James 4:1-10

James continues his thoughts on the destructive results of our having "bitter jealousy and selfish ambition"(3:14) in our hearts that he started in the previous passage. The last passage ended with James' statement, "And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."(3:18). Right relationship with God, living out of a confidence in His presence and work in your life, is a life marked by the peace of Christ. We are content, able to rest in Him in our present circumstances and this peace flows out to our actions and our relationships with others. God's peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but is a wholeness and health that is expressed by a sense of contentment that is not dependent of the situations we are currently facing.

James now turns his thoughts from living in this peace of Christ to the root of our conflicts with one another. "What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you?" he asks. James answers his question with a rhetorical question, "Is it not your passions that are at war in your members?" The wars or conflicts between us are due to our passions that are at conflict. James can be referring to have conflicting interests or concerns between us and others around us. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is due to a conflicting passion for the same land. But, I think he is also referring to the conflict within ourselves. We have warring passions within ourselves, don't we? The desire for security, well-being, wealth, possessions, good relationships, etc. can all battle within us for supremacy especially if the fear/anxiety factor is high. Our desire for both intimacy and independence from others can lead us to send mixed messages because we are mixed ourselves as to what exactly we want from this or that relationship. The internal conflict heightens our insecurity and so leads us to take more extreme measures in our relationships with others. We have conflict within ourselves and we collide with the passions of others when we interact.

Our passions or desires tempt us to believe we need to possess, obtain, or control in order to have peace. But these lead instead to destruction and discontent. "You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war." As we have noted before, James is writing to people who find themselves in a variety of trials due to being forced from their homelands because of persecution. Obviously, when we are in difficult circumstances, our desires for peace, well-being, good relationships, success, etc. are not being met by our immediate circumstances. We desire, covet, or envy and cannot have or obtain. So our solution is to kill, to destroy, or to fight others.

I think we can expand James' statement about killing beyond actually taking someone else's life. Our envy of others can lead us to kill our relationship with them, to gossip about them to others in an effort to "kill" their reputation, or simply to "kill" our feelings towards them because we are so unhappy that they have it better than we do. It is impossible to be peaceful and content when envy and jealousy are at work in us. We may try to tell ourselves that it is not fair the way our lives are now and we have a "right" to make getting what we want a priority. But this justification does not really improve our situation but makes it worse in deeper ways.

This next section is very interesting. James goes on to tell his readers, "You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." The reason they do not have, James says, is not because they have failed in their efforts to obtain or possess things on their own, but because they either have not asked or have asked only to have their passions satisfied. This seems to mean then that first of all God intends for us to receive what we need by asking Him. He is our Father and the One from whom "every good endowment and every perfect gift" comes from (1:17). He can be thoroughly trusted to know what we need, even more than we know. He is "the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." Does He see us in our struggles, does He care? Yes, James has already assured them that this God "brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures."(1:18) The greater glory God has for us is that we receive from His hand His loving, transforming work in our lives. We cannot easily receive from God what He desires to give us when we are busy attempting to obtain or fulfill our own passions. How can we receive His peace, love, and even joy in the midst of our daily lives when we are focusing on pursuing getting from others what we are convinced we need to be secure or to escape our troubles?

Secondly, James is telling his readers that God is not to be viewed as merely a means to their own ends. God will not give to us when we are only going "to spend it on (our) passions." God's desires for us His children are so much richer, deeper, greater than what we have in mind in our more immediate concerns. He intends nothing less than we be "perfect and complete, lacking in nothing"(1:4) and to "receive the crown of live which God has promised to those who love him."(1:12) This reminds me of C. S. Lewis's comments:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of rewards in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea... We are far too easily pleased."

Transposition and Other Addresses, ch. 2

James now sums up the point he has been making in the last three verses. "Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." James is not saying here that we should not care for others in the world or reach out to them, obviously. The friendship of the world that he speaks of here he has already defined as having passions and desires that you seek to obtain by manipulative and destructive means motivated out of envy and jealousy and distrust in God. The world is that realm where we live without confidence in a heavenly Father and so attempt to gain power, authority, success, or respect through our own ungoverned abilities used against or in competition with others. Such persons count only on themselves, believing it is up to them to get themselves ahead of others. This is why James calls his readers "unfaithful creatures." They are living as if they have been abandoned by their heavenly Father, as if He isn't there, isn't good and able to transform them and love them in the midst of their lives here. This warning is the same as Jesus' words about the impossibility of serving two masters.(Mt. 6) If we are counting on ourselves, then we cannot be counting on God and therefore are unable to receive what He is ready to give us. We misrepresent our generous heavenly Father to ourselves and others when we let our jealousy and greed get the better of us. We act as if He is not at all what He has revealed Himself to be.

