As many of you have probably heard before, the Greeks had three different words to describe three different kinds of love:
“Eros” … where we get our English word “erotic” from. It denotes a sexual sort of love.
“Agape” … denotes a spiritual or unconditional type of love … usually used to reference God’s love for us.
And then there’s “philla” (or “philos”). In contrast to eros and agape, it denotes a mental kind of love. It is the sort of love that exists when the one doing the loving benefits from the thing being loved. For example, brotherly love (philadelphia). I benefit from my love for my brother or sister.
“Philosophy” is the combination of two words: “philla” and “sophia.” “Sofia” means “knowledge” or “wisdom.” “Philosophy” is “the love of wisdom or knowledge” and a “philosopher” is a person who benefits from his or her love of knowledge or wisdom.
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” James asks (v. 13). James addresses this question to churches that were experiencing conflict … but the question very much applies to us today. “Show by you good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (v. 13). Just as faith without works is dead, what good is wisdom if it doesn’t lead to a good life? Your works … or lack of works … is evidence of the kind of faith … or lack of faith … that you have. How you live your life is evidence of the wisdom that you have in your heart and, according to James, there are only two kinds of wisdom … wisdom that comes from the world … and wisdom that comes from above, from God.
Let’s start out, as James did, by examining the fruits or evidence of a life lived by worldly or secular wisdom. “But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth” (v. 14).
“So ... you are the King of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus replies. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world … to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. Pilate asked Him, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38).
What is truth? Hummm … what is “truth” today?
Now, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, truth is a body of real things, events, or facts … a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true … the property of being in accord with fact or reality.
Hummmm …. “a body of real things” … “facts” … “being in accord with fact or reality” … Hummmm … facts … reality … yeah … it’s that second definition that’s really thrown a monkey wrench into this whole “truth” business: “a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or … ACCEPTED as true.”
Here’s a term that you might not be familiar with but I can assure you that you’re living it today … it’s called “moral relativism.”
“Moral relativism” may be any of several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgment across different people and culture. “Descriptive” moral relativism holds that some people do, in fact, disagree about what is moral. “Meta-ethical” moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is ‘objectively’ right or wrong. “Normative” moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behaviors of others even when we disagree about the morality of it (Wikipedia).
“Right or wrong,” says the Legal Dictionary, “are not absolute values … but are personalized according to the individual and his or her circumstances.” It goes on to say that “moral relativism can be used positively to effect change in the law, or negatively as a means to attempt justification for wrong doing or law breaking” (Legal-Dictionary.the freedictionary.com).
Let me simply it for you. Right or wrong is in the eye of the beholder. I can’t say what’s right or wrong for you and you can’t say what’s right or wrong for me.
As James points out, there are two kinds of wisdom. The opposite of “moral relativism” is “moral absolutism,” which “espouses a fundamental, natural law of constant values and rules, and which judges all person equally, irrespective of individual circumstances or cultural differences” (Legal-Dictionary.the freedictionary.com).
Worldly wisdom, says James, “does not come from above but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish” (v. 15). Let’s see if James is right, shall we?
Stefonknee (pronounced “Stephanie”) Welscht is a 52-year-old man who thinks … or “feels” … that he is a six-year-old girl. He left his wife of 23 years and their seven children so that he could live with an adoptive family who accepts him as a six-year-old girl who wears jumpers and plays with dolls. In one of the pictures I saw, he had a baby binky in his mouth. Believe me, I wish I could burn that image out of my mind, but once you see something like that you can’t ‘unsee’ it.
“Nano” is a 20-year-old woman in Norway who believes that she was born a cat trapped in a human body. “I have been a cat all my life,” says Nano. “I realized I was a cat when I was 16 when doctors and psychologists found out what was ‘the thing’ with me,” she explained … so she’s apparently a talking cat. “It’s also obvious that I am a cat when I start purring or meowing … and walking around on four legs and stuff like that.” Again, I saw a video of her walking around a mall with a fake tail swishing behind her … don’t ask me how she attached it! I agree with the author of the article. “Generally speaking, there are two ways to live. You can either live in accordance with reality, or you can life in accordance with your feelings” (PJ Media).
