The Illusion of Authority: Playing God

James 4:11 – 12

 

When I was a young kid I used to play all sorts of pretend games. I would sit down in the dirt, make a cow manger out of old nails and a fence line out of rocks and pretend to feed my cows with my own equipment. I’d have a pile of dirt as my silage pit, and I’d use my metal toy loader and dump truck to make the feed and feed the cows.

 

As I got a little older, I would play pretend with a friend of mine where we pretended to be power rangers and we’d be fighting off the bad guys and saving the day. Other times we’d find sticks that made nice swords and we’d sword fight with them, or we’d find sticks that made nice guns, and we’d play the game cops and robbers.

 

Then video games became more prevalent in the world, and while many kids still play outside, many others play inside. Playing video games is at its core playing pretend. You pretend to be a hero, a villain, a soldier, a racer, and many other things. Some of us never outgrow the desire to play video games, and that’s fine, but some of us still never outgrow the desire to be something we’re not, ignoring reality.

 

And sometimes, that desire to be something we’re not manifests itself in the desire to play God. For many people, that desire or attitude is almost imperceptible. Those who go around behaving like they’re God are typically seen as arrogant and self-righteous. But sometimes, those desires to be like God, show up in small ways, even if they show up subconsciously. And just like in the Garden, its rebellion against God.

 

Self-deception was a major problem that James saw in the church. He cautioned against it in 1:22 when he exhorted believers to be doers of the word, not just hearers only. He spoke against self-deception when he talked about faith and works, and James talked about self-deception when talking about blessings and curses coming from the same mouth with the same tongue.

 

Last week’s passage we saw the issue of double mindedness come to a head, and today and in the following weeks we will see James address self-deception among the church, the body of believers, in three distinct ways. Let’s look at the first way. Let’s read God’s Word: James 4:11 – 12.

This part of James launches into his final attack on self-exaltation and self-deception, and we’ll see next week how James presents boasting in oneself as the height of self-deception and a great evil.

 

The last verse from last week, v.10, says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” Just when the hearer or reader of James might have been ready for an explanation of the meaning of that, James instead calls them out further for not acting like genuine believers. And wouldn’t you know it; it’s the tongue getting them into trouble.

 

• Believers are not to speak ill of one another.

 

In a matter of a few lines of writing, James shifts from calling his audience adulterous people, sinners, and double-minded to calling them his brothers. In that moment, they were indeed both, but if they would just repent of their spiritual adulteries, which James was deeply concerned about, they could then hear the exhortation James was delivering.

 

Do not slander, do not speak against, do not speak ill, do not speak evil (as our translation puts it) against one another says James. Slander was considered a vice in the ancient world, it is considered that way still today, though seemingly less serious than back then.

 

By bringing it up here, James is pronouncing a judgment on their behavior that they likely didn’t expect. This isn’t just a warning or a caution to believers about slander, this is James telling them to knock it off. It’s unbecoming of a Christian to talk like that.

 

But why? How could believers speak ill of each other? The command against speaking evil of each other exposes the evil that is already a part of the very mixed up behavior of these Christians.

 

James already pointed out the issues among the church he wrote to about partiality, faith without good works, the issue of the tongue, and the fruits of bad wisdom. Church is made up of broken people. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, so of course His church is going to be full of those people.

 

But Christ doesn’t leave His flock in the condition He found them. When Paul wrote that believers are a new creation in Christ he meant it. As such, more is expected of them, including not slandering one another.

James continued with an explanation of the evil reality hidden behind acts of slander, or speaking evil of one another. He repeats the word “brother” while describing this act of unlove among believers. Behind the slander—behind the back of the person being slandered—is an act of condemnation.

 

Instead of the divine measure of judgment in the Word of God, the person speaking evil of a brother or sister in Christ is establishing their own system of measurement and finds their fellow child of God lacking and worthy of rejection. Judging someone makes a presumptive statement about the destiny of a person or their works as a whole that really only God can make.

 

Judging is an act that only the all-seeing, all-knowing God can perform. Only God, who knows the secrets of the heart, can judge that heart. Only God, who sees what is done in secret, can judge these things long before they come to light. God Himself will bring them to light, and He will judge justly.

 

Now, this isn’t to say that believers aren’t supposed to have discernment, they are. They are to make decisions and distinctions between good and evil, between the ways of God and the ways of the world. That’s discernment. Discernment is rooted in the Word of God and it’s measuring tool is God’s Word, not themselves.

 

Discernment looks at the action or behavior as the problem, it looks at sin as the problem. Discernment is different from judgment because it says, “That behavior or action goes against the Word of God, and I want no part in it.” Judgment, however, looks at the person, the sinner as the problem and condemns their eternity for it. Sadly, so many people today view those exercising discernment as judgmental.

 

James reinforces here what is clear throughout Scripture—the authority of final judgment is not given to people, that belongs to God. People, however, do have the authority to preach the gospel and to announce the forgiveness of sins and they indeed have the authority to forgive sins that have been committed against them personally.

 

But people don’t have a right to play God, to judge those who have sinned, making the claim to know God’s final judgment about them. When they do that, they judge more than just a fellow believer.

• Judging one another is also judging God’s law.

 

There is more to slandering a person than just judging them, but James focused on this connection so that he could reveal another connection. In slandering one another, believers slander the law of God; when believers judge one another, they judge God’s law.

