Reflections on James 4

James 04 (Contemporary English Version)
1. Why do you fight and argue with each other? Isn't it because you are full of selfish desires that fight to control your body?
   
2. You want something you don't have, and you will do anything to get it. You will even kill! But you still cannot get what you want, and you won't get it by fighting and arguing. You should pray for it.
   
3. Yet even when you do pray, your prayers are not answered, because you pray just for selfish reasons.
   
4. You people aren't faithful to God! Don't you know that if you love the world, you are God's enemies? And if you decide to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.
   
5. Do you doubt the Scriptures that say, "God truly cares about the Spirit he has put in us"?
   
6. In fact, God treats us with even greater kindness, just as the Scriptures say, "God opposes everyone who is proud, but he is kind to everyone who is humble."
   
7. Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you.
   
8. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Clean up your lives, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you people who can't make up your mind.
   
9. Be sad and sorry and weep. Stop laughing and start crying. Be gloomy instead of glad.
   
10. Be humble in the Lord's presence, and he will honor you.
    
11. My friends, don't say cruel things about others! If you do, or if you condemn others, you are condemning God's Law. And if you condemn the Law, you put yourself above the Law and refuse to obey either it
    
12. or God who gave it. God is our judge, and he can save or destroy us. What right do you have to condemn anyone?
    
13. You should know better than to say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to the city. We will do business there for a year and make a lot of money!"
    
14. What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears.
    
15. You should say, "If the Lord lets us live, we will do these things."
    
16. Yet you are stupid enough to brag, and it is wrong to be so proud.
    
17. If you don't do what you know is right, you have sinned.

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In this chapter James outlines several problems among his readers along with a central solution to them all - indeed the solution to all our problems. The solution? Submit to God and draw near to Him. (4:7-8)  This solution involves getting our "house" (ourselves) in order. Submitting to God includes resisting the Devil. By drawing near to God we also mourn for our sin. And mourning for our sin will lead us to humbling ourselves before the Lord. This is the solution, what were the problems?

The first problem was warring and fighting among the readers who were believers. Many were driven, not by God's Spirit, but by their inner cravings that led them to desire and covet what they did not have and to seek pleasure as a primary concern. No wonder they were fighting among themselves. Their self-centeredness naturally caused a conflict of interest between them as the self-interest of one got in the way of the self-interest of another. James' solution applies to this problem. Rather than submitting to God, they were submitting to the world. And submission to the world is about the fulfillment of our desires for pleasure and inner cravings which naturally leads to selfishness. We may try to convince ourselves that we can be a friend of the world while also submitting to God, but James dispells that argument by pointing out that friendship with the world is hostility toward God.

A second problem which would naturally flow from the first problem was criticizing one another. Such criticism, James points out, is to also criticize the law by making one's self a judge of the law. Furthermore, if one judges the law he is no longer a doer of the law, but a judge. But there is only one judge, God, who is also the lawgiver.

The same prideful thinking that leads one to judge the law also leads to the third problem which was for persons to assume control of their own destinies as illustrated in verses 13 & 14. Rather than submitting one's plans to God's will, such a person would make his own plans even a year in advance without confering with God and arrogantly assumed they would play out as he imagined them. What they should be doing was to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Again, the solution outlined by James applies - submitting one's self, and their plans, to God.

We often do not consider ourselves to have sinned if nothing bad can be attributed to us, but James tells us it is sin to know to do good and not to do it. More specifically, to know we should submit ourselves to God and not to do it, or to know friendship with the world is hostility toward God but to do it anyway, or to know that criticism of others is to place ourselves above the law but to do it anyway, are all sins.