World War II had ended. On September 2, 1945 General Douglas MacArthur spoke to a waiting world from the Battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, “Today the guns are silent...the skies no longer rain death...the seas bear only commerce...men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace....”
That long war cost sixty million lives, and an estimated $1 trillion. It came only one generation after what President Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars.” Since World War II we have been engaged in Korea and Viet Nam, Iraq twice, not to speak of limited wars, political assassinations, personal revolts, rebellions and social revolutions.
The history of the world is a war history. James brings it even closer home when he makes it clear that our personal stories are war stories as well, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (v.1). What a penetrating question! Why can’t we get along? Why do we rub each other the wrong way?
I. THE REASONS FOR OUR WARFARE ... vv. 1-5
We have problems with people and problems with God, and James addresses the reasons in the first five verses. The first reason for our fighting and quarreling is “desires that battle within you.” Abrasive words and abusive actions are expressed to one another because we are not a peace within ourselves. So we take it out on one another.
The word for “fights” is also translated “war” and means a continuing state of hostility. “Quarrels” are outbursts of active animosity. We tend to think that peace is our natural state, and that conflict is unnatural. The reverse is actually true.
We have constant battles because of our “desires” or passions. Lust for power, popularity, prestige and pleasure create strife. Desires is from the word hedone, a term for pleasure, with the usual negative connotation of sinful, self-indulgent pleasure. The word “hedonism” comes from hedone. It consistently has this negative meaning in the New Testament. Paul uses it when he says, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). Peter also uses hedone to describe sensual self-seekers, “Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you” (2 Pet. 2:13).
Tom Sine wrote in an article in World Christian magazine,
Fifteen years ago the dominant value among college freshmen was “finding a meaningful philosophy of life.” Today that value has dropped to number eight on the list. Predictably, “being well off financially” has soared to the top of the list of 70 percent of all freshmen.
What these college freshmen are likely unaware of is the hidden cost of trying to “have it all.” Pollster Lou Harris tells us that 86 percent of the American public is chronically stressed out and 68 percent of that group is stressed out and doing nothing about it [Tom Sine, “Life with a Difference,” World Christian (U Section, September/October, 1988) 5].
Selfish indulgence is responsible for discord. This is the pursuit of personal pleasure without regard for God or other people. “Desires” is really a morally neutral word. God is not a cosmic killjoy who allows us no pleasure, in fact, He “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Ti 6:17). Pleasure is a good goal, but if its pursuit becomes an ultimate aim with no concern for others, it is perverted.
When such desires are frustrated violence often erupts. The words James uses are ominous: “kill and covet.” We are capable of relentless rage and even murder when sufficiently frustrated. Most murders are not cold-blooded and premeditated. Deeply regretted later, they are crimes of passion.
The Minnesota Crime Commission reported on the growth of crime and reached a startling conclusion:
Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it — his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny him these once, and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children — not just certain children — are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal — a thief, a killer, or a rapist.
All human conflict is ultimately traced back to the frustrated desire of wanting more than we have, and being resentful of what others have, whether it is position or possessions.
Christians sometimes have a sort of baptized hedonism that even affects our prayer life. James was not fooled, however. He said, “You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (vv 2-3). We are either so busy taking things into our own hands that we fail to pray entirely, or are so greedy that we pray with improper motives. Prayer is the way to get our hearts’ desires. But real satisfaction is found only when we want the right things.
James says, “...you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” God will not allow us to use prayer as a means to our own selfish ends. Genuine prayer leads us away from preoccupation with ourselves. It aligns us with God’s purpose rather than promoting our own cause.
A distorted prayer life leads to a deception spiritual life. “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. (v. 4). James uses the blunt and shocking word, “adulterous” to indict the people for spiritual unfaithfulness.
God’s relationship with His people in the Old Testament was often portrayed as a marriage. When they romanced with other gods, the Bible labeled it “adultery.” The Book of Hosea poignantly presents this theme.
James characterizes this adultery as friendship with the world. It involved a deliberate flirtation that set them against God. James uses “world” to represent the entire system of evil controlled by Satan. All that is wicked and opposed to God on this earth comes under this image. The pleasures that lure people from God are especially in mind.
The Tom Sine article in World Christian continued,
Perhaps the most troubling of all is that a growing number of American Christians, of all ages, are not only embracing these self-indulgent values but moving them to the very center of faith. Instead of challenging the self-preoccupied living of a secular society, we have elevated it to normative living for Christians. This decision to place ourselves and our egoistic interests at the center of the gospel literally stands Christianity on its head and we have a perverted cultural faith, not a biblical one.
There’s an unquestioned assumption that American Christians seem to agree on: The self-involved cultural agenda must come first. Getting our career underway, our house in the suburbs and our upscale lifestyles started, come first. And then, with whatever time and energy is left, we try to serve Jesus. The problem is that the cultural agenda occupies so much of our lives, there is precious little time or energy for anything else, including Jesus.
Sine also says,
Too many Christians think they can just live the American dream with a little Jesus overlay as if it all goes together but it doesn’t. If people are going to seriously follow Jesus, they need to recognize that the secular culture is trying to pull them in a very different direction.
