Full Transcript

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. Every day, we struggle with living in this world without being of the world. Now, I know that that statement may be a bit confusing for some, but I know Paul will clear it right up in this podcast. Let’s get started. James chapter 4: Sleeping with the Enemy. I grew up in the Cold War era, as it’s known, the 1960s through the mid-1980s, when tensions were high globally between East and West, Soviet Union and the United States in particular.

These opposing world powers were always trying to gain the advantage over the other in technology and weapons and space exploration, and the influence they had over the rest of the world. Even if you’re younger than me, you’ve likely seen movies or TV shows set against the backdrop of the Cold War. One theme in many of them is the use of spies, and of course, because it’s a titillating theme for entertainment, many of those shows featured attractive female agents who were used to entrap officials or scientists or politicians, hoping to gain information or some advantage. The term for that, by the way, is honey trapping. The idea was to get a man into a relationship with a deep cover operative, and if possible, get him in so deep that he would share sensitive information. If he wouldn’t voluntarily, compromise him using photos that could be used as blackmail.

Both East and West used this technique to gain advantage when they found a likely target. There are some famous stories about it being used very successfully, too. In chapter 4 of his epistle, the apostle James calls out some early Christians for sleeping with the enemy, but in a spiritual sense, of course. In verse 4, he says something I think he wrote to jolt his readers. He says, You adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Why would he use such terms?

We need to compare some other scriptures to get to the right answer. Not to understand adulteresses. I think we all know what that means, but more for the way he uses the term world. That word has different meanings in the New Testament. Just as now, if you look up Webster’s definition for world, you’ll find several different meanings. For example, in Acts chapter 17, when the apostle Paul was in Athens speaking at the Areopagus, he said, The God who made the world and everything in it, He is the Lord of heaven and earth.

The God who made the world, in that case meaning the physical universe. Pretty sure James here is not coming down on people who love nature or who like studying the stars when he says friendship with the world is hostility to God. Then again, the apostle John writes in maybe the most famous verse in the Bible, God loved the world so much that He sent His one and only Son. In that case, world means humanity. God loves the people that He created that inhabit this world enough that Jesus came to save us. But again, James is certainly not speaking against our loving other people, that’s for sure.

So what could he mean when he says, Friendship with the world is hostility toward God? James is using the term world here in a very negative sense for the way people think and live who have no regard for God, where the highest goal is to please self and exalt self rather than to please God or honor God. It’s the spirit, the ethos, the mindset that is in willful ignorance or even rebellion against God. Paul used world similarly in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, where he wrote to believers, We have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God. Write that sentence. Keep in mind, James’ epistle here is written to those claiming to be followers of Jesus, to Christian believers.

It’s completely normal for those who don’t have that relationship with Christ, who’ve not made that commitment to Him, to have as their highest life objective to please self, to pursue selfish interests as the highest goal, to be enthralled with the temporary things of this world. And that’s James’ point. That’s the way of the world, the way people who don’t know God think and act. But it should not be the way believers think and act. If we do, think about this, if we do, James is saying God feels that as unfaithfulness to Him. There’s a great parallel passage to this, and by the way, usually the best way to understand Scripture’s meaning is to compare similar scriptures on the same topic or idea.

It’s 1 John chapter 2, another general epistle we’re going to get to in our study shortly. The apostle John there urged his readers in similar terms, beginning at verse 15, where he writes, Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, The love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, are not from the Father, but are from the world. And the world is passing away. Hear how John similarly used the word world repeatedly here.

Remember our definition? It’s the way people think and live who have no regard for God, where the highest goal is to please self and exalt self rather than to please God or honor Him. So James is saying that when we think and act like those who have no relationship or regard for God, God actually feels that like infidelity. This goes back to the beginning of time. How did the enemy tempt God’s first daughter, Eve, in the paradise of Eden? Wasn’t it by getting her to question God’s word and God’s goodness?

Wasn’t it to make her think obeying God was not really in her selfish best interest? God is just trying to hold you back, girl. He knows that if you eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, you’ll be as wise as He is. So put yourself first, Eve. Be smart. Do what’s best for you.

The writers of the New Testament often used the term world for just that, for a way of thinking, for values that might seem very well the best for us, but in fact are in opposition to God’s word and God’s will. For James to call someone an adulteress is pretty strong, yet its terminology God Himself used many times when calling out the unfaithfulness of His chosen people Israel in Old Testament times. And I’m pretty sure that’s exactly where James’ mind was when he was writing this here. In the book of Hosea, for example, in the Old Testament, God is pictured as Israel’s loving husband and his chosen people as his wife. But at that point in their history, most in the nation had adopted the thinking, the lifestyles, the values of the pagan world around them, and Hosea called them out for that. Here’s what he wrote.

