Humility is the cure for interpersonal conflict.
The story is told of a Christian couple who were married for a number of years but they got into terrible fights. After one particularly intense argument, the husband stormed out of the house. The wife got on her knees and prayed, “O Lord, you know how these fights with my husband are tearing me apart. I pray that if these fights don’t stop, that you take one our lives away. And after you do that, I can go live with my sister.”
Do you think interpersonal conflict is common? We see it in marital relationships, in relationships in the workplace, between parents and children, in fact conflict exists in just about every place where humans live together. In one sense, we may expect that in the world. But what about Christians? Are we immune to fights and conflict between each other?
When we were on the mission field I remember taking a course on how to handle interpersonal conflicts. The course was mandated by the directors of the mission because so many missionaries were leaving the field early because they couldn’t get along with other missionaries. And of course that’s not just true overseas. That’s true right here, in the church. That’s why we have different churches splitting and people leaving, disgruntled and angry. But the problem isn’t new in our generation. It has existed since the church was founded. It was a problem in the church during the time of James.
But there is a solution to interpersonal conflict. There is a way to disarm fights and battles. Humility is the cure for interpersonal conflicts. This passage tells us how this happens. Look at James 4:1-12 (read verses).
This passage begins by describing the cause and effects of fighting and quarreling. Look at verses 1-3 (read verses). These verses are really connected to the previous passage. Last week we looked at the choice between worldly wisdom and heavenly wisdom. When we choose to live by heavenly wisdom then the results are found in James 3:18 (read verse). What happens when we choose to follow worldly wisdom? James 4:1-3 describes the result. Remember last week we talked about the two key attitudes that fueled worldly wisdom? What were they? They’re found in James 3:14. Bitter envy and selfish ambition are the attitudes that drive worldly wisdom. And those are the two attitudes described here. Fights and quarrels come from the desires that battle within us. We want something, we covet what others have and we fight them for it. Selfish ambition says that we have to have our own way. We have set goals and we strive to achieve them and if anyone tries to block our goals, then we fight them tooth and nail.
When our kids were younger one of the most stressful times in our home was on Sunday morning. My wife Ruth and I had to run around getting everything ready. We usually needed to bring lots of stuff like books and toys for the kids, snacks, fill up the diaper bag and bring stuff for church. Not only did we need to organize this mass of material, but we had to feed and dress the children, and at the same time get ourselves ready. Well, what typically happened was that the time would come for us to leave and I would be standing at the door waiting. You see, it generally takes women a little longer to get ready than men. That’s why women are so much more beautiful than we are.
Well, like I said, usually I waited at the door. And as each minute ticked by, the temperature under my collar rose by a degree. When Ruth was finally ready, often I would too angry to talk with her. Things are much better now. The kids are older and we bought a second car.
Why do you think I got so angry? Because my goal was blocked. My goal is to be recognized as a good pastor and if I don’t get to church on time then I think people will see me as a failure. But pursuing that goal brought stress in my relationship with Ruth. That’s the result of choosing to selfishly pursue our own goals at the expense of others. But even worse, if we continue to make this our lifestyle, then we will also sever our connection to God. That’s exactly what verses 4 to 5 say (read verses).
When we choose to live by worldly wisdom then we become adulterers. We say we are devoted to God, but instead we live by another standard. We live by worldly wisdom. When we become friends of the world, that means, we live by the world’s rules and standards, then we become enemies to God and His ways. 1 John 2:15-16 describes what love for the world means:
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.
When we live by worldly wisdom, when our lives are driven by our cravings and lust and pride, then we separate ourselves from God. This not only affects our lives, but it also grieves God, Himself. That’s exactly what James 4:11 says (read verse). This is one of the hardest verses to translate in the New Testament. In the NIV Bible you can see there is a footnote and if you follow the footnote to the bottom of the page you’ll see two alternative translations for this verse. I think the main thought of this verse it this: God longs for us to love Him with an undivided heart and He is jealous for us when our affections are divided. The Message Bible translates this verse as: And do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that “he’s a fiercely jealous lover.” When we choose to live by worldly wisdom then God, Himself is grieved. He longs for us to have a pure, undivided passion for Him.
What is the solution to our selfish ambition and bitter envy? How can we live by heavenly wisdom instead of worldly wisdom? How can we be free from the love of the world and the destruction that brings in our relationships with God and people? The answer is found in verses 6-10. To summarize it in one word, the answer is humility. Let’s look at these verses (read verses).
