James 4:13-17
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. (James 4:13-17)
PLANNING IS A GOOD THING
This text is about the way we plan our lives. And right away I want to say that, according to what we see in the New Testament, planning in itself is not wrong. On the contrary, Jesus himself encourages planning in his parables. For example, in Luke 14:28-32 he says:
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ 31 Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. (Luke 14:28-32)
These verses make it clear that Jesus is in favor of our planning our lives and counting the cost well — especially when the matter touches our commitment and our desire to be Christ’s disciples.
From the book of Acts and the epistles we learn that the apostle Paul also planned his journeys. For example, in 1 Corinthians 16:3-9 he shares his plans to visit the church there in a few months’ time:
3 Then, when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem. 4 If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me. 5 After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you — for I will be going through Macedonia. 6 Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. 8 But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. (1 Corinthians 16:3-9)
In Acts 19:21 we see Paul making even longer-range, larger-scale plans:
21 After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” (Acts 19:21)
When he drew up this plan he was in Ephesus, and he decided to go to Rome, which lies to the west of Ephesus, by way (as the more direct route) of Jerusalem, which lies to the east of Ephesus. But to reach Jerusalem, east of Ephesus, he decided (again, as the more direct route) to set out westward toward Macedonia and Achaia. This was, of course, no accident — on his journey he wanted to visit the churches he had founded on his earlier missionary journey; and from the book of Acts we see that this plan of his was carried out.
So, looking into the Bible, we can boldly say that planning is a good thing. What is more, setting goals and making plans to achieve those goals is a key to success in every area of life.
But besides the fact that planning is good, in God’s Word we see that there is a right way and a wrong way to plan, and the apostle James discusses both. If we borrow two Latin expressions, we can call the one way of planning “Carpe Diem” — “Seize the Moment” — and the other “Deo Volente” — “If God Wills,” or “If God desires it and it is God’s will.”
PLANNING WITHOUT GOD
The words in our text sound so contemporary. Their force today is still the same as it was some two thousand years ago. It is as though, when he wrote them, the apostle James knew that even though we have decided to follow Jesus, we still go on carrying a strong desire to do our own thing. Human intentions to reach one’s own goals are so typical and so recurrent that for James they become a stock example. In verse 13 he says:
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.” (James 4:13)
“Now listen!” — with these words the apostle seems to want to catch the attention of some who are not paying attention. What they need to hear is truly important, so that they — and we — must give it our undivided attention. And who are these who are not paying attention? They are people who have their own plans. They “say” — this word in Greek is in the present tense and shows that this is something happening continually. Business trips in the first century were a very common occurrence, and the Jews in particular traveled widely to carry out their commercial aims. They traveled from city to city, carrying their goods on the backs of camels.
Notice how clearly their plan is laid out:
- we will go to this or that city — the place, the city, is already chosen; perhaps it is Tyre, Sidon, Caesarea, Crete, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, or Rome;
- we will spend a year there — the length of the stay is fixed;
- we will carry on business — this is their activity;
- and we will make money — this is the final goal; in their eyes the reward is one hundred percent certain;
- and the starting date of this plan is set as well — today or tomorrow.
Everything is so simple and clear. “Carpe Diem” — “Seize the Moment” — take advantage of the right moment and profit from it. So where is the problem? Do you see anywhere any place for God in these plans? Do those who make such a plan have any need of God? No — for them it is as if God does not exist. But to shut God out of our lives and out of the process of making decisions is, in fact, a practical atheism. This kind of thinking misses the meaning of life. It means to gain the whole world but to lose your soul.
TAKING THINGS FOR GRANTED
What is wrong with such an attitude? It is the sin of taking things for granted. You assume that everything will turn out exactly as you have planned it, as though you were the one on whom everything depends.
But the assumption that things will always stay just as they have been up to now is false. In Luke 12:16-20 Jesus told the following parable:
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ (Luke 12:16-20)
This rich man took it for granted that he would live many more years. He was presumptuous. But can anyone say how long his life will last? I want to ask you: would this rich man’s plans have been any different if he had known that he would die so soon? Would this rich man’s plans have been any different if he had prayed and asked God what to do with the surplus of his crops, his grain, and his goods?
BOASTING ABOUT TOMORROW
In verse 16 the apostle James takes up again the theme of empty boasting:
16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. (James 4:16)
Some people love to boast about their plans for the future. They are presumptuous enough to think that nothing will get in the way of their predictions. They act as though they were masters of their own fate. But “All such boasting is evil,” James concludes, because it takes no account at all of the frailty of human life and the supremacy of God’s will. In Proverbs 27:1 the wise man says:
1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. (Proverbs 27:1)
So the mistakes that these Christian businessmen — and we too — often make are three:
- We often plan without God;
- We often take it for granted that our future is secure;
- We often, even if we do not say it out loud, take pride in our plans as though they made us something more than others and were already accomplished.
WHY IS THE “CARPE DIEM” OR “SEIZE THE MOMENT” PHILOSOPHY WRONG?
