Who’s the enemy?
“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” (James 4:4 )
This verse almost makes it sound too simple; be an enemy with the world and you will be a friend of God. But as often happens when you pluck out one verse from the Bible you get the message only from the perspective of that one verse. Verses one through three of this chapter from James set the context of the verse in a different way.
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. “ (verses 1-3)
The problem then is not the world ‘out there’ but the conflicting impulses inside. If you give in to the impulses and desires that are not of God and not motivated by the fruits of the Spirit, you will be an enemy of God. But if you are ruled by God’s laws of love, compassion, mercy and grace, and live your life according to the fruits of the Spirit, you will never have to worry about God being your enemy. Nor will you have to worry about ‘the world’ tempting you into sin because you will have a strong defense against such ‘worldly’ things, Christ our Lord and God Almighty.
Verse 5 of this passage says “Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scriptures says ‘God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?’” God has set within each one of us the power and authority to defeat ‘the world’. Please note that it is IN each of us. Verse 4 makes it sound like the battle ground is outside of us; it is not. It is inside of us where our sinful nature is battling with our Godly nature; and the enemy, the true enemy, is inside of us. We are, to our potential downfall, our own worse enemy.
May the Lord who showed us what it means to live righteous lives and the Spirit who dwells within you win all the battles. Selah!