Humility is the key. That’s what verse 6 says. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. That’s also what verse 10 says. If we humble ourselves before the Lord, He will lift us up. Sandwiched between these two calls to humility are specific instructions on how this humility is to be displayed.
The basis of these instructions, the thesis of this section is found in the first part of verse 7. Submit yourselves, then to God. While humility is more of an internal attitude, submission is the action that flows out of that attitude. When we submit, we consciously put ourselves under the power and authority of another. When we submit ourselves to God, we choose to believe that God’s way is best and we obey Him. We follow His written will for our lives, which we get from the Bible. That means when the Bible says that God hates divorce, we take that seriously and we work through our relationship issues instead of breaking up. That means when the Bible says that sex is only permitted within the boundaries of marriage, that we don’t have premarital sex. That means when the Bible says that children are to obey their parents, then we do what it says. That means when the Bible says that we aren’t to be unequally yoked that we don’t date or marry non-Christians.
But not only do we submit ourselves to God’s written commands, but we also submit ourselves to the specific direction He gives us through prayer, the Bible, other Christians and circumstances. Often we pray for direction in life, but when we get it we often don’t want to follow. I remember when I finished my first year of university I was seeking God’s will for what to do for the summer. I was invited to go on a two week Christian camp at the start of the holidays. It was a terrific time of learning more about God and digging into the Bible. Near the end of the camp I found out that the camp had openings for summer staff. They didn’t pay much but they covered room and board and I would be able to continue to grow and minister in a Christian setting. Well I phoned my parents to tell them my decision, and they said, “No. We want you back home.” Now my parents weren’t Christians and they’re still not. And I didn’t have the best of relationships with my parents. In high school I basically distanced them with the rebellious way I lived. I pretty much did what I wanted to do and stopped asking my parents for permission. So I was just about to tell them that I was going to take the job anyway, when a verse I recently memorized came into my mind. It was Col. 3:20 and says: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” I didn’t answer my parents for about a minute, but a struggle was happening in my heart. I had all the arguments to take the camp job. It seemed logical, but deep in my heart I knew that God wanted me to obey my parents. So reluctantly I said that I would come home. I don’t know who was more surprised at my answer, them or me. And I found that during that summer home I was able to take to first steps to rebuild my relationship with my Mom and Dad.
If we want to have peace in our interpersonal relationships, if we want to live by heavenly wisdom, then the first thing we need to do is submit to God.
In verses 7-9, James describes in more detail what this submission to God looks like. There are a series of commands here that can be split into three pairs. The first pair is this: Resist the devil and come near to God. Look at the last part of verse 7 and the first part of verse 8 (read verses). I think these two commands need to go together. It is not good enough to resist the devil. When we run from temptation we have to have someplace to run to, and the only safe place from the devil is in the arms of God. Someone once said that a crisis, not followed by a process, leads to an abscess. What that means is when we are convicted by God and we make a critical decision in our lives to stop a certain action, that is a crisis. That’s what often happens at events like TC when they have an altar call. I’ve counselled at the last couple of TCs and I’ve talked and prayed with young men who want to make a decision to follow God. Often they want to make a decision to stop sinning. A couple of the guys I prayed with were struggling with internet pornography. At TC they made an important decision. But I know that if that’s all that happened, if that crisis wasn’t followed by a process, that they would fall right back into porn.
Do you remember the story Jesus told in Luke 11:24-26? Let me read it to you (read passage). A demon possessed man is freed from his bondage, but this is only temporary. When the demon comes back he finds the man empty, so he finds seven other buddies and they go back into the man. A crisis, not followed by a process, leads to an abscess. We need to resist the devil, but that’s not good enough. It’s never good enough just to resist the devil. When we stop that sinful behaviour we need to replace it with something holy. If someone decides to stop watching pornography on the internet, they need to fill up that extra free time with some holy activity, like reading the Bible and praying, or going for a walk in the woods, or running a mile, or spending time with loved ones. We have to resist the devil, but we also have to come near to God.
And the encouraging thing about both these commands is that there is a promise for each. When we resist the devil and come near to God, then the devil will flee from us and God will draw near to us. What a encouraging promises. The temptation will not last forever. If we persevere, we will succeed. The devil will leave us. And if we pursue God, He will be waiting for us. In fact, as we learned, God is a jealous lover. He wants to meet with us more than we want to meet with Him.
