Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: James 4:13-17 | Date: February 6, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Christian Atheism

Turn to James chapter 4. Working our way through this epistle, we have only two or three weeks left, something like that. Today we’re at James chapter 4, verses 13 through 17, and we’ll call this “Christian Atheism.” And if that sounds strange, well, I think that’s what he’s talking about.

James 4, beginning with verse 13:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Let’s bow together in prayer.

Our Father, we come again to a passage just full of practical instruction for us, teaching us what it is to live as believers. We pray that you will open our hearts to it, give us a greater appreciation through this passage of your all-encompassing providence over our lives, and help us to reflect that in the way that we think, the way that we talk, and the way that we live. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Well, I titled this, as I say, “Christian Atheism.” Of course, I’m going to have to define that because, by definition, I suppose, in one way, the two are just completely incompatible. But it has been customary for a long time for theologians to speak of various kinds of atheism.

One is the dogmatic atheist: the one who says there is no God. Well, clearly, such a person is not a Christian. There’s another kind of atheism that’s talked about. It’s not just a dogmatic atheist, someone who says confidently there is no God. It is called virtual atheism. These are those who would profess that there is a God, confess that God exists, but then they define God in such a way that they virtually put him out of existence.

So, for example, we have some of the naturalistic philosophers that we’ve talked about in Sunday school recently. Some of them would be theists of some kind, but by the time they’re done, they’ve defined God in such a way that he’s completely irrelevant, and virtually they are atheists. Pantheism is a classic example of virtual atheism, where God and the created order are so identified together that there’s virtually no distinction between them. And again, God is confessed as to his existence, but then defined virtually out of existence. Deism is another example of that, where God is acknowledged—he’s the creator—but then he’s backed away from his creation. He’s transcendent, he’s not immanent in his created order, and he’s virtually irrelevant. In a sense, that’s a virtual atheism. I think we could do the same with open theism today that defines God virtually out of existence by saying he doesn’t know the future. They’ve basically stripped him of his deity.

Virtual atheism. So there’s dogmatic atheism, virtual atheism, and then coming closer to home and closer to this passage here, there’s what’s called practical atheism. And that is, the practical atheist is not one who denies that God exists. In fact, he affirms very emphatically that God exists. But practically, this person lives as though God does not exist.

So on the one hand, this might be the liberal Protestant. He goes to church Sunday, acknowledges that there’s a God, but then there’s no relevance of God in his life from Sunday afternoon to next Sunday morning. Practically, he’s an atheist. We have that with others who would claim to believe in God. Sometimes it would be people who maybe they go to an evangelical church, but they’ve been burned by it, and they’ve left, and they’re gone, and they have no connection with Christianity at all. You ask them, “Do you believe in God?” “Oh yeah, I believe in God,” but he makes no difference at all in real life. Practically, they’re atheists.

What is practical atheism? What James rebukes here is specifically a professing Christian who lives like a practical atheist, verses 13 to 17. He attends church. He attends James’s church. He confesses Christ as Lord. He acknowledges that God is God. He acknowledges that God is ruling over all that is. He comes to church on Sunday. He sings the praises. He means them. He means them in his heart. But then he goes home Sunday noon, and from then till Sunday morning next week, God makes little difference. And so far as their confession is concerned, God is there, but practically he makes no difference in life. And this goes from Sunday to Sunday. So they’re Christians, but practically, they’re atheists as well. And that’s what James is gunning for in this passage.

Now, we’ve said before, we don’t know a lot about James’s congregation. What we do know from all of his—let’s put it this way—his negative preaching and his rebuking of their sins, we know that it wasn’t a model congregation. It might be typical, but it’s not a model congregation. But we get a picture here that evidently at least many in the church in his congregation were of the merchant class. What he describes here is not people who live hand to mouth, but it’s people who are making plans for their future.

And you’ll see that in verse 13. These are the ones who say, “Today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town, spend a year there, and trade and make profits.” So these are businessmen, businesswomen. They’re somewhat well-to-do. They’re able to make these kinds of business decisions in what they’re going to do. They’ve decided where to go. They’ve decided when to go there, how long to stay. They’ve determined how much profit they will make when they are there. It’s really making rather extensive kinds of business plans and travel plans, determining the kinds of profits they’ll make.

