That is verse seventeen of the fourth chapter of James. This one sentence carries much more weight than most give it credit, which is a very sad statement.
If you know you are doing something that the Bible says you should not, you have sinned.
If things in the world that you have some way of correcting and aiming it back toward God. Yet you do nothing, you have sinned.
If you know God, yet do not correctly teach of Him to your children and they enter into a sinful live. You too have sinned.
So like I said this one sentence carries a lot of weight.
Now let’s expand this to the entire teaching that led up to this sentence.
James 4:13 – Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” 14 How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. 15 What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” 16 Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil.
“Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.”
Our lives are fleeting, temporary. Most go through this life, even those that call themselves “Christian,” and all they say is I will do this with my life, I will plan for this event or that event. All you see is the word “I.”
This teaching shows that it is not we that should be the topic of our lives, but God, His Son and the teachings of the Bible. Yet most go about treating God as a genie that is there to serve them and their desires. This is the furthest thing away from what the Bible teaches.
We are to be the servants. We are the ones that are to ask God what it is we are to do. It maybe to raise a family. It maybe to work a job. It maybe to run a nation. As long as we keep God as the master. The focal point, then we are serving God. We are doing what we are supposed to do.
When we keep God the core of our life. Then when we see sin and we have power to stop it or draw attention to it we are to do so. Otherwise we sin. If we disobey the laws of the land which we are told we must not do in Titus 3:1, then we sin.
If we allow those that have turned against God to take control and we have power to stop it, yet do nothing, then we sin.
Our lives are not ours, but God’s. We are only here for a short time. For this life we now live is not all there is to our existence. This life is merely a stepping stone toward an eternal life. An eternal life that will either be spent as a servant of God or writhing in agony, because we sinned.
This is the importance of this teaching, and it is a teaching that is not being taught enough.