Nano is, by no means, alone. There is a movement called “human pups.” Yep … you heard me right … and it’s what you think it is. Nell Frizzell of the The Guardian describes this movement of “human pups” as a … God forgive me, I almost can’t say this … a “broad church” … yes … she used the word “church.” “It is easy to laugh at a grown man in a rubber dog suit chewing a squeaky toy,” says Frizzell, “maybe too easy, in fact, because to laugh is to dismiss it, denigrate it – ignore the fact” … yes … the “fact” … that “many of us have found comfort in pretending to be animals at some point in our lives.” Yeah … maybe when I was two years old … and nothing … I mean nothing … to this extent … trust me!
Human pups are mostly male, like to dress up in leather or rubber dog suits, eat out of bowls on the floor, and like to have their ears tickled and their tummies rubbed. And, says Frizzell, “are often in a relationship with their human ‘handlers’.” I don’t even want to know what that means.
Animals aren’t the only things that some people “self-identify” with. Some people feel that they have the spirit of a plant living inside them. This is serious. They have names for it, like “greenkins,” “woodkins,” “plantkins,” or “phytanthropes.” Because they are plants, or part plant, they believe that they can actually gain energy from the sun through photosynthesis. My God, I truly wish that I was making this all up, but, sadly, it goes on …
Here’s a headline from a Brietbart article: “Drag Queens Teach Children ‘There’s No Such Thing as a Boy or Girl Thing’.” I’m not talking high school students. I’m talking children … elementary school children. Nemis Quinn McLancon-Golden is an eight-year-old Canadian drag queen known as “Queen Lactacia.” He has been videotaped dancing on the stage with other adult drag queens while the club’s patrons cheer and throw money on to the stage. Desmond Napoles, from Brooklyn, NY, is a “drag kid” known as “Desmond the Amazing” who has started a club for ‘drag kids’ called “Haus of Amazing.” I know this is hard for some of you to hear but you need to know what’s going on out there and where the “world’s wisdom” is taking us.
Every hear of a “polygamist”? A polygamist is a person who has more than one spouse. Ever hear of a “sologamist”? A sologamist is a person who is … are you ready for this? A sologamist is a person who is married to themselves. One thing for sure … it would be pretty hard to cheat on yourself without you knowing it, amen? This is a trend that’s been around for about 10 years and has been graining traction lately … especially among women. “It’s hard to find a man, a good man,” says Nell .. a different ‘Nell’ from the author of the “human pups” article. In The Weekly News article, Nell is quoted as saying that she took her honeymoon in Italy and plans to have two children, which, thanks to modern science and medicine, she says, “I don’t need a man for that either.”
As if marrying yourself isn’t strange enough, Linda Dscharme married a ferris wheel … Zheng Jiaji marred a “female” sex robot … yes, they have them now in Japan … Babylonia Aivez married a warehouse in Seattle … Chang His-Hsum married a Barbie doll … a real, 8 inch, plastic Barbie doll … Tracy Emin married her favorite rock … Richard Torres married a tree … Carol Santa Fe married a train station and took on her ‘husband’s’ last name … ‘Santa Fe’ … how traditional! Millionaire Sharon Tendler married a female dolphin named “Cindy” and Jodi Rose married a bridge in France called, appropriately enough, “The Devil’s Bridge.”
I never thought that I’d ever live to see the day that I would hear the kind of discussion and legislation that we’ve been hearing out of the New York and Virginia legislatures or ever have to coin a term like “post-partum abortion.” I can’t even wrap my mind, let alone my heart, around it.
I know that this is very difficult to listen to but this is exactly what James is talking about. This stuff no longer lurks in the shadows. There was a time when I was a kid that you had to “that” part of town to buy your pornography or get it through friends. It was all underground. Thanks to the internet and the media, this stuff’s all out in the open. It’s in our houses and on our phones … just a few taps or swipes away … anything you can imagine and, as we just heard, things you could never imagine. Like Ms. Frizzell said in her ‘human pups’ article: “The internet has made it easier to reach like-minded people” … people who want to wear rubber dog suits or marry trees.
Moral relativism allows me to decide what’s right or wrong for me. So what if I want to marry a tractor or think that I am a squash trapped in a man’s body. The only one who can judge me is me … and that works out pretty good for me, don’t you think? If I thought there was some wrong with what I was doing, if people judged me for it, I might feel bad about it and … gasp … probably stop doing it. Moral relativism … so sin, no guilt, no shame, no judgment.
Well … actually it doesn’t work that way. Saying that it’s not so doesn’t make not so, if you know what I mean … but that’s another sermon for another time.
