James 4:1–5:6 (NKJV)
1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. 11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. 1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. 4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
Like one of the Old Testament prophets, James issues stern warnings and urgent calls to repentance in today’s lesson. He moves from one topic to another, urging the Jewish Christians to whom he is writing to live more humbly before God and before man.
Is there strife among you? It is likely because some of you are wrapped up in the “cares, riches, and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). It’s so easy, so tempting to fall in with the world, to value what the world values, to engage in the activities the world promotes. But the Church is, by definition, the assembly of those who have been called out of the world into Christ’s kingdom, even though we still live in the world. The world is opposed to Christ and, therefore, opposed to Christians. If our goal is to get ahead in this world or pursue the pleasures of this world, then we are bound to be at odds with our fellow Christians, even as we are at odds with Christ. But if we repent of our worldliness and humble ourselves before God, then He will lift us up. If we resist the devil, he will not be able to overcome us.
James then calls out two groups among the Christians: those who arrogantly make plans for themselves with no regard for God or His will, and those who have bowed to the god Mammon, who have trusted in their wealth and heaped up treasures for themselves with no regard for their fellow man. Both of these sins are all too common today and flow from the same worldliness that James upbraided above. This life is not all there is, so it’s foolish to live as if it were. Indeed, those who fail to repent of their idolatry of self and of wealth will soon learn just how foolish it was for them to ignore God’s warning issued through the Epistle of James. Instead, turn to God in humility before it’s too late, and you will find mercy with Him for Christ’s sake.
Let us pray: O God, come to our aid against the devil, the world, and our flesh, that we may be victorious over these our enemies and walk before You in humility and sincere faith. Amen.
