James 4:17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
I can imagine a time in the near future when college and universities will offer courses in “Ballot Box Manipulation.” It could be a real boost to the candidates who want to use this newly perfected crime. If anyone has the inclining to switch the vote, just add hundreds of thousands of extra votes in key districts. Have them counted in the middle of the night when there is no accountability. It sounds genius.
Now the previous paragraph probably produced in you one of two reactions. Either you stopped ready and dismissed what I wrote (in which case you are no longer reading this, so why am I still writing to you?) OR you are still reading wondering where I am going with this. But as the bottomline is important, let’s get too it.
Doing the right thing makes a big difference in life. I’m not simply talking about getting the desired outcome, but about every action along the way. You can’t get a righteous result with unrighteous means. Sin taints everything it touches.
And since we live in a sin sick world, very few grand things get completed without sin leaving its mark. This is what James is getting at in the text we have before us. Instead of focusing on the grand final outcome of combined actions of those in society, James focuses on the individual actions that make up the whole.
In doing so he gives us a very good definition for sin done by and individual. Sin is ignoring the right you know you should do and doing something different. They might have their sights set on what they perceive as a good outcome in the grand scheme of things, but then ignore their responsibility to do the right thing, the thing that is in their hands.
Some poll workers in the dead of night were caught on security video pulling out suitcases of ballots from under a table after all observers and the media had gone home. They might have thought they were doing the right thing in the moment because it led to their candidate winning. But in that moment, their actions were sin. They knew as poll workers what the rules said, and they ignored the rules for the sake of their candidate.
If they knew the right thing, but then ignored the right thing and did the wrong thing, it was sin. Sin involves our minds and consciences. Sin becomes sin when, either through the internal prompting of the Spirit or through an externally conveyed rule, a person chooses to ignore the prompting or the rule and do the other thing.
Now if the person’s conscience has not been calloused over by repeated sin an a particular area, then in the moment of action, the knowledge of sin will be present in the individual, at least for a brief moment, a flash of guilt, a brief question, a hesitation. It is right in that brief moment that the sin is given the opportunity for birth or death.
We will make choices today and they will end in sin or in obedience. What will it be for us today?