The Wrong Kind of Love
James 4:1-6
All love is not good… and some friendships are potentially devastating. By giving us this word of warning, the Bible stands in stark contrast to the culture of our day that tells us “all love is positive and all friendships are healthy.” But there are wrong kinds of love and deadly forms of friendship. The most natural and consuming love (especially in our day) is love for self. We feel such pangs to be respected and admired, to be honored and esteemed, that when we bring this attitude to church, everything seems wrong. In the true church, it’s not about us and our lusts for recognition and esteem – it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the Center of all things in the church and those who call Him Lord delight in this fact. But those who don’t will rage and seethe within their hearts until they are either converted or they look for a place where Christ is not so exalted.
James has this latter group in mind when he writes in chapter four. Look at James 4, beginning with verse 1. This is a description of a life where self is exalted and Christ is debased. It’s the wrong kind of love. In honor of God and His Word, let’s stand for the reading of these verses.
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” [NKJV]
[Prayer] This passage is so helpful because it targets the source of sinful conflict. If you’re struggling with conflicts in your work relationships, conflicts in your home with your spouse, or conflicts in the church, these verses will provide abundant wisdom. According to James, we need look no further than our own hearts to find the primary source of most rancor and conflict we see around us. It begins with the wrong kind of love… a love of the world. Notice what it promotes:
I. Love of the world promotes conflict with others (4:1).
The opening question of verse one has no verb in the original language. It literally says, “Where quarrels and where fights among you?” The translators have added different verbal clauses to show a relationship between the results here and the source in the next sentence. My NKJV says “Where do wars and fights come from…”; the NASB says “What is the source…”; and the NIV says, “What causes…” So these different translations are striving to draw a causal link between the question in verse one and the source in verse two. The answer is that wars and fights come from sinful desires within us, not merely from the circumstances or people around us.
“Wars” and “quarrels” is from the word polemos, from which we get our word polemics. This refers to prolonged disputing and argumentative combat as we sometimes see in a debate or in a heated courtroom battle. Both of these terms, “wars and fights”, are used metaphorically to describe violent personal relationships. It describes a person who goes to violent extremes when crossed. Unbelievers feed this inner beast and it gets stronger and stronger. When these sinful attitudes aren’t restrained, they can ultimately lead to murder (as he mentions in v. 2).
The way these wars and fights are related to love of the world is that James uses the phrase “friendship with the world” or “love of the world” to describe the affection of an unbeliever. The affection of an unbeliever is aligned with the world, even though they may give “lip service” to Jesus and the church. There were undoubtedly members within the churches to whom James wrote who were in the church while guarding and cultivating friendships with the world.
We’ll cover this again in verse 4, but understand what James is saying about friendship with the world and the misplaced affections of unbelief. To be a friend of the world doesn’t mean you’ve cultivated friendships with unbelievers; that may be a very good thing. Most of us know and have worked with unbelievers and even have family members who we know are unbelievers. We can be friends with them while remaining steadfast for gospel truth. Rather, friendship with the world speaks of a person’s attitude toward the things of this world: the world system, the worldly lifestyle, its materialism, its sinfulness, and its high regard for self and low regard for obedience to Christ (like Demas). This worldly kind of love leads to angry, self-centered, vengeance.
The rest of verse 1 goes right to the source of these wars and conflicts: “Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” In this verse, James makes clear that the source of internal and external conflicts is rooted in the misdirected pleasures of unbelief. Pleasure here is from the same word where we get hedonist. It is used here negatively of lower, base pleasures: sensual, carnal, prideful desires. These sinful desires overwhelm the person who has no relationship with Jesus. The Bible portrays the unregenerate as slaves to their desires and tyrannized by their passions. These lusts for recognition and glory and pleasure create an unquenchable thirst for vengeance in the hearts of the unredeemed. But knowing Jesus in the biblical sense, in the saving sense, means a decisive break with this carnal love for the world system and its beguiling pleasures. He goes further in verses 2-3…
2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
In these two verses we have the second major point:
II. Love of the world provokes contention within your self (4:2-3).
Worldly love not only promotes conflict with others, it provokes contention within your self. Notice how many times the pronoun “you” is repeated in these two verses. When there’s sinful strife and contention everywhere you go, the first place James tells us to look is “you, you, you.”
