Daily Bread 2011 - James 4
Submit Yourselves to God
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
What Does This Mean?
As the church has been displaced because of difficulties, James (the brother of Jesus and a prominent member of the early church) writes this letter to correct some of the early practices in the church. Among those were people who reasoned, “Since we are saved by grace it doesn’t matter what we do, after all we’re forgiven.” Paul reasons against this in the book of Romans, as James does here as well.
In the first couple of verses, he gives some real practical instruction about what causes fights among us. What is it? Our own attitude of “I want what I want when I want it.” He is confronting an attitude of entitlement that we see quite pervasive today as well. He is also confronting an attitude that sees God as a just a means to get what I want. Bottom line is that James is confronting a “worldliness” that has crept into the Church. Perhaps due to the trials they were under, or the fact that they had been displaced, but James wants them to get back to an authentic relationship with God. He gives them an incredible promise that we would do well to remember, “Come near to God and He will come near to you!”
When we authentically seek God on His terms, not just so we can get what we want when we want it, God gives us His grace and His very presence. This is what we really need more than anything.
What Does This Mean For Us?
These passages remind us how zealous God is to have all of us. God doesn’t just want us on Sunday mornings, or when we are in bible study, He wants all of us all the time. Just like the Christians in the early 1st century, we also have desires that battle within us. The bible calls this, “our flesh”. Our fleshly desires are always warring against what God wants to do in us and through us, by His Spirit. James says, “This Spirit that lives within us envies intensely.” Once we are God’s child by faith and are baptized, we are now part of God’s family. We have a new identity. The old has gone the new has come. God has residency within us.
What this also means is the Holy Spirit who is your guide and comforter, is also your “convicter”. Meaning when you start to stray, the Holy Spirit will remind you of who you are and that you don’t need to go there. Of course we can quench the Spirit, but as we listen to the Spirit there is life and freedom and we begin to mature and become more like Christ. This is the Christian life that begins when one comes to faith and ends when Jesus takes us home. We all need strong leaders like James’ that calls us back to the way of life we first started when we professed Jesus as Lord. Do you have someone in your life asking you the hard questions?
Gracious God, we pray for the power of the Spirit in our lives to conform more to Your desire for us, than the desires inside of us that often cause us to me more in love what the world says that what you say. Change our hearts and lives as we draw near to you, and we know you will draw near to us, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
What Does This Mean?
As the church has been displaced because of difficulties, James (the brother of Jesus and a prominent member of the early church) writes this letter to correct some of the early practices in the church. Among those were people who reasoned, “Since we are saved by grace it doesn’t matter what we do, after all we’re forgiven.” Paul reasons against this in the book of Romans, as James does here as well.
In the first couple of verses, he gives some real practical instruction about what causes fights among us. What is it? Our own attitude of “I want what I want when I want it.” He is confronting an attitude of entitlement that we see quite pervasive today as well. He is also confronting an attitude that sees God as a just a means to get what I want. Bottom line is that James is confronting a “worldliness” that has crept into the Church. Perhaps due to the trials they were under, or the fact that they had been displaced, but James wants them to get back to an authentic relationship with God. He gives them an incredible promise that we would do well to remember, “Come near to God and He will come near to you!”
When we authentically seek God on His terms, not just so we can get what we want when we want it, God gives us His grace and His very presence. This is what we really need more than anything.
What Does This Mean For Us?
These passages remind us how zealous God is to have all of us. God doesn’t just want us on Sunday mornings, or when we are in bible study, He wants all of us all the time. Just like the Christians in the early 1st century, we also have desires that battle within us. The bible calls this, “our flesh”. Our fleshly desires are always warring against what God wants to do in us and through us, by His Spirit. James says, “This Spirit that lives within us envies intensely.” Once we are God’s child by faith and are baptized, we are now part of God’s family. We have a new identity. The old has gone the new has come. God has residency within us.
What this also means is the Holy Spirit who is your guide and comforter, is also your “convicter”. Meaning when you start to stray, the Holy Spirit will remind you of who you are and that you don’t need to go there. Of course we can quench the Spirit, but as we listen to the Spirit there is life and freedom and we begin to mature and become more like Christ. This is the Christian life that begins when one comes to faith and ends when Jesus takes us home. We all need strong leaders like James’ that calls us back to the way of life we first started when we professed Jesus as Lord. Do you have someone in your life asking you the hard questions?
Gracious God, we pray for the power of the Spirit in our lives to conform more to Your desire for us, than the desires inside of us that often cause us to me more in love what the world says that what you say. Change our hearts and lives as we draw near to you, and we know you will draw near to us, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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