James 4:1–10 "Where Do Wars Come From?"

Introduction

It is said that no soldier ever comes home from war unchanged. The battlefield leaves its mark — on the body, yes, but more permanently on the mind, on the soul, on the relationships he returns to. Ask any veteran, and he will tell you: war does not end when the bullets stop flying his way. The scars remain. The nightmares remain. The lack of sleep remains. The trauma remains. The distance between him and the people he loves — that too, often remains, in many ways.

And like the soldier who carries his battlefield home with him, there are wars far closer to us than we would like to admit. Not wars fought with assault rifles, humvees, helicopters or in trenches, but wars fought with words, with silence, with a cold shoulder in the hallway after the worship service, with a secret grudge that is quietly fed and nursed for years. Wars and conflicts fought between brothers and sisters in Christ.

Last year, if you remember, I was preaching slowly, as I had opportunity through the book of James. We covered the first 3 chapters, and since it has been quite a while, I want to give you a quick recap to bring us up to speed. In chapter 1, James lays out for us what true religion looks like — not merely claiming the name of Christ, but being a doer of the Word we say we believe. True Christianity does not stay locked up in our hearts; it works its way out into our speech, our conduct, every relationship we have in this world.

In chapter 2, James turns to the sin of partiality, exposing the gap between what we profess and how we treat one another — because true religion is never only about what we say, but about what we do. Nothing James writes here contradicts the apostle Paul; we simply have to labor to understand James rightly, on his own terms, or we will land on conclusions neither he nor Paul ever intended. James does not teach that one is saved by faith and works, or any other combination of that; but his emphasis is that a true and genuine faith in the Lord Jesus will inevitably, work itself out into the open.

And in chapter 3, James turns his attention to those who teach the Word to others — providing a sobering reminder that greater knowledge brings greater responsibility, and greater responsibility brings greater judgment.

Now in chapter 4, James does something remarkable. He takes us from the platform as it were, from the pulpit to the pew. From the public dispute to the private heart. Public problems, James tells us, have private causes. A disrupted fellowship is the visible symptom; that’s what we see on the outside, but a self-pleasing, selfish heart is the hidden disease.

If the good life as he calls it — the harvest of righteousness — is ever going to be realized among God's people, there must first be a deep and penetrating work of transformation wrought upon the individual soul. What is hidden on the inside will always, eventually, show up on the outside.

So tonight, James asks a question that we all need to honestly ask ourselves: Where do wars and fights among us come from?

Read James 4:1–10 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. 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 purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

There are three major truths that I want us to consider from our text this evening. The first one is this:

1. Contentions Exist Even Among Genuine Believers

James 4:1 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”

Notice, first, that quarrels are a reality even among true believers. The word James uses for "quarrels" is the Greek word polemoi — from which we get our English word "polemic." It is war language. Battle language. It carries with it the very real idea of conflict, of combat, of one party set against another to destroy.

And perhaps your first reaction, like mine, is to wonder and ask: How can this be — among Christians?! How can James speak of war and battle among the people of God? Shouldn’t this be the exact community where that should be unheard of, not even mentioned? before we look at anything else; brothers and sisters it should grieve our hearts; sincerely, truly grieve our hearts that even among God’s people these things are still present...bickering, envy, jealousy, arguments, fights that result in division and fracturing of relationship. We should weep and mourn when we hear of these things, don’t entertain it; don’t laugh at it as if it is something trivial, just another piece of Gossip. It grieves the heart of God, and it should grieve our hearts as well with Godly sorrow.

But notice who James is writing to. He is not writing to the church at Corinth, or the church at Galatia, Thessalonika, or Ephesus. James is writing to believers scattered throughout the diaspora — Jewish Christians spread across an entire region, with no single address in common. Which means this is not some isolated case, some unfortunate exception limited to one troubled congregation. This, brothers and sisters, is a description of the church universal. This is us. And you know what, we need to remember this; if we are ever tempted to say, man I’m leaving this church; let me go to a church over out on the other side of Florida, or to another state or another country; as if somehow this problem is isolated to one congregation; there’s so much pride here, or whatever sin may be present. The reality is, no matter where you go, just stay there long enough; there will be remaining sin that will show itself in the life of a congregation.

And that is a sobering thing to sit with. Not only that sin still remains in the people of God — we know that already — but that it can rise, and swell, and boil over until it looks, in James's own words, like quarrels, like strife, like open warfare.

Think again of the soldier who returns from the battlefield forever changed. War leaves trails of death behind it. Separation. Loss. Wounds that never fully close, memories that surface at the most unexpected moments, years and even decades later. That is what war does. And James tells us that our quarrels — our petty grudges, our unresolved bitterness, jealousies, our sharp words spoken and never taken back, never repented of — they leave behind the very same kind of wreckage. They leave wounds. Scars. Deep, lasting damage to the body of Christ.

