James warns against planning without God because our lives are brief and every tomorrow is in his hands. In James 4:13-5:6, he first speaks to confident merchants who map out a year of profit as if they control the future. He isn’t against planning or profit. He’s against arrogance. Then he turns to wealthy landowners who hoarded riches and cheated their workers, warning them of God’s judgment. Money isn’t evil, but money that leaves God out is dangerous.
Setting the Scene in James 4:13-5:6
In the previous lesson (James 3:13-18), James showed that worldly thinking leads to worldly living. Just before this passage, he called friendship with the world spiritual adultery (James 4:1-10). Now he applies that idea to one of the most common places worldliness shows up: our finances. Financial worldliness is simply wrong thinking about wealth, put into practice.
James’s first-century readers would recognize the scene. Trade was booming across the Roman world, and many Jews had settled in cities around the Mediterranean to do business. At the same time, much of the land in Judea and Galilee was owned by wealthy estate holders, while day laborers worked the fields for a daily wage. Jesus’ parables often feature both kinds of people.
Today or Tomorrow
James begins with a group of businesspeople making plans.
James 4:13-15 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
Notice what James does not say. He doesn’t condemn travel, business, or profit. Some have tried to use this passage to argue against free enterprise, but the context makes James’s concern clear. The New Testament scholar Douglas Moo notes that James isn’t rebuking these merchants for planning or wanting a profit, but for the self-confidence that leaves God out. The problem isn’t the business plan. It’s the missing Boss.
James reminds them of a basic fact: “You are a mist.” The word atmis means vapor or steam, like your breath on a cold morning. It echoes the book of Ecclesiastes, where the Teacher calls life hebel, a breath or vapor (Ecclesiastes 1:2), and Proverbs 27:1, which warns against boasting about tomorrow. Even people who don’t believe in God often admit how much of financial success comes down to things outside their control. We don’t have the final say.
So James offers a better way to talk: “If it is the Lord’s will.” Paul spoke this way about his own travel plans (Acts 18:21; 1 Corinthians 4:19). For centuries, Christians even wrote the Latin abbreviation D.V., for Deo volente (“God willing”), in their letters. But this isn’t a magic phrase to tack onto our plans. It’s a posture of the heart that seeks God’s guidance for our careers and investments as much as for a spouse or a healing.
Pretentious Plans
James then names the real problem.
James 4:16-17 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
The word for “arrogant schemes,” alazoneia, describes pretentious swagger, claiming something you don’t actually have. John uses the same word for the “pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Planning without God is pretending we hold the future when we don’t.
Verse 17 can seem out of place, but it fits the context. It’s a sin to know what you ought to do and not do it. In this setting, that applies to our finances. Maybe God is calling you to take a step of faith in your work. Maybe he’s prompting you to be more generous. Sins of omission are still sins, and when God makes his will clear, delay is disobedience.
Weep and Wail
In chapter 5, James turns to a different group of wealthy people.
James 5:1-3 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.
These rich landowners probably weren’t part of the church at all. James addresses them the way Old Testament prophets addressed foreign nations, speaking against them to encourage God’s people. His command to “weep and wail” uses a word, ololyzō, that appears in the Greek Old Testament almost entirely in the prophets, in the context of God’s judgment. The misery James describes isn’t a stock market dip. It’s the judgment of God.
In the ancient world, wealth was often stored in grain, fine clothes, and precious metals. James says all of it is already decaying. Grain rots, moths eat clothing, and even gold and silver corrode. Technically, gold doesn’t rust, which may be James’s point: even what seems permanent is perishing. Worse, their hoarded wealth will testify against them. They stored it up “in the last days,” when they should have been using it for God’s purposes. Jesus said the same thing.
Matthew 6:19-21 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Storing up earthly treasure is a waste. Everything we keep for ourselves will eventually be lost. Everything we invest in God’s kingdom will last forever. For a topical overview of these warnings, see What Are the 5 Warnings to the Rich in James?
The Cries of the Workers
James then gets specific about how these landowners became rich.
James 5:4-6 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
The law of Moses required employers to pay day laborers before sunset, because the poor depended on that money to eat (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14-15). These landowners held back wages, and the unpaid money itself cried out, like Abel’s blood crying from the ground (Genesis 4:10). James says those cries reached the ears of “the Lord Almighty,” literally the Lord of hosts, the commander of heaven’s armies. The poor may have had no one to defend them, but God heard them.
The rich, meanwhile, lived in luxury, fattening themselves like cattle on the day of slaughter, unaware that judgment was coming. Verse 6 says they condemned and killed the innocent. Most commentators think James means the righteous poor in general, crushed by unjust courts and systems. Some early readers saw a hint of Jesus, the Righteous One. And there’s a sad irony. James himself was known as “James the Just,” and the historian Josephus records that he was condemned and executed in Jerusalem around AD 62 at the urging of the high priest.
What This Means for Us
By global and historical standards, most people reading this are rich. That makes James’s warnings uncomfortable, and they should be. Jesus warned that it is very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23). Money isn’t evil, but Scripture often links wealth and unrighteousness because riches so easily make us self-reliant, proud, and blind to others.
The answer isn’t guilt. It’s surrender. Submit your financial plans to God, pay people fairly, give generously, and invest in what lasts. When Jesus’ disciples asked who could possibly be saved, he answered that with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). God can free even a rich heart from the grip of money. If you’ve never trusted him with your life, start there: How can I become a Christian?
The Takeaway
Why does James warn against planning without God? Because life is a mist and tomorrow belongs to him. James isn’t against business or profit, but he warns against arrogant plans, ignoring what God asks us to do, hoarding wealth, and exploiting others. Submit your plans to God, be generous, and store up treasure in heaven.