To tell you the truth I’ve struggled with this promise. There have been times when I’ve set aside to meet with God and when I spend time, nothing seems to happen. I don’t feel His presence or hear His voice. I remember taking a course in seminary focusing on spiritual formation. We had an overnight retreat and during that time we were given to afternoon to seek God. I remember walking into the woods with excitement and anticipation to meet with God. I found a nice rock to sit on in the woods and I sat down to pray. I went through the exercises of quieting my heart and preparing to listen to God. Then I sat and waited. And I waited and waited and waited. I listened until my ears rung. But I didn’t hear anything. I came back from that experience disappointed.
Over the years I’ve found that when I try to meet with God and I focus on my own experience, I generally don’t connect with God. I realized I was selfish, focusing on my own needs. Instead, what I’ve tried to do is think about my times alone with God being primarily for Him. I will spend most of my time worshipping Him and thanking and praising Him for who He is. My purpose isn’t to get something from God, but to give Him something. I just want to tell Him how much I love Him. And when I’ve approached my times alone with God in this way, I’ve found, almost without fail, I will experience God in often very profound ways.
What does it mean to submit to God? We must resist the devil and come near to God. The second pair of commands is found in the last part of verse 8 (read verse). The second pair of commands is this: Wash our hands and purify our hearts. This is a natural pairing. Washing our hands means to stop behaviour that is contrary to the commands of God. Washing our hands means that we need to stop sinning, pure and simple. What are you doing that you know is contrary to the will of God? I don’t need to point it out to you, that’s not my job. That’s the job of Holy Spirit. And I know in my life that the Holy Spirit is quick to convict. I know the areas in my life where I need to cut off. If you can’t think of any sin, then just pray this prayer in Ps. 139:23-24 (read verses). Will you pray with me and ask God to convict you? (Pray together).
But just changing our external behaviour isn’t enough. It won’t be effective or lasting. Why? Because our actions begin in our hearts. That’s why we need the second command. We need to purify our hearts. What does it mean to purify our hearts? To have a pure heart means to be single-mindedly devoted to God and His ways. The last part of verse 8 calls us double-minded. Back in James 1:5-8 talks about what it means to be double-minded. In that context, only those who trust in God alone will have their prayers answered. When trials hit we need to depend on God and trust that He will bring good out of the situation instead of trying to escape our circumstances on our own. In this passage, purifying our hearts, means we need to single-mindedly choose to live by heavenly wisdom rather than worldly wisdom. We can’t be split between two opinions. We can’t be enticed toward the desires of our flesh. We can’t be drawn to the world’s values. We can’t think with worldly wisdom. Our minds must be totally convinced that God’s way is the best. And our hearts must desire to please God above all else. Unless we have pure hearts, we cannot have clean hands. At least we won’t have clean hands for long. After a while we’ll go back to our old ways.
It’s like trying to start a new diet to lose weight. We decide to cut out chocolate, ice cream, cakes, cookies and all kinds of sweets. Instead our new diet will be fruits and lots of vegetables. And we may be able to do it for a while, but after a period of time, the temptation becomes too great and we sneak a candy bar, or a dessert, and pretty soon the diet is dead and we are back the way we came. Why didn’t the diet work? It didn’t work because we still love that bad food and the good food makes us want to gag. Our actions don’t change because our heart hasn’t changed.
But suppose we became convinced that all of that food, chocolate, ice cream and all the rest was poisonous and if we ate them we would die. And suppose as well, that we came to love and desire the good food of fruit and vegetables. Do you think we would have any problems staying on our diet? No, I don’t think so. What’s the difference? Our minds and hearts have changed. The same thing has to happen to us if we want to be free from sin. We have to learn to believe that our sinful actions may look attractive, but really they are deadly to us. We have to come to the point where we hate and despise the temptation. And we have to come to the point where we love the will of God. We have to see God’s commands as not burdensome, but as freeing. We have to see our times of prayer and Bible reading as the best times of the day because we are meeting with the One we love. If those changes happen to our hearts, then we will wash our hands and purify our hearts.
What does it mean to submit to God? It means we have to resist the devil and come close to God. It means we must wash our hands and purify our hearts. And it also means we have to grieve, mourn and wail and change our laughter into mourning. Look at verse 9 (read verse).
