James 4:1-6
Where Your Fights Begin
1What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the passions at war within you?
2You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.
4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
5Or do you think the Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He caused to dwell in us yearns with envy?
6But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Berean Standard Bible
James has been describing wisdom and peace. Now he asks where their opposite comes from, the fighting, and he looks for the source in an uncomfortable place.
What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don't they come from the passions at war within you?
Not from other people, is the answer he expects, and not from circumstances. The war outside starts as a war inside. You want something and cannot get it, he says, so you quarrel and fight to seize it, and underneath the grabbing is a strange failure: you do not have because you do not ask God at all. And when you do ask, you ask with the wrong motive, wanting the thing only to spend on yourself. So the trouble runs deeper than short tempers. It is a whole way of wanting that has left God out of the room and then fights everyone else for the scraps.
Then James raises his voice with a hard word.
You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
The charge is severe. To court the world's values while claiming to belong to God is not a neutral thing, it is unfaithfulness, the way an affair is. James even appeals to Scripture, insisting it does not speak without reason when it says the Spirit God has set in us yearns jealously. God is not indifferent about where his people give their hearts, and he wants them wholly. That could sound like nothing but a threat, and then the sentence turns.
But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
That answer, more grace, is the last thing a reader braced for rebuke expects. God opposes the proud, James says, but gives grace to the humble, so the God who will not share his people with the world still meets the humble with grace. The way up out of the war James describes is not to win it. It is to be humbled, to ask God for the right reasons, and to receive the grace he gives to the lowly.
How We Know
The line James quotes, that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, is Proverbs 3:34. The proverb's second half, about grace given to the humble, runs the same in this text, while its first half here speaks of how God treats mockers rather than the proud. James gives the line in the form the New Testament uses for it, the same form Peter uses when he quotes the proverb in 1 Peter 5:5. The wording "opposes the proud" is the New Testament's form, not this text's Proverbs, which speaks of mocking the mockers; but the same point stands in both, God set against the arrogant and full of grace for the humble. That is why the cure for the warring, craving heart he has just described is to be humbled and to receive grace. James names no reference and counts on readers who know the line.
Questions
1 Where does James say quarrels and conflicts come from?
AnswerFrom the passions at war inside a person, not from other people or bad circumstances. James turns the blame inward, tracing the fights we have with others back to the wanting we cannot control in ourselves.
2 What does James say is wrong with how they want and ask?
AnswerThey fight to seize what they crave, yet do not have because they never ask God, and when they do ask, they ask only to spend it on their own pleasures. The wanting has left God out, so even their prayers serve their appetites.
3 Why does James call them adulteresses and speak of friendship with the world?
AnswerBecause courting the world's values while belonging to God is unfaithfulness, not a harmless preference. He says friendship with the world is hostility toward God, so a person cannot befriend both without betraying the one.
4 What is the turn James makes when he says God gives more grace?
AnswerAfter the hard charge, he opens a door. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, so the way out of the war is not to win it but to be humbled and receive the grace God gives the lowly.
What This Means for Us
Take one quarrel this house has had lately and trace it back past who was right to the thing someone wanted and could not get. That craving, James says, is where the fight was really born. Bring it to God plainly, not to get leverage for the next round but to be humbled under it, since he gives grace to the humble and opposes the proud who keep score. The fight ends not when you win but when you stop and ask him honestly.
Prayer
Lord, our quarrels start inside us, in wanting we will not bring to you and will not lay down. Forgive us for befriending the world and calling it harmless, and for asking you only for what feeds ourselves. You give more grace to the humble. Humble us, and let us receive it. Amen.