Faith Bible Fellowship

Dear friends,

We continue in our study of James this week in 4:1-6—

4:1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or 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”? 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? – (NIV) 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

James takes off the gloves here and uses strong language to describe what happens to us and our community when we quench the Spirit, and give our feelings over to pride, selfish ambition, and envy. He uses figurative language to emphasize how destructive such sinful attitudes can be to our spiritual and physical family. Think of what Cain did to Abel or David to Uriah and his wife because of envy and pride. Read over Romans 7 as a description of what we struggle with as Christians; what we don’t want to do, that is the very thing we do. Only belief in the grace of Christ can lead us to victory as seen in chapter 8, just think – “no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”
Since our flesh fights against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh inside of us we must rest in the humility and grace of Christ to resist our evil inclinations. Murder and adultery begin in the heart. Sin first comes as a thought, we nurture it in our ambition and pride and then when the opportunity arises, sin takes physical action. The deceiver will paint sin as a wonderful and liberating activity just as he did with Eve in Genesis 3.
This week study James 4:1-6 with a good dictionary, prayer and a determination to discover the deception of sin in our own lives. We are all capable of great evil and we must resist the devil as seen in Ephesians 6. I want us all to walk in spiritual health and peace, no matter what our physical state may be. Do not lose heart in growing in the grace of Christ. He is here to help us become more like Him.

See you Sunday,

Lee