According to the apostle James, it is so for three reasons:
1. The human future is unknown.
In verse 14a James tells his readers: “How can you say what will happen a year from now, when you do not even know what will happen tomorrow?” In life there is no certainty. We have no guarantee of tomorrow. If our present is uncertain, what shall we say about our future? So if anyone has still not received Jesus into his heart and has not been reconciled to God up to this day, let him do it now! Tomorrow may be too late! On the back window of his car pastor Zhivko Tonchev has placed the following inscription: “Some decide to seek God at 11:00, but they die at 10:30…”
2. Human life is fragile.
Verse 14b says: “you are a mist.” In Job 7:7 it says that life is a “breath.” In verses 10-11 of his own letter, with a striking sweep of the imagination, James says that the rich man will fade away like grass:
11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. (James 1:11)
That is why it is foolish to imagine that we have enough strength in ourselves to make our plans come to pass.
3. Human life is short.
Verse 14c says: “you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” To point out the passing nature of human life, James compares it to the morning fog. In the morning it appears over the surface of the earth, but before noon has come it has already vanished. Yet some people plan their lives as though they were going to be here forever.
The prayer of the psalmist in Psalm 39:4-6 should become ours as well:
4 “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. 5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure. 6 Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be. (Psalm 39:4-6)
The shortness and passing nature of our life ought to convince us not to shut God out of it.
“DEO VOLENTE” — “IF GOD WILLS”
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:15)
Notice that James says: “We will go on living on this earth only if the Lord wills it. If He does not will it, there is no room at all for making plans!”
When I was little, in order to teach me to keep this verse and to say “If God wills” (Deo Volente), my grandmother used to tell me the following true story. Sometime around the 1950s, in the days of socialism, there was a family in which the wife was a believer and the husband an unbeliever. One day the husband began making plans for the next day and said: “Tomorrow I’ll go here, and here, and here, and I’ll get this and that job done.” The wife corrected him with the words: “If God wills, you will do all of that.” But the husband, because he had been raised to be an atheist by the government of the time, retorted: “Willing or not willing, I’ll get my work done.” The night passed, morning came, and the man got himself ready and set out to leave. But at that very moment there was a knock at the door, and for some reason he was summoned to the police on urgent business. There he was held up all day long. His wife began to worry about what had happened and why her husband was so very late. Late in the evening there was a knock at the door. The wife came up to the door with expectation and fear, and before unlocking it she said: “Who is it?” From the other side of the door came the uncertain voice of her husband: “Wife, if God wills, it’s me.”
He had learned that a person’s future does not depend on himself, and at first he even began to use the phrase “If God wills” (Deo Volente) in places where it did not quite fit.
If we plan our lives without God, we miss something especially important. And that is that God is more concerned about us than we are about ourselves. In Jeremiah 29:11 the prophet delivers God’s words to the leaders of Israel while they are in Babylonian captivity:
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)
When we seek God’s will for our lives, He protects us from the great mistakes we would make if we planned entirely on our own.
The apostle Paul is an example to us in this: whatever plans he drew up, he always submitted them to God for approval. In Acts 18:21 he says: “I will come back if it is God’s will,” and in 1 Corinthians 4:19 he writes: “But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing.” Clearly he was following James’s counsel. And perhaps in this lay the secret of his success.
Here I would like to make the following observation. For many people the phrase “If the Lord wills” or “Deo Volente” has become simply a cliché that they tack on at the end of their plans. The reason they use it is not that they want to submit their plans to God, but that in their superstition they want, by some magic formula, to secure God’s approval for their own plans so that those plans will not fail. Such people take it for granted that if they put the phrase “Deo Volente” at the end of their plans, this will guarantee their success. But this is a great delusion. Although in some cases the apostle Paul did not use this phrase, from the way he conducted himself it is plain that, whether he said it or not, his plans were dependent on God’s will. We must not ask the question “What is God’s will for my life?” as though we were at the center of the universe and God somehow had to fit himself in around our life. Instead, we should ask the question “What is God’s will?” — and conform ourselves to it. What is more, when it comes to God’s will, we should not worry so much about what we do not know. Instead, we should be concerned about what we do know but are not doing. We must not follow our own plans and move in God’s will only when it is convenient for us. If we do not obey God’s commands, then no matter how much we talk about seeking and knowing God’s will, we will not know His blessing!
The way we plan our lives demonstrates our values and reveals what we really are. True and living faith has a bearing not only on spiritual things, but also on how we use our time, how we spend our energy, how we earn money, and how we make our plans for the future. “Deo Volente” — “If God Wills” — this should be the refrain that sounds constantly in our hearts as we make decisions and plan our lives.
What are your goals? How do you plan your life? Whose glory are you seeking — your own or God’s? These are the questions for us to ask ourselves.
IF ANYONE KNOWS THE GOOD THEY OUGHT TO DO AND DOESN’T DO IT, IT IS SIN FOR THEM!
The apostle James closes his exhortation with the words:
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:17)
Although this statement can be applied to a great many situations, James ties it to the text that immediately precedes it. The verse begins with the word “then” (or “therefore”). This word introduces a concluding sentence. With it the apostle James seems to say to his hearers: “You have now been fully warned about the mistakes you are making, and you know what the right path is. So from this moment on, to go on behaving as you have until now will be a sin for which you would have no excuse whatsoever!” “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
Knowing what a person ought to do obligates him to do it. The same holds true for us. If until now we have planned without God, taken the future for granted, and boasted about our plans, let us stop — because the future is unknown, human life is short, and we are quite fragile. So in all our decisions let us be led not by our own cleverness, but let us seek God’s will in humility and prayer and live according to it. And let us remember that
“If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:15)