08 - James 4:1-10 Series

James 4:1-6

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

After talking about the need to be agents of sowing peace amongst one another, James goes on to address the issue of conflict. He begins by asking what the root of wars and fights are, and that’s a great question to ask. So often we try to deal with the symptoms without getting to the root cause for it. When we deal with the root, we are able to deal with the issue itself.

He then goes on to answer his question saying that the conflicts arise from the desires we have for pleasure and adds that these desires themselves are at war within our bodies. It’s this internal battle that results in external battles. Most of us are unconscious of these battles that rage within us and so don’t do anything about them.

James says that the first thing about these desires is that they are those of pleasure. We desire to please ourselves in every way, have the best that this world has to offer, and to satisfy our sensual and temporal desires, that we are willing to do anything to have them satisfied. We are never satisfied with what we possess – we always want more, thinking that we will eventually reach a place of contentment with possessions. The sad truth is that possessions will never bring us to the point of contentment – we will always want more.

James goes on to mention various things people do to possess things. Firstly, he says that they lust (desire) to have things but don’t have, meaning that merely desiring something does not mean that one can possess it. Secondly, he says that they take one another’s lives to possess and they even covet their things and with all that, they still do not have. Thirdly, they fight and go to war to possess, and yet they do not have. How many battles and wars have been fought with the intent of colonizing someone else’s lands and how much blood has been shed in the process?

He then gives the reasons why they do not have. One might be expecting a rather complicated answer to the question, “Why do I not possess what I desire?” But the answer James gives is rather simple. “You do not have because you do not ask.” Is that all it takes to receive something – ask? Ask who? He’s referring to asking God, who is the giver of all good gifts.

He then goes on to say that even those who do ask, do not receive, and the reason for them not receiving is that they ask for things with wrong motives. They merely want to use their possessions on themselves, to satisfy their own sinful pleasures and not to bring glory to God through them. He seems to say that even though the method of wanting to possess things might have changed, where one is seeking God for the things he desires, one thing has not changed and that is the selfish desires behind wanting to possess things.

James then gets a bit strong with them calling them adulterers and adulteresses, and goes on to give a reason why calls them so. When we hear the words, ‘adulterers and adulteresses,’ the first thought that comes to our minds is that of infidelity in marriage. But let’s look at what James is using these terms to refer to.

He asks them whether they don’t know that if one desires to be in a friendly relationship with the things of this world, then that person is at enmity with God. What he seems to be implying is that people have chosen to have a relationship with the things of this world, instead of with God. So in that sense, they have forsaken their covenant with God and entered into another covenant with the things of this world, much like a person who forsakes the relationship with his spouse to enter into a relationship with another person instead – hence the name, ‘adulterers and adulteresses.’ He is saying that if one chooses to be friends with the world, he is simultaneously choosing to be an enemy of God. This is a very serious issue and something we need to take to heart in our day and age, when life is all about possessions and so often, God is the One we seek to increase our possessions. Have we traded our relationship with God for a relationship with money and possessions?