James Chapter 4
Effects of Self-Centeredness
4:1 Where do conflicts and disagreements come from? Don’t they come from pleasures at conflict inside you? 2 You want and don’t have, you kill and covet and can’t get, you quarrel and fight and don’t obtain because you don’t ask. 3 When you do ask, you don’t receive because you ask with the wrong motive: you ask so you can spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers, you know, don’t you, that friendship with the world amounts to hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be friendly with the world makes himself hostile toward God. 5 Do you suppose the scripture says for no reason, “The Spirit he put among us yearns to receive exclusive loyalty”? 6 He gives more grace, “God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble” [Pro 3:34 LXX]. 7 So submit to God. Resist the devil, and he’ll run from you. 8 Come close to God, and he’ll come close to you. Clean your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you with divided loyalties. 9 Be sad, mourn, and cry. Turn your laughing into mourning, and your lightheartedness into serious-mindedness. 10 Humble yourselves in front of the Lord, and he’ll lift you up. James 4:1-10
Ban on Criticism
11 Don’t gossip about each other. When you criticize your brother or sister, you’re acting like a judge. If you do that, you go from being a doer of the law to serving as a judge for the law. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge that can acquit or execute. Who are you to serve as a judge over your neighbor? James 4:11-12
Recognizing Your Dependent Place
13 Come, come, now, you that say, “Today or tomorrow we’ll go to such and such a city, spend a year, carry on business, make money.” 14 You don’t know what tomorrow holds. What’s your life but a vapor that appears for a while and vanishes? 15 You should say, “The Lord willing, we’ll live and do this or that.” 16 But you take pride in your bragging; that’s not right. 17 If you know to do good and don’t do it, you’re sinning. James 4:13-17