But if any one of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all freely and reproaches not, and it shall be given to him
James places this promise right after his words about trials, at the point where testing has exposed what we do not have. It raises a practical question. When we do not know what to do, where does wisdom come from, and on what terms is it given?
Wisdom here is more than understanding. One writer draws the difference from the way people react when things go wrong:
James has just said that the goal is for us to be complete, lacking nothing. Then at once these words follow: "If any of you lacks wisdom …" How often our trials reveal that lack! A child howls when things go wrong and it gets hurt. It lacks understanding. It cannot imagine why this has happened, or what it is for. The grown man in the same situation sets himself to understand, and profits by the trouble. But wisdom is more than mere understanding. The wise man is one who can apply with discretion the things that he understands.
The verse names one address for this need, and part of its comfort is what it rules out.
Even if we are willing and truly want to do the will of God, we may often lack the wisdom to act according to His will in our trials. If that is the case with any one of us, James says, "Let him ask God." Our resource is God. We might hold back from turning to people. Their advice might be wrong. They might give it unwillingly, scold us for not knowing, or repeat what we told them in private. With God we need have no such fears. He gives freely, without reproaching us for our folly and feebleness.
God could have made us wise once and for all. One writer counts it a kindness that He did not:
When a soul truly enters the path of trials, he soon finds his lack of wisdom. Faith always meets such trials in a world that has turned from God. But his comfort is that the One he deals with is alone wise, and ready to guide those who wait on Him. How much better that wisdom should stay in Him, so that we depend on His guidance! If it were ours to own, we would be in danger of trying to manage without Him.
The promise says God does not scold the asker. One writer explains the reason, and adds a limit worth noticing.
If we lack wisdom, we are simply to ask God for it. We may be sure of a generous answer, with no word of reproach. We are not expected to hold in ourselves the wisdom that is in God and comes from above. We may ask God for whatever else we lack and expect a generous answer too. But whether we always get it without a word of reproach is another matter. Sometimes the disciples asked the Lord Jesus for things, and He did not give them without a gentle word of reproof… But in those cases what they needed was faith. As believers, we ought to have that already.
People often spoil a gift by the way they hand it over. God never does:
We have known men who gave gifts, but did it unwillingly and with such bad grace that the gift turned bitter. God's gifts are not like that. With them the way of giving is an even greater blessing than the gift itself, if that is possible. "God … gives generously to all without reproach" (v. 5). His manner of giving increases the blessedness of the gift, and reveals His own perfect graciousness.
Another commentator ties the timing of the asking to the outcome of the trial:
"Let him ask God." When trial comes, the Christian's first resource, and the first instinct of the new nature, is prayer. God always hears the prayer of His saints. Strengthened from above, the Christian can go through the trial in a spirit of obedience. In Gethsemane Christ prayed before He was in the trial; then in obedience He took the cup from the Father's hand. If we neglect prayer and the difficulties come on us unawares, we enter into temptation and we fall. Peter slept when he should have prayed, drew the sword when he should have submitted, and denied Jesus when he should have confessed Him.
One writer points to King Solomon, and to why he asked for wisdom:
Solomon did not ask for wisdom out of vanity or for personal advantage. He realised what a tremendous responsibility the Lord had entrusted to him, young and inexperienced as he was. He wanted wisdom so that he could rule God's great people well. May we too seek wisdom from above to function well in our daily tasks, family needs, and in the responsibilities God entrusts to us among His people!
- Lack. Trials expose what understanding alone cannot cover: the wisdom to apply what we already know.
- Ask. People may give advice unwillingly, scold us for not knowing, or repeat what we told them in private. God does none of that.
- Depend. Wisdom stays in the One who alone is wise, so that He guides us instead of us managing without Him.
- Receive. God does not reproach us, because the wisdom that comes from above was never meant to be ours. One writer notes that God treats a lack of faith differently from a lack of wisdom.
- Use. Solomon is the pattern. Ask for wisdom to meet the responsibility God has given, and ask before the trial, not after the fall.
but let him ask in faith, nothing doubting. For he that doubts is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed about;
God promises wisdom to anyone who asks Him for it. This verse adds a condition — not to His giving, but to our asking — and it pictures the doubter as a wave at the mercy of the wind.
Asking in faith is not an extra step added to prayer. One writer treats faith as the thing that turns asking into prayer:
Faith is the breath of prayer; prayer is dead unless faith breathes in it. "But let him ask in faith" (James 1:6). "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith" (Matthew 21:22). Without faith it is speaking, not praying. Faith must take prayer by the hand, or there is no coming near to God. A faithless prayer is fruitless.
Verse 5 has already settled the outcome. That promise leaves no ground for hesitation:
"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." God is what He is, and His word is the word of truth. So there is no room for doubt about this: "it will be given him." That is why the verse goes on, "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting." Why should he waver, when God is the unwavering God and His word the word of truth?