He said, O people of Israel, don’t exult as nations around you do, that is, challenge God, for you have been unfaithful to your God, hiring yourselves out like prostitutes. Another Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, who was also trying to turn the unfaithful nation of Israel around, used the same kind of imagery when he wrote, You have been unfaithful to me, says the Lord, you people of Israel. You have been a faithless wife who leaves her husband. So James is using exactly the same kind of language that God himself has already used about his people in the past, and language many of us certainly ought to understand, because being cheated on really hurts. Anybody who has experienced it knows that. Having a marriage partner be unfaithful to you hurts badly and away like little else.

And God apparently feels like that. He wants us to know, cheated on, when we have responded to his love in Christ and made a commitment to him, and then turn around afterwards and love the things in this world, he says, are not important and are passing away more than we love him, and live by the same self-centered values and morals as the people around us who don’t even claim to know him. When believers do that, we are sleeping with the enemy. Whether or not we realize it, we have been honey trapped by God’s enemy, who has anything but our best interests at heart. Did you know that New Testament scripture writers use a very similar analogy for Christians in our age as the Old Testament prophets did in their time? They pictured Israel as the wife of God.

Both the apostles Paul and John use the term in the New Testament for Christians, the bride of Christ. So Jesus sees those of us who have accepted Him in this way, His beloved, those who He expects to be in a devoted, spiritually monogamous relationship with Him. Peter calls Christians in his first general epistle a chosen people, a people for God’s own possession. So James is asking our text, You do realize, don’t you, when you adopt the philosophy of the world without God, and you live an egocentric, please-yourself-first kind of life, you’re being unfaithful to Christ. You’re committing spiritual adultery. Don’t imagine that that does not hurt your relationship with Him.

Don’t be so foolish as to act like an unfaithful wife who would claim she does not know sleeping with another man would gravely hurt her husband. Verse five is a little hard to translate into English, but this is likely what James means when he says, Do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us’? I think more smoothly put into English, he’s saying, The Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, who He has made to dwell in us, earnestly desires us, in the sense of desires our devotion. He’s jealous for us. God is a jealous God, we’re told elsewhere, in the good sense of being jealous, jealous as a husband has the right to be who deserves the faithfulness of his beloved wife. It’s pretty eye-opening to think about our loyalties in these terms, don’t you think?

Too much of the time, we tend to, I think, compartmentalize things as if there are things that we can be selfish and self-serving about, things we hope God really doesn’t care much about, and other things that he may well care a lot about. But like a husband or a wife who wants to be in a good relationship is careful to learn all that pleases their spouse and careful not to hurt them by ignoring their interests and living independently and selfishly. James is urging us to think about our relationship with God just like that, to think about what pleases him in every area. When we don’t, God feels it as unfaithfulness because the world’s value system and ideals are, for the most part, hostile to his. They lead us away from him, damaging our relationship with him.

It’s pretty interesting, maybe even surprising, to see the things James then uses as examples in this chapter of what he means by worldliness. It’s funny looking back for me because when I was growing up in a very conservative Christian environment, worldliness seemed to be defined as almost exclusively related to the popular culture, like going to the movies or certain kinds of entertainments that were off limits, clothing and hairstyles, and also changing moral standards. I still believe, because God’s Word is clear on this, that immorality, for example, is sin. Living with someone you’re married to in an intimate relationship is sin, or engaging in homosexual acts is sin.

Even though these things are widely encouraged and accepted as normal in the world today, but other things like hairstyles and clothing styles or going to the movies and certain kinds of entertainments, things that often seem to be the definition of worldliness in, say, 1970 American Christianity, those things were way too superficial or way too defined. So look at the examples that James gives us here in this section. At the beginning of chapter 4, he brings up fighting and quarreling with other people because we are trying to get our selfish way. Our fights with other people, he says, come from the wrong desires inside of us. He says the selfish need to have things go the way we want, the selfish desire to have something like the attention or recognition that someone else is getting.

To James, who remember again is writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit, that’s an example of worldliness, trying to push your personal agenda over the top of other people, getting into arguments, falling out with folks when they don’t agree to go your way. That’s an example of worldliness, he says. I don’t think James is talking about actual murderers he’s heard about or wars, as some translations put it at verse 2. He’s using figurative speech. He’s talking about when people, in this case sadly Christians, get into conflicts and say things like, I was mad enough to choke that guy. I’ve been around situations, even in churches, I hate to say this, but even in churches where people have gotten into open conflicts, and I’ve seen professing believers so angry when things didn’t go their way.

All sense of peace was broken. All sense of unity was broken. All sense of the bigger picture was lost because somebody had to have their way or there was going to be a war. James says, People like this, even their prayers are selfish. It’s their selfish pride acting out that causes these angry conflicts. That’s just the way people behave who don’t know God.