We live in an age of human history where physical murder — even murder of the tongue, even murder of the heart — has become almost commonplace, and tragically, the church has not been immune. It’s everywhere. Whether in your own experience, or simply flipping the channels on your remote or screen. And now, at the cusp of the 21st century, we are all facing and thinking about how things like Artificial Intelligence will forever change warfare in ways the human soul has not experienced.

Listen to 1 Peter 2:11 — "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul."

And Romans 7:23 — "But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." Do you see it? The quarrels James addresses among believers point us to something deeper still — a war being fought not only between one Christian and another, but primarily within every single one of us. The flesh against the Spirit. The passions against the soul.

This internal war does not stay inward. It spills out. It pours over into how we treat the people sitting next to us in these very pews. It pours into how we treat the person we share our very lives.

This is the raw reality of what it means to live as redeemed sinners in a fallen world — a constant tension between what we know to be good, and true, and beautiful, and what remains evil, false, and twisted within us.

The question that James addresses in this chapter presupposes that these conflicts exist within the community of God’s people.

So then — what is the source of these quarrels? from where do they come?

The Greek word James uses for "passions" here is ἡδονῶν / hēdonōn — the very word from which we get "hedonism." And in itself, this word is not automatically sinful. God has given us real, legitimate pleasures to enjoy in this life — rest, good food, good music, the laughter of friends, the joy of family, the pleasures of marriage. God is no stoic. He is no joy-thief. "At his right hand," the psalmist tells us, "there are pleasures forevermore." But here, James uses the word in its negative sense — sinful passions, waging war within us, crouching and ready to pounce on anything that stands between them and self-indulging satisfaction.

Listen to how James describes it: You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. And lest we think James is exaggerating, he is simply echoing the words that the Lord Jesus himself taught. When Jesus explained the sixth commandment, he did not stop at physical murder. He went further — anger is murder of the heart. Insults are murder of the tongue. Every dismissive remark, every name called under our breath, every cutting word — Jesus calls it murder. Was he exaggerating? You may be tempted to think so. But the Bible is clear. In his first epistle, John writes that everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, like Cain.

The root and source of the problem is not out there. It is in here — the human heart, curved in on itself, demanding its own way. And this is at the heart of reformed theology, isn’t it? A proper and biblical understanding of Sin. Our circumstances are not to blame. Not our upbringing. Not our parents, bad luck, the cards we were dealt or any other excuse our human hearts would like to contrive. Our Church confession states, all the descendants of Adam are “now conceived in sin and are by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, and partakers of death and all other miseries—spiritual, temporal, and eternal—unless the Lord Jesus sets them free” (6:3).

And yes, that is a description of the unregenerate person, everyone who is outside of Christ, dead in sins, under Adam, but even for believers with a new heart, a new nature, a new Master and Lord, under a new federal Head, Christ, there remains sinful corruptions even in us.

You know in one sense, Jeremiah 17:9 is not about believers because we have been given a new heart; but it another sense it still does include believers doesn’t it? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” There is still remaining sin in us brothers and sisters, that needs to be mortified; and Praise God, one day it will be fully and finally dealt with.

That is the first truth from our passage, Contentions exist even among true believers.

But that contention does not remain there, at a horizontal level with one another, our sinful passions even bring contention with God; and that is the second truth I want us to consider from James 4.

2. Contentions with God Come from Our Evil Passions

James is not finished. In verse 2, he turns from our quarrels with one another to something even more searching — our relationship with God, and specifically, our prayers. "You do not have," he writes, "because you do not ask."

Do you see the pattern? Instead of asking God, as we are commanded in scripture to take every petition, every request, every desire of our heart to the throne of grace, instead of that, we scheme. We strive. We take matters into our own hands — fighting, coveting, deceiving, grasping after what does not belong to us — and only when that fails, only as a last resort, do we finally turn to God. And even then, when we finally ask, James says, we ask wrongly.

James 4:2–3 “You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” .

Even our prayers are not immune to our sinful passions. We come to God the way a man comes to the bank after he has already exhausted every other line of credit.

Now, isn’t it interesting that James does not hand us a checklist here. He does not give us a tidy list of forbidden passions to avoid. And if you are anything like me, some part of you wishes he would! Just tell me the do's and dont’s. Often you’ll run into people who just want you to tell them what to do; just Tell me exactly where the line is, and how close I can get to it without crossing over. That is how our legalistic hearts want to operate. But James will not play that game, because this was never a matter of rules. It is a matter of the heart.

