James 4:4 – 5
INTRO – When a person is genuinely converted by God, God pledges His love to them and they repent of their sin,
trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior and pledge their love to God.
God tells them that “They have eternal life and will never perish.” He tells them that “They have eternal life and
will never be condemned.” He tells them, “No one can snatch them out of His hand.” He tells them, “Never will I
leave you; never will I forsake you.” And “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate them from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Because God is faithful to His promises and does not lie, He is totally devoted to those who trust in the Lord Jesus
Christ to save them from His wrath. And God wants and expects total love and devotion from those whom He has
saved by His love, grace and mercy through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately those who have repented of their sin, trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior and
pledged their love to God are not always faithful to keep their promises to Him. And that is what James is speaking
about in these verses. James says,
James 4:4, 5, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone
who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without
reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?”
THEME - GOD WANTS OUR TOTAL DEVOTION
PRINCIPLE #1 - IT’S POSSIBLE FOR CHRISTIANS TO NOT BE TOTALLY DEVOTED TO GOD.
James 4:4a, “You adulterous people ...”
In the OT the chosen people of God, the Israelites were called the ‘bride” or “wife” of God. (Deut. 31:16, Is. 54:5).
When the Israelites, God’s chosen people, God’s bride refused to worship and obey God exclusively and began to
worship idols the prophets described it as “spiritual adultery”.
When the Israelites, God’s chosen people, God’s bride of Jesus’ day were disobedient and unfaithful to God’s law
Jesus called them a “wicked and adulterous generation.” (Matt. 12:39)
In the NT. Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom (Matt. 9:15) and Paul says that the Lord Jesus Christ is the
husband of the church. (II Cor. 11:2, Eph. 5:22, 23) Those individuals who have repented of their sin, trusted in and
received the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
So we who have received the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior are called the Bride of Christ and we are called to
love Him and obey Him exclusively.
When a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is unfaithful in their love and devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, they are
guilty of spiritual adultery.
So when James calls these Christians, “adulterous people” he is directing his rebuke at those Christians who were
unfaithful or not fully devoted to their covenant with the Lord Christ. He says,
James 4:4b, “... don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”
This is a question of rebuke and calls for an affirmative answer. Yes friendship with the world is hatred toward
God.
What does James mean by “the world’? He means the unsaved people in our society, Satan, our desires which
come from our sin nature, and everything in our culture which is anti-God.
What does James mean by “friendship with the world”? First of all, James is not saying that we should not be
friends with the non-Christians around us. Nor is James saying that we should avoid all contact with non-Christians
and non-Christian businesses. Because Jesus said,
Matt. 22:39, “… the second greatest commandment is to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Matt. 7:12, “do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
And Jesus prayed this for His disciples …
John 17:15, “Father ... My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil
one..”
Friendship with the world implies that a Christian has adopted the same values and the same goals as the world. In
other words the Christian has adopted the same values and the same goals that Satan, the unsaved people living around
them and their sin nature have.
The purpose of Satan, unsaved people and a person’s sin nature is to love, glorify and enjoy themselves by doing
what they want when they want to do it rather than loving, glorifying and enjoying God by obeying His commands.
The people of this world think as little about God and life after death as they can. To them Jesus Christ is a swear
word not a person to love, worship and obey. They seek their riches and their pleasure in this life on earth, because
they do not believe in life after death.
They do not believe they will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell. So their motto is eat, drink and be merry for
tomorrow we die. They are much more concerned about satisfying their sinful nature and impressing the unsaved
people living around them than pleasing God.
Therefore if Christians the Lord Jesus Christ’s bride adopts the values and goals of Satan, the unsaved people living
around them and their sin nature it would mean that the Lord Jesus Christ’s bride has goals and values which are
completely incompatible with the goals and values of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ’s goal for Christians, His bride is that they love Him, honor Him, glorify Him and enjoy Him
forever. (I Cor. 6:20, 31; Phil. 4:4) by obeying His commands.
Jesus said,
John 14:15, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”
John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.”
John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.”
John 15:8, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
John 15:18, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love
you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is
why the world hates you.”
Since the Lord Jesus Christ’s commands are incompatible with pleasing Satan, the unsaved people living around
them, and their sin nature, Christians must make a choice. Are they going to use their lives to love the Lord Jesus
Christ, honor, glorify and enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ by obeying His commands or are they going glorify and enjoy
themselves by pursuing the goals and values of Satan, the unsaved people living around them and their sin nature.
If a person chooses to use their life to pursue the goals and values of Satan, the unsaved people living around them
and their sin nature, they are taking up a position of opposition to God. As a result James says,
James 4:4, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone
who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God ...”
This text emphasizes the truth that the Christian makes a deliberate choice of his will to choose the world over Christ
which makes him an enemy of God.
The Christian usually gets involved with the world gradually through deliberate choices of their will.
1) They become friends with the world and people who are anti God (James 4:4)
I Cor. 15:33, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
2) They begin to compromise areas of their lives to get the approval of their friends who are anti God.
3) They begin to love the world.
I John 2:15-17, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is
not in him. For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the
boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its
desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”
3) When they love the world, they become conformed to its goals and values.
