Read with Me
James 4:1-6 (HCSB)
What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.
Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy. Or do you think it’s without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously?
But He gives greater grace. Therefore He says:
God resists the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.
Listen with Me
Many people idealize the state of the first-century Church in their minds, believing that it was always perfect, ideal, the very model of what the Church was designed to be. The New Testament Scriptures paint a different picture. The Church in those days truly was powerful and effective. But with its rapid growth and expansion there were also the normal problems that arise in any growing community.
A big part of the problem was that not everyone who made-up the Church, which grew to stretch across the whole Roman Empire and beyond, was a mature, and fully developed disciple. Because of its rapid growth, the Church always had many “baby Christians” who still needed to mature and grow in knowledge and character.
The problems grew, however, as those baby Christians were not adequately discipled because often the people resources of the Church were stretched very thin. So, many of these immature Christians remained immature for quite a while, and that resulted in tension, strife, and divisions in the Church.
James has been addressing some of these issues in the first three chapters of this letter. Now he turns to the fights and quarrels that were rising up in some congregations, fomenting further divisions, and damaging the witness of the Church in its various communities.
James points to the source of these quarrels as untransformed hearts and misaligned wills. These had led to coveting and a desire more for pleasure and ease than for pleasing God. And when strong desires stemming from misshaped motives are thwarted or unfulfilled, the result will always be competition, strife, and conflict.
James points to an incorrect moral compass as the heart of the issue. If a person is focused on the world and on worldly wealth, they will always find themselves operating in opposition to God, and at odds with those who are following His will.
Verse five has been variously translated over the centuries. But the emphasis in every case is on the fact that God has put His Spirit into the heart of every one of his people, and that Spirit is continually pushing to fulfill God’s destiny and His calling for each person. And He will give no rest until that destiny is fulfilled, or until He is so grieved that He retreats and allows that person to pursue his or her own destructive agenda.
James points clearly to the solution in verse six: God’s grace. God’s transforming grace is available to every person who humbly submits to His will and His agenda. Not only will God help them to grow and mature in their relationship with Him, but He will also empower them to accomplish every dream He has placed in their heart.
Pray with Me
Father, I am struck by the insight that immature, worldly Christians existed in the early Church, and it was that immaturity and worldliness that caused the lion’s share of the problems that the Church experienced in those days. James pulls no punches, but clearly identifies both the problem and the solution so that the divine agenda of the Church could move forward fluidly and without the hindrance of misguided agendas and self-focused goals. Lord, help us today to make the time to properly feed into the lives of new believers and those who have been left by the wayside, so that they can quickly grow and mature in Your grace and wisdom, so that we too can move forward and become all that You have in mind for us. Amen.