James 4.4-10

Wisdom From Above Comes from Submission to God (James 4.4-10)

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.

We have to remember that this passage is on ongoing thought from the section before. In James 3.13-4.3, James makes a comparison between those who live according to the wisdom from above versus those who live according to the desires from below. It looks like this:

Wisdom from above (thinking heavenly)--> truth---> good deeds --> Life

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Desires from Below---> leads to temptation----> leads to Sin-----> leads to Death. 

The last verse before this section is still condemning those who live their lives according to their worldly desires. James follows this condemnation with an accusation. He says, “You adulterous people...” Committing adultery was a common metaphor for the people of God being unfaithful to God. Over and over again, throughout the prophets, God connects this idea that he is “married” to his people through a covenant, an agreement. Just like when we get married today, it is called a covenant of marriage. The word covenant is just a fancy word for the idea of an agreement, or deal. And when we enter into a covenant of marriage, we come to an agreement that we both will be faithful to our husbands and wives. When we break that covenant and are unfaithful, that is called adultery. The same is true of God’s relationship with his people.

When Israel or Judah, and now the church, worships other idols or sins or does not live according to the will of God, we are being unfaithful to God and his covenant with us. God calls it adultery. And so right from the beginning of this passage, these kind of people who live according to their earthly desires, they are being unfaithful to God, they are committing adultery. But how? James goes on to explain:

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. 

Those who choose to friendship with the world are chosen to be enemies of God. Remember, the world is fallen, it is cursed. We, the world, rejected God in the garden, and from that point on, the world has been at odds with God. 1 John 2.16 says, “For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he had and does--comes not from the Father but from the world.” The world has been in a mess since the garden. There has been sexual immorality, murders, idolatry, pain, suffering, abuse, disease, natural disasters, war and genocide of every kind. And all this comes from following the desires from below. And when we choose to live that kind of life, to live as friends of the world, we automatically set ourselves up against God. Look at how Paul says it, “For the minds that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; Indeed it cannot (Romans 8.7).” 

Verse 5 is a tricky verse. First of all, it is not found anywhere in the Old Testament. There are a couple of explanations for this. Perhaps James is quoting from some document that is now lost that he considered Scripture. Another possibility was that this came from some kind of Jewish or Christian tradition that we don’t know about. But what makes the most sense to me is that James was summing up the whole idea of scripture with this verse. This is his summation:

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.

But what does he mean by that? That is the second issue that must be dealt with. This verse can be translated one of two ways. The first, “He (that is, God) jealously yearns for the devotion of the spirit which He has made to dwell within us.” or “The Spirit which God has made to dwell within us jealously yearns for the full devotion of our hearts.” Either way, the meaning is the same. God is a jealous God who wants us, all of us, to worship him and him alone. Remember how this section started? “You adulterous people”. His condemnation is that when we live according to our earthly desires, we are making allegiances with the world, which is unacceptable. We must be fully devoted to God. This “Scripture” quote is support for his point that he is making about the dangers of being friends with the world. But there is hope. He ends it with this, “But he (God) gives us more grace.” How do we receive this grace? How do we get on the right side of God’s wrath? Through humble submission to his wisdom and desire for our lives. James exhorts his audience to do this by saying:

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.

This Scripture quote comes from Proverbs 3.34, an entire book devoted to living by the wisdom God provides. And he says here that if we humble ourselves to that wisdom, we will receive grace. This humbling takes the form of submission.

What shall we do now? We shall humbly submit to God’s wisdom, to thinking heavenly. This takes the form of five actions:

1. Set yourself up against Satan
2. Come near to God
3. Wash your hands
4. Purify your hearts
5. Grieve and mourn

And what is the result? Verse 10 gives the result, “Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.” If we humbly submit to God’s wisdom, we will be glorified, rewarded, blessed, lifted up, given life. It comes back to the diagram:

Wisdom from above (thinking heavenly)--> truth---> good deeds --> Life

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Desires from Below---> leads to temptation----> leads to Sin-----> leads to Death. 

Now that James has thoroughly presented his thesis, his big idea, his general principle for the whole book, he now is going to take that general principle and show how it is lived out in seven specific test cases. And that is where we will begin...on our next lesson on thinking heavenly.