JAMES 4:2

The Bible says in James 4:2-3, “You lust and have not. You kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you have not because you ask not. You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts.” James did not pull any punches in this letter that he wrote to the believers. He certainly was not using flattery. He said they were lusting, they were killing, they were fighting, and they were warring among each other. He told it like it is. There is a time when you need to be both honest and blunt. James said that not only were these believers lusting, they were also killing. They were probably killing in the same sense that Jesus said we could become guilty of murder. Jesus said that we are already guilty of murder before God if we have hatred in our hearts. Evidently these Christians to whom James was writing were fighting and quarreling so much that they were even having hatred for one another. What a shame, and what a horrible testimony. Jesus said that we should have love for one another. He said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: when you have love one for another.”

We must get rid of our selfish desires. As Christians, they will only hinder. In a very real irony, it is the strong desire for something that will actually become a hindrance to finding and obtaining the very things that we need the most. Actually, James said that there are two reasons that Christians do not have certain things that they should have. One reason is that we do not ask for it. Prayer changes things. God answers prayer. Jesus said, “Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, you shall receive.” Sometimes we do not have what we ask for because we ask for the wrong reason. We should always qualify everything that we ask for with the thought, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine be done.”

James 4:3 says, “You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts.” To ask “amiss” actually means to ask in an evil way. “Lust” refers to a strong human selfish desire. “Lust” does not refer only to immorality. A strong selfish desire for money is a lust. Notice that there is a direct connection between selfish human desire and evil. It is no wonder that the holy God does not answer prayers that are based upon selfish human desire, what James calls lust.

It is so important; it is so critically important that we learn to surrender this selfish will that so easily comes out of our own members and our own being. We can only become what Jesus wants us to become by surrendering our wills to Him each day. The surrender of our wills to God is one of the things that we must do in order to follow Jesus. He was our example, and He prayed before going to the cross on Calvary, “Not my will, but thine be done.” The people of the world are full of selfish lusts, with nothing to help them to keep from becoming totally overcome by their own selfish impulses. If we do not learn to surrender to Him, then we will be just like those who are not even saved. There should be a difference between the saved and the unsaved. There should be a difference regarding our ability to not be overcome by our selfish will, and there should also be a difference regarding our affections.

James had more strong words for the believers to whom he was writing. He said in James 4:4, “You adulterers and adulteresses, know you 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.” In this chapter James has been talking about the problem of the strong selfish desires that can so easily overtake a human heart. These desires result in unanswered prayer, and they result in fightings and quarrels among believers. They also result in believers acting and living just like unsaved people. One of the most significant traits and obvious characteristics of the people of the world is the existence of strong desires that lead them to compete with one another and to envy one another. As a matter of fact, “envy” is mentioned three times from the last part of James chapter three to this part of James chapter four. James 3:14 says, “But if you have bitter envying.” James 3:16 says, “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.” James 4:5 says, “The spirit that dwells within us lusts to envy.”

The word that is translated as “envy” is very revealing. It is the word for zeal. A person who has envy is a person who has great zeal to go after someone else or to go after what someone else possesses. One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbors.” To have envy is to break that commandment. Again it all happens because of the strong selfish desires that this flesh is heir too. Envy leads to many other sins. Some stealing and some lying result from envy. Some murder and some vandalism also result from it. The world accepts envy as a normal part of human life. Sometimes the world calls envy competition. Much of the competition in the world is envious in nature and is based upon the selfish human lust to acquire and to possess at the expense of one’s neighbors.

In James chapters three and four we have seen some things about human beings that are not too good. We have seen some very graphic descriptions of the negative side and the sinful side of human nature. But thank God that Jesus loves us in spite of these things. James 4:6 says, “But he giveth more grace, Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” After telling us how sinful we are, James then reminds us of the grace of God that is in Christ Jesus. One of the qualifications to receiving the grace of God is to understand your own sinfulness and the truth that you deserve nothing from God but judgment for your sins. “God resisteth the proud.” A person who admits their own sinfulness and need of grace will not be proud.

