James

4.1-17

James had just given a series of triple illustrations for keeping control of our tongues; 3:3-5 horse - ship - flame, 11-12 fountain - tree - vine, 15 earthly - natural - demonic. He now transitions to the control that must be exerted over the nature that wars within us, "waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body" (Rom 7:23). Simply put, James says the reason we aren't able to resist our need to argue with others is a problem within ourselves.
Again, using a triple illustration, he says, you lust, you envy, and you do not ask or ask with wrong motives (vv2-3). These represent the affair we have in our hearts with the things of the world, which place us in an adulterous relationship with God. Our conflict with others because of our selfishness is evidence of our enmity with God (v.4). James sets the road map to control this nature in vv7-11, between the bookends of scriptural authority (vv5-6, 11-12). If we believe we are justified in continuing to argue with, or more specifically, to speak slanderously against a fellow Christian, we are doing this in defiance of scripture. We are defying God by taking His place, as "there is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy" (v12a). What better sarcastically rhetorical question to conclude this point would James ask than, "But who are you to judge your neighbor?" (v12b).
The wisdom of the final five verses of this chapter (vv13-17) deserves meditation rather than commentary. Please consider them prayerfully as you seek to have God abide within you by His Word.

CHAPTER 4

Draw Near to God

1 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?
2 You lust and do not have, so you murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”?
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.”
7 Be subject 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 miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
11 Do not slander one another, brothers. He who slanders a brother or judges his brother, slanders the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it.
12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor?

Life Is a Vapor

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”
14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 Therefore, to one who knows to do the right thing and does not do it, to him it is sin.