If I stood up here and read off a list of forbidden passions one by one, I suspect some of you would be sitting on the edge of your seat, holding your breath, waiting to hear if I mentioned that one thing — the thing you hold onto so tightly. And if I never said it, you would exhale in relief. I’m Safe. He didn't mention it. You might even elbow your spouse on the way out and whisper, "See, I told you there was nothing wrong with it." But that is not what James is after. This is not about a list of respectable sins and forbidden ones. It is about what is ruling your heart.

You've heard the phrase "respectable sins" — Jerry Bridges coined it in his well-known book by that title. But I would go further and say we often have polite passions. Ambitions and desires we pursue with a thin veneer of holiness draped over them. Maybe I should turn that into a book, polite passions. Don’t steal my idea.

Perhaps it is something good, like the desire to preach, to teach, to serve as a pastor, after all Paul says the man who desires the office of a pastor desires a good thing— and you tell yourself, even convince yourself, "I only want to serve God, I only want to teach his Word." But underneath, if you are honest, what is really driving you is the desire to be recognized. To be liked. To be respected. To be called "pastor." To be seen, front and center. That is an example of “polite passions.” And when others fail to recognize us the way we believe we deserve, those very same passions — now wounded — erupt into a little quarreling, a little arguing, a little scheming, a little bitterness. All in service of private pleasures we were never meant to worship, polite passions.

That is why James says we ask and do not receive — because we ask wrongly, so that we may spend it on our passions. Brothers and sisters, do not count on getting anything from God in prayer that is only going to serve our sinful pleasures. God will not give that.

And then, in verse 4, James does not soften the blow. He calls these believers adulterers — more literally, adulteresses. Marital unfaithfulness. He compares God's own people to a wife who has broken her wedding vows. This is not a new theme in Scripture.

Calling believers "adulteresses" in v. 4 draws on one of the Old Testament's most developed metaphors — Israel as God's unfaithful wife in Hosea, Jeremiah 3, and Ezekiel 16 and 23. James applies this same covenant-adultery language, previously reserved for national Israel, to the scattered New Covenant church, which is itself a biblical-theological move: the church inherits and continues Israel's identity as God's covenant bride (a thread that runs through to Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19 and 21).

Like Old Covenant Israel, God's covenant people, the church — the bride of Christ — can be, and often is, unfaithful to her husband. And yet. And yet God remains faithful. God preserves us, even as we chase after the world like an adulterous spouse chasing after other lovers.

But notice — God is not a husband who simply watches from a distance while his bride wanders. Look at verse 5: "Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, 'He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us'?" Now, this verse has troubled commentators for centuries, there is a bit of an exegetical discussion here on how to translate and interpret verse 5.

There are 2 issues here that I want to point out to you because they are important:

First, James writes that the Scripture says, and we would expect that he would quote a passage of Scripture but what he writes is actually not a direct quotation of any OT passage; this is most likely some sort of synthesis by James, the general sense of Scripture.

Secondly,there is some debate among bible scholars and commentators; some read and translate this verse as speaking only of the sinful envy native to the human spirit.

The translators from the KJB actually agree with this and translate the verse as follows:

King James Version Chapter 4

5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

But the majority of modern bible translations, at least the ESV, NKJV, NAS, NLT, and others rightly identify that this is not talking about the human spirit of man that lusts toward envy, but James is actually speaking about the Holy Spirit that dwells in every believer.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?

I believe James is pointing us to something far more precious than a diagnosis of our own jealousy. He is pointing us to the jealousy of God's own Spirit, dwelling within us.

But think of what that means. James 4:5 ““He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?”

The very Spirit of the living God has taken up residence in you, in me, in every true believer. And that Spirit does not sit by indifferently while we wink and flirt with the world. He yearns. He longs. He jealously desires the whole of our affections, the way a faithful husband cannot bear to share his wife's heart with another man. This is not the cold jealousy of insecurity — it is the jealousy of covenant love, the very jealousy that God claimed for himself at Sinai: "I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5). The Spirit who dwells within you will not quietly tolerate your adultery with the world. He opposes it. He grieves over it. As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:30 — "do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."

So here is the wonder of it all brothers and sisters. Even as James exposes our wandering hearts, our polite passions, our quiet flirtations with the things of this world, he does not leave us to wonder whether God has given up on us. No. The Spirit himself remains. He does not withdraw from the unfaithful bride — he pursues her. He convicts her. He will not let her rest easy in her adultery. That jealous love of the Spirit is not evidence that God has abandoned his covenant people. It is proof that he never will.

But now comes the best part. Verse 6…James 4:6 “But he gives more grace.

This is the 3rd and final truth I want us to consider tonight:

3. God always has more grace to give

English Standard Version Chapter 4

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

7 Submit yourselves therefore 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, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

9 Be wretched 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.

Submit; Resist; Draw near; Cleanse; purify; Be wretched; mourn; weep; humble yourselves; be turned around.

