The Unexpected Path To Perfection

If you were to take a survey of every person in this room, and perhaps every person in this city, and ask them, "What is your main goal in life?" you would get a lot of different answers. Some would say to be successful, to provide for their family. Others might say to be healthy, to travel, to be happy. But I guarantee you, almost no one would say, "My goal is to face hardship. My goal is to run headfirst into trouble."

Our entire culture, our very human nature, is engineered to seek comfort and avoid pain. We buy insurance to protect us from disaster. We go to doctors to shield us from sickness. We build financial plans to guard against poverty. We construct our lives like a fortress, with the goal of keeping difficulty on the outside.

And then we open our Bibles. We turn to this intensely practical, no-nonsense letter from James, and in the very first few verses, we are hit with one of the most counter-intuitive, upside-down commands in all of Scripture.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, writing to the scattered believers, says this in verse two: "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations."

Let that sink in. He doesn't say, "Grit your teeth and bear it when you face trials." He doesn't say, "Try to find a silver lining." He issues a command: Make a conscious decision, as an act of will and faith, to consider your trials a matter of pure joy. Not just some joy, but all joy.

When you receive the diagnosis you were dreading... count it all joy.

When your business faces a downturn and the bills are piling up... count it all joy.

When a relationship you cherished falls apart... count it all joy.

When you are wrestling in the darkness with a temptation that won't leave you alone... count it all joy.

Our immediate, honest human reaction is to say, "James, that's impossible. It's irrational." And if the trial itself were the point, we would be right. But James is pulling back the curtain on a divine process. He wants to show us that God uses the inevitable trials of life not to defeat us, but to develop us. He is about to reveal the unexpected pathway to our own spiritual perfection.

I. The Test of Your Faith (Verse 3a)

1. The first thing James tells us is what is actually happening in the trial.

Look at the beginning of verse 3: "...Knowing this, that the trying of your faith..."

Notice what is being tested. It’s not your strength. It's not your emotional fortitude or your intellectual capacity. It is your faith. The Greek word used here for "trying" is dokimion. It’s a goldsmith’s term. When a goldsmith wanted to know if a lump of ore was truly gold, he would put it into a crucible and heat it in a furnace. The intense heat wouldn't harm the gold. In fact, the fire would cause all the impurities—the dross, the slag, the worthless bits of rock and dirt—to bubble up to the surface where they could be scraped away. The fire didn't destroy the gold; it proved its genuineness and purified its substance.

2. That is what God is doing in your trial.

The heat is on, not to destroy you, but to prove and to purify your faith. Your trial is God's crucible. It reveals what your faith is truly made of. When everything is going well, it's easy to say, "I trust in God." But when the bottom falls out, the trial reveals what we actually trust in. Do we trust in our bank account? Our health? Our reputation? Our own strength? The trial brings the dross of our self-reliance, our hidden idols, and our love for comfort to the surface, so that God, the master refiner, can lovingly skim it away.

He isn't punishing you; He is preparing you. He is not breaking you; He is building you. The trial is a divine diagnostic, showing you—and showing God what He already knows—the true condition of your heart so that you can learn to depend on Him more completely. Understanding this divine purpose is the very first step to being able to "count it all joy."

II. The Product of the Test: Patience (Verse 3b)

1. This fiery test of faith produces something.

It has a result. Look at the rest of verse 3: "...the trying of your faith worketh patience."

Now, when we hear the word "patience," we often think of something passive. We think of waiting in a long line at the grocery store or sitting in traffic. It's a grit-your-teeth-and-do-nothing kind of word. But the biblical word here is so much more powerful. The Greek is hupomone, and it means steadfast, triumphant endurance. It's not the picture of a man passively waiting for a storm to end. It's the picture of a soldier standing his ground in the thick of the battle, holding the line, refusing to retreat under enemy fire. It is active, persevering, unconquerable endurance.