Chapter 4
| James: Chapters -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- |
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| 4:1 From where do disputes and quarrels come among you? Is it not out from the sensuous passions fighting inside your members? 2 You desire but do not possess; you kill and are eager to possess but are unable to obtain. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, that you may squander it in hedonistic pleasures. • 4 Adulteresses! Are you not aware that friendship with the world is hostility against God? Whoever, therefore, has chosen to be a friend of the world, has appointed themselves to be an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit that dwells inside of us greatly desires even to envy”? [g] 6 However, He gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud and arrogant, but gives grace to the humble” (Proverbs 3:34). • 7 Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Be present with God, and He will be present with you. Cleanse your hands, you who fall short, and possess purified hearts, you who are split in your souls. 9 Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into eyes downcast. 10 Humble yourselves inside the presence of the Lord, and He will lift you up. • 11 Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters. The one speaking against his brother or judging his brother, speaks against law and judges law. If you judge law, however, you are not a doer of law, but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you, then, judging your neighbor? 13 Come now, those who say, “Today or tomorrow, we will go into a certain city, and will spend a year there, and will trade and make a profit.” 14 You do not know what the next day might be. What is your life? It is just a vapor, appearing for a little while and then disappearing. 15 Say instead, “As the Lord desires [h], we will live as well as do this or that. 16 Now, however, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is malicious. • 17 Therefore, to him who is aware of doing good but does not do it, to him it is falling short [of God]. |
| Gospel Comments | Notes |
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| • Ruling Verse 10: Knowing the Father causes us to abandon the pride of our own twisted self-story. Submitting to God begins with acknowledging His presence with us, that He alone is our Source and our Salvation from all that opposes. It continues to no sufficiency in ourselves but all sufficiency in God. It envelops giving thanks inside of and for the sake of all things, that God shares our lives with us. Inside such submission of faith, we stand opposed to all the false-speaking of the evil one, his twisting of words, and he cannot but flee. • Speak Christ: The words of our inward story of self then become the words we speak into others, whether to build up as God’s dwelling place together, or to tear down as the evil one in our mouths. Our words impart the love of God shed abroad in our hearts (See Romans 5:5). • Ruling Verse 8: So-called “faith” without the actions of love is not faith. The “actions of love,” separate from acknowledging the Father as the One who loves, are not love (See 1 Corinthians 13:1-2). Faith in God energeoes through Love. |
g. The Old Testament reference is not certain; neither do we quite know what James means in his words here. h. The Greek word is thelema, always meaning “desire” or its synonyms in everyday speech. Translating it the “will” of God creates a religious hardness placed upon God that is not of Him. |