James 4:1 - Meaning and Application

The last chapter spoke about envy as a major source of quarrels and fights. Here James turns to another root problem, a strong desire for worldly things and an overly high value on worldly pleasures and friendships. That desire pushed their divisions to a shameful level.

James first rebukes the Jewish Christians for their wars and for the desires that caused them: “Where do wars and fights among you come from? Do they not come from your desires that fight in your members?” (James 4:1). The Jews were often rebellious and had many clashes with the Romans. They were also a quarrelsome and divided people, often fighting among themselves. Some of these faulty Christians seem to have joined in those common disputes.

James tells them that the real source of their wars was not, as they claimed, true zeal for their country or for God’s honor. Their ruling desires were behind it all. What people hide under a fine-sounding zeal for God and religion often comes from pride, anger, greed, ambition, and revenge. The Jews had many struggles with Roman rule before their final destruction. They often brought trouble on themselves, and then split into parties over how to fight their common enemies. Even when their cause might have seemed right, their actions came from a bad heart.

Their fleshly desires drove and organized their wars and fights. But that should be enough to humble those desires. They create war inside as well as fights outside. Strong passions and desires first fight within a person, and then they stir up conflict in the nation. There is war between conscience and corruption, and also between one sinful desire and another. From those inner struggles came their outer disputes. The same is true in private life. Do not fights among relatives and neighbors come from the desires that fight within the heart? The desire for power, pleasure, or wealth, or all three, lies behind the broils and contentions of the world. Since all wars and fights come from the corruption in our own hearts, the right way to cure contention is to cut the problem off at the root and put sinful desires to death.

It should also kill these desires to remember how disappointing they are: “You desire and do not have, so you kill. You covet and cannot obtain” (James 4:2). You want great things for yourselves, and you think you will get them by defeating the Romans or by crushing one party after another among yourselves. You expect to secure great pleasure and happiness by removing everything that blocks your wishes. But you are only wasting your labor and blood when you kill one another for such goals. Strong, unruled desires are either completely disappointed, or they are never satisfied even when they get what they want. The word here translated “cannot obtain” means they cannot win the happiness they are chasing. Worldly and fleshly desires are a disease that keeps the mind from contentment.

Sinful desires and feelings also keep people from prayer, and from turning their desires toward God. “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). You fight and do not succeed because you do not pray. You do not ask God what he allows, and you do not commit your way to him. Instead, you follow your own corrupt ideas and wishes, and so you keep meeting disappointment. Or, if you do pray, your desires spoil your prayers and make them offensive to God.

“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). You may pray for success against your enemies, but your real goal is not to use that success for true godliness. Pride, vanity, luxury, and sensual living are what you want to serve through your victories and even through your prayers. You want power, plenty, and a comfortable life for selfish pleasure. That kind of prayer dishonors God, so he rejects it.

We should learn from this to keep right purposes in all our worldly work and in our prayers for success. A person may be a tradesman or farmer, ask God for prosperity, and yet not receive it because the request is wrongly aimed. He asks for success in his work, not to honor his heavenly Father and do good with what he has, but to spend it on his own desires. He wants better food, better drink, and better clothes, so he can feed pride, vanity, and pleasure. If we seek worldly things for selfish ends, God is right to deny them. But if we seek anything so that we may serve him with it, we may expect him either to give it or to give us contentment without it, and to open some other way for us to serve and glorify him.

When our prayers are not answered, we should remember that it is because we ask wrongly. Either we do not ask for the right reasons, or we do not ask in the right way, perhaps without faith or without earnestness. Cold, unbelieving desires ask to be refused. And when our prayers sound more like our lusts than our graces, they will come back empty.

James now gives a strong warning to avoid sinful friendship with the world: “You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4). Worldly people are called adulterers and adulteresses because they are unfaithful to God, giving their best love to the world. Covetousness is called idolatry elsewhere, and here it is called adultery. It means turning away from the one we belong to and clinging to other things. Worldly-mindedness is marked as hostility toward God.

A person may have a fair share of the good things of this life and still remain in the love of God. But the person who sets his heart on the world, makes his happiness out of it, and is willing to do anything rather than lose its friendship, is an enemy of God. To put the world on God’s throne in our hearts is a kind of rebellion against him. Therefore, whoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of God.

Whoever follows this course, wanting the world’s approval and steady friendship, will show himself to be God’s enemy in heart and in life. You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24). This is why wars and quarrels grow out of this sinful love for the world and its ways. What peace can there be among people while they are at war with God? Who can fight against God and succeed?

Think carefully about the spirit of the world, and you will see that you cannot fit in with it as a true friend. It will push you toward envy and evil desires, just as it does most people in the world. Scripture does not speak in vain when it says, “The spirit that lives in us tends toward envy” (James 4:5). The Bible’s picture of human hearts by nature is plain: every thought is evil, only evil, all the time (Genesis 6:5).

This natural corruption shows itself especially in envy, and that pull is always there. The spirit that lives in man keeps producing one evil desire after another. It keeps comparing itself with others and wanting what they have. So the world’s love of show and pleasure, along with its fights and quarrels over these things, is the sure result of being friends with the world. Friendship requires shared desires and a shared spirit. So Christians, if they want to avoid conflict, must avoid friendship with the world. They must show that a better way guides them, and that a nobler spirit lives in them. If we belong to God, he gives more grace than to let us live like the rest of the world.