There is more here than a rule for us to keep. God Himself has a preference about how we come:
God loves us to send our prayers up to Him in a spirit of confidence in His goodness.
James does not only condemn doubt. He explains it with the picture of a wave, and one writer traces the doubt back to what the eye watches:
So the apostle insists here that the one who asks should "ask in faith, with no doubting." Is it hard to do that? We are told at once how it is hard — where the doubt comes from. "For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." He lies open to the influence of the things around him — the things the eye looks at the moment God is not before it.
A wave has no direction of its own. In prayer, that means our asking rises and falls with our circumstances:
The wave is exposed to winds from every quarter. We must not let the difficulty of the circumstances or the strength of opposing evil shape our prayers. In simple faith we look to the One who is above every opposing influence of evil — the One who can walk on the waves and calm the storm. He alone can give us the wisdom to act according to His will.
Not every inner struggle is the doubt James means. Grant draws the line:
James is not speaking of the exercises an honest soul may have while working out what the way of the Lord is. He is speaking of the instability that comes from a double mind: the strife of our own wills with God's will, the desire to have Him act according to our mind instead of desiring to act according to His mind.
So the promise of verse 5 needs care. If we are really asking help for a plan of our own, the answer may come in a form we did not expect:
If we ask wisdom, how can He deny us? But suppose we mean wisdom to carry out some plan of our own devising. Then, if we are in earnest, the wisdom He gives must be wisdom to drop that plan.
The doubter is not being punished for nothing. His own state is what keeps him from receiving:
The word here is not the usual word for a wave; it means a single billow, and here it is the plaything of winds blowing this way and that. How could it be otherwise with the man who in his weakness does not lean on the Lord? Whatever may be given, there is no real receiving from the Lord on his part who does not trust Him. If in one way he speaks, in another he feels and acts, being of double soul. Instability marks all his course.
Doubt costs the doubter, but it also touches God:
So we need unwavering confidence if we want our prayers answered. To doubt is to dishonour God, and it kills our own prayers.
- One breath. Faith is the breath of prayer — without it, asking is speaking, not praying.
- One promise. There is no room to waver, because God is the unwavering God and His word is the word of truth.
- One eye. Doubt starts the moment our eye leaves God and studies the circumstances. Then the wind decides our direction.
- One will. The instability James condemns is not honest searching. It is our will fighting God's — wanting Him to act our way.
- One result. The man who does not trust receives nothing from the Lord. Instability marks his whole course.
for let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord;
Verse 7 gives the verdict on the doubter James has just described: a person who prays with a divided mind should not expect anything. But is God refusing to answer, or is the doubter unable to receive — and what sort of doubt does James mean?
The verse is not aimed at every believer who has felt uncertain while praying. One writer locates the problem in a will that competes with God's.
The apostle is very emphatic here: "That person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord." But what is he talking about? He is not talking about the searching an honest soul may go through in discerning the way of the Lord. He means the instability that comes from a double mind: the strife of our own wills with God's will, the desire to have Him act according to our mind instead of desiring to act according to His mind. Clearly this is not the way to get wisdom. Yet how much of our prayer is often just this strife with God! How often we think that if we only had energy of faith in this way, we might in some sense bend Him to our will! But that would be no blessedness. His will is the perfect one.
The verse does not say God gives nothing. It says the man should not think he will receive. One writer traces this to a man whose words and inner life pull in opposite directions.
Whatever may be given, there is no real receiving from the Lord on the part of the one who does not trust Him. If he speaks one way, he feels and acts another way. He is a man of divided soul. Instability marks his whole course.
The result is practical. God's help can arrive and go unnoticed.
He who asks of God, and yet asks with a doubting mind, is not likely, whatever he may receive, to take it as from the Lord... And when God's mercy works for such people and things turn out well, they do not see His hand in it or receive it as from Him. They attribute it to their good fortune: they say, as the world would say, "My luck was in!"
The image just before this verse is a wave shifted by whatever wind is blowing. Applied to prayer, it describes a mind that rises and falls with the circumstances.
We must not let the difficulty of the circumstances or the strength of opposing evil shape our prayers. In simple faith we look to the One who is above all opposing influences of evil — One who can walk upon the waves and calm the storm. He alone can give us the wisdom to act according to His will... With a double mind we will be unstable in all our ways. Circumstances look good or bad, and we are driven one way or the other.
Hesitancy can feel like humility. One writer calls it something far more serious: it questions a word God has already given.
Doubt is no harmless modesty. It is sinful. Indeed I am afraid it often goes further than mere timidity — it is downright unbelief; and this will always hinder prayer... If God, in His condescending grace, is willing to give us promises, surely it is not unreasonable to expect us to believe them. Would we not take it as an insult if someone doubted our word? If God, the God of truth, pledges us His word, we should believe it is pure truth. A single doubt creeping in will spoil the prayer.
