Saturday, September 13, 2008

James 5:5

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James 5:5


5 Ye have lived in pleasure [truphao] on [epi] the earth [ge], and [kai] been wanton [spatalao]; ye have nourished [trepho] your [humon] hearts [kardia], as [hos] in [en] a day [hemera] of slaughter [sphage]. KJV-Interlinear


5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. NASB


Pleasure means indulgent. Wanton means voluptuous, which is a feminine term and infers pleasurable appearance, well endowed. And these two terms together refer to one who is inclined to a lifestyle of self indulgent pleasures.

That is the ultimate purpose of living in the temporal world, to the exclusion of ones spiritual life.

The spiritual life emphasizes and supports and nourishes the soul and sustains its eternal status.

The carnal side of life emphasizes and supports the animal side, the instinct side of a worldly life. Its attempts to nourish and satisfy always fail. There is never enough.

Slaughter refers to a large and bountiful banquet. Here, God has provided a feast in the world, and the unbeliever or negative believer feasts to their hearts content, taking that which was not intended for them, filling themselves up in preparation for whatever comes after this life (even during this life), and more or less ignoring God in the whole process.

Even those who spend some time in their Bible study, never really come to a full subscription and endorsement of Gods views of life. They play both sides of the fence, looking to God as one looks to a rabbit’s foot, but relying on what they can see, touch, smell, taste, and hear. They feed the demands of their sin nature, because it is more real to them, than God who cannot be detected in the usual ways.

So, the spiritually deficient or negative person lives in the world, doing nothing more than feeding their sin nature. The sin nature is a bottomless pit, which can never be filled up, and when the person dies, when the soul (the real you) leaves the body, the sin nature is left behind to rot along with the body.

Feeding the sin nature, allowing your life to be led by the sin nature, is no different than investing in an enterprise that is destined for bankruptcy. Your investment will yield you nothing.