The spirit of the world teaches people to be selfish and stingy. God teaches them to be generous. The spirit of the world tells us to spend for ourselves and according to our own wishes. God teaches us to share with those in need and to care for the comfort of others, doing good to everyone we can. God’s grace is opposite to the world’s spirit. So if we claim to be God’s friends, we must avoid friendship with the world. Where God gives grace, he gives a different spirit from the world’s, and that grace corrects and heals our natural corruption.

We also learn here the difference God makes between pride and humility: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Scripture says the same in the Old Testament. The Psalms say God will save the afflicted people, if their hearts fit their low condition, but will bring down those with proud looks (Psalm 18:27). Proverbs says he scorns mockers, but gives grace to the lowly (Proverbs 3:34).

Two things stand out here. First is the shame that comes on the proud. God resists them. The word means that God sets himself against them like an army in battle. What greater shame could there be than for God to declare a man a rebel, an enemy, a traitor to his rule and honor, and then act against him as such? The proud man resists God in his mind, in his will, and in his passions. He resists God’s truth, God’s commands, and God’s providence, so it is no surprise that God sets himself against the proud. Let proud people hear this and tremble, God resists them. No one can fully describe the misery of those who make God their enemy. He will surely fill with shame, sooner or later, the faces of those who have filled their hearts with pride. So we must fight pride in our own hearts if we do not want God to oppose us.

Second is the honor and help God gives the humble. Grace, as the opposite of disgrace, is honor, and God gives that to the humble. Where God gives grace to make a person humble, he will also give other graces, and, as the verse says, more grace. Wherever God gives true grace, he will give more, for the one who has and uses what he has well will receive more. He especially gives more grace to the humble, because they know their need, pray for it, and are thankful for it. Such people will receive it.

For that reason, we are told to submit ourselves fully to God: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Christians should leave the world’s friendship behind. They should guard against the envy and pride seen in natural people, and by grace learn to take joy in obeying God. Submit to him as subjects to their king, in duty, and as friends to a friend, in love and shared interest. Submit your understanding to God’s truth. Submit your will to his will, both his commands and his providence.

We are subjects, so we must be willing. Not only out of fear, but also out of love. Not only because of punishment, but also because of conscience. Submit to God by remembering how deeply you owe him and by seeing the good that comes from it. God will not harm you through his rule over you. He will do you good.

Since the devil works hard to stop this kind of submission, we must carefully and firmly resist his suggestions. If he tries to make us think that calmly yielding to God’s will and providence will only bring trouble, shame, and misery, we must resist that fear. If he tries to make submission to God seem like a loss of comfort or success in the world, we must resist his pride and laziness. If he tempts us to blame our troubles, crosses, and sufferings on God’s providence, so that we may follow his advice instead of God’s, we must resist these prompts to anger and not sin by fretting. Do not let the devil win in these attacks, but resist him, and he will flee from you. If we give in in a shameful way, he will keep after us. But if we put on the whole armor of God and stand firm against him, he will leave us. Strong resolve shuts and bolts the door against temptation.

We are then shown how to act toward God in this submission to him: “Draw near to God” (James 4:8-10). The heart that has rebelled must be brought back to God’s feet. The spirit that has been far away from a life of fellowship with God must come to know him. Draw near to God in worship, in his appointed ways, and in every duty he asks of you.

“Cleanse your hands.” Whoever comes to God must have clean hands.

Paul therefore tells believers to lift up holy hands without anger or doubt (1 Timothy 2:8). Those hands must be free from blood, bribes, and every kind of unfairness or cruelty, and free from every stain of sin. No one is truly under God’s rule if they remain a servant of sin. The hands must be cleansed by faith, repentance, and changed behavior, or it is useless to come near to God in prayer or any other act of worship.

The hearts of the double-minded must also be purified. By “double-minded,” James means people who waver between God and the world. To purify the heart means to be sincere, with one clear goal, to please God rather than chase the things of this world. Hypocrisy is heart-impurity, but those who truly submit to God will cleanse their hearts as well as their hands.

“Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep.” Take the troubles God sends as he intends, and feel them deeply. Be grieved when suffering comes, and do not treat it lightly. Also grieve for your own sins and the sins of others. Times of quarrel and division are times for mourning, and the sins that lead to wars and fighting should be mourned.

“Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness.” This may be understood as a warning of coming sorrow, or as a call to serious repentance. People may act as if grief can never touch them, but God can bring it upon them. No one laughs so confidently that he cannot turn that laughter into mourning. James warned these careless Christians that this could happen to them. So before matters grow worse, they should set aside empty happiness and bodily pleasures, and give themselves to godly sorrow and tears of repentance.

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.” Their inward attitude should match the outward signs of grief, sorrow, and repentance just described. God especially looks at the spirit, so he requires humility of heart. There must be real humiliation in confessing what is evil, and true humility in doing what is good.

We also have strong encouragement to act this way toward God. He will draw near to those who draw near to him (James 4:8), and he will lift up those who humble themselves before him (James 4:10). Those who come near to God in duty will find him coming near in mercy. Draw near to him in faith, trust, and obedience, and he will draw near to you for your rescue. If there is no close fellowship between God and us, the fault is ours, not his.

He will lift up the humble. Our Lord said the same thing: “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). If we are truly sorry for sin and humble under God’s displeasure, we will soon know the benefit of his favor. He may lift us out of trouble, or lift our spirits and comfort while we are still in trouble. He may lift us to honor and safety in this world, or lift us along the way to heaven, raising our hearts above the world. God revives the spirit of the humble (Isaiah 57:15), he hears the desire of the humble (Psalm 10:17), and in the end he will lift them up to glory. Before honor comes humility. The highest honor in heaven will be the reward of the deepest humility on earth.