If we return to verses 3:14-16, we see that worldly wisdom leads to selfish ambition and envy. Unchecked, envy causes disorder and other evils. James hopes his people live by God’s wisdom, yet he knows many in his audience live by the world’s wisdom. Therefore, he now describes the rivalry, pride, strife, even murder, that envy and ambition breed.

James 4:1 says worldly wisdom leads to fights and struggles. James says there are fights “among you” because of passions “that are at war within you.” Literally, the last phrase says those passions are at war “in your members.” In this verse, “members” means the members or faculties within one person, not the various members of the church. Selfish passions make believers wage war within themselves, as their desire to serve Christ and neighbor conflicts with the desire to serve self.

James 4:2 says that this internal conflict leads to external conflict. Whenever envy and selfish ambition create battles within us, they disrupt relations outside us. Quarrels and fights break out in the church and the family. James even says his readers “murder.” It is very unlikely that his readers were guilty of literal murder. The word for “fights” can refer to physical violence, but in the New Testament it usually refers to verbal conflicts or internal struggles. We speak the same way.

Of course, we, like James, know that it is necessary to fight some battles. We should fight for the unborn – politically, judicially, and in the hearts of men and women. We should fight for the truth. Sometimes refusal to fight reflects the vice of cowardice, not the virtue of peacemaking. But alas, far too many of our fights begin with selfish desires, not noble causes. As James says, we fight because of our “passions,” that is, the selfish desires that are often so disorderly.

Our pursuit of selfish desires becomes so severe that we find we cannot bring ourselves to pray about them. James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (v. 2). This sounds odd, since believers can always pour out their requests before the Lord (1 Sam. 1:15). Yet James understands how difficult it is to present selfish requests to the Lord, regardless of the intensity of the desire. The heart is free when we pray for friends and family, for the kingdom and the church.

Too often, the uncertain Chrisian ceases pray. Let us ask ourselves: Do I harbor a desire that is so far outside God’s revealed will that I am ashamed to mention it to Him? Am I shoving it under the bed, into the basement, hoping God will not see it? So, we fail to pray. Yet, James says, some do pray “that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (4:3). God denies the request, because we ask wrongly, wickedly. He will not answer a prayer that aims no higher than the belly. Paul says, of the enemies of Christ, “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil. 3:19 ESV). Why would God answer the prayer of a believer who wants to live like an enemy of Christ?

When James says, “You adulterous people,” he makes a specific accusation. The charge is spiritual adultery, not spiritual fornication, because the people are joined to Christ. They are married to Jesus, but they run after other gods. This endangers their relationship, their marriage, to Him. This is the language of the prophets who charged Israel with adultery. Faithless Israel sought to worship both the Lord and the Canaanite gods of fertility and prosperity, so Christians attempt to pursue both God and the world. James says that this is not vacillation, it is adultery.

James censures adultery, but he even objects to friendship with the world (v. 4:4). We use the word “friend” lightly, when we really mean “cordial acquaintance.” But in antiquity, as today, true friends shared a mindset and an outlook on life. They shared interests, values, and goals. They saw life in much the same way. They shared goods as necessary. They cared for each other and worked together effectively because they agreed how the work should be done.

Christians are friends of God in this high, restricted sense. Earlier, James said believers are “unstained by the world.” That is, we can be friendly toward anyone – showing kindness and concern. We should be good neighbors and good coworkers. But in the deepest sense of “friendship,” we cannot be friends with the world because we reject its values. God’s value system is different. In His eyes, all humans have honor, since He made all in His likeness. Therefore, we are not God’s friends if we define people by their acquisitions, their merit, and their “station.” We must not adopt the values of our culture. We cannot be loyal to the culture and to the kingdom. Their values clash. To try to serve both systems is adultery. Yet the Lord, like a good husband, woos His faithless wife instead of seeking divorce.

James brings his indictment or worldly wisdom and selfish ambition to its climax with a probing question (4:5). Notice that when James writes “Scripture says,” he is not quoting one passage. No Old Testament text says, “The spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely.” James is condensing the entire biblical theology of the fallen human condition. He turns our minds toward sinfulness, not one particular sin. The analysis and the indictment read: “The spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely.”

James’s point is that Scripture rightly testifies that human history is one long story of intense envy and selfish striving. In other words, human history is largely a record of misdirected energies. God has endowed humans with a drive to achieve, to taste glory. But alas, we put our energy in vain projects, and we fan selfish desires. Instead of aiming for success, we are content to watch someone else fail. Is this what God intended us to make of our drives and talents? Surely, God gave humans a desire to do great things, but we ought not be motivated by envy or satisfied by a taste of our latest desire. God granted us the capacity to yearn, to desire, to dream for higher purposes. He did not give us our energy, our feistiness, to spend it defeating others and plundering their goods. No, God made us for glory, to aspire to the glories of loving God and blessing our fellow humans.

But James does more than diagnose the human problem: he announces the fundamental solution: God gives grace. He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (4:6). James does not describe how God has sent His grace. He does not say that God the Son humbled Himself and gave His life for us on the cross, then rose from the dead in victory over sin. James assumes that his Christian readers know how Jesus accomplished the salvation from which God’s redeeming grace flows. Now God extends His grace to the humble who believe in Him.

The gospel of James suggests a test of our spiritual condition. What are your longings? Is your spirit filled with selfish or ambitious cravings for things, for experiences, for fame, for power? Or do you pursue simpler but equally misguided goals – mere prosperity and tranquility, spiced up by pleasant leisure activities, punctuated by an occasional exotic high point? There is no harm in dreaming large dreams. Goals prompt us to do our best. But dreams can be egotistical too. If examine ourselves, we may find sinful cravings and envy.

James says, we must choose between two ways of life. There is the way of ambition, grasping, and pride, and the way of repentance and humility, which leads to peace with God, then with mankind. True repentance is more than feeling sorry. The penitent man acknowledges the sin at hand. A reader of James should repent for the sins James singles out: pride in knowledge, hearing the word but doing nothing, the reckless speech that will say anything to get a laugh or gain an advantage, the desire to fit in with society rather than to stay unpolluted by it. If we humble ourselves in genuine repentance, God promises to forgive us and exalt us with Christ.

James 4:1-6 Study Questions:

How does James seem to use the word “passion” in verse 1? What are the results of the kids of “passions” that are at war within each one of us? What does this teach us about our sinful nature?

In verse 2, what does James suggest that we ought to do about our desires? Why is this such a better alternative than fighting and quarreling? What might James be suggesting that we often forget about God?

According to verse 3, there is a wrong way to ask God about our desires. What wrong motivations do we sometimes bring to our prayers, according to James?

What does the phrase “adulterous people” imply about James’s understanding of his readers’ relationship with God (v. 4)? In what ways might “friendship with the world” be likened to spiritual “adultery,” in the way James is describing it?

How is verse 5 a good summary of the human condition? How could this explain much of human history, including the rise and fall of leaders and nations?

How might verse 6 offer the solution to the sinful battle within every human soul? How does this verse direct us to respond? What does it tell us about God, and how is it a hopeful verse to conclude this passage?