Grace Orientation and Inner Happiness;
James
NASB “and the rich man {is to glory} in his humiliation,
because like flowering grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with a scorching
wind and withers the grass; and its flower falls off and the beauty of its
appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will
fade away. Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been
approved, he will receive the crown of life which {the Lord} has promised to
those who love Him.”
“because
like the flower of the grass, it will pass away” is the correct translation.
What we have here in the first phrase is the flower of the grass—ANTHOS CHROTOU [a)nqoj xrotou]. The second word is the genitive noun of CHORTOS [xortoj] which means “grass”; ANTHOS means flower. We have a
picture of grass, and out from the grass comes a
flower. The grass represents your logistical grace blessings, the basics in
life. These you possess because of the perfect righteousness of Christ. The
flower represents the beautiful extras that you don’t anticipate in life, all
of the details of life that God is blessing you with. Then we have the verb PARELEUSETAI [pareleusetai] which is the future middle
indicative, third person singular—3rd person singular=he, she, or
it. This is not talking about the passing away of the rich man,
it says “it will pass away.” “It” refers back to the flower of the grass. In
other words, at some point in time all of a sudden all of those details in life
are going to disappear; those details in life that you are tempted to put your
hope and focus on for your happiness.
Then there is the
illustration in verse 11: “For the sun rises with a scorching wind.” This is
adversity in life. All kinds of things can come up and they are like the
scorching wind that destroys everything under it. Notice it doesn’t kill the
grass, it just withers it. The flower falls off and even the logistical grace
blessings begin to dry up. You still have logistical grace but it is withered
up. In the analogy, “so too the rich man [wealth] in the midst of his [its]
pursuits will fade away.” This is not talking about the rich man fading away, it is the wealth that he has, that excess. It is not
talking about the destruction of the wealthy man, it
is the loss of his details of life. All of a sudden, just like the sun that
rose up and blew away the flower of the grass, so to there was economic tragedy
and the wealthy person lost those details of life that were distracting him
from doctrine. So we have to understand at the conclusion here the importance
of grace orientation.
Throughout life we are
going to face various attacks upon our souls. Those attacks come under the categories
of adversity and prosperity. As adversity attacks the soul when the soul is
under the control of the sin nature the result is stress in the soul. Remember
that adversity happens to everybody but stress is optional. Adversity is the
outside pressure of the circumstances on the soul; stress is the internal
pressure that comes from the soul that is the result of yielding to the temptation
of the sin nature. The solutions are the stress-busters or problem-solving
devices. The tens stress-busters: confession, the filling of the Holy Spirit,
the faith-rest drill, doctrinal orientation, grace orientation, personal sense
of eternal destiny, personal love for God the Father, unconditional love for
all mankind, inner happiness, occupation with Christ. As we begin to learn
doctrine it begins to flow through these categories. It erects a fortification
around the soul that protects it from adversity. As we begin to learn the Word
of God then we extrapolate all of these different principles.
Grace orientation
1) There are two categories of grace in God’s policy for
mankind. Category # 1 grace is extended to the believer through the saving work
of Christ on the cross, Ephesians 2:8, 9. Category # 2 God’s grace is extended
to the believer through God’s plan for the believer’s life in the church age.
We must align ourselves to the right age in history. Remember, the
dispensations are specific periods of time in God’s plan for His administration
of the human race. The basic divider is the cross. In the Old Testament there
were two basic periods, the Gentiles and the Jews/Israel. The age of
2) Category # 1, saving grace, is the defined as all that
God is free to do for mankind on the basis of the saving work of Christ on the
cross. All grace is ultimately grounded in one event in human history: the
cross of Christ. All the Old Testament grace of God towards Adam and Eve after
the fall, to the various people who lived in the antediluvian period, to
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Exodus generation, was based on what would happen
at the cross. It anticipated the cross. In God’s plan He knew what would happen
and so on the basis of Christ’s provision God’s grace was extended antecedently. When Jesus said “It is finished” on the cross, that means that nothing can be added to salvation.
