Other-Worldly Congeniality
by Bill Smith, a faithful friend and pastor of Covenant PCA Church in Sulphur, Louisiana

The Christians addressed in James' epistle are having problems wedding their faith in Christ with all of life. As many of us are prone to do, they were holding faith as an abstraction. If, as it seems to be the case, they were anything like many in the church today, faith was a mystical component of one's life that abides in the ethereal netherworld which is only entered into in times of "spiritual experience."

James drives home the truth that faith is not a concept nor simply the grasping of concepts. Faith involves all that we are and all that we do. Even demons grasp "ideas," but they are certainly not believers. Believers persevere through trials, visit orphans and widows in their affliction, keep themselves unspotted from the world, refuse to show partiality on the basis of social status, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, protect other believers, and are willing to sacrifice the child of promise if that is what God requires. Our faith matters in real life situations. It cannot remain lodged in the world of ideas. Any Christian who fails to understand this stands to be reproved severely by the inspired writer.

The Christian faith being active in the world of human relationships means that what God commands directly impacts how we relate to those around us. Though James 4:4 seems to be somewhat of an island in the sea of various rebukes and exhortations, it rests in a particular context. James is teaching his readers about how our faith presents itself in our relationships. The closing paragraph of chapter three contrasts worldly wisdom—the faith of this world—with the wisdom that is from above—genuine faith. Those who claim to be wise but demonstrate a self-seeking penchant that stirs up strife are exposing themselves as having demonic wisdom (and thus a demonic-type "faith"). Genuine faith seeks the best for others. Therefore heavenly wisdom is "pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." This forms the basis for what James says in the opening sentences of chapter four.

Christians were warring among themselves. In doing so they were exhibiting characteristics that are in conflict with that which God requires of us. They were being self-seeking, which, by its very nature, puts them on the side of the world and at enmity with God. James, just as a multitude of prophets before him, brings charges against the people of God for their covenantal unfaithfulness. The people of God were engaging one another in battle instead of the world. In doing so they proved that they were sleeping with the enemy. Their adulteries were revealed by their actions. These actions had betrayed their adoption of the world's faith; that is, their worldview. They were looking at everything through the wrong set of glasses. Faithfulness to the covenant means that my ultimate loyalty is only to One. The relationship is necessarily exclusive. As a Christian I cannot adopt the world's faith and the Christian worldview. This is being double-minded. And a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. So as I jettison the world's faith, I am set at enmity with those who adopt it. To be God's friend, I must live a life of faith like Abraham, our father. This faith means that I am going to walk out of lock-step with the world.

Living as a believer also entails confronting worldliness as James does here. To be sure there will be times that this will be perceived as being harsh, uncaring, or even not being nice. While it is granted that there are some who use the truth as a club to bludgeon people, others' "perceptions" of a lack of congeniality might simply arise from the fact that they are defining their terms with the wrong lexicon. Many evangelicals would never call religious hypocrites by name because, they say, "That is unChrist-like." Yet this is precisely what Christ did with the scribes and Pharisees as recorded in Matthew 23. Worldly faith expressing itself in the church says, "You must be tolerant of error. This is what grace means. It is the Christian thing to do." Paul does not think so. When the Gospel was at stake because of Peter's compromise, Paul withstood him to his face. While some would say that toleration of hypocrisy and error is the definition of "nice" and the only way to peace and unity in the church, God tells us that those who are in error are divisive (Romans 16:17). There can be no peace or unity or true congeniality in error. People can only be united in truth. To be united in truth means that we must be united in covenant faithfulness. For this to happen there must be those who blow the whistle when we step out of bounds. Therefore, James' scathing rebuke of the covenantal unfaithfulness of the believers who have adopted the wrong worldview is completely consistent with what he has said about being "gentle, peaceable, and willing to yield." As long as they foster the self-seeking attitude that is promoted by the world, there will never be any genuine peace among them. They will never be able to be truly nice to one another until each one of them becomes selfless, willing to submit to our one Lord.

Christian niceness as an expression of true love demands that we seek the best for others. Anything less than seeking the best for others—which sometimes involves addressing others as "adulterers"—is nothing more than selfishness masquerading as concern. The type of "concern" that refuses to confront another person with the truth is not being nice. It is the kiss of an enemy. For when we refuse to summon people to covenant faithfulness, we betray a self-seeking attitude that places personal comfort above the eternal welfare of others. The truth may hurt. Yet "faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of the enemy are deceitful."