James 4 (NLT) What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. What do you think the Scriptures mean when they say that the spirit God has placed within us is filled with envy? But he gives us even more grace to stand against such evil desires. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but favors the humble.” So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters, if you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil. Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
Context: The bible was not originally divided into chapter and verse. People began introducing various ways of dividing the biblical text in the 13th century to help persons navigate through it. While our current system of chapter and verse does help us to find what we are looking for, occasionally we find the division less than helpful. Often it detracts from our ability to put the proper thoughts together. I find this to be true in the book of James overall, but most of all in the division between chapter 3 and 4. For this reason, I deleted the verse references themselves and included the related material from the end of Chapter 3 above. We read the celebration of “wisdom from above” as pure, peace loving, gentle, willing to yield to others, full of mercy and good deeds, showing no favoritism, and always sincere … whose peacemakers will “plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness” in order to contextualize chapter 4.
Chapter 4 begins with a couple of rhetorical questions to highlight the absence of wisdom in the community and to use as a continuing argument for moral behavior as an indicator of the presence of God. In the process of developing his argument, James echoes many of his earlier thoughts as he writes about the “evil desires at war within.” In this chapter, the war seems to emerge from our love of the “world” which destroys our peace and robs us of the wisdom God desires for us and our community.
James indicates that one of the keys to winning the war between worldliness and godliness is tapeinoo {tap-i-no'-o} which is the Greek word translated humility. This word has also been translated surrender or submits to. Tapeinoo means,
- to make low, bring low, to bring into a humble condition by reduction to lesser circumstances, to assign a lower place, to be ranked below others who are honored or rewarded, to abase the self by humble living, to lower the soul in order to bring down one's pride, to have a modest opinion of one's self, to behave in an unassuming manner, and to be devoid of all conceit and arrogance.
- “So [submit] yourselves before God.” Many translations use the word submit or surrender as a more accurate translation of the Greek: hupotasso {hoop-ot-as'-so} than humble is ... it is not the same word that was previously published as humble.
- Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
- Come close to God, and God will come close to you.
- Wash your hands, you sinners;
- purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.
- Let there be tears for what you have done.
- Let there be sorrow and deep grief.
- Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy.
1. First we come … We submit to God and resist “the devil,” whatever that means to you. James certainly strips “the devil” of power if simple resistance will cause the source of evil to dissipate so quickly. In the next directive our relationship with God deepens with our movement toward God and our surrender: “Come close to God, and God will come close to you.”
2. Then, we act … We wash, purify, cry, and mourn. We know from our study on Chapter 1 that James, who was probably the brother of Jesus or someone writing in his name, has written this letter to the dispersion, or the “Jewish believers scattered abroad.” These Jewish believers “came close” to God in the temple. One could not enter the temple without close attention to ritual purity and one could not approach God without sacrifice, so this call to the way of humility should not be read as a simple metaphorical assent to an inward sense of downcast behavior. This image of humility, submission and surrender emerged from within a community with a distinctly Jewish-Christian cultural identity.
Pondering: Humility, submission, and surrender are not concepts that are natural to human beings but are essential for us as we grow in our spiritual life. The war that rages within is resistance to putting God at the center of life for our natural inclination is to put ourselves at the center of our world. Yet this week as we “Come close to God,” we find that God will make up our shortfall and come close to us.
- Where do you come close to God?
- How do you come close to God?
- How do you experience God’s presence come close to you?
- How do you struggle with surrendering to God?
- How do you humble yourself before God?
- How does this behavior manifest peace in your life?
- How does this behavior manifest peace in your community?
- How does your prayer life draw you closer to God?
Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
If music is the pathway to your soul … watch this video Draw Me Close… the words are somewhat of a distraction to me but the song in lovely and evokes a sense of the surrender that James talks about in this chapter … breathe deeply and allow this sense of surrender to envelop you as you allow God to "draw you close."
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things
to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
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