And in one sense, all of this sounds very ordinary. Very, in fact, good. James is not condemning capitalism here. He’s not endorsing laziness. He’s not saying to be industrious is wrong. He’s not saying any of that. All of what he describes here on one level is all very good. What James is rebuking here, and it’s obvious as you read through it, is not that they are making plans and business plans and how much profit they’ll make. That’s not the point of his rebuke. The point of his rebuke is their spirit of independence in it all and a spirit of self-sufficiency in it all. All these plans are made as though their time, their ability, the circumstances, and all were completely under their control. There’s no acknowledgment of the sovereign providence of God in it. So they make their plans, they’ve determined their profits, as though they’re in charge of the whole course of their life and all of the circumstances of it. And James here is rebuking that.

This, in effect, would be not just the merchant class, those who are, let’s say, upper middle class. This would be the regular working guy as well who lives from paycheck to paycheck, but he’s made his plans as though he can determine, “Now I will have this paycheck and that paycheck, and then I’ll save this much and that much, and then I can do this, that, and the other.” It’s that spirit of independence and self-sufficiency that James is gunning for here. And James says then in verse 16 that that is arrogant and it’s evil boasting. It’s interesting how he characterizes that.

There are people making plans for business on one level, as they should. And James blasts it as arrogant and boasting. They’re professing to have a belief in God. But James is pointing out here that has certain implications, has certain consequences in life. Better that they are outright hypocrites than to profess belief in God as God, as God overall, then it ought to have some implications for the way that we live and spell out our plans.

The Uncertainty Of The Future

Now what’s specifically wrong with what they’re doing here? James begins here by pointing out simply the uncertainty of the future. Verse 14: “You do not know what tomorrow will bring.” There’s the first part of his rebuke. You make these plans; you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. In all of your planning, you’re acting as though the future is certain and it will be just as you have planned. And James says, you don’t know that.

That’s actually a frequent note that we have in the scriptures, a famous proverb of that: “Boast not yourself because of tomorrow, because man does not know what a day will bring forth.” It’s Proverbs 27, verse one. We have other passages like that that warn us of the uncertainty of the future. And it’s presumptuous, James says, to think as though you have it all under control.

But if you look at verse 14, you’ll see that it’s not just the future generally that James is emphasizing here. It’s life itself that is uncertain. It’s not just that the future is uncertain, but he’s saying life itself is uncertain. Look again at verse 14. Look at it carefully. “You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

You’re a mist. That’s an interesting word to use of life. The Greek word here is atmos, where we get our word atmosphere. Mist or a vapor, smoke, cloud—take your pick. That word is translated in various kinds of ways. But he’s comparing that to our life. You go outside on a cold night like tonight, and you go [exhales], and you see that cloud, and it’s gone. James says, that’s what your life is. We’re here, we’re here for a moment, and then it’s gone. It appears for a little while, he says, and then it vanishes.

Well, that’s one biblical metaphor for life. Another one is life is like grass. We read that in the epistles. We read that in the Psalms. Your life is like the grass in the morning; it’s green and fresh and full of life. In the evening, it’s withering and going down. Moses laments the death of Israel in that first generation after the Exodus in Psalm 90. Life is like grass; it appears for a little bit and it’s gone. We might have 70 years, we might have 80 years, but in the big scheme of things, it’s here and in a flash it’s gone. The brevity of life, the transitoriness of life is what he’s emphasizing here.

Now we don’t tend to think of our life that way in terms of its brevity, in terms of its transitoriness. I don’t think any of us would claim that we’re going to live forever, but I doubt that many of us think, at least regularly, “You know, I don’t have much time here. And I don’t know if I’ll be alive tomorrow. What’s important for today?” We don’t tend to think like that. Now, it may be, in fact, that you won’t die for decades off. Many of you are young. I trust that’s the case. Decades off. Some of us are a little closer to it than others. The fact is, none of us knows what today, tomorrow will bring. We don’t know that we’ll make it home tonight. We don’t know if we’ll live past tomorrow. We don’t know what life will bring. And James is simply applying that.

