Submit Yourselves to God
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so 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, [An allusion to covenant unfaithfulness; see Hosea 3:1.] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, 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 he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us [Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously]? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”[Prov. 3:34]
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. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister [The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a believer, whether man or woman, as part of God’s family.] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Boasting About Tomorrow
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
NOTES:
4:1–12 The concern here is with the origin of conflicts in
the Christian community. These are occasioned by love of the world, which means
enmity with God (Jas 4:4). Further, the conflicts are bound up with failure to
pray properly (cf. Mt 7:7–11; Jn 14:13; 15:7; 16:23), that is, not asking God
at all or using God’s kindness only for one’s pleasure (Jas 4:2–3). In
contrast, the proper dispositions are submission to God, repentance, humility,
and resistance to evil (Jas 4:7–10).
4:1–3 Passions: the Greek word here (literally, “pleasures”)
does not indicate that pleasure is evil. Rather, as the text points out (Jas
4:2–3), it is the manner in which one deals with needs and desires that
determines good or bad. The motivation for any action can be wrong, especially
if one does not pray properly but seeks only selfish enjoyment (Jas 4:3).
4:4 Adulterers: a common biblical image for the covenant
between God and his people is the marriage bond. In this image, breaking the
covenant with God is likened to the unfaithfulness of adultery.
4:5 The meaning of this saying is difficult because the
author of James cites, probably from memory, a passage that is not in any
extant manuscript of the Bible. Other translations of the text with a
completely different meaning are possible: “The Spirit that he (God) made to
dwell in us yearns (for us) jealously,” or, “He (God) yearns jealously for the
spirit that he has made to dwell in us.” If this last translation is correct,
the author perhaps had in mind an apocryphal religious text that echoes the
idea that God is zealous for his creatures; cf. Ex 20:5; Dt 4:24; Zec 8:2.
4:6 The point of this whole argument is that God wants the
happiness of all, but that selfishness and pride can make that impossible. We
must work with him in humility (Jas 4:10).
4:11 Slander of a fellow Christian does not break just one
commandment but makes mockery of the authority of law in general and therefore
of God.
4:13–17 The uncertainty of life (Jas 4:14), its complete
dependence on God, and the necessity of submitting to God’s will (Jas 4:15) all
help one know and do what is right (Jas 4:17). To disregard this is to live in
pride and arrogance (Jas 4:16); failure to do what is right is a sin (Jas
4:17).
4:14 Some important Greek manuscripts here have, “You who
have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Why, what is your life?”
4:15 If the Lord wills it: often in piety referred to as the
“conditio Jacobaea,” the condition James says we should employ to qualify all
our plans.
4:17 It is a sin: those who live arrogantly, forgetting the
contingency of life and our dependence on God (Jas 4:13–16), are guilty of sin.
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