Yet the Apostle Paul told the Roman Christians
Rom. 12:1, 2, “… I urge you, brothers in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and
pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
APPLICATION - When we admit we are a sinner in need of a savior and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as God in the
flesh who lived a sinless life, died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and rose bodily from the dead and receive
Him as our personal savior, we become the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. We form a relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ that calls on us to love Him more than we love anything or anyone else. We are called to make a complete
commitment to him and to obey Him exclusively.
Yet the world, unsaved friends, Satan, and our sin nature do their best to woo us away from our complete love and
devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. They will us good things as well as bad to tempt us to be unfaithful to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
So each of us must make a choice: Are we going to be loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ by loving Him, honoring Him
glorifying Him and enjoying Him by obeying His commands or are we going to be unfaithful to the Lord Jesus Christ
and have an affair with this world? We cannot divide our affection between God and Satan, the unsaved people around
us and our own sin nature.
Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to
the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” We cannot serve both God and this world.
THEME - GOD WANTS OUR TOTAL DEVOTION
PRINCIPLE #2- GOD IS JEALOUS WHEN WE DON’T GIVE HIM OUR TOTAL DEVOTION.
James 4:5, “Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely. But
he gives us more grace.”
EXPLANATION - There are two primary interpretations of this verse.
A) The human spirit which indwells you yearns to envy but He (God) gives more grace.
This, interpretation would mean that because of the fall, man’s spirit or man’s sinful nature envies intensely. Even
in Christians, there is a natural tendency to be envious and jealous of others, and to do that which is displeasing in the
sight of the Lord. The natural bent of everyone is toward evil, but God’s grace is able to overcome man’s envy.
B) The Holy Spirit who indwells you jealously yearns for you and He gives more grace.
This interpretation means that the Holy Spirit imparted to us by God at conversion, yearns enviously for our total
love, loyalty, devotion, obedience and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ and He will give us the grace to be totally
faithful and devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Jerusalem Bible interprets this verse like this,
James 4:5, “The Spirit which he sent to live in us wants us for himself alone.”
This interpretation would mean that the Lord Jesus Christ longs for the entire, undivided devotion of those He has
redeemed, those who know him as their savior and Lord.
I like this interpretation, because it fits with other scriptures. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandment, He
said,
Ex. 20:2-5, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other
gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the
earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord
your God, am a jealous God.”
God is a jealous lover who will tolerate no rival. God told the Israelites
Ex. 34:14, “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
Yet the Scriptures tell us …
Deut. 32:16, “They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.”
Zech. 8:2, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I am very Jealous for Zion, I am burning with Jealousy for her.”
God has a special love for believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the bride of Christ because He chose them before the
foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. He sent His Son Jesus Christ from heaven to earth to
suffer and die for their sins so they could have eternal life in heaven with Him. He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell all
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ as a down payment to prove that He would give them everything He promised them.
So God has the right to be jealous for the complete and undivided love and devotion of believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He has made them for Himself and redeemed them with the precious blood of Jesus Christ therefore He loves
them with such a passion that he cannot bear to have his bride love anyone or anything more than they love him.
APPLICATION - What things or people do Christians have in their lives which come between them and God? Money,
pleasure, sports, church, family?
ILLUSTRATION - A. W. Tozar asked certain questions which will give us an indication where our supreme love
might be. 1) What do I want more than anything else in the world? 2) What do I think about the most? 3) How do I
spend my money? 4) What do I do with my leisure time? 5) What kind of company do I enjoy? Spirit filled
Christians, Carnal Christians, unbelievers? 6) Whom and what do I admire the most? Do I admire people with Godly
character or people with money, expensive toys, prestige, and power?
It is awfully hard to be and to remain totally faithful and totally devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ in our culture.
Many people believe the church in Laodecia is a description of the church today. Jesus told the church in Laodecia
Rev. 3:13-17, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So,
because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich; I
have acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind
and naked.”
God desires the absolute loyalty of his people and he will take stern action against them if they betray his love by
Being unfaithful.
Rev. 3:19, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.”
THEME - GOD WANTS OUR TOTAL DEVOTION.
PRINCIPLE #1 - IT’S POSSIBLE FOR CHRISTIANS TO NOT BE TOTALLY DEVOTED TO GOD.
PRINCIPLE #2- GOD IS JEALOUS WHEN WE DON’T GIVE HIM OUR TOTAL DEVOTION
SPECIFIC APPLICATION - As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, We should examine our lives daily to make sure
that we are seeking to love the Lord with all our heart, and with all our soul and with all our mind. We should seek to
make Him the first love of our life. We should seek to demonstrate our love for Him by obeying His commands and
seeking to bring honor and glory to His name.
We must be very careful not to love and devote ourselves to our material possessions, our families, our pleasure,
our recreation and fulfilling our own desires rather than loving and devoting ourselves to God. We must be careful not
to put our trust in our talents and our possessions rather than in trusting in God’s promises. We need to live very
carefully, we must remember we are married to a jealous husband who will rebuke and discipline us for our own good.