James 4
James 4 moves from false teaching about faith without works (chapter 2) and the power of the tongue (chapter 3) to something more intimate: the lusts warring inside us. The chapter is brutally honest. Where do quarrels come from? From your own desires. Why don't you have what you ask for? Because you ask amiss. You want to be friends with the world, but friendship with the world is enmity with God. The chapter reads like a sermon from someone who has looked hard at the human heart and found it fractured.
The cure is just as direct: submit yourself to God, draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you. Confess. Stop judging. Remember that life is a vapor. Accept that you don't know tomorrow. This is not complicated theology; it is a call to humility, to honesty, and to the recognition that God is with you if you are willing to stop fighting Him.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
James 4:1Wars and Fightings from Your Lusts
1From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
James does not point to external enemies. The wars and fightings are among you, in your community - and they spring from a place that is even more internal. Desires at war in your own members, your own body. This is the anatomy of conflict: it begins as a war within before it breaks out between people.
James 4:2-3"Ye Ask Amiss"
2Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
The cycle is clear: you want something, you don't have it, you want it badly enough to fight for it, but the fight doesn't get it for you. The first reason: you don't ask. The second: when you do ask, you ask amiss - wrongly, for the wrong motive.
Prayer is not a magical transaction where you name something and get it. God listens to the heart behind the request. He does not give you money to stay addicted to money. He does not give you a relationship to feed your self-worship. He does not give you power so you can dominate others. He listens to what you really want - and if what you really want is yourself, He honors that choice by letting you have it, without Him.
James 4:4"Friendship of the World is Enmity with God"
4Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
The language is shocking. Adulterers and adulteresses - a description of spiritual infidelity rather than literal conduct. You made a covenant with God. If you are clinging to the world's value system, its measure of success, its measure of worth, you are breaking that covenant. You are being unfaithful.
By "world" James means the system - the set of values that says: take what you can, love what flatters you, trust what you can see, protect yourself first (the physical creation, which God loves, is a different matter). It is the operating system of pride. And you cannot run two operating systems at once. You cannot run the code of heaven and the code of the world on the same heart.
James 4:5-6"He Giveth More Grace"
5Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? 6But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Against every impulse toward envy and lust inside you, God offers something more - more grace than you can account for. This is the pivot of the chapter. You have named your warfare, your amiss-asking, your divided loyalty - and now you are invited to something else.
James 4:7-8Submit Yourselves to God; Draw Nigh to Him
7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
This is one of Scripture's most beautiful promises: if you draw near to Him, He will draw near to you. He moves toward you when you move toward Him - the intimacy of presence, the warmth of a God who closes the distance.
James 4:8Cleanse Your Hands; Purify Your Hearts
Hands represent works; heart represents the root intention. You can do the right things with the wrong heart. You can refrain from sin externally while harboring it internally. James calls for both: the visible change (hands) and the invisible change (heart). Not one without the other.
James 4:9-10Humble Yourselves in the Sight of the Lord
9Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
The movement is always the same in Scripture: down and then up. You bow; God raises. You confess; He cleanses. You die; He resurrects. James is not calling for permanent sadness - he is calling for the moment of humbling, the acknowledgment that you cannot do this alone. And the promise is that this moment of lowness is not the end. He will lift you up.
James 4:11Speak Not Evil One of Another
11Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
When you judge another person's motives or character, you are not applying the law; you are sitting above it. You are positioning yourself as the authority. But the law is not yours to judge - the law is God's. There is one Lawgiver, James says next. You are not it. Neither am I.
James 4:12There Is One Lawgiver
12There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?
The question is an invitation. Who are you? Are you God? No. Do you have the authority to save or destroy? No. Then why are you judging? Step back. Let the One who is wise enough and good enough to hold that authority do it.
James 4:13-15What Is Your Life? It Is Even a Vapour
13Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
There is nothing wrong with planning or work. But notice the planning in verse 13: a year in a city, buying and selling and gaining. The speaker is assuming control of next year, next month, next week. They know exactly what will happen. James says: you don't know what tomorrow brings. Why are you planning as if you do?
The word for vanishing away is aphanizo - it disappears, becomes unseen. Life does not end with fanfare. It fades. Which is why the advice is to hold all plans lightly, with the constant awareness that you are not ultimately in control.
James 4:16-17To Him That Knoweth to Do Good and Doeth It Not
16But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
A small note before the final verse: boasting about your plans, your city, your gain - even this is evil, James says. It is the posture of someone who thinks they control the future. Let that drop.
The verse is often misunderstood as a general command. In context, it is more specific: you know what God is calling you to do. You have heard Him. You sense it. And yet you are not doing it. That refusal - that is what James is naming as sin.
This is the closing argument of the chapter. The weight here falls on knowing what you should do and choosing not to do it. A refusal is a choice you make with open eyes.