James 4
v.1
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
v.2
You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.
If you may have everything by asking, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is, and I beseech you to abound in it… Do you know, brothers, what great things are to be had for the asking? Have you ever thought of it? Does it not stimulate you to pray fervently? All heaven lies before the grasp of the asking man; all the promises of God are rich and inexhaustible, and their fulfillment is to be had by prayer.
James then repeats his assertion that, with all their consuming desire and bitter antagonism, his readers were not able to obtain what they wanted, because they were going after it in the wrong way. They did “not ask God” for it. They were lusting and fighting rather than praying.
v.3
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
See James 4 James4
When prayer meetings become a mere form, when brethren stand up and waste the time away with their long orations, instead of speaking to God in earnest and burning words, when there is no expectation of a blessing, when the prayer is cold and chill, then nothing will come of it. He who prays without fervency does not pray at all. We cannot commune with God, who is a consuming fire, if there is no fire in our prayers. Many prayers fail of their errand because there is no faith in them. Prayers which are filled with doubt are requests for refusal.
The prodigal son exemplifies one who spent his money in this way (Lk 15:14). It was the desire of James’s readers for pleasures that was battling within them for satisfaction (v.1) and even leading them to try to use prayer as means of gratification. They wanted to gratify themselves rather than help others and please God.
v.4
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
Jesus pictured a similar situation when he said, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and Money” (Mt 6:24). This issue is not how well one can serve this or that master, but that one cannot serve them both…If you are invested in God1, you do not at the same time have the energy left to value what the surrounding culture values.
1Being invested in God does not necessarily mean being busy in church work. It would mean spending enough time in the presence of God to learn from him what priorities he has for one’s life. 🔥Church work itself often can be simply more worldly business, a way to gain status or one’s personal ends in another sphere.
HardSayingsOfTheBible see also in wealth,work.
The apostle uses this strong language not concerning the actual sin of adultery as the term is commonly understood, but in relation to our not loving God with true chastity of heart, but lusting after something else. This is the very essence of spiritual adultery. We ought to give God the whole affection of our being, but instead of doing so, we allow at least some of it to wander to other objects, and therefore we are called, by the Holy Ghost Himself, “adulterers and adulteresses.” These may seem to be hard words, but they are true ones. May they bring us to our spiritual senses, and cause us to love our God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength!
The people of God in the OT are considered the wife of the Lord (Jer 31:32), and in the NT, the bride of Christ (Eph 5:23-32). It is reasonable, therefore, to understand “adulteress” as a figure of speech for spiritual unfaithfulness. It is a blunt and shocking word, intended to jar the readers and awaken them to their true spiritual condition. The concept of spiritual adultery was no doubt taken from the OT (cf. Hos 2:2-5; 3:1-5; 9:1).
v.5
Or do you think that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?
“The idea is that God loves men with such a passion that he cannot bear any other love within the hearts of men.” (Barclay)
v.6
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Do you suffer from spiritual poverty? It is your own fault, for he giveth more grace. If you have not got it, it is not because it is not to be had, but because you have not gone for it—you have not sought for it—you have not walked in such a way that you could possess it and exhibit its fruit. Spiritual growth, if we have any, must never be the subject of our self-congratulation, but we must give all the glory to God, for if you look at the text from another point of view, the more grace we have, the more has been given us. If we have it not, it is our own fault, but if we have it, it is not our earning, but His bestowal. #CharlesSpurgeon sermon link
🔥The meaning of vv.4-6 is that God has set a high standard for wholehearted love and devotion on the part of his people as they resist the appeal of the world, but he gives grace that is greater than the rigorous demand he has made. This assurance is documented from Proverbs, the point of which is in the second clause. The reference to “the humble” (GK 5424) constitutes the theme for vv.7-10, where James pleads for submission to God. They should be the people who willingly submit to God’s desire for them rather than proudly insist on satisfying their own desires for pleasures (cf. vv.1-3).
You are just as spiritual as you want to be. #LeonardRavenhill
v.7
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
I desire to whisper one little truth in your ear, and I pray that it may startle you: You are submitting even now. You say, ‘Not I; am lord of myself.’ I know you think so, but all the while you are submitting to the devil. The verse before us hints at this. ‘Submit yourselves unto God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ If you do not submit to God you never will resist the devil, and you will remain constantly under his tyrannical power. Which shall be your master, God or devil, for one of these must? No man is without a master.
v.8
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
I have already referred to the parable of the prodigal son, I will refer to it again by reminding you that, “when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” It is, after all, but little of the way that the sinner has to go in returning to his God, the greater part—nay, I might say, all the way—God comes to the sinner who desires to return to Him. Only turn your face Godward, and your God is at once with you
v.11
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgement on it.
What is said may be true in its content but harsh and unkind in the manner of it presentation… The law referred to is probably the command of Lev 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” To speak against your neighbor is to violate this law
v.12
There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
With shattering bluntness, he crushes any right his readers may have claimed to sit in judgement over others. This is not to rule out civil courts and judges, but it does root out the harsh, unkind, critical spirit that continually finds fault with others.
v.13
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.”
We shouldn’t prioritize where our careers place us over where God places us. This goes to show that we cannot and shouldn’t do anything apart from Him. Those who plan out their careers ahead of their endeavors to serve God live a zero sum value life.
The sin here is arrogant presumption—feeling secure enough to leave God out of one’s calculations (4:16; cf., e.g., Jer 12:1; Amos 6:1).
v.14
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.
It is sinful to neglect the common duties of life, under the idea that we shall do something more by-and-by. You do not obey your parents, young man, and yet you are going to be a minister, are you? A pretty minister will you make! As an apprentice you are very dilatory and neglectful, and your master would be glad to see the back of you; he wishes that he could burn your indentures; and yet you have an idea you are going to be a missionary, I believe? A pretty missionary you would be!
v.15
Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
v.17
Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.