“You can have it all” is not only Michelob’s light beer commercial, it has become the battle cry of an entire generation. Madison Avenue has been remarkably effective in seducing us to “Move on up,” “Grab the gusto,” and “Have it our way.” In her show, Lily Tomlin has one of her characters say, “If I had known what it was like to have it all, I would have settled for less.”
The noun “friendship” comes from the verb phileo meaning “to love, or to have affection for.” It can also mean, “to kiss” as an indication of affection. No loving husband is willing to have his wife kissing and making illicit love with another man. We call it by more mellow terms today. It’s an “affair.” Everybody stays cool, but the Bible still labels it “adultery.”
God reacts with holy jealousy when you become enamored with the world. He is a jealous God. At Mt. Sinai He said, “You shall have no other gods before me.... You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.... Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold” (Ex. 20:3, 5, 23).
The world is an egocentric system that is hostile to God. It is unthinkable that we would make it the object of our affection. Adopting the world’s set of values and wanting what the world wants is an obscene familiarity with God’s enemy. The apostle John warns, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2:15). A conscious choice of the world is a rejection of God and the teaching of his Word.
God takes flirtation with the world seriously. “Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?” (v. 5). God demands an unreserved commitment, and warns against any entanglement with the attitudes and the values of the world. He is Lord over every area of our life. We must not surrender to another. We cannot live intimately with Him when our hearts are set on the world.
The NIV footnote for v. 5 reads, “[God jealously longs for the spirit that he made to live in us]” indicating that the Holy Spirit opposes the wandering tendencies of our nature. His Spirit dwells within us and combats our waywardness. He continues to woo us as He did in the beginning. There is no specific reference for this, but the idea fills the whole Old Testament.
II. THE RELIEF FROM OUR WARRING ... vv. 6-10
Verse 6 begins with a conjunction that relates it back to verse 5. God’s jealousy leads not to judgment, but greater generosity. He is a jealous God who will not share His love. He sets a high standard for wholehearted love and devotion, but he gives grace that is even greater than His demands. He provides the help we need to resist the appeal of the world and to remain loyal to him through greater grace (an undeserved gift).
Annie Johnson Flint, the hymn writer, put it this way:
He giveth more grace, when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength, when the labors increase,
To added affliction, He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
His love has no limit,
His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto man,
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.
Julia H. Johnson expressed it beautifully:
Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt,
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin.
God does the giving and the pardoning, but He requires humility from us. James quotes Proverbs 3:34 when he declares, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” This is demonstrated beautifully in the parable of the lost son. Jesus said, “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men” (Luke 15:17-19). Humility is not achieved without some cost and it pains us greatly. We have to give up struggling for what we want and ask God what He wants for us.
Overcoming the desire to be like the world is not easy, but it is possible. The war with worldliness is winnable! James builds on the idea of humility presented in v. 6 and closes with the same thought in v. 10 - “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” In between are a series of commands that assure victory.
1 - “Submit yourselves, then, to God.” This is a voluntary act of placing yourself under God’s authority. This is what happens when we really pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Submit means much more than a passive acquiescence. It carries the idea of “signing up” for service. It is a pledge of allegiance to a great Sovereign so that you can fight under his banner.
2- “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This is the other side of the same coin. You submit to God by resisting the devil and you resist the devil by submitting to God. Satan constantly seeks to lead people into self-centered and world-centered
attitudes and activities. He wants to subvert our allegiance to God.
We have a secured victory. but we must actively oppose God’s enemy. Indecision and doubt only makes him bold and aggressive in his attacks, but he flees like a coward when we confront him with a resolute will and firm confidence in God.
Three steps for resisting the devil are presented in verses 8 and 9.
1. ““Wash your hands, you sinners.” This is an appeal to our outward lifestyle. Our hands represent our deeds. They must be cleansed as we withdraw them from evil deeds and from grasping for the world’s contaminating pleasures. Our conduct must be clean.
2. “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Here is another reference to our motives. Our hearts become impure when we love the wrong things and give our allegiance to the wrong people on the throne or our heart. The heart is the place of our affections. Jesus must be Lord of our hearts or we are double-minded.
3. “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” This is an obvious call for repentance. We must not only acknowledge the existence of our sins, but we must feel sorry that we have sinned against God. James’ was no killjoy, but he recognized that laughter in the Old Testament was often the scornful laughter of the fool who refused to take sin seriously. We quickly become too casual about sin.
David experienced godly sorrow for his sins when he prayed, “I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears” (Ps. 6:6). He was serious about his sin.
We cannot play games with the devil and with sin. We win the war with worldliness by “drawing near to God.”
God offers love, trust, grace, forgiveness, openness, and all the other marks of a loving relationship. But we must draw near to Him. Distance separated them from God. Our flirtation with the world estranged us. Now we must return to an intimate relationship with Him. He will never force His love upon us. He will not coerce or manipulate. He loves and invites and responds as we respond to Him.
When you are genuinely humbled and submitted to God, the promise is “He will lift you up.” The prodigal son typifies the arrogant lifestyle that James condemns. When he tired of the pigsty and the husks he finally humbled himself. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate” (Lu. 15:19-24). When he exalts you, you have won the war.
