Hello, and welcome back to the One Thing Podcast. We’ve been reading through the book of James this week as a church, a very exciting book, and today we wanted to reflect on one of the verses coming from James. It’s James chapter 4, verse 17. It says,

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them.”

"...sin isn't just wrong doing, it's wrong being."

Very simple verse that we can apply in many different ways. If we know the good that we ought to be doing and we don't do it, it becomes sin. For example, maybe there's somebody that God wants us to reach out to, or pray for, or be there for in some sense in scope of His will or what God wants to do. If we refuse it, if we ignore it, or we put it aside, it becomes sin for us. And we can go on in so many ways of many examples that this applies to, but one particular thing that I had read at some point this week was giving a description of sin, and it said that sin isn't just wrongdoing, but it's also wrong being. It’s wrong being.

"What is the good that God calls us to? It is to connect with Him."

You see, God had called us to something good. There’s something we know about Him that is good, and it is to be close to Him. It is to have an intimate relationship. You see, Jesus didn't go to the cross just for us to come into a little bit of reading or a little bit of praying, but He died and He had given His life that we too would follow His steps, giving our life as a sacrifice to God, giving of ourselves to love Him and to cherish Him. So if anyone knows the good they ought to do— what is the good that God calls us to? It is to connect with Him. It is to be with Him, not to just do things. You know, there’s an action to our faith, of course, we know that, we also read that in James. But that faith is rooted in our heart, connected to God's very own.

So, what is good we should be doing? Ultimately, coming close to our Father in Heaven: loving the Lord Our God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and strength, and also loving our neighbor for ourself.

So, to be close to God is to come out of sin. Sin is being in the wrong place. It’s not being with God. Sin is to be independent, to walk our own way, to maybe do our own thing, and we know what happens in that state.

So, if we know the good we ought to do and we do it, now, let's look at the opposite. If we know the good that we ought to do and we do it, it is not sin, but it is freedom, it is love, and it is hope that God has given us.

"To be close to God is to come out of sin."

I pray today that we would stop, that we would be reflecting upon the scripture, we would be thinking of what God has truly called us to— to himself— in all that we do, that throughout our days, we will be thinking about Him, we would be seeking just to know Him more and more. And we know that through the Word of the Lord, through the power of His Spirit, He draws us near, and as He draws us to Himself, we can rejoice because we get to know Him more and more and walk in a relationship that He’s called us to be in.

So, again, if anyone that knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them. I pray today that we would know the good that we ought to do, that we would understand His will for our lives, that we would move in it, and that we would truly bring his kingdom and step into it— not just think about it, but step fully into His kingdom and bring it everywhere we go.