James 4:1-10: Counter Cultural
Misdirected desires leads to:
Ask God Instead
Worldy Friendship
Outline:
To allow “the world” to entice us away from total, single-minded allegiance to God is to become people who are divided in loyalties, “double-minded” and spiritually unstable.
Isa. 54:5–6: “ ‘For your Maker is your husband—the LORD Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife who married young, only to be rejected,’ says your God.”
see Jer. 3:20: “ ‘But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD” (see also Isa. 57:3; Ezek. 16:38; 23:45). But it is in Hosea that this imagery reaches its pinnacle. The Lord commands Hosea to marry a prostitute so that her unfaithfulness might poignantly and painfully reveal the tragic alliance of Israel with foreign gods. Israel, God claims, has “been unfaithful,” going after other lovers, Baal and other false gods (Hos. 2:5–7). This marital imagery for the covenant relationship between God and Israel is picked up by Jesus, who called those who rejected him “a wicked and adulterous generation” (Matt. 12:39; 16:4).
see Jer. 3:20: “ ‘But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD” (see also Isa. 57:3; Ezek. 16:38; 23:45). But it is in Hosea that this imagery reaches its pinnacle. The Lord commands Hosea to marry a prostitute so that her unfaithfulness might poignantly and painfully reveal the tragic alliance of Israel with foreign gods. Israel, God claims, has “been unfaithful,” going after other lovers, Baal and other false gods (Hos. 2:5–7). This
Jer. 3:20: “ ‘But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD” (see also Isa. 57:3; Ezek. 16:38; 23:45). But it is in Hosea that this imagery reaches its pinnacle. The Lord commands Hosea to marry a prostitute so that her unfaithfulness might poignantly and painfully reveal the tragic alliance of Israel with foreign gods. Israel, God claims, has “been unfaithful,” going after other lovers, Baal and other false gods (Hos. 2:5–7). This
Joel, warning of the nearness of the day of the Lord, pictures the Lord as inviting his people to “ ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning’ ” (2:12)
James’s insistence that we turn our “joy into gloom” might sound strange in light of Paul’s injunction to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). But the joy Paul speaks about is the joy that comes when we realize that our sins are forgiven in Christ; the joy James warns about is the fleeting and superficial joy that comes when we indulge in sin. True Christian joy can never be ours if we ignore or tolerate sin; it comes only when we have squarely faced the reality of our sin, brought it before the Lord in repentance and humility, and experienced the cleansing work of the Spirit.
As we mentioned above, it is not clear whether James thinks of “the spirit that he has made to dwell in us” as the Holy Spirit given to believers, or as God’s creative spirit by which he has invigorated humankind (Gen. 2:7). Perhaps the latter is slightly more likely, however, since James never elsewhere refers to the Holy Spirit. In either case, the phrase reminds us that God has a claim on us by virtue of his work in our lives.
And v. 4 focuses on the spiritual adultery that James’s readers are committing by following the world in distinction from their only true “spouse,” the Lord. A reminder of God’s desire that his people be wholly and unreservedly his provides a beautifully appropriate substantiation of the warning against any flirtation with the attitudes and the values of the world in v. 4.
If, however, as we have argued, v. 5 depicts God’s jealousy for his people, then James here is reminding us that God’s grace is completely adequate to meet the requirements imposed on us by that jealousy. Our God is “a consuming fire,” and his demand for our exclusive allegiance may seem terrifying. But our God is also merciful, gracious, all loving, and willingly supplies all that we need to meet his all-encompassing demands. As Augustine has said, “God gives what he demands.”