What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?  Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body’s parts? ² You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. ⁴ You ADULTERESSES, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose, “the spirit that He has made to dwell in us yearns with jealousy”? ⁶ But He provides greater grace, for which reason it is said, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives such grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come close to God and He will come close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you (Jam4:1-10).

Within the opening verse there are echoes of Paul in Rom7 where he wrote of the conflict between the spirit and the flesh (wrongly understood by many to be referring to the Holy Spirit and the flesh). There are no lexical ambiguities in Peter’s brief reference to this subject where he speaks of “fleshly lusts that war against the soul” (1Pet2:11). James is citing this internal battle between the God-given spirit and the lusts of the body to be the cause of the fighting, disputes and hostilities that had arisen amongst the believers to whom he was writing.

Note the feminine

James’ accusations, referring even to lusts that result in murder, might suggest he was addressing a pagan audience, but that simply cannot be the case. Firstly, because like all the New Testament epistles, this is a pastoral letter, but secondly because he refers to his audience as “adulteresses”, i.e. in the feminine. This is obscured in some translations, e.g. the King James Version, which translates Μοιχαλίδες as “adulterers and adulteresses”, and the International Standard Version as simply “adulterers”. Frankly such translations are theologically inept, implying that James has inter-human adultery in mind. That may have been another of his addressees sins but it is not what James is referring to here. As just stated, the use of the feminine (adulteresses) affirms that it is God’s chosen people to whom James is referring. In the Old Testament, Israel was often depicted as an adulterous wife,  whilst in New Testament terms, the Church is regarded as the bride of Christ and in Revelation becomes His wife.

Befriending the world

Such an understanding of what Christians are (and one day shall be) can be a helpful prerequisite to the key message of this passage, which for many is the most challenging. That is what James writes concerning believers who are “friends of the world” becoming the enemies of God. Don’t misunderstand James: Christians should be friends of the earth (cf. Rev11:18b), but not friends of the κόσμος^G2889, i.e. the current world order and its way of thinking and acting. For those who are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” are unsurprisingly intended to be pilgrims in this spiritually barren land. As Peter also wrote: “we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2Pet3:13). I have highlighted “new earth” for reasons that will follow shortly.

In explaining his statement concerning loving the world being at enmity with God, James adds the statement in verse 5 which I believe is best translated as “Do you think that the Scripture says to no purpose, “the spirit that He has made to dwell in us yearns with envy”? Given that he is addressing Christians, James could be referring to the Holy Spirit, for JHWE declared Himself to be jealous concerning Israel’s idolatry – so might the Holy Spirit be aggrieved at the believer’s love of money and possessions which the bible on several occasions refers to as idolatry. The quoted scripture (from where, no one seems to know) could equally be referring to the human spirit á la Rom7. That is the God-given spirit provided to everyone (cf. 1Thes5:23) that continually strives with the flesh within Paul’s “body of this death”. In either case the Holy Spirit is able to give more grace to the Christian, at least to those who show humility by acknowledging their need of such divine enabling (v6).

The physicality of the Christian’s destiny

In terms of why I highlighted “new earth” in Peter’s statement, it is to make the point that it is not morally wrong to wish for material comforts and pleasures. We are material beings, and after a temporal period of what the bible describes as “sleep” following physical death, shall always be so. “For I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed”. In terms of exactly how we shall be and what we shall do, the Scriptures provide limited information. But we do have the witness of the One described as the firstborn from the dead (Col1:18). We know that in His resurrection body Jesus ate breakfast with His disciples and moved around in an extraordinary fashion. He had earlier stated that He looked forward to sharing wine with His disciples in His Father’s kingdom (Mt26:29).

So whilst in the age to come, God’s elect (in particular) will no doubt encounter unfathomable spiritual blessings, given that they are the corporate Bride of Christ they shall no doubt also enjoy material privileges and benefits, superior but not necessarily alien to what the privileged and wealthy within the current world order experience. The point James is making to his readers is don’t strive for, still less live for such material benefits right now. In the case of those who are being prepared to be the Bride of Christ, that is a form of idolatry. Strive rather for God, for Christ, His kingdom and His righteousness, trusting that the One  who feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies will ensure that the essentials of life are provided for as long as God intends us to sustain our pilgrimage on earth.

I am the first to acknowledge that much of this is more easily said than done, but an awareness of the eschatological matters I have raised hopefully makes James’ exhortations more intelligible and with God’s grace more attainable.

Author’s Facebook page HERE