that love the Lord and let our joys be known. So you can endure trial because you believe your exaltation comes from him, the one who's in charge of the trial. The rich should endure through trials because it reminds them of what all their money and their luxuries and their vacations and their insurance policies and their expensive doctors they can go to all tempt them to forget that they were humiliated in their sin and captivity to the world and the flesh and the devil.

They especially need to boast in their humiliation, their mortality, that they're like grass, that even though they can afford the best medical care that science can give, that they are flesh and all flesh is grass.

From Isaiah chapter 40, verse six, James is quoting here, all flesh is grass and its beauty from the best salons, even with the best suits and dresses adorned with the costliest jewelry and sitting in the back of the nicest cars and relaxing in the nicest houses is like the flower of the fields.

The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. All the money in the world won't keep the rich from fading away. The billionaire can spend his whole life chasing more billions, but he still can't outrun the Lord and his own death.

The Christian rich need to remember that and so boast in their humiliation and their weakness. The fact that they too will die and all that they work for will be handed down to who knows, to their children and who knows what they will do with it.

They need, we all need to remind themselves, ourselves, to see through the facade of wealth. Because it's a facade, it's fake. As soon as it's gonna disappear. People go to the Biltmore, see that grand castle and the exorbitant wealth that's displayed there, what they can get if only they get that much money.

And I think a lot of people go there to see what they dream of, what they'd love to get enough money to afford. Maybe to remind themselves that wealth really is the ticket to the best life. That it's not a facade, it's not fake.

They can have this if they only get enough. Well, what they should do is visit the grave of George Washington Vanderbilt, the man who had that estate built and remind themselves that all his money, so much of it squandered on his own self-indulgence didn't keep him out of the ground.

Boast in your humiliation. I'm like grass, like a flower of the field. Soon the wind of the Lord blows and I wither. So you put your hope in the Lord and not in uncertain riches. Money is a test. How are you doing so far?

Testing for Maturity and the Sovereignty of God

There is testing for maturity and it's also testing for blessing, starting in verse 12. If you're tested and you remain steadfast, you endure. You don't, maybe you don't feel the thrill of being quote in love anymore, but you stay faithful to your spouse.

You keep reading your Bible and praying and staying faithful to a member of a church, you persevere. If that's the kind of person you are, then blessed are you. Blessed means happy, joyful. And you'll be blessed and happy and joyful.

First in verse two, you count it all joy when you go through various kinds of trials because it expands your endurance. And then in verse 12, you'll be joyful when you endure because when you have stood the test, you will receive what he calls the crown of life.

Like that crown we heard about last week, remember? Paul, crown of righteousness. Talked about it, he said it was henceforth there is laid up for me from this point onward. He could see the crown just up ahead to be put on his head and then after he endured having his head chopped off, you'll be crowned with life if you're faithful to death.

Your life comes from being right with the Lord. And so the crown of rightness with him is the crown of life, same crowns, I think. And that's something to be happy about, you're blessed. God promises that crown, he says at the second half of verse 12, to those who love him.

It doesn't say to those who keep his rules, although if you love him, you'll wanna keep his rules. But it is the love that comes first. Religious people can keep his rules without loving him, but there's no crown for that of righteousness or of life.

The crown is promised for that same group of people that God determined to work good out of from every trial. You remember who they were? Who gets the crown? Who gets good out of every trial? Remember Romans 8, 28?

Same thing James says here. He works good out, works all things together for good, not for everyone. A crown is a promise for everyone, but for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Then do we earn the crown, blessedness, eternal joy, simply by loving God? How do we love God? Well, because he first loved us. He loves us first, and then we love him and get a crown after enduring under trial.