But this should never be seen among God’s people. After all, bearing with one another and patience with others, staying humble and putting a premium on unity, these are the evidences of the Holy Spirit in us. We’ve already learned that. Blessed are the peacemakers, right? In verses 11 and 12, James gives another example of worldliness when he writes, Brothers and sisters, don’t slander anyone. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.

When you judge the law, you’re not keeping it. You’re sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. He’s speaking of God, obviously. But you, James says, who are you to judge your neighbor? Again, probably not the classic way worldliness has been thought of among Christians, at least not in my experience.

But James says when we verbally attack other people, judging and condemning other people, that is wrong. It’s not only not constructive, but we’re so out of tune we don’t even realize we are actually assuming a role that belongs to God alone. Only God knows what’s going on inside people’s hearts and minds. Only God knows the motives. Verbally attacking and judging the motives of people we disagree with is how people who don’t know God behave. That’s worldliness, again on display.

I should add, though, he’s not talking here about judging false teachers who we are called upon in the Scripture to judge. He is talking about situations when we get crossways with other people, especially other believers, and we attack them or verbally slander them to make them look bad so we can get our way. Man, if you think these examples are a little off the beaten path of how Christians often think of worldliness, listen to this third one, beginning at verse 13. Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into this city or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. You don’t even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Our lives are like a mist that appears for a little while and then it vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, If it’s the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or do that. As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes, and all such boasting is evil. I’ll be honest with you. Before thinking about this passage for this podcast, I never really tied this to the big idea about worldliness. But James is tying it. It seems rather normal for us to make our plans and yak confidently about them to other people, doesn’t it?

But that’s just it. Worldliness, the way James is asking us to think about it, is often just acting and behaving in the ways the rest of the world sees as normal. So he asks, Isn’t this presumption? Isn’t this an example of categorizing our lives into parts we imagine God doesn’t need to be involved in, or maybe doesn’t care about, over against the more spiritual areas that pertain to Him? Isn’t that, at its root, self-centered and arrogant? Our very lives depend on God.

Any chance of our plans succeeding depend on God. The I’m in control of my life and I’m the boss of it kind of thinking, isn’t that just another display of worldliness? How are we any different from others who don’t know God when we think like that? Come on now, James urges. Think more deeply about this. Wouldn’t it be far better?

Isn’t the way we should plan ahead be prayerfully and humbly and with God’s will for our lives as the highest goal? I don’t know about you, but this whole chapter makes me completely rethink what worldliness even means. And it helps me bring into focus how much God wants to be involved in all the areas of my life, Lord over all the areas of my life, controlling how I behave toward others and how I speak about others, how I make plans for my future, all of it. James is calling on God’s people to repent of such worldly attitudes. That’s why he writes here, Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, the one who wants us to think, act, and independently of God.

Think and act like everyone else in the world. Resist that, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. By double-minded he means living with divided loyalties rather than being faithful to Christ alone. Grieve, mourn, cry if you realize you’ve let this happen, James says.

Change your laughter into mourning, your joy to gloom, and humble yourself before the Lord. A modern translation puts James’ call to repentance like this: Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord. I hope you have noticed that when we talk about what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Christ, on our podcast, we usually use terms like, Receive Jesus as your Savior and Leader, or Accept Jesus as your Savior from sin and turn your life toward following Him.

James clearly believed that becoming a Christian means more than taking out a fire insurance policy against hell by agreeing with some propositions about the historical Jesus. James sees the crucial decision as a turning away from who we used to be to a follower of Jesus in earnest. James sees it as humbling ourselves before Almighty God and saying, I’m ready to do things Your way, no longer the world’s way. For those of us who have made a commitment of ourselves to Christ because we believe He is the way, the truth, and the life, we should check carefully for how much of the world’s way of thinking and acting we are still indulging in. Are we double-minded? Are we still, in fact, sleeping with the enemy?

If so, James’ advice is, Return to God. Repent. Recommit yourself to be faithful in your relationship with Him. Remember, this world and all that’s in it is passing away. All of its wrong thinking, all of its wrong values, passing away. So pleasing the One who deeply loved us and sacrificially redeemed us should be our highest objective, both because of who He is and because our relationship with Him is forever.

This has been Paul for Share the Word. Paul, another great message. As I was editing and listening to this podcast, I thought, does anyone else ever feel like what you’re listening to is targeted directly at you? Well, you’re not alone. I feel that way every single time. This is what God does.

He uses each of us with our unique gifts to be able to share the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ. If you’re a new listener, please keep listening and check out all the podcasts at sharetheword.org. And if you’ve been a longtime listener, thank you for your support. Lastly, Paul, it continues to be an honor to be part of this great commission project and working with you and all the others to share the Word to the world. And to all of our listeners, we need your help and your gifts that God gave you to get the Word out that Share the Word is here. And since we’re crowdfunded, we could also use your financial support.

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