Is pride a good thing or a bad thing? If I say, “You are so prideful, that’s negative. But if I say, “I’m so proud of you,” that’s positive. So, is it ok to be full of pride? Well, it depends. What about confidence? Is it good or bad to be confident? You want your quarterback to be confident. You want him to know the playbook. He needs to have some level of self-assurance. But not too much. You don’t want him to be so confident that he blames it all on other people. You don’t want him so confident that he’s smug and arrogant in interviews. But still, you don’t want him second-guessing his ability. There has to be good confidence, but not bad confidence. Much like “pride” and “confidence,” there’s an important word in the Bible that functions similarly: “boasting.”

READ James 4:13-17

How do we learn to boast in God and not ourselves?

James is pushing us to a more resolved faith in God’s Sovereign Wisdom and Care for his children. This faith includes an unraveling of the places where we put our confidence outside of God. This is why, in 4:16, James says, “All such boasting is evil.” He knows that there’s a negative kind of boasting that uses God as a good-luck charm when we don’t get the results we want or when we pout when we don’t get our way. And this bad boasting is dismissive of God and thinks it knows better than God. But the good kind is when you submit it all to God, and you have hope in him that isn’t contingent on results, money, or stuff.

If we resist presumption, surrender our plans, and realize the brevity of life, then we are set free to embrace, trust, and be confident in God’s plans for our life.

The best example we have of all of this is Jesus himself. Paul says, “God forbid that I should boast in anything except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14). But why does Paul say this? Because Paul knows that Jesus constantly lived out the posture of “if the Lord wills” from James 4:15. What God has done at the cross and in his resurrection is the starting point for resisting our own agenda. Imitating Jesus, relying on Jesus, pursuing Jesus, holding fast to Jesus – this is the supreme way we learn to boast not in ourselves but in God.