James 4:8-10 “Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

The Lord wants to be with you and on your side. Go to him and he will stick with you. But where is that? We find him where he has promised to be found: in the promises of his word. Paul wrote the Romans, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming.” We find Jesus, we come to him, in his word, and through that word he comes to us and lives in us. And you can be sure that Jesus is not content to live in an old fixer-upper. He doesn’t live in a place without tearing it apart and improving just about everything about it.

So you recognize who has to change if you aren’t happy with the people around you or with the content of your life. James doesn’t egg us on to go after the other guy. He is pointing you and me to ourselves. “Work on yourself,” he is saying, “if you want me to lift you up in your life.”

That work assumes a life of repentance. The Apostle does not mince words. “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Some might complain about James’s negativity. “I want to feel good and be uplifted when I worship, not beaten down,” I have heard people say. “You can’t tell people they are bad,” one false teacher on TV has said to defend his greasy smile and sermons composed of shallow flattery.

James makes it clear there is still a place for genuine regret and tears in the believer’s life. He is not saying there is no place at all for joy or happiness. But we still mistreat other people. We still want what God says we can’t have. Our hearts still waver between God’s way and the devil’s. We tell our children to say they’re sorry when they misbehave. That’s what James is telling us here.

“And he (the Lord) will lift you up.” You see, he is not interested in seeing us spend our lives with a frown on our face and tears in our eyes. He replies to our repentance with his grace. He let’s us see our sins, every last one of them, sent to the cross with Jesus and obliterated. He raises us with Jesus to new life now and eternal life to come. He fills our hearts with peace. He fills our lives with meaning and purpose. He promotes us to the dignity of being the sons and daughters of the King, the distinguished members of his royal family. He exchanges this tar-paper shack we call our home for his glorious kingdom.

Yes, we repent. We humble ourselves. But we don’t lose. We win the most fantastic prize ever won. We end up with the immeasurable blessings of his grace.