Week 22—Saturday James 1:13-15
James 1:13-15
LIGHT TURNED TO DARKNESS
The third place of the danger of outwardism is fastings or the place of renunciations: “So too when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites: they make their faces unsightly so that other people may see that they are fasting. I tell you this: they have their reward already” (Matt. 6:16, NEB). This amounts to calling attention to the self-renunciation by displaying the supposedly renounced self as heroic. Which means, of course, that you use the renunciation to display the unrenounced self—which is self-defeating. You have your reward. You wanted the praise of people, and having received it you have nothing beyond that.
So the very light in giving charity, in prayer and in fasting, turns to darkness. And how great is that darkness—self-deceived by self-display. You save your life and you lose it.
So this verse sums up the necessity for inward and outward sincerity of purpose and intention: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt. 6:22-23). This is penetrating in that it reveals that your highest things, giving charity, prayer, fasting, have become your lowest things—your very light has become darkness, if not accompanied by the single eye, namely, that you do these things for God and not for your unsurrendered self, for self-display.
Preaching the gospel is good, but that good can be and is turned to bad if at the close we wait for and invite compliments and are disappointed if they don’t come. A famous preacher was the first speaker on a program and didn’t do too well; he was followed by a less famous preacher who did better. After that he would not speak to the one who outdid him. His light was darkness.
O Savior, save us at our highest moments as well as our lowest moments. For walking the high places if we lose our footing and stumble, then we fall far. So keep our hand, lest we lose our heads at dizzy heights. Save us at the heights and at the depths. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I twist doing good into doing good for myself, then my light has turned to darkness.