Grace is mentioned twice in this verse, and the fact that God gives grace is also mentioned twice. We do not earn grace. It is given to us freely because of Jesus and because of what Jesus did for us.

In chapter three and in chapter four James had already made clear certain important information about our relationships with those around us. He told us to watch out for the friendship of the world. He reminded us that if we do not guard our hearts closely, we will have bitter envy in our hearts that will result in strife and wars and fightings and confusion with our Christian brethren when we should be at peace with them. In the next several verses James will remind us of both God and Satan and how we can ensure that we are properly influenced by them. We want to increase the influence that God has on our lives, and we want to decrease the influence of the devil. How do we do that?

James 4:7 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” In this verse an important thing is said concerning how we can be sure to be rightly influenced by God, and how we can be sure to not be influenced by the devil. Concerning God, the Bible says that we should submit ourselves to God. There may be nothing more important than submitting ourselves to God. If you do not have submission to God, then in its place you will have rebellion, selfishness, and self-will; and all of these things will take you away from God and away from His will for you. Jesus told us to always pray to the Father, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” Another way of translating this verse is, “The fool has said in his heart, No, to God.”

The devil is much less powerful than God, but he is more powerful than we are. The devil is the god of this world. The devil has much power to control who gets certain riches and kingdoms and positions in this world. But in spite of all the power that the devil has, this verse shows one important thing in which we have power over the devil. We have the power of our own will. We have the power to say “No” to the devil. No one can make you do anything, if you are willing to resist long enough and hard enough. God has given you a free moral will. It is your will. You can and shall do with it as you choose. No one can make you do anything that you do not wish to do and do not choose to do. The phrase, “The devil made me do it,” is not accurate. The devil may have tempted you, but if you did it, it was because you chose to give in. You are responsible for your own actions. The nice thing to remember is that if you resist him, he will flee from you. When Reagan was president, his wife approved using in the anti-drug campaign the slogan, “Just say no,” in order to remind children and teens that they have the power to say “no” to drugs. Christians have the power to say “no” to temptation and to the devil.

It says in James 4:8, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.” The phrase, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you,” is an interesting phrase to consider. The indication is that sometimes we need to make the first move. That is true with some human relationships. Many a young man has learned concerning courting the girl of his dreams that if he does nothing, then they will stay forever separate; but if he sends her flowers, and writes a nice thank you note, and invites her to the ice-cream parlor it might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship and then even more. If anything is going to happen, someone must make the first move.

When we were saved, God made the first move. Jesus said in John 6:65, “Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.” When we were saved, the Spirit of God convicted us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment and drew us unto Jesus. Except He had done that, we would not have gotten saved. He drew nigh unto us, and then we were able to draw nigh unto Him. Now that we are saved, He wants us to do the same in regards to Him. He wants us to draw nigh unto Him first. Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”

In order to draw nigh unto God, it must always involve turning from sin on our part. That is why James said, “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts.” To draw nigh to God always involves turning from sin. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Notice that believers are still called “sinners” by James. We do not become perfect once we are saved. After having been an Apostle for many years, Paul looked at his own life and wrote in Romans 7:23-24, “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The Apostle John wrote to Christians and said in First John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” He also said in First John 1:10, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

James and John and Paul all agree. Christians are still sinners, and Christians need to keep repenting of their sins on a daily basis in order to draw nigh unto God. We repent of our sins when we first come to God, but we also need to live a life of repentance; knowing that the key idea behind repentance is to change our minds about our sins. That change of mind is a turning from sin and a turning towards God, and it must be done on a regular basis. That is the lesson that Jesus was teaching the disciples when He did the foot washing. Jesus was not instituting a ceremony. He was taking an event that occurred every day in that culture and teaching a spiritual lesson from it. Jesus said in John 13:10, “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.” If you are saved, then you are washed. But your feet still get dirty as you walk through the dusty roads of this world. Each day you must do what the disciples did. You must come to Jesus to be cleansed, so that you can be clean every bit. Those who most consistently walk with the Lord are not the strongest among us, but are those who are the quickest to turn to the Lord on a daily basis and even a moment-to-moment basis to be cleansed and to have fellowship with Jesus maintained. James wrote, “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.”

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