Look at verse 2: “You lust and do not have.” The lust in view here is any strong desire in a sinful direction. James doesn’t mention an object for this lustful desire because it doesn’t matter. When any strong, sinful desire isn’t gratified, the worldly person wants to lash out in malicious ways, even to the point of committing murder in some cases. The religious Pharisees who lusted for the praise of men and the honor of people had a reputation for virtue and even holiness, but in their hearts they yearned to murder Jesus. Religious unbelievers received the strongest words of rebuke from Jesus. He called them white-washed sepulchers… full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. They loved the world’s praise and used God and religion as a façade to mask their own hypocrisy. They were so in love with the world and its praise that they had no room to hear the words of Christ.
And so with the Pharisees, James says “You murder and covet and cannot obtain.” When the lusting person cannot achieve his desired goals—whether for reputation, or social status, sexual gratification, money, power, or whatever – the result will be harmful to others and destructive to oneself. Remember the men of Sodom at the door of Lot’s house? Even when they were struck blind by the angels, they were so intoxicated with their perverted lust that, ignoring their blindness, they continued groping for the door in a vain attempt to gain entrance to satisfy their unrelenting passions. That’s lust out of control. Then James says, “You fight and war.” It all goes back to a self-exalting love. Marital strife, family conflicts, job disputes, church splits, political wrangling—all of these are usually the result of unsatisfied personal lust and envying.
When a person’s heart is not set on Christ, they don’t see Him as the Source for all they need in this life. Therefore, they don’t come to Him in times of need. He says “Yet you do not have because you do not ask.” Instead of asking the Giver of every good and perfect gift, they look for ways to get control through fleshly avenues. “If someone offends me, I’ll punch their teeth out!” No! This is not the response of those who know Jesus Christ! So even if they do ask, if their heart is wrong toward God, they will ask with the wrong motives. Look at verse 3: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” Even if you bring God into the equation, it’s still all about you. The religious pagan will attempt to use God to advance their own fleshly pursuits. But this kind of asking doesn’t receive anything from God but contempt. God is calling His people to get over themselves and to experience something much more glorious!
If your highest form of pleasure is walking through a hall of mirrors and admiring the view, then Christianity and heaven will be a great disappointment to you. You would be miserable in heaven! Christianity is for those who yearn to forget about themselves to see and savor the magnificence of Jesus Christ above all other things. True believers want to have the attitude of John the Baptist who said, “He must increase and I must decrease.” This produces the attitude of Paul who said, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” The only answer to the lustful self-centered vengeance that creates misery, contention and bitterness everywhere it takes root is self-denying love for Jesus Christ. Love of the world provokes contention within your self. But radical self-abnegation is the believer’s key to abundant joy as we grow more mature in Christ. Finally, in verses 4-6 James gets to the real heart of the problem:
4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Here’s the bottom line:
III. Love of the world produces enmity with God (4:4-6).
That’s the foundation for all self-exalting envy and bitterness in the world. When Christ is not your first love – not first chronologically, but first in superiority – then the world will drive your passions to self-promoting enmity with God. Anyone who professes to love Jesus and claims to have a covenant relationship with God through Christ while really loving the world (manifested by self-love) is committing spiritual adultery.
Therefore, James says in verse 4: “You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility or enmity toward God?” This is the wrong kind of love and a deadly kind of friendship. Remember, friendship with the world speaks of a person’s attitude toward the things of this world: the world system, the worldly lifestyle, its materialism, its sinfulness, and its high regard for self and low regard for obedience to Christ (again, like Demas, who left Paul and Christ because he loved this present world).
Verse 5 is both passionate and possessive: “Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?” This is the passionate language of the godly sovereign Bridegroom for His one and only spouse. Adultery is out of the question! He requires fidelity from those who name the name of Christ. The Spirit within believers yearns jealously. But, verse 6, He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” So James comes full circle. The antidote to spiritual adultery and friendship with the world is putting ourselves aside; in other words, it’s humility. God resists the proud… this is a picture of God in military array. God sets His battle forces – all the forces of heaven – against the proud. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what James is saying to us!
In these verses, James is telling us that lustful, murderous strife boils in the proud heart of self-seeking enemies of God. True believers will mortify this deadly rebellion before it kills them and they will fortify their hungry souls with the Word of God; but unbelievers will continue to starve their souls and feed the inner beast that will ultimately destroy them… and God will not only permit it to happen… He has promised that it cannot be otherwise.
And so I close with a crucial question: In these remaining days, which nature will you feed?
Let’s pray.
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
April 8, 2006
