Quarrels in the community arise from desires battling within the heart, producing coveting, conflict, and selfishly motivated prayer.
James 4:1–6
1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
2 You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Friendship with the world is not neutral compromise but hostility toward God and betrayal of covenant loyalty.
4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward 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 lives in us yearns jealously”?
The proud stand opposed by God, but the humble receive grace.
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
James summons the divided community to submit to God, resist the devil, draw near, cleanse, purify, grieve, and humble themselves before the Lord.
James 4:7–10
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. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Lament, 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 exalt you.
Slanderous judgment of fellow believers is condemned because it usurps the place of God, the only Lawgiver and Judge.
James 4:11–12
11 Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
12 Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
James rebukes arrogant planning that assumes control over time, travel, business, profit, and life itself.
James 4:13–17
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city, and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
14 Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
15 For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
16 But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
James concludes that failure to do the known good is sin, extending accountability beyond wrongful action to neglected obedience.
17 To him therefore who knows to do good, and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.