Saving grace, therefore, is totally of God and has nothing to do with human
merit, human works, religious activities, or any of the other things that
people think will impress God or gain His approbation.
3) Category # 2, post-salvation grace, is all that God is
free to do for the believer on the basis of God’s plan for the believer’s life.
Post-salvation grace is divorced from any system of human works, human merit,
human ability, human behaviour, talent, emotion or power. It is not up to us;
it is not based on us. God’s plan is not going to proceed or fail on the basis
of who and what we are, it succeeds on the basis of
who he is and what He has done. Grace is the function of the attributes of God
on behalf of every church age believer as a member of the royal family of God.
4) Under the divine policy of grace everything depends on
who God is and what Jesus Christ did on the cross, never, in even the least
little bit, on who you are and what you do.
5) Under this divine policy of grace God has found a way
to bless the worst of all believers as well as the best without any compromise
of His attributes. That is what we call logistical grace.
6) Therefore the beginning point for orientation to both
saving grace for the unbeliever and post-salvation grace for the believer is
humility—realizing who you are in all honesty. Romans 12:3 NASB “…I
say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to
think…” This is not a false humility that runs one’s self down but a true
humility that looks honestly at yourself.
7) Grace is all that God is free to do for each believer
and be consistent with His own divine attributes.
8) The integrity of God is composed of the perfect and
eternal justice of God, the perfect righteousness of God, and the immeasurable
love of God. So we can say that what the righteousness of God demands the
justice of God works out or supplies, motivated by the
love of God and expressed through the grace of God. So then, what the
righteousness of God rejects the justice of God condemns, but the love of God
provides a solution as expressed through the grace of God. What the
righteousness of God accepts the justice of God blesses, as motivated by the
love of God and expressed through the grace of God.
9) The pattern for grace is established at salvation and
remains consistent with all post-salvation spiritual growth in the plan of God.
We have to align ourselves
to grace orientation. Grace orientation begins by understanding salvation and
the spiritual life. But that is only where it begins. Grace orientation goes on
to extend to all of our human relationships and to provide the basis for
unconditional love, because the unconditional love of God directed toward you
in pre-salvation grace and post-salvation grace is based on His grace, His unconditional
love expressed through grace. So we have to understand grace if we are going to
have unconditional love for those people who are not very attractive to us, to
people who hurt us, to people who have harmed us, to people we don’t care too
much about and are the kind of people we would not normally have anything to do
with. But we can express unconditional love for them and we don’t even have to
know them very well. Love is always based on knowledge but we can have
unconditional love because it is based upon the grace of God, who God is and
what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. Grace orientation, then, becomes a
building block for developing the more mature attitude of unconditional love
for all mankind.
James
It says here, “Blessed is,”
and there is no “is” in the original language. It just says, “Blessed [happy]
the man.” The word here for “man” is the Greek word ANER [a)nhr]. This is
important. What we normally expect is ANTHROPOS [a)nqrwpoj]. Usually ANER refers to male instead of the female. Sometimes it
refers to a human as opposed to an animal and sometimes it refers to an adult
instead of a child. The latter is the focus here: “Blessed in the spiritual
adult who perseveres under trial.” The reason for focusing this on spiritual
maturity is because understanding the dynamics of joy and happiness are not
something the spiritual infant can understand. It takes time and a certain
amount of doctrine in the soul before we begin to realize that we have to put
our focus on Jesus Christ, on the plan of God, and the glory of God. When our
focus is on that then our circumstances no longer are the issue, your happiness
is based on something solid. So there is an element here that this word
introduces that is maturity. Spiritual maturity comes as a result of endurance—HUPOMENO [u(pomenw]; MENO = to remain or stay; HUPO = under. That is the basic
meaning. When life gets tough you hang in there, you stay under the pressure;
you don’t try to bail out of the situation. We try to opt out of the situation through
the easy solution, which is usually to yield to the sin nature and try to
handle it ourselves rather than by waiting on the Lord.