James Series (9)

James 4:1–12 CSB

1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? 2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. 5 Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. 7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 Don’t criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer defames and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

So far in James he has in chapter 1 showing us faith tested and lived out with the key idea of real faith indoors real faith listens to God and real faith lives wholly. In James chapter 2 he talks about faith without favoritism and his key idea in chapter 2 was saving faith always shows itself through action and then in chapter 3 James talked about faith and the tongue. With the key idea faith changes how we speak and what kind of wisdom we walk in ,now in chapter 4 he kind of switches off of talking about the leaders and he begins to talk to us about faith and humility. The key idea of this chapter is that faith submits to God and humbles itself before him and that's not just for leaders that's for every person who has a true relationship with Christ. Up to this point, James’s focus has been primarily on symptoms—favoritism, empty faith professions, uncontrolled speech, and invalid claims of wisdom. Now James will look at the underlying cause of these symptoms and will, more importantly, suggest the solution to the problem.

The first ten verses of chapter 4 become the climactic point of the entire epistle. Specifically, verses 6 through 10 represent the height of James’s exhortations to his readers. In a letter filled with authoritative commands, these are the supreme necessities, for here James bares the soul of his purpose in writing. This passage thus serves as the climax for those who see a unifying purpose in the epistle, which is what I have argued throughout. Here, the apostle will press his case to the heart of the matter, which, as we shall see, is just that—a matter of the heart.

4:1 You can’t have peace if you’re constantly at war (3:18). According to James, his readers engaged in fights among themselves. What caused them? What was the source? Ask people why they’re fighting, and they’re likely to point their fingers at others. But James insists that wars come from your passions that wage war within you. Conflicts emerge from within.  Your desires for pleasure that war in your members: The types of desires that lead to conflict are described. Covetousness leads to conflict (you lust and do not have). Anger and animosity lead to hatred and conflict (murder).

 Again James looked back to the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus also used murder to express more than actual killing, but also as an inward condition of heart, shown outwardly by anger (Matthew 5:21-22).

 “The word kill [murder] is startling and meant to startle; James sought to force his readers to realize the depth of the evil in their bitter hatred toward others.” Yet you do not have: This points to the futility of this life lived for the desires for pleasure. Not only is it a life of conflict, but it is also a fundamentally unsatisfied life. This is the tragic irony of the life lived after worldly and fleshly desires; it never reaches the goal it gives everything for. This helps us to rationally understand the folly of living life after the lusts of the world and our animal appetites. You are tempted to fulfill a sinful desire because you think (or hope) that it may be satisfied, but it will never be satisfied. Why not accept your lack of such satisfaction now, instead of after much painful and harmful sin? Yet you do not have because you do not ask: The reason these destructive desires exist among Christians is because they do not seek God for their needs (you do not ask). James reminds us here of the great power of prayer, and why one may live unnecessarily as a spiritual pauper, simply because they do not pray, or do not ask when they pray.

“If you may have everything by asking, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is, and I beseech you to abound in it… Do you know, brothers, what great things are to be had for the asking? Have you ever thought of it? Does it not stimulate you to pray fervently? All heaven lies before the grasp of the asking man; all the promises of God are rich and inexhaustible, and their fulfillment is to be had by prayer. We have to pray.

. You ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures: After dealing with the problem of no prayer, now James addressed the problem of selfish prayer. These ones, when they did ask, they asked God with purely selfish motives.

 We must remember that the purpose of prayer is not to persuade a reluctant God to do our bidding. The purpose of prayer is to align our will with His, and in partnership with Him, to ask Him to accomplish His will on this earth (Matthew 6:10

Matthew 6:10 CSB

10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

 “When a man so prays he asks God to be his servant, and gratify his desires; nay, worse than that, he wants God to join him in the service of his lusts. He will gratify his lusts, and God shall come and help him to do it. Such prayer is blasphemous, but a large quantity of it is offered, and it must be one of the most God-provoking things that heaven ever beholds.”

Spend is the same verb used to describe the wasteful spending of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:14 Destructive desires persist, even if we pray, because our prayers may be self-centered and self-indulgent. . A helpful question to pose when we pray about something for ourselves is this: “How will God’s program be advanced through the granting of my request?[1]

Luke 15:14 CSB

14 After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.

So, Church James reminds us that the battles we face—whether in our homes, our churches, or our own hearts—are not just surface-level skirmishes. They are spiritual conflicts rooted in unsurrendered desires. But we, as a Holiness people, know that God calls us not just to be forgiven, but to be cleansed—to live in the fullness of entire sanctification, where our hearts are wholly His.

This passage is not just a mirror to show us our need; it’s a call to the altar. A call to lay down every selfish ambition, every carnal craving, and say, “Lord, not my will, but Yours be done.” Because when we pray with pure hearts, aligned with His will, heaven listens—and the Spirit moves.

Let us leave this place not just stirred, but sanctified. Not just convicted, but consecrated. May we be a people who no longer fight to be right, but who live to be holy. For in holiness, there is peace. In surrender, there is power. And in Christ, there is victory.