When you make all of your plans as though you’re so confident and as though all of these things are sure, or as though they’re in your control, you’ve forgotten the uncertainty of life, the uncertainty of the future, and the brevity of your own life. And the really humbling thing about it all is that we don’t have any control over it all.

If The Lord Wills

Look at verse 15: “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live…'” Before we go to the rest of the verse, get that. What we ought to say is, “If the Lord wills, we will live.” Did you know that your life today is a gratuitous gift from God? You and I are drawing breath right now. Ultimately, it’s only because God has so willed it, and God gives it. And what we ought to say is, “If the Lord wills, I’ll live.” The only reason we’re breathing right now, the only reason we’ll breathe tomorrow, is because God has given it. God does not owe you life. He doesn’t owe me life. He doesn’t owe life to anyone. The reason we live today and the reason we live tomorrow is because God gives it.

And that’s the same with everything about us. He tells us that in verse 15 and the rest of the verse. “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'” It’s a remarkable statement of God’s sovereign providence over all things. Everything about us, he says, is in God’s hands. And the outcomes of all of our plans, they’re in God’s hands. We have our life, we have our health, we have our families, we have our wealth, we have our happiness, we have our house, we have our bank account, and we think they are ours. James says, they’re not yours, they’re God’s. He has given that to you and in his time he’ll take it away. Your life, your relationships, health, happiness—all of those are for God to give and for God to take away as he sees fit.

It’s a remarkable statement of God’s providence over all the details of life. If the Lord wills, I’ll live. If the Lord wills, I’ll do this and I’ll do that. But it’s only if God wills, because God is God over all, over everything about us. We are invited to pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread.” And what this passage reminds us is that those kinds of prayers are requests for mercy. And they ought to be worshipful kinds of prayers with an acknowledgement that all of this, even my daily bread, is in God’s hands. I’ll eat well today like I ate well tomorrow if God wills. These are all in his hands: our life, our health, our success, our business plans. God does not owe any of that to any of us for any length of time. He is God over all of it, and to use it all for his own purposes for us.

An important part of our worship, James is telling us here, is that we bow before God in humble acknowledgement that everything about us is his, to acknowledge our dependence upon him for everything. Now, this is Reformed Baptist Church. We know all about God’s sovereignty. We know all about God’s sovereign providence over everything. What James is saying here is that if that is the faith that we confess, then shouldn’t that show up in the way that we think every day, in the way that we talk to one another every day? Shouldn’t it show itself in the plans that we make, in the way we think about those plans, in the considerations that we make?

That’s again, verse 15. James says, when we make our plans, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” That is to say, a vital part of our daily worship, living before God, is to acknowledge His sovereign providence over all of our life. Every morning we ought to wake up and say, “This day is God’s. It is in His hands, and we will live and we will do this and we will do that if God wills.” This is an important part of our worship. It’s an act of worship to acknowledge God’s sovereign rule over everything about our lives.

Now it’s important, I think, again, to clarify that James here is not criticizing the industry of these people. He’s not saying, “Oh, these people are well-to-do. Shame on them for being so well off.” He’s not saying that at all. He’s not criticizing industry. The Book of Proverbs is a wonderful corrective to any of that kind of thinking. “Go to the ant, you sluggard, and consider her ways, and be wise,” and be industrious. “A diligent hand makes rich and the slack hand makes poor,” and we’ve got plenty of Proverbs to correct that kind of mistaken thinking. James is not criticizing being a person who’s industrious and making plans. What James is rebuking is that spirit of independence and that spirit of self-sufficiency in it all, and that spirit of forgetfulness that everything about us lies in God’s hands.

And that’s what he emphasizes now. Let’s look at it again, verses 13 to 16:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You’re a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will do this, live, and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

That is to say, then, these outcomes that you have planned, they’re not in your hands, and you shouldn’t talk as though they are. Again, Proverbs 16, verse 9: “The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” And so James is saying we ought to humbly and reverently and thankfully acknowledge God in everything about our lives and in the plans that we make.

