Objection: James Said to Say, “If the Lord Will, We Shall Live.” This Proves That We Cannot Claim Long Life.
James also told some people that they should weep and howl. When I read objections like this, I don’t know whether to weep or to howl!
Read this in context:
James 4:13-16:
Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
But now, ye rejoice in your boastings: all such boasting is evil.
If you are self-willed and conceited, this passage applies to you. If you aren’t, it does not tell you what to do because it is not addressed to you.
Two verses later James says to howl and weep for the miseries that are coming upon you. (See James 5:1-6 for the whole context.) Is that proper conduct for all Christians? No, it only applies to the rich oppressors described in the context. God does not want His children howling and weeping for the miseries that are coming upon them! Likewise, it is the evil boasters (verse 13, verse 16) to whom the verses in between (verse 14 and verse 15) apply. James gave commands to two groups of people who are out of God’s will. Why classify yourself with the self-willed people who have no guarantee of long life in their present condition? (God’s promises of long life are always tied to serving Him. Self-willed people do not qualify.)
You don’t have to wonder if the Lord is willing to give you a long life if you are serving Him. There are many promises covered in this book elsewhere that make this clear. In fact, to serve God fervently but then say, “I don’t know if God wants me to continue living until I’ve had a long life or not” would accuse God of being able to break His promises.
In the larger context, James said in the next chapter that the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and that being transparent with each other – confessing our shortcomings to each other and praying for one another – would result in healing (James 5:14-16). So we KNOW that it is the Lord’s will for you to be healed – not to die of an illness – based on that next chapter. James definitely does not counsel the Christian to question the will of God for his healing. The only IF is that IF a SINNER calls for the elders, IF he has committed sins, he will be forgiven when the elders come and anoint him and pray the prayer of faith over him. No IF is involved with the healing. Therefore, you cannot make James 4:14-15 say that you should die of an illness and not have long life.
You must remember that James is addressing a “mixed bag” of sinners and saints. Some of the people whom he addresses KILL (James 4:2, James 5:6), and no murderer has eternal life (1 John 3:15). So some of these people are not partakers yet of New Covenant blessings.
The other ways out of here would be an accident, murder, suicide or martyrdom. Anti-faith teachers love to harp on martyrs as proof that we can’t be assured of long lives. (See the objection about Stephen for an exposition on this.) So what about accidents? Jesus talked about some accidents. He talked about accidental poisoning and snakebites. You are guaranteed preservation in such cases in Jesus’ name. He also said that we would tread on snakes and scorpions and over ALL the power of the enemy, and NOTHING should be any means hurt us (Luke 10:19). Psalm 91 covers accidents when it says that no evil shall befall the man who abides in God and that God will satisfy that man with long life. That takes care of accidents and getting murdered (as opposed to martyred). As far as suicide goes, just don’t kill yourself and you won’t leave that way, either.
It is true that your life appears “for a little time” in the overall scheme of time, but even 120 years would be a little time by God’s standards. Given that a thousand years is as a day to Him, 120 years would be as 2 hours, 52 minutes and 48 seconds using the same standard, which would seem to God like a little time. Okay, I’m being a little over-mathematical, but you get the point. (I like math, and I cringe when Christians make mathematically incorrect statements. For example, some preachers say that there are over 30,000 promises in the Bible. There are actually only 31,101 verses in the entire Bible, and they are certainly not all promises. The New Testament has only 7,957 verses. Also, some preachers say that Paul wrote half [some even say two-thirds] of the New Testament. Paul actually wrote only 24.04% of the 180,551 words and 25.55% of the 7,957 verses in the King James New Testament. [I pulled those totals out of a popular Pentecostal reference Bible. The total from the individual books’ word counts was 180,551 words, but the total for the New Testament was stated as 180,552 words. I did not feel like counting the words in the New Testament myself to see which was right.] Of course, these numbers are slightly misleading because Paul did not write in King James English, and this count includes little italicized words that were added for clarity to the English translation. If you think that he wrote Hebrews (which is not explicitly stated, but probable in my opinion), the numbers jump to 27.90% of the words and 29.36% of the verses, which is still less than a third of the New Testament. I’ll only go along with you if you say that Paul wrote half of the books in the New Testament [13, or 14 including Hebrews, out of 27]. End of mathematical digression.)
James’s point is that life is a gift from God. The boasters should recognize that God gives them their very lives so that they don’t boast in themselves. It is not a blanket statement of unbelief telling all Christians that they should ask God every year if it is His will for them to live another year! It is only the people who turn away from God who are in danger of not living another year except for God’s mercy. If you aren’t one of these proud boasters, you don’t have to pray every New Year’s Eve to see if God wants you to live another year or not.
See also: