Continuing a look at the Book of James, this article will take a look at Chapter 4. Interestingly, the heading the NASB translation gives for this chapter is “Things to Avoid,” which could be confusing wording, but we’ll dig in to that.
1What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body’s parts? 2 You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures.
We tend to be needy, as human beings. We have physical, mental, and emotional wants, needs, and desires. And sure enough, as James states in the opening lines of this chapter, those requirements not being met tend to be a primary motivating factor in much of the strife of our world. But also, as James says, we do not have our needs being met because we do not ask God to help us. Not only that, but when we do ask we aren’t receiving because we aren’t asking with the proper motivation. Think about your prayer life for a moment. When you go to God in prayer and ask for his blessing, favor, or to meet some need or want you have in life…is that prayer for God’s glory, or is it for your own comfort? Is that request being made to further His kingdom and increase service to Him, or is it out of a personal desire or wish? We ask and do not receive because we ask not that His will be done, but that He would do our will where we cannot do it ourselves. Matthew 6:33 - “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you.”
4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose, “He jealously desires the Spirit whom He has made to dwell in us”? 6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come close to God and He will come close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
The modern church has become all too friendly with the world. We have placed wealth, influence, and social status above honor and service of God. The church has become the adulteress, and our God is a jealous God. How do we return Christianity to being an arbiter of God’s love and word, instead of being a platform for warm fuzzies and the Buddy Jesus doctrine? It probably takes the next steps of this section of Chapter 4…which can come across harsh, but are also necessary in life at times. The church itself needs to be humbled. Not the Baptist or Methodist or Catholic church… the Body of Christ, the modern Christian church as a whole. There needs to be a cleansing of hands and a purifying of hearts. Cleaning out the double-mindedness of trying to serve both the world and the Lord. Humbling ourselves before God and submitting to resisting the evil that has infiltrated the body. Verses 7-9 can come across rather harsh. But when you understand that we were not celebrating, laughing, and joyful because we were right with God in this instance… we were celebrating success in the world. To our demise and downfall. Just look at the state of Christianity across America today. It is time to mourn that demise, to weep at how far we have fallen from God’s path. It is time that the church humble itself before the Lord, be purified, and be exalted once again by Him and serve His kingdom and glory. Not the successes of the church in this world.
11 Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. The one who speaks against a brother or sister, or judges his brother or sister, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you, judging your neighbor?
I won’t delve too deeply in to this particular section because I believe I have covered it fairly thoroughly when looking at Jesus’s teachings on judgement in the Book of Matthew. A lot of times in these letters there is particular context missing based on who the letters are being written to. Sometimes, such as in this instance, the church the letter is intended for has not taken the necessary steps of “taking the log out of its own eye” to be in a position to be a judge of others. Which should be fairly clear from verses 4-10. Acting as a judge is not damnation for those who judge, but doing so without having first humbled oneself, purified the heart and mind, is certain damnation because that is a selfish act of defiance to the One true judge.
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.
Proverbs 27:1 - “Do not boast about tomorrow, For you do not know what a day may bring forth.” The people who James was speaking to seem to closely resemble us. And by us I specifically mean Americans, or those of Western society. We know all of our own plans for our future. We live for our worldly satisfactions. We’ve got it all, and we’ve got it all figured out. The reason this chapter have the subtitle “things to avoid” is because these are the things that create a weak, unfaithful church. It may be less that these need to be avoided, so much as they need to be rooted out! Serving the world, serving the balance sheet, serving “preferred” members, serving the future. All of these things turn us away from serving the Lord, and bringing His love, salvation, and kingdom to the world. The church James is speaking to seems to think, like many of the prosperity gospel churches and preachers today, that its serving to the world and advancement of itself is doing God’s work. But it fails… it serves its own glory, not His. We need a humbling. We need to destroy double-mindedness. Matthew 6:24 - “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon is Aramaic for “wealth (etc.) personified as an object of worship.” It is the embodiment of the fruits of the world being placed as the idol above God. How much of the modern church serves mammon? More than I’m comfortable with. It is time for our reckoning. It is time to mourn our fall from grace. It is time for purification of heart and mind.