A Greater Grace

James 4:1-10

Where do the conflicts and where do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, from your passions that battle inside you? You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask; you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions.

Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy. Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning”?

But He gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” So submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter into mourning and your joy into despair. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

As much as we might like to be completely free from sin's presence in this world, the fact is that God delivers us from the penalty of sin and from its power, but allows us to struggle with the reality of its presence as part of our spiritual growth process. James hits this struggle at its source in a highly convicting passage -- but he doesn't leave us without hope. He lays a "grace greater than all our sin" right alongside his convicting words.

James bluntly observes that quarrels and conflicts come from the fleshly passions that remain at war within us even as Christians. Lust, envy, and a desire to be friends with the world, lead to murder, conflict, and idolatry. These are selfish desires that are in contrast to serving others as James has previously noted in 1:27; 2:14-17; and 3:17-18.

James wants his readers to do what we know is right (4:17) - serving with no room left for selfishness. He uses a strong comparison - that a person who decides to be a friend of the world is making himself an enemy of God. The verb choices are key here: God doesn't make this person an enemy; he chooses the world over God and in the process demonstrates hostility toward God, placing himself in the position of an enemy of God. Both choices are the individuals, not God's. James' bottom line here is that we cannot have a heart inclined to choose the world and be a friend of God. A heart inclined to love God will not love the world -- and will reject the lust, envy, and selfish desires James addresses in this section.

These are powerfully convicting words, and yet God offers a two-fold solution:

• A jealous, guarding Spirit (v. 5)
• A greater grace (vv. 6-10)

God's jealous Spirit won't tolerate the idolatry of loving the world more than God. This is a hard passage to interpret since we're not sure exactly where this Scripture comes from - but at least one thing it means is that God's Spirit won't allow the believer to be content loving the world more than God. That "divine jealousy" will cause a yearning that will not be satisfied with the world. Simply put, a worldly believer will be miserable in Spirit.

The grace that James speaks of is like that Paul highlights in Titus 2:11-14: not the grace of salvation, but the grace of sanctification. Specifically, this grace gives believers the power to:

• Submit to God (v. 7)
• Resist the devil (v. 7)
• Draw near to God (v. 8)
• Cleanse our hands (v. 8)
• Purify our hearts (v. 8)
• Mourn over sin (v. 9)
• Humble ourselves in God's presence (v. 10)

This is a beautiful picture of God's enabling us to do what He requires of us. The passage states that God "gives grace to the humble" -- and that humility comes when, by His grace alone, we recognize our utter incapability and His complete ability.

Grace, grace, and more grace. That's at the heart of becoming a friend of God.