New Testament
James 4
Overview
James traces the church's quarrels to their true root: "your passions that are at war within you" (4:1). They covet and cannot obtain, they fight and quarrel, yet they do not have because they do not ask—or they ask wrongly, to spend on their pleasures (4:2-3). He then escalates to the sharpest charge in the letter: "You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" (4:4). But mercy follows the rebuke: God "yearns jealously" over us and "gives more grace," for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (4:5-6). On this hinge James issues a series of ten staccato commands—submit to God, resist the devil, draw near to God, cleanse your hands, mourn, humble yourselves (4:7-10)—a call to repentance with the promise that God will lift up the humbled. He then forbids slander and judging a brother, since there is only one Lawgiver and Judge (4:11-12). Finally he rebukes the merchants who presumptuously plan, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town" (4:13), reminding them their life is "a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes" (4:14); they ought to say, "If the Lord wills" (4:15), and to know the good they fail to do is sin (4:17).
1Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
2You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
3You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
12Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
14Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
15For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
16But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
17To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.