Submit Yourselves to God
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 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. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
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. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
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 judgment on it. 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?
Boasting About Tomorrow
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.” 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. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.
Just listen to these questions:
1. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
2. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? (or “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? or `To envy earnestly desires the spirit that did dwell in us,')
3. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
4. What is your life?
Just listening to these questions and the instruction that follows them says a lot about the people James is writing to in this letter. Think about the language he uses here that builds an image of their behavior.
Fighting and quarreling, desires that battle within you. Adulterous people, friends of the world and enemies of God. Slanderers and those who are judging their neighbors.
These images alone give us a pretty bleak and uninviting picture of the original audience of this letter. Are these real Christian people? Is this the church Jesus died for?
In thinking about this letter carefully, it appears to be written to Christians who are less committed to Christ than what we usually think of when we consider the early church. Many times we think of the early Christians as deeply faithful, persecuted and valiantly giving up their lives for the faith. This did indeed happen at times, but not constantly and everywhere. In fact, it seems that most of the Christians of all times have had the same struggles that we have today. When we read the letters Jesus sends to the churches in Revelation we discover that only two out of the seven churches of Asia are in good healthy standing and do not receive a rebuke.
James writes to people who are just like us. He tells us what we need most in this life. We all need a faith that works, a faith that motivates us to live for Christ humbly and obediently. We all need to focus on God and His goodness and kindness toward us so that we will be changed by His character to become more like Him and less like this sinful world we live in.
Isn’t God good? Isn’t he patient not to give up on us?
What kind of God do we serve? What is the Lord of heaven and earth like? He is both fearsome and loving at the same time.
Look again at the first three verses here: What is James telling us about God? What is he saying about us? James pictures God this way: God is waiting for us to ask so that He can bless us.
That’s exactly what Jesus said about God our Father. Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened for you. For whoever asks receives, he who seeks finds and the one that knocks, it is opened to him. Which of you having a son, if he asks for bread would give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish would give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, will not your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him?”
It is probably true that our behaviors demonstrate clearly how we view God. It certainly demonstrates our relationship with God. If we fear God and love God and think about God we will look more like Him, act more like Him, sound more like Him. If we think about our own selves and fear what others may think about us or do, or if we love to look good in the eyes of others instead of concerning ourselves with pleasing God, or if we just go after what feels good to our flesh and do not seek God’s will, we will look more like God’s enemies than his children.
Look at verses 4-10 again: Did you hear what it says there about our relationship to God and how God wants us to do it?
Don’t cuddle with the world! Don’t kiss and make love with the devil’s minions! That’s adultery! God says that it makes us into His enemies. It is hatred toward God to love up on this world’s ways and party with the people of darkness. God put His Spirit in you and that Spirit is jealous for your faithfulness. Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit, Don’t quench the Holy Spirit, give God the steering wheel of your life and let Him direct you! Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. If that sound biblical, it is!
Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden and had only one tree that they were commanded not to eat from. Satan came along and tempted Eve to eat the fruit saying that God is a liar and wants to withhold good things from you! Go ahead! Eat! Take it! It won’t hurt! You won’t die! You are a big girl! Make your own decisions! Do what you want to do! Give in to your fleshly desires! Who cares what God says!
James tells us… that is adultery. God is your Creator, your Lord. God made you to be like Him! Don’t throw away the glory of God for the lust of the dust. Don’t give in to a quick thrill of adultery and turn your back on the one who you promised to follow and be faithful to. Don’t take pride in the flesh and despise the Spirit.
God gives us grace! Grace that brings us close to Him. Grace that calls us to humble ourselves before Him and forsake our pride.
Listen to James instruction about relating to God: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble! If we believe that, if we honestly accept that and can open our eyes to God and see how our sins offend Him and insult the Holy Spirit of His grace, we would act on these words!
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
In other words, make a decision! Choose God! When we love God and recognize how our sin is adultery and yet He still offers us grace, we bow, we submit, we resist evil, we come near God, we clean up our bodies and hearts and minds, we quit rejoicing in evil and recoil from it with grief and sorrow. We do this all before God and in His presence. And God… God, reaches down and lifts us up. Listen to Psalms 51
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will turn back to you.
David had become proud and had committed adultery and had fallen far from God’s glory, doing his own will and seeking worldly pleasures. But it backfired on him big time. When David saw what he had done and recognized his condition before God, he did just what James is telling us here. And God lifted David up again. God forgave David’s sin.