What this is simply is applied theology. You might call it applied Calvinism. We talk about sovereignty—God’s sovereign providence over all of life. And this is simply applying that a little more deeply than we normally would. You believe that there’s a God. Really? What difference does that make then? Do you really believe that? And so he says, what you ought to say is, “If the Lord wills, we will do this or that.”

But it’s interesting that the Apostle Paul adopted this practice that James here is commending to his people. In Acts chapter 18, Paul says, “I will return again to you if God will.” 1 Corinthians 4 verse 19: “I will come to you shortly if the Lord will.” 1 Corinthians 16 verse 7: “I trust to tarry a while with you if the Lord permits.”

The church for centuries has adopted the practice—and we don’t know Latin anymore, so we don’t tend to do it—but the church for centuries adopted the practice of saying we will do this “DV,” Deo Volente, Lord willing, God willing. And that’s simply an adopting of what James has commanded here.

Now, I doubt here that James’s concern is simply the mere recitation of words. “Say these words and you’re OK.” What he’s after here is a worshipful acknowledgment and a dependence upon God. So when he tells us here what you ought to say, “If the Lord wills we will live and do this or that,” does this mean then that every time you text a friend, “Be there in five, DV”? Do we have to tack that on every time?

Yes and no. Again, I don’t think James is after the mere repetition of words here. And it’s probably not an absolute demand that says every time you make a statement of intention, you have to tack on the words, “if the Lord wills.” But then on the other hand, James is rebuking not just the absence of words, but he’s rebuking the absence of a right attitude of dependence upon God. And the fact remains, if we don’t develop the habit of saying, “if the Lord wills,” we are likely to forget that we will do this and that only if the Lord wills. It is a good practice to keep this going as a matter of reminder of our dependence upon God, and I think James is calling for that.

No, if you text someone, “Be there in five” or whatever, I don’t think you’re sinning for leaving off Deo Volente. But at the same time, he is telling us, as it ought to be forefront in all of our minds always, a sense of dependence upon God, who is God over all. He directs our steps. There must always be this worshipful recognition of God in our lives and his rulership over everything about us. If we don’t make a habit of saying it, we’re going to be likely to forget it altogether. And what James is commending here, commanding of us here then, is a reminder and to remind ourselves that we are living under the rule of God.

Sins Of Omission

Verse 17 then makes an interesting contribution to this discussion and to the biblical doctrine of sin as well. “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, to him it is sin.” This is where we get that category of sin: sins of omission. Sin is not necessarily just something that you do that’s wrong or what you do that’s forbidden. Sin may be a sin of omission: things you leave out that you should have done, leaving off responsibilities that you should have taken more seriously and done. Sins of omission.

We tend to think of sin mostly in terms of doing things that are bad, and James here says there’s another category of it altogether. When you fail to do what you ought to do, that is sin as well. And falling in this context, I think what he’s saying is to forget God in your daily life is a sinful thing. We forget to live under God’s rule as recognizing that we are under God’s rule, and we forget to say, “if the Lord wills, we will do this or that.” And in all of that, it is a sinful failure to recognize God’s Godhood over everything about us.

The Puritan John Flavel has a marvelous book, The Mystery of Providence. And I don’t know if some of you probably read it. It’s a marvelous book, and the thesis is: it is an act of worship and an important act of worship for the Christian to reflect on divine providence. So not just acknowledge that God is sovereign over your life, but to look back over it all and to recognize God’s providence in this and in this and in this and the other. It’s a wonderful instruction in that way.

That’s not, though, what James is saying here. James is not relating our acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty and his providence over our past life. He’s talking about the future life—what I do tomorrow and my plans for tomorrow—to recognize that same rule of God and his providential control over yesterday is the same God who rules over tomorrow. And we ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will do this and that.”

And this then is a wonderful exercise of devotion to consider the governing rule of God over everything about us: what God has provided, what God has done. And our lives rest in his care tomorrow as well. Make our plans, be industrious for sure, advance all you can in the various vocations that we have, plan for the future, provide for your family—yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And in it all, it is if the Lord wills, we will do this or that, because he, after all, is the one who guides every step and rules over everything about us. Amen.

Let’s pray.

Our Father,