James 4:1-10
Pride Promotes Strife
1 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.”
Humility Cures Worldliness
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, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
Humility is to be chosen over worldly pride if we are to follow and please God in the calling to which we have been called (Ephesians 4:1) in Christ. Pride seeks only to satisfy self and its desires to covet and gain more and more of what lasts less and less towards eternity. Such pursuits only engender fights against our own souls and those of our neighbors as we seek pleasure in letting loose our fights to gain what others have and often leads the ungodly to kill to take from others or at least hate them and speak evil against them to get what they have and we seem to lack. These useless fights and skirmishes can lead to all-out wars and only bring further lack of what we really need, peace with God and man, contentment in godliness (1 Timothy 6:6-8), and the obtaining of all we need for life (Luke 12:29-31) and living that matters. Why then ask for or even demand things we do not need just to spend what we gain on the passing pleasures of sin? Such friendship with the world and its pursuits only leads to spiritual adultery as we love things instead of our Lord who gives us all things we need richly to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17) and makes us appear as His enemies. The Lord is jealous for our complete and undivided devotion and loyalty because we are made in His image for His glory and not for ourselves in opposition to Him which is often just more idolatry and immortality as we see throughout the reading of the Old Testament. We have been called to better things (Hebrews 6:9) in Jesus Christ our sovereign Lord. We also read that the truth is found in the grace of God as He resists proud men and women but gives this grace to the humble who are satisfied in Him above all else that tempts us to worship and please ourselves at His expense. What can we do? Start by submitting to God’s authority according to His word. Resist the devil’s adversarial attempts to pull us away from Him back into sin, knowing that evil one will have to flee when faced with Christ in us as we trust in Him and lean on grace. As we draw nearer to God we know He draws nearer to us while we cleanse ourselves from seeking sin and purify our hearts within according to the implanted word (James 1:21) that saves the soul. If we truly humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord for Him to see into our hearts being transformed by grace and obedience, then we can be assured He will lift us up and carry us on until we meet Him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12, 1 John 3:2-3) at last! Knowing these things, do we then continue to seek worldly pride in self-seeking to gain what we can only lose or godly humility in obedience for the things which we cannot ever lose?
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