NOTES for Jam 4:10

For unbelievers, humility is perhaps the most irritating concept in Christianity. How it is caricatured: as weakness, lack of will, passivity, slavish submission... Is that right? After all, Christ says of Himself, "I am gentle and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:29), and He is not weak, not lacking in will, not passive; and if He is submissive, then not as a slave, but as a Son, that is, obedient rather than submissive.

This word irritates because it is the opposite of pride, the main driving force of every sin. Pride seeks strength, power, self-assertion; a person possessed by it places himself above everything and everyone and is incapable of real love. Humility, by contrast, is the path to love, because for the one who loves, the other, the beloved, is always more important than himself.

Christ's work on the Cross brings all of us out of slavery to sin, redeems our guilt before God, and gives us reconciliation with the Heavenly Father. But there is a step no one will take for us: recognizing God's rule in our own life, opening our heart to God's voice and will. And this is humility. The Apostle James says that in this case God will be able to take responsibility for our "fate," our life, and it will become an ascent into eternal life, full of love.

The apostle James uses the metaphor of rusted gold and silver to point not to the material side of life, but to the goals and meaning of every kind of accumulation. Accumulated experience, fame and recognition as a specialist, a great public figure, success in business, academic degrees - these are the very gold and silver that rust and will be a testimony against us. And the goals we set for ourselves are our treasure. They mean very little for the future. None of the successes of this world is required in order to love our neighbors, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. And for a believer, a churchgoing person who reads the Gospel, awareness of the smallness and inconspicuousness of our successes before the world and before God must become fundamental. When the Apostle says, "Lament and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom," he calls us to pay attention to the fact that we strive for joy and merriment, that we drive difficult and heavy thoughts away from ourselves. But there is no joy in the world. We carry joy in our hearts. And this joy is from God. He alone can grant it to us. Yet we look in this world for a substitute for relationship with Him. And we understand that we must do good, we feel the need for it, but the mercy we have shown and the help we have given do not bring us joy if through them we do not glorify God and thank Him for the opportunity to help and to be near someone in need.

James does not specify from whom those who ask wrongly ask and do not receive, but we may compare these words with what he wrote at the beginning of his epistle about people who turn to the Lord not with complete faith, but with divided minds. Even today one may hear the question: why do we not receive what we pray for? James’s answer is simple: consider whether you ask in faith and whether you always ask for what is good for you. Is your prayer divided and weakened by lack of faith? Of course, much that belongs to the higher world cannot be explained “in human terms,” and we should not imitate Job’s friends, whose reasoning was logical and plausible but wrong. Yet sometimes we must still reflect on James’s words.

James also speaks of the inadmissibility of friendship with the world, and these words have often been understood literally. But we must withdraw not from the world that the Lord created and loved, and into which He sent His Son, but from the sin that has afflicted and enslaved the world. It turns out to be simple to resist sin: one need only submit to God and, with His help, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. This is true, yet for some reason what is simplest and most accessible to us proves very difficult. Perhaps this is because we are afraid to draw near to God, since doing so requires us to reject many tendencies that He hates and that bind us to the sinful world...

Continuing his discussion of spiritual life, James speaks of humility as its unshakable foundation. Modern usage has completely distorted the meaning of this concept. Today, humility is most often understood as something between nonresistance to evil and an indifferent fatalism: “freedom or captivity—it is all the same.” In religious circles, humility also implies a particular manner of behavior that would more accurately be called an affectation of humility: lowered eyes, a quiet voice, constrained movements…

Yet the biblical books mean nothing of the kind by humility. A meek or humble person may look very different indeed from a humble person as we understand the term today.

One might recall Moses, for example, who is called “the meekest of men” in the Book of Exodus. Clearly, humility in the Bible means neither indifference nor some special manner of behavior. It is plainly something else. If we look at Moses, for instance, or at other people whom the biblical writers call humble, it becomes clear what they all have in common and what precisely the Bible calls humility. Above all, each of them has surrendered himself entirely to God's will.

Outwardly, the lives of these people may differ greatly from one another, but none of them lived merely as he pleased. Of course, God forces no one to obey Him. He simply offers to take part in a person's life. The person is free. But if someone wants a full relationship with God, the simplest course is to place their life at the disposal of the One who gave it, and henceforth to act only with His knowledge.

Of course, God may well leave certain things to a person's discretion. But it matters that permission to act at one's own discretion should come from Him, not from oneself. In the apostle's words, not “we will go and do this,” but “if God wills, we will go and do this.” This is not a formality or an empty qualification.

Here two wills are brought into accord: God's and the human will. It is precisely this accord which, if it becomes complete, will in itself rule out all inner wavering and vacillation, let alone the inner division James calls double-mindedness. Otherwise, there is only futility, an illusion of life, attempts to reach a goal that never succeed, and surprise that God does not answer prayers or listen to requests. A semblance of life instead of real life. Outer darkness instead of the Kingdom.

How often we are afraid... How often we say, “Oh, I am so weak; there is nothing I can do...” And we surrender without a fight, giving the devil an opportunity to act through our inaction. Yet the Apostle James tells us that we can free ourselves and, moreover, that it is not so difficult! Simply resist the devil, and he will flee from you! But it is we who flee... Why? Why does it seem to us that nothing can be done? Perhaps it is easier for us that way? But if we sincerely desire to draw near to God so that He will draw near to us, there will be no choice: unless we resist the devil, we will not be able to draw near to Him.