 

James is carefully working out his logic here. Believers should accept the law of God, remember the law of liberty, of freedom in Christ, but this law requires believers to exercise mercy toward others since they themselves have received mercy and are putting their hope of salvation and eternal life on the mercy of God.

 

Slander, then, offends not only the brother in Christ and constitutes judgment against him, but it also offends and constitutes judgment against the law of mercy. In both cases the slanderer and one passing judgment has placed themselves in a position not only above their fellow Christian, but also above God and His mercy.

 

There’s self-deception, there’s the arrogance that goes with it. When believers speak evil of one another and judge one another they are playing pretend, putting themselves in the place of God, whose mercy they themselves so desperately need.

 

James is showing his readers and hearers how the little digs of the tongue turn out to be far weightier than believers naturally think. Those who profess to believe in Jesus Christ but act in ways that contradict that faith also end up undermining the effectiveness of their faith, including their words.

 

If the law of Christ is God’s chosen instrument of judgment, then presuming to step in and take that role from Him is like trying to rival God’s judgment. To reinforce that point James contrasts the one who judges the law with one who does the law.

 

Remember that in 1:22, believers are called to be doers of the word, not just hearers. Believers are to be doers of God’s law, not judge it. That believers can become judges of the law goes back to 2:8 – 12. Believers should “so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty” through mercy and not place themselves above the law by placing themselves above others through speaking evil against them.

Just as believers offend the whole law when they offend the royal law of loving one another, they become judges of the whole law through a single act of judging their brother. James makes it clear in the next verse that this position of judge does not belong to believers or anyone else but God.

 

• God alone is the Lawgiver, and God alone is the Judge.

 

In Matthew 19:17, Jesus declared that there is only One who is good, and back in 2:19, James said that even the demons believe that there is one God, and here James makes it clear that God alone is the lawgiver.

 

And as the one who gave the law, He is the only one qualified to judge based upon the law. He is the only one qualified to judge and give the law because He is the only one who is able to save, and able to destroy.

 

Earlier James had ascribed the ability to save to the Word of God. God alone has the right to save anyone. And God alone has the right to condemn anyone. Jesus warned His disciples in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

 

Divine judgement affects the eternal destiny of those who are judged. The destiny of the soul, its future life or destruction, is dependent entirely on the nature of God’s relationship to the sinner. Is it characterized by mercy or wrath?

 

Because God alone is able to grant life or condemn it, God alone has the right to judge and that is why judging is not allowed for believers. Biblical judgment is eternal judgment and should not be confused with human judgments of a temporal nature.

 

So, James asks his audience, “who are you to judge your neighbor?”

 

How could any human exercise that kind of judgment? God’s judgment is not moral judgment of the conscience but the final judgment of the obedient and disobedient, the merciful and the unmerciful. Had James’ hearers not realized that in their judging one another they were presuming to play God?

 

Do believers today realize that when they judge one another they too presume to play God? Judging one’s brother or sister in Christ can only be viewed in a negative way because the believer has no part in deciding the destination of someone else’s soul.

 

The apostle Paul wrote in Romans, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Believers are servants of God, who are they to judge other servants?

 

Believers belong to the Master, and the Master, God, is the one who makes them stand, makes them worthy. He alone grants salvation to sinners, it’s up to Him to make those judgments, not fellow servants.

 

This warning against judgment in James, and in Romans for that matter, is not about seeking revenge. It is about not judging those to whom God grants salvation.

 

Those who are busy judging others are quite often indifferent to the true condition of their own faith. These believers have set themselves up as “judges with evil thoughts” like James said back in 2:4, whose speech has become filled with the language of slander that is no better than the cursing he said comes from the mouth back in 3:10.

 

The contrast of this section, which warns against the presumption and pride of setting oneself up as a judge, stands starkly against the previous section which exhorts the believer to humility. James is masterfully making his point here.

 

Since only God has the authority to judge, demonstrate humility by showing God’s mercy to others without judgment.

 

In Jesus’ sermon on the mount from The Gospel of Matthew, he says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (7:1-2).

 

If we were judged by God the way we sometimes judge others, how would we measure up? Would you be able to stand up to that level of judgement? Would you come out ahead or stand condemned by your own standards?

The reality is that none of us can stand up to God’s judgment, and so we have no right to judge others. Who are we to judge when we were dead in our sins? DEAD. Who are we to judge when we were enemies of God?

 

We are nobody to judge in the place of God, to pretend as if we are God, because we were nobody when God graciously and mercifully decided He wanted to save us. And without God, we’d continue to be nobody.

 

God, when we were so deserving of His judgment and wrath poured out mercy on us, through His Son Jesus Christ, who died in our place, who bore our sins on the cross and took God’s judgment for us on Himself.

 

And we remember that sacrifice on the cross every time we take the Lord’s Supper, like we’re about to today.

 

Luke writes in 22:14 – 15, “And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

 

That night, He eagerly desired to eat this last meal with His disciples, knowing full well it was his last and that one of them would betray Him. He knew He had to suffer God’s judgment, so that we could receive His mercy.

 

Jesus, knowing full well the judgment that awaits our sin, willingly paid our debt by dying on the cross. Let that sink in. Let us each take a moment to reflect on that sacrifice and to examine ourselves this morning.

 

Jesus has borne the judgment for our sin so that we could live in God’s mercy. Let’s not deceive ourselves by passing judgment on those whom God has poured out mercy.

 

Let’s pray.