If we are to have our questions answered it is to the Word of God that we are to come. The Bible has the answer to all the most important questions that can arise in men’s minds, questions relating both to this life and to that which is to come. But the Bible not only answers the questions of men in the world but also poses questions so that men may be brought to consider them. The question, What is your life?, is one of these. James in his epistle not only asks this question as the inspired writer of this epistle but also answers it so that men may not be left ignorant of this solemn matter.
But why did he pose such a question as this — What is your life? The answer we find in the preceding verse. There were those who were saying, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain. That is, there were those who were planning what to do with their life for a year ahead. They were planning for the future like the rich man in the parable who said: This will I do: I will pull down my barns and build greater; and there will I bestow my fruits. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry. So do worldlings plan for the days and weeks and years that lie ahead of them. The men of this world appear to take everything into account in making their future plans. It is not without deliberation and forethought that they lay them, so that it can be said that “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” How sensible and reasonable does it appear to the natural mind to plan for the future and he would be reckoned a fool who would act otherwise. Where then is it that men go astray in connection with this matter which makes the Apostle James say: What is your life?
What the apostle is bringing before us here, and what God is seeking to place before us here is this — that in all our planning there is need to have ever before us the brevity of time; and that very shortly, we know not when, we must give in our account to God. Forgetfulness of God makes us forgetful of eternity and of the shortness of time. We are ready to presume on the long-suffering of Jehovah — that He will spare us yet a season in the world — if we think of Him at all. So far as the wicked are concerned, “God is not in all their thoughts,” and the consideration of eternity is far from them. They therefore resolve that as they have done in the past so shall they do in the future — and much more besides. The rich man had to learn to his bitter sorrow the awful result of such a philosophy. How awful to hear these words: “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” These words were to seal his eternal doom. He who had thought up such great plans for time had no plans made up for eternity and he was found unprepared. Of how many planners in this world is this true. Ask them of their plans for time and they can expatiate on their plans and ideas which they have thought up for a long time to come, but ask them about preparation for death, judgment and eternity and it will soon become apparent that they have made no preparation for these. Is this true of us?
The Word of God is not telling men to make no plans for the future but tells us that when we are making such plans to say: “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” We are ever to keep in mind that our plans may be interrupted at any time by the call of the messenger of death and that that messenger allows no delay. We are ever to have before us the uncertainty of time. “Ye know not what shall be on the morrow,” James says to those to whom he is writing. We do not know what a day or an hour may bring forth. Time is on the wing, eternity is nigh. Our “days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” the Word of God tells us, or are as an hand breadth. And here in the Epistle of James we learn in answer to this question, What is your life?, that our life “is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” How unsubstantial, how unreal, how swiftly passing is a vapour! So is our life.
As another year then opens, and as we lay our plans for the future, let us not leave out of our calculations this question and the answer given to it. Let us be very much aware that though we may have been spared in the Lord’s good providence to see the beginning of it, we have no assurance of seeing the end of it. Yea, every day of it must be regarded as a gift from God in His mercy and long-suffering. Each day ought to be used by us to make our calling and election sure lest at last we are found unprepared for the great eternity and go out to everlasting darkness. How sad it would be to do so from the midst of Gospel privileges. Let us therefore give heed to the call of God in His Word: “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” And let His people take encouragement from this, that “none perish that Him trust.”