James follows this with a rhetorical question. "Or do you suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, 'He yearns jealously over the spirit which he made to dwell in us'?" Do you think, he asks, that it is just idle talk when the Scripture says that God yearns jealously over us? In other words, God is not neutral about us and what we do. God created us, with our best in mind, and He is passionate about seeing that His good will is done. He hates our destructive tendencies because He loves us, wholly and completely. He hates to see the twisting and destruction of His good creation and one part or person turning against another. He will not stand idly by, content for us to do "whatever" with our lives when He knows that He has so much better in mind for us. He is for giving us life and will oppose our attempts to pursue what in the end only brings death to us and our relationships. God is jealous over us, ready to protect us and resist those forces that would come between us and Him.

But he gives more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'" As John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel, "And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace." (Jn. 1:16) Here James tells us that God's response to our wandering back to the ways of the world is to give us more grace. His grace shows up in two ways. To the proud, God's grace is experienced as opposition, and to the humble, as more grace to receive from the hand of God. As I said in the last paragraph, God will oppose our efforts to live in any way that is not out of trust and confidence in Him. God will resist our resistance. He loves us too much not to.

Therefore, since God will push against us when we live out of distrust of Him, we are called to submit ourselves again to God. Gary likes to use the picture of sailing to talk about God's will. When are living in His peace, when we pursue living out of a counting on Him to be our heavenly Father, then this is like sailing with the wind. The wind may be blowing very hard but as we are going with it, we hardly feel it. When we resist His peace and presence, it is like sailing into the wind. Now the strong wind blows in our face and our progress is slow and laborious. Turn from your envy and jealousy and the "need" to have your own way and throw yourself again onto your heavenly Father, knowing that He cares for you--even more than you care for yourself!

Counting on God again involves turning aside from your sinful distrust and drawing close to God. James tells his readers to "resist the devil and he will flee from you." This is a wonderful statement. When we are struggling with anxiety, fear, or guilt about our lives we listen easily to the devil's voice about ourselves and our situations. But James is saying this is not a hopeless circumstance at all. If we resist the devil, he will flee. We do not need to listen to his accusations and lies endlessly. And, as we turn from the devil we can draw near to God. He is always ready to draw near to us and will not leave us alone. We can know His presence and His comfort. We can receive again His grace. We can count on Him to never be far away, but always at hand, ready to draw close to us when we turn to Him.

James continues to deal with submitting to God in the next few sentences. "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection." God wants to enable us to see the truth not only of Him and the wonderful life He offers us but also the truth of sin and its destructive, twisting consequences. Sin leads to nothing good. There is not another, equally good life out there for us to have apart from God. God is life, all life, good, abundant, full life. When we attempt to get our own way, there is always a destructive cost. We have hurt others and ourselves in our attempts to control and possess. Repentance is agreeing with God about the grievous nature of our sin and its consequences. We need to see the folly and impossibility of continuing to purposely live in two minds. We cannot receive from God when we are out to take care of ourselves on our own. We are very reluctant in general to consider the nastier motivations and actions in our lives. But James is encouraging his readers to do this very thing. Not in order to beat themselves up with it, but to gain a true perspective of the emptiness of a life without our Father in heaven. There is a good Godly grief that can lead us to thanksgiving and praise for what God is doing to make us His children who are complete and lack nothing in Him.

Instead of exalting ourselves, maneuvering and positioning ourselves to look better before others, James encourages us finally to humble ourselves before God. And the most amazing and awesome result will come of this--"and he will exalt you." God desires not to keep us from exaltation, but to be the one who exalts us! And isn't it more glorious, more wondrous to be exalted by God Himself than to have to spend my time and effort trying to exalt myself? or trying to somehow get others to do it to me? How much more secure, satisfying, peaceful, and life giving to receive from God all He desires to give us, ultimately to receive His very self, than to try and give myself out of my meager resources life and peace and security!