Sin shows up in the most surprising of places. We are accustomed to thinking of sin as certain bad things that we do. And because of this we sometimes imagine that if we avoid these behaviors, if we just don’t actively harm anyone else, we can avoid sin.

But at the end of this passage, James reminds us that sin can just as easily express itself in things we don’t do as things we do. If we know we ought to make a call or pay a visit or help out a neighbor and decide to spend that time or effort on ourselves instead – that’s sin. That means that just keeping to ourselves, even if we don’t actively harm others, can be the most sinful thing we can do.

And that’s because all these behaviors – things done or left undone – are actually just the symptoms of sin, the outward manifestations of a profound separation from God and from other people. And sin pushes God and other people away from the self because sin is primarily interested in nurturing, protecting and advancing the self.

James illustrates this sort of casual selfishness in the first four verses of the passage. Now, there’s nothing wrong with advance planning. There’s not even anything wrong with working hard and trying to make a profit. The problem, James says, is in the assumption that we are in charge of our own destiny – that we can make plans and carry them out without reference to God’s will. And that sort of offhand assumption of autonomy lies very close to the root of sin, which is after all an attempt to live independently of God and of other people.

So, before we decide what to do today, why don’t we check in with God first? After all, we know that He wants us to love Him with all we are and all we have, and we know He wants us to love our neighbors just as much and in the same way that we love ourselves. So, instead of focusing on ourselves, let’s seek opportunities to serve God and other people.

James 4:13-17 (ESV)

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”–
14 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.
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.