James
Chapter 4
Overview
James confronts communities being torn apart by envy, selfish ambition, and the desire to control both people and the future. He traces their conflicts back to divided loyalties: they want God’s help while chasing the values of a world opposed to God. His words are sharp because the problem is serious, but he also points toward a way back through humility. The chapter moves from inner desires to damaged relationships, then warns against condemning others and boasting about tomorrow. Human plans, James reminds us, are real but fragile—like mist in the morning air.
1Where do the wars and fights among you come from? They come from your cravings, which are at war within your own bodies.
2You desire things but do not have them. You murder and envy, but you still cannot get what you want. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask God.
3When you do ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives. You only want to spend what you receive on your own pleasures.
4You unfaithful people! Do you not know that friendship with the world’s corrupt values means hostility toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of such a world makes themselves God’s enemy.
5Or do you think Scripture speaks without reason when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live in us longs with jealousy”?
6But God gives even greater grace. That is why Scripture says, “God opposes proud people but gives grace to humble people.”
7So place yourselves under God’s authority. Resist the devil, and he will run away from you.
8Come near to God, and he will come near to you. You sinners, clean up your actions, as if washing your hands. You people with divided loyalties, purify your hearts.
9Recognize your misery, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter turn into mourning and your joy into sadness.
10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11Brothers and sisters, do not speak against one another. Anyone who speaks against or condemns a fellow believer speaks against God’s law and judges it. If you judge the law, you are not obeying it but setting yourself up as its judge.
12There is only one lawgiver and judge: God, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to a certain city, spend a year there, do business, and make a profit.”
14You do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are mist that appears for a short time and then disappears.
15Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”
16But as it is, you boast about your arrogant plans. All such boasting is wrong.
17So if someone knows the right thing to do and does not do it, that person is sinning.