By my count, there are 10 imperatives in the greek language. James, in effect, is pointing his finger and saying do this, do this, do this!

Here he actually gives us a long list of things to do. But brothers and sisters, my friends, don’t miss verse 6… “But he gives more grace.”

Don’t rush into the responsibilities and duties that God calls us to do without the power to be able to carry it out. The remedy for all unrighteousness, is a humble receiving of divine Grace.

One of my favorite hymns speaks of this in thhe opening line — "Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise" — is exactly that image: grace as an unceasing, flowing fountain, poured out on undeserving sinners.

God has a deep deep well of Grace that can never be exhausted; even as his children, we’ve entertained some heinous sin, allowed our sinful passions to get the best of ous, there is still more grace, and yet more grace to be found in Jesus Christ.

You will never come to God and find him lacking. He will never say to us, I’m sorry, i don’t have anymore to give you.

James focuses on the need that we have for a continual inflowing of grace, the grace provided by that same spirit that yearns jealously within us.

That is why James writes, James 4:6 “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.””

Here James is quoting from Proverbs, the same passsage that Peter records in his first epistle. Brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you and challenge you… memorize this verse this week… only 10 words; “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” How much good will come from remembering this verse the next time you are tempted to bitterness, lust, slander, gossip in your heart. God opposes all of that, but he gives grace to the humble. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be an enemy of God, I want to be on his side. How many divorces, broken marriages, broken homes could have been avoided, by believing what this verse teaches us… when I’m tempted to complain, to yell at my spouse or hurl all sorts of hurtful coments, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

What incredible comfort is here for us in verse 6; I wish we could park here and stay here for a few days.

But James does not let us park there. And neither does true grace ever leave us where it finds us. Watch what happens next — because right on the heels of "he gives more grace," James hands us ten imperatives, back to back, without pause. Submit. Resist. Draw near. Cleanse. Purify. Be wretched. Mourn. Weep. Humble yourselves. Is that a contradiction? Grace on one hand, commands on the other? Not at all, brothers and sisters. This is exactly how grace has always worked in the true gospel. The grace that saves us, is also the grace that sanctifies us.

Submit yourselves therefore to God (v. 7a). The very war James described back in verse 1 — passions warring within us, at odds with one another — that war ends the moment we stop resisting God's rightful rule and surrender the whole battlefield of the heart to him as King.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (v. 7b). Notice the order. Submission comes first, resistance second. We do not have it in ourselves to stand toe to toe with the enemy of our souls. We resist him only from a posture of dependence on the Lord — not in our own strength, but his.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you (v. 8a). This is not a bargain. This is not James telling us to earn our way back into God's good graces. This is the fruit of verse 6 — because he gives more grace, we can draw near at all. And he promises to meet us there.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded (v. 8b). Do you hear the echo? Back in chapter 1, James called us double-minded, unstable in all our ways. Here he calls for the whole person — hands and heart, the outward and the inward — to be washed clean. Not a surface change. Not a Sunday performance. A cleansing that reaches all the way down.

Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom (v. 9). This is not James being morbid. This is James calling for real repentance — not the polite, tidy, minimize-it-and-move-on repentance we're so prone to, but a repentance that actually grieves over sin the way sin deserves to be grieved over. We should not laugh at what ought to break our hearts.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you (v. 10). And here James brings us full circle — back to that Proverbs quotation in verse 6. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. This is not a new idea invented by James. This is the pattern woven through the whole of Scripture — from the Psalms, to Isaiah, to Mary's song in Luke, to the very words of Jesus himself: whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. And ultimately, brothers and sisters, this is the pattern of Christ. He humbled himself, even to the point of death on a cross — and God exalted him, gave him the name above every name. If humbling comes before exaltation for the Son of God himself, why would we ever expect a different path for ourselves? First the cross, and then the crown.

Conclusion

So, brothers and sisters— where is the war in your heart tonight? Is it a grudge you've been feeding in silence? A polite passion dressed up in respectable clothing? A prayer life spent asking God to bless what your flesh already wanted? Do not walk out of this room tonight still clutching it. Submit. Resist. Draw near. He gives more grace.

And if you are here tonight and you do not know this God — if you've never once humbled yourself before him, if the very idea of "friendship with the world is enmity with God" describes exactly where you stand — then hear this: the door is not shut. The grace James describes tonight is not reserved for those who have already cleaned themselves up. It is grace for sinners. It is grace for the proud who are willing, this very evening, to stop being proud. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Which one will you be tonight?

Let's close in prayer.

BENEDICTION

"And now O Lord, rain down righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness grow with it; So that your people may be mature and complete, never lacking anything."