March 7 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 66—James 4:1–6

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"? ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Devotional:

Isn’t it striking that even though chapter 3 ends with peace, chapter 4 starts with quarrels and fights? "And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?" (3:18–4:1).

The wisdom from above is like seed. It produces a harvest of righteousness. But in order to produce a harvest of righteousness, it must be "sown in peace," that is, in the soil of loving Christian fellowship. And it must be sown "by those who make peace."

In order to set us on the path to reaping the harvest of righteousness, God exposes and calls us to wipe out the weeds of hostility in the church. The wisdom from below is also like seed. The harvest it produces, however, is "disorder and every vile practice," James 3:16. Those who sow it are not Christ-like peacemakers; instead they are marked by "jealousy and selfish ambition," James 3:14.

And—as God now insists in chapter 4—what makes this tick is the breaking of the third mark of genuine Christianity. Chapter 1 revealed three "leading spiritual indicators," three signs of a genuine walk with God—a controlled tongue; care for the needy; and cleanliness from the world (1:26–27). Chapter 2 applied the second—care for the needy. Chapter 3 elaborated on the first—a controlled tongue. Chapter 4 now applies the third—cleanliness from the world. "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?"

The topic that begins chapter 4, then, not only flows directly from the teaching of chapter 3, but it also applies the third sign of genuine faith—"to keep oneself unstained from the world."

Do you experience "quarrels" and"“fights" in your Christian relationships? They are signs of worldliness. They are reminders of our ongoing need of the grace of God in Christ.

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.