A Living Faith Evidenced in Godly Affections: Part 2 (James 4:1-12)
James 4 begins by addressing the manifest problem of quarreling and fighting. James pinpoints the source of such a problem. Then he reveals the solution to that problem.
The Source of the Problem: Worldly Passions (James 4:1–4)
What are passions? And what makes them worldly?
Passions are fleshly desires or lusts (desires misdirected). According to Romans 6:13, the members of our bodies can be used as instruments for unrighteousness. The inner motives within are to blame for the external actions. James asks a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. Certainly, James assumes an unavoidable affirmative admission to his query regarding where the source of the problem lies: warring lusts. James is seeking to convict those who know their own guilt when it is pointed out.
When people are driven by selfish covetousness (wanting something that is not fitting or does not belong to them), they will fight. In context, James is confronting people who have a dead orthodoxy (cf. James 1:21–22; 2:14ff.). Their fighting is due to trying to achieve licentious freedoms and selfish pursuits. The sensual desires within are driving them to fight to fulfill their desires. When others get in the way of that fulfillment, they do whatever it takes to remove them out of the way (murder them, even if figuratively speaking).
In context, James is not identifying the cause or source of all fighting. He is dealing with the fighting of these people overcome by dead orthodoxy—not being doers of the Word, and thus rightfully accused of worldliness and spiritual adultery. James is not condemning those who fight against such things. He is not condemning those who fight for truth and righteousness out of pure motives in submission to God (James 4:1–4 must be harmonized with Jude 1:3). James himself is confrontational in this very passage—using quite harsh accusations in his choice of words. So, not all fighting is due to covetousness, but covetousness leads to fighting. And much fighting can be identified with such lusts.
The selfishness of their desires is manifest in their lack of praying. They do not seek after God to fulfill what they wish to achieve. Even if they do pray, it’s a hypocritical, thinly-veiled piety draped over their lust-filled motives. Whatever they’re trying to achieve is patently out of step with God’s will (see the contrasting model prayer by Paul in 2 Thess. 1:11–12).
Why? What has brought about such passions? The key source of the problem to everything else that is going on downstream (see James 3:1–18) is worldliness.
“‘The world’ here does not refer to the material creation but rather to the mass of unredeemed humanity as an ego-centric world system that is hostile to God…. To cultivate the world’s friendship implies conformity to its principles and aims.” (Hiebert, James, 228)
Friendship with the world is pictured as spiritual adultery—a common picture of Israel’s idolatrous breaking covenant with God in the Old Testament. James’ confrontational accusation carries with it:
· Grave seriousness to its significance: their sin is a serious betrayal of their fundamental covenant relationship with God.
· Evidence of spiritual adultery: friendship with the world—affection for its value system and ways leads to accommodating it, appeasing it, syncretizing with it, copying it, and seeking to please the watching world according to its own godless system of values.
· Result: lusts that they fight to achieve—setting them at odds with God (enmity or hostility with Him instead of affection for Him and His things described in His commands; this hostility carries over against those willing to align with God and His ways). God also sets Himself against such people.
The kingdom of this world is at odds with the kingdom of God (Eph. 2:1–3; Col. 1:13). These kingdoms are rightly embattled against each other—which is why not all fighters can be condemned—the adultresses are the only ones to blame for such fighting. A person must choose which side he is on. There most certainly is an “us-against-them” reality in our world even if many adultresses would rather win the world by appeasing instead of confronting it (Matt. 6:24; 1 John 2:15–17).
Sadly, many have lost a posture even close to what is reflected here in James 4 in regard to confronting worldliness. The mere mention of the topic seems so passé as if it only fits with a decades-past unhealthy fundamentalism characterized by legalism and pharisaism. Bring up worldliness and it will be treated as an excuse to foist a bunch of human standards on people. Some people act like the very idea of worldliness is only a human-made religious idea to undermine grace. No doubt, misuses of such topics included misapplications.
Nevertheless, what needs to be pressed home is that worldliness is a very biblically rooted identifiable problem at the root that underlies problems in the church—this is identified as such at the climax of James. In other words, it is the ultimate thing that needs to be dealt with if we take seriously James 1:22 and 2:14ff. (Footnote: for an excellent treatment on worldliness that avoids both legalism and license see Randy Leedy, Love not the World.) If anything, we need a renewed emphasis on the dangers of worldliness, with concrete applications biblically discerned (Titus 2:11–12; Eph. 5:1–18).
In the next post we’ll delve into the conviction and solution to the problem of worldliness, manifested in lust-driven fighting.
Kevin Collins has served as a junior high youth leader in Michigan, a missionary in Singapore, a Christian School teacher in Utah, and a Bible writer for the BJU Press. He currently works for American Church Group of South Carolina.
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