Module 35: Christian Experience Part 3
James - Christ and His Ethic; and Philemon - Christ and Social Relationships; and Jude - Christ the Perfect and Perfecting Lord
James Chapter 4
Part D: FAITH AS A PRINCIPLE OF PURITY IN CHARACTER - 4:1-4:17
D.1. The Failure - 4:1-4:5
1. Wars and Fightings
2. Arising from Lust
3. Issuing in Envy
4. Daring to lay Tribute on Prayer
1 Where do wars and fightings amongst 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.
4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility towards 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"?
D.2. The Correction - 4:6-4:10
1. The Gift - 4:6
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
2. The Responsibility - 4:7-4:10
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.
D3. The Principle - 4:11-4:17
1. Toward Man - 4:11-4:12
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?
2. Toward God - 4:13-4:16
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 vapour 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.
3. Summary - 4:17
17 To him therefore who knows to do good, and doesn't do it, to him it is sin.
Footnotes
- Verse 6
- Proverbs 3:34