Sometimes the delay is not judgment at all. And sometimes the wisdom God gives is not the wisdom we requested.
No doubt there are things God is ready to give, and yet He waits for us to have faith in Him about them. He may keep us waiting until we have more of the faith that honours Him. But this is a different matter altogether. If we ask wisdom, how can He deny us? But suppose that means wisdom to carry out some plan of our own. Then the wisdom He gives, if we are in earnest, must be wisdom to drop that plan.
One writer pictures the divided person trying to hold two things at once.
Suppose we say, "I will follow Christ," and hug the world at the same time. One arm holds the world, and the other tries to hold Christ. Do you think that will do? No! That is a double-minded man, and such a man is "unstable in all his ways" (James 1:8).
- Divided. The warning targets a double mind: our will wrestling against God's. It is not aimed at the honest soul searching for God's way.
- Driven. A divided mind moves with the weather. Prayers rise or sink as circumstances look good or bad.
- Deaf. God may still act, but the doubter cannot receive it as from Him; a happy outcome gets filed under good luck.
- Dishonouring. Doubt is not harmless modesty. It questions a word God has already pledged, and one intruding doubt spoils the prayer.
- Decided. The remedy is an undivided heart — asking for wisdom while ready for that wisdom to overturn our own plan.
[he is] a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James has been speaking about asking God in faith. Here he names the man who does not: a man with two minds inside him. The damage is not limited to his prayers. It touches everything he does.
The phrase describes a person split down the middle. His words and his real feelings do not match. One writer traces that split to its root:
How could it be otherwise in him who in his weakness does not lean on the Lord? Whatever he is given, the man who does not trust Him receives nothing real from the Lord. He speaks one way, but he feels and acts another way, because he has a double soul. Instability marks his whole path.
James is not warning the honest soul who is still working out God's will. He is describing a will that fights against God's will:
The apostle is very direct here: "That person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord." But what is he speaking about? He does not mean the struggle an honest soul may have while working out what the Lord's way is. He means the instability that comes from a double mind. It is the fight of our own will against God's will. It is the wish to have Him act as we think, instead of wanting to act as He thinks. Clearly, that is not the way to get wisdom.
That explains a common frustration. Prayers can be repeated for years and stay unanswered because the heart behind them was never whole:
Why is it that our prayers are not answered? James gives us two reasons. One is double-mindedness — that is, the mind half on one thing and half on another. If my mind is half on the world and half on Christ, I may pray every day of my life and get no answer to my prayers. Oh, when I seek the Lord, let it be as it is beautifully put in the book of Chronicles: "They sought Him with all their heart and with all their desire." That kind of prayer will be answered.
A divided aim drains the energy out of a life. The result shows in behaviour that will not hold steady:
Mark this: it is where there is one single object that there is practical energy and power. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." In some things, he acts like a Christian; in others, he does not. If he has two or three objects, he is unstable, but if he has one object he walks with energy.
Trying to hold both never ends in an even split. One side wins:
"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." A man tries to keep one eye on the world and the other on Christ. He ends up with no eye for Christ and both eyes for the world. It must be so: Christ must be all or nothing... The Holy Spirit is jealous for the glory of Christ. He can never give comfort, consolation, or strength to a heart divided between Him and the world.
Others notice too. This kind of Christian earns nobody's respect:
There are a good many people who profess to be Christians. But they have too much of Christ to enjoy the world. And they have too much of the world to enjoy Christ, or to do any real service for Him in the world. They are the people whom nobody respects. They are the people without a backbone.
The cure is not more effort at balance but a heart made one. It is something to ask God for:
The psalmist longs for the Lord to teach him His way, with a firm purpose of heart to walk in the truth. So he asks God, "Unite my heart to fear Your name." That is the opposite of a divided heart — one part for the Lord and another for self. A divided heart is double-mindedness, and James 1:8 tells us, "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."
A settled heart also brings peace. The wavering man never finds it:
A wavering man is never peaceful. He is always tossed to and fro. He tries to please everybody, and in the end pleases nobody. The decided man, on the contrary, is he who feels he has "to please but One." This gives unity and fixedness to the life and character.
- Two souls. The double-minded man speaks one way while he feels and acts another, because he does not lean on the Lord.
- Two wills. Prayer fails not when a soul honestly seeks God's way, but when our own will wrestles with His.
- Two eyes. The man who keeps one eye on the world and one on Christ ends up with both eyes on the world.
- Two objects. One aim gives energy. Two or three give a life that acts like a Christian in some things and not in others.
- One heart. The cure is to ask, "Unite my heart" — and the settled heart gains the peace the wavering man never finds.