“Such wisdom does not come down from above,” James would tell us today, “but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish” (v. 5). And all you have to do is open your eyes and look around you to see the disorder and wickedness that earthly wisdom produces.
It’s a crying shame because wisdom … true wisdom … is a gift from God … and what we are doing with it today is not how God intended us to use it. Lloyd John Ogilvie, pastor and former chaplain to the U.S. Senate, describes “wisdom” as a “special gift of the Lord for our quest to know His will. It is beyond intellect and knowledge. “In a willing mind,” says Ogilvie, “wisdom enables a person to hear with God’s ears and see with his eyes.” Do you think that the New York and Virginia legislatures were listening with God’s ears and seeing with God’s eyes when they wrote and debated that legislation? I think the answer is pretty obvious. “It is a vertical thrust of the mind of God into our minds,” writes Ogilvie, “making discernment possible on the horizontal level of human affairs. With wisdom,” says Ogilvie, “we can penetrate the mysteries of God – His nature, plans, and purposes.
“Who is wise among you?” The Apostle Paul askes the same question this way: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe” (1st Corinthians 1:20-21). The Apostle later warns us in another letter to “beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the principles of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Even Christians must fight the temptation to build their lives on the foundation of the world’s wisdom.
“Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” (v. 13). It’s easy to claim that you have wisdom. Like his statement on faith, James demands that we do more than just ‘talk’ about wisdom. He wants to ‘see’ wisdom in the way that we live our lives.
One of the first signs or fruits of true wisdom … wisdom from above … is “gentleness.” The Greek word for “gentleness” is often translated as “meekness.” It’s the same word that Jesus used in Matthew 5:5: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” “Meekness” or “gentleness” is one of the fruits of the Spirit listed by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5. The Greek word does not connote a mild, weak person who is always nice but rather portrays someone who is powerful but restrained … under control. It actually describes a tame horse which is very powerful yet submissive to its master … shades of bits and bridles in verses 2-3 that we spoke of last week.
A meek or gentle person may be very strong yet completely submissive to God’s Spirit. The Bible describes Moses as the meekest and humblest man on earth, yet he was clearly a very strong leader. Jesus described Himself as meek and gentle, yet He powerfully confronted His detractors and the religious leaders time and time again … and He was also under control. Bound before Roman’s regional representative, Jesus gives Pontius Pilate a little divine truth: “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53) … but He didn’t call. He allowed Himself to be led to the cross and nailed to it.
“But the wisdom from above,” says James, “is first pure” (v. 17). If wisdom is not pure, it’s not from above … it’s that simple. The Greek word means “unmixed, unalloyed, untainted.” In James’ situation, it means unmixed, unalloyed, untainted by jealousy and selfish ambition. Jealousy and selfish ambition are not gifts from God or fruits of the Spirit. They are of and from the world. If we seek wisdom for personal gain only … to gain an advantage or power … if we seek wisdom so that we can lord it over others … then it is not pure … it is not from above … it is not from God. Our motive for seeking wisdom … for using wisdom … must always be to glorify God and to build up the person we’re trying to help or serve. If there is jealousy or selfish ambition, it is from the world. There are no hidden motives in God’s wisdom. It is transparent and clean. There are no ulterior motives or self-seeking lurking underneath the surface. It is all out in the open … all out front. That’s how you know it is from God … it is pure.
When our hearts and our motives are pure, there is peace … peace in our hearts, peace in our lives. We are to go after peace as we would pursue an animal in a hunt. As David urges us in Psalm 34: “Depart from evil and do good; seek peace, and pursue it” (v. 14).
If our motives are not pure, then there will be disorder and wickedness … not peace. Listen to Isaiah’s warning: “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked” (Isaiah 57:20-21).
When the peace of God follows the purity of God’s wisdom into our hearts and our lives, it will affect those around us. For Christ … who is our peace … will be on the throne of our heart. The presence of this peace in our hearts will cause us to be approachable … to allow discussion … to be willing to yield to others.
Author and pastor John White believes that someone who is exhibiting this kind of peace will stand out in this world. He describes this peace from above as a kind of lighthouse in the midst of a storm. “Winds shriek … waves crash … and lightening flickers all around it, but inside, the children are playing while their parents go about their work. They may look out the window to marvel at the powers that rage around them,” says White, “but they have peace. It is the peace of knowing that the strength that surrounds them is stronger than the strength of the storm.”
