When you allow the lusts of the flesh to control you, then you become a lover of the world and an enemy of God. We will always ignore one to attend to the other. God tells us that we cannot serve two masters. Within the Christian is God’s Holy Spirit and man’s sinful nature. This is the same war that Paul wrote about in Romans 7. It can be a physical war, but I believe he is talking about a spiritual war. In this chapter the writer is speaking of a war. This is a common theme throughout the Bible: the Creator has been discarded so that worship and idolization of the creation becomes more important (Romans 1:25).

However, without this humility and a spirit-filled view of how your life should be lived, you are full of the desire to have more to consume for your own purposes. When you are close to God you have Spirit-led desires. The author is teaching that humility and friendship with God are the way to draw closer to Him. Here are some of the topics covered in the chapter. When you don’t do what you know is right, then you are sinning against God. Humility will cause you to include God’s will in your future plans.įinally, it all boils down to doing what you know is right according to God’s revealed Word. Don’t allow pride to make you think you are above the law and beyond God’s reach. This humility comes through the Holy Spirit controlling your actions. He does this when you become humble and ask Him to cleanse you. However, God still loves you and desires to draw you closer to Himself. You have these desires because you have become a friend of the world. You are going around in circles by either not asking or asking outside of God’s will. And, when you do ask, you ask for the purpose of your own lusts and desires. This is because you do not ask appropriate things from God.

You lust and desire to have things you think are best for you, but the result is war and fighting. I am not attempting any kind of accurate translation. My purpose is to show you the logical progression. My Paraphraseīefore looking at the chapter in detail let’s look at the progression of the chapter in a quick summary. In the book there is an assumption that the reader has already yielded his life to Christ for salvation and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. In James 4 there is a logical progression throughout the chapter, while still allowing some verses to cover individual topics.Īs we look at this chapter, it is important to remember that the book of James is written to Christians. Many subjects are handled quickly and succinctly in the book. Part of the reason for this is that James is like Proverbs in that many of its verses really stand alone in their content. James is a book that many of us know random verses from, yet we tend to not really know the book that well.

Book of james study outline