This verse tells that we have to grieve, mourn and wail. There is a progression here. Grieving we do quietly, mourning is more emotional, and wailing is an outward outpouring of the pain inside of us. When we wail we don’t care what other people think. We need to understand, to deeply feel what our choices have done, how we have hurt ourselves, others and the cause of Christ. We have to grasp what Christ has done for us and how by living a worldly life we have thrown that back in His face. Listen to Hebrews 10:26-31:
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who had trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Do we really understand what we are doing when we choose the world over God, as Christians? Do we really know what we are doing when we consciously choose to sin? We are taking the Jesus Christ and we are walking all over Him. We are wiping our feet on His bleeding body like it was worth nothing. We are taking His precious blood and treating it like it was worthless. I remember during the women’s hockey final in the Vancouver winter Olympics. The game was between the US and Canada. And it got out in the news that to psyche team up, the US coach took a Canadian flag and put it on the changing room floor. And the US players were encouraged to walk over the flag and wipe their feet on it as a symbol of the US dominance over Canada. Of course when this got out, Canadians were outraged at the dishonour. And maybe that incident was a factor on Team Canada winning the gold. But when we choose to sin, when we choose to live for the world, as Christians, something far more offensive happens. The passage in Hebrews says we trample on Jesus Christ, Himself.
We need to understand how offensive our sinful actions and our divided hearts are to the Lord Almighty. We have to grieve, mourn and wail over the sin in our lives.
The second command is similar. The command here though is that we need to change our emotions. We need to go from laughter to mourning and from joy to gloom. We need to do this to become humble. Do we just grieve for grievings sake? No. We mourn and grieve, we wail and cry because of where we stand before God. We need to see who we are from God’s point of view. This is something that only the Holy Spirit can reveal to us. We have lived in the world’s environment for so long, we don’t even see the blatant sin in our lives. It’s like when you’re in a room filled with smoke. After you’ve been in the room for a while, the smell becomes accepted. After a while we don’t even notice the smell anymore. It’s only when we leave the room and we come back in does the smell hit us. We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and hearts to how far we have fallen away from God.
In our own lives, we have lived by this world’s standards for so long, how can we be filled with laughter and joy? We watch the same TV shows and movies. We read the same books. We even have the same life goals. We want good health, good relationships and financial security. What does God think of the things we watch or read? Instead of obsessing on the next episode of “Pretty Little Liars” or “CSI Miami”, we are to fill our minds with things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. What does God call us to live for? Instead of living for our own comfort and happiness, we are called to carry our cross and follow Christ, no matter where He leads. Shouldn’t we change our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom?
What about in our church? If the Holy Spirit gave us eyes to see BTBC with the eyes of God, what would we see? We have fights and quarrels among us. We are filled with selfish ambition and bitter envy. How can we rejoice? Think of what goes on at board meetings, and at monthly members meetings. How can we rejoice? How can we laugh? Shouldn’t we mourn? Shouldn’t we weep? We are living by the world’s wisdom. We are adulterers, enemies of God and separated from Him. We can’t go on this way any longer.
What do we do in response to this? How can help the church? Verse 10 tells us to humble ourselves before the Lord, then He will lift us up. The place we need to start is on our knees. We have to pray. The Message Bible translates this verse as: “Get down on your knees before the Master; It’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.” We need to pray for BTBC and for ourselves.
There is a second thing we should do. We need to change the way we think of other people. We cannot look at people from a worldly viewpoint any longer. We can’t see those opposed to us as our enemies. We can’t pass judgement on people and think they are out of the will of God. Who are we to judge? Look at verses 11 to 12 (read verses).
We need to change how we look at others. We can’t slander them, gossip about them, complain about them behind their backs. When we do that we are breaking the second greatest commandment. When we judge them we have stopped loving them. There is only one Judge, and He doesn’t need our help. We have to leave people in the hands of God. Even when we don’t agree with them, even when we are attacked and personally slandered, we can’t repay them by the same behaviour. Repayment is God’s responsibility, not ours. Instead, we are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Those might seem like hard commands. I would go beyond that, I would say they are impossible commands. They are impossible unless we learn to humble ourselves. We need to learn to submit ourselves to God. We do that by resisting the devil and coming near to God. We do it by washing our hands and purifying our hearts. And we do that by grieving, mourning and wailing and changing our laughter to mourning.
Humility is the cure for interpersonal conflict.
Let’s pray.