Wisdom from above is first pure … then peaceable … and then “gentle.” “Of all the Greek words in the New Testament,” says Bible scholar William Barclay, “this is the most untranslatable.” He goes on to say that the man or woman with this quality “knows how to forgive when strict justice gives then a perfect right to condemn. They know how to make allowances, when to stand upon their rights, and how to temper justice with mercy.”
According to British poet Matthew Arnold, “gentleness is sweet reasonableness.” According to seminary professor Homer Kent, the word that James uses for “gentleness” referred to God, kings, or slave masters who showed moderation or leniency toward someone beneath them when it was actually within their power to insist upon their rights.
Gentleness is a characteristic of being “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). The Apostle Paul wrote of the “meekness and gentleness of Christ” in 2nd Corinthians 10:1, and he instructed his disciple, Titus, “to speak evil of no one; to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men” (Titus 3:2).
The world’s wisdom produces strife … but wisdom from above produces purity, peace, a gentle spirit, and reasonableness or a willingness to yield. The Greek word translated as “reasonable” or “willing to yield” literally means “easily persuaded.” Again, not as a sign or result of weakness but strength under control. It’s a military term that means “to be willing to take instruction” from a superior … someone who is above you … and you can’t get any higher up the chain of command that God, amen? What James is saying is that when it comes to God, “be quick to listen and slow to speak” (James 1:19) and know when to yield for the sake of peace.
Wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, and full of mercy and good fruits. This should sound familiar. In chapter 2, James said faith produces works. At the beginning of this chapter, chapter 3, he said that we can tell the kind of faith a person has by the kinds of works or “fruit” they produce. Faith without works, without fruit, is no faith at all and he is saying the same thing here about wisdom. The kind of wisdom we live by … be it the world’s or from above … will be revealed by how we act, by the kind of life we live. Our godly wisdom must be like our love and our faith … demonstrated in word and deed and truth. Our lives, our actions, must back up our testimonies, amen?
Wisdom from above must be full of mercy. Again, we hear echoes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Jesus, in fact, commanded us to be “merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Being merciful means not only having compassion for the person who is suffering through no fault of their own but also showing compassion to the one who IS suffering ¬because of his or her sin. God has been merciful to us in spite of the fact that our problems usually stem from our own sin and rebellion. We are to extend the mercy that we have received … from above … to other undeserving sinners.
Wisdom from above has no trace of partiality … it is unwavering … undivided … in its loyalty to God. Godly wisdom does not play politics with the truth. It doesn’t practice “moral relativism,” shading the truth to gain personal advantage. Wisdom from above practices “moral absolutism” … holding unswervingly, unwaveringly to the truth in love.
Wisdom from above does not have a trace of hypocrisy. Wisdom from above is sincere. What you see is not a mask or an act. Bible scholar Douglas Moo describes such a person as “stable, trustworthy, transparent – the kind of person constantly displaying the virtues of wisdom … and on whom one can rely for advice and counsel.”
If we would all seek to live by these seven qualities of godly wisdom, personal conflicts would be greatly minimized and harmonious relationships could and would blossom and grow. Unfortunately, we all have to battle the world, the flesh, and the Devil. These forces combine to draw us into “worldly wisdom” which plants copious seeds of disharmony and discord and selfish ambition in our hearts, in our lives, and in our world.
James mentioned “good fruit” in verse 17. God’s wisdom bears good fruit and the fruit of God’s wisdom matures and produces seeds … which produces more fruit … more seeds … more fruit … etc. What you reap is the result of what you sow, amen? “Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs?” (v. 12). A harvest of righteousness, says James, “is sown in peace for those who make peace” (v. 18).
Wisdom may come from above, but we must seek it, be open to it, and do our part to be prepared to receive it. A farmer who sits around doing nothing can’t expect to go out to his field and find a crop ready to harvest. If there’s to be a harvest, the field must be prepared, the seed planted, and the crop tended. If there is gentleness and peace at home or at the church, it is because the members have worked to cultivate the godly wisdom they have received from above. They have listened to one another, respected one another, judged their own selfishness and pride, and sought to live in accordance with godly wisdom … not worldly wisdom.
What is truth? You won’t find out there [point to the door] … you won’t find it here [hold up cell phone] … you will find it here [hold up Bible] and here [point to cross] because they are from above.
Let us pray …
