Image: Textures, 2021, Greensboro, NC
James 4:4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James 4:7–10 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.
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It's pretty hard imagining a modern pastor speaking these words, using this tone, to his congregation. Now, that's not necessarily a good thing. Jesus certainly didn't shy away from "firing for effect" when the situation demanded it. He turned to Peter, after his somewhat condescending comments regarding Jesus' future, and soundly rebuked him: "Get behind me Satan!" Talk about being set back on your heels! Jesus was actually showing mercy to Peter. He was awakening him to the subtlety which Satan can use to lure us away from right thinking. James is doing nothing less here.
James is worried about his people. His central concern is "double-mindedness" ( ch. 1:7, 4:8), the deadly trap of trying to live with one foot in each world: the world of Christ's Kingdom, or the world of the flesh and the devil. We must not think that this circumstance is unusual. Every church is infected with this plague to some degree and, truth be told, perhaps the majority of so-called Christian congregations are dominated by it. Again, like with Peter, the essential problem is the subtlety of the sin.
Every time a Christian gathers with his brothers and sisters, he brings worldly thinking to the gathering. Christians live the majority of their lives engaging the world. They live in secular neighborhoods among very worldly neighbors. They work in the fiercely competitive economy for people and among people, who are actively devoting their lives to Mammon. They cannot escape the political environment and they have been mostly educated in institutions that sneer at the Christian faith. The most common coping mechanism Christians employ is to "bifurcate" their worldview. They put their Christianity in a little box marked "private" and they only open that box when gathering with their brothers and sisters in the church.
Necessarily this results in "double-mindedness". Keeping their faith "private" means that Christians actively "make friends" with the world. (vs. 4) When the world is "at ease" with a person it is because that individual poses no threat to it. There are no points of friction. There are no distinctions made within the group. The Christian, though perhaps unconsciously, is influenced by the worldly values, opinions, and priorities that control his worldly circle. Since in normal practice, he spends much more time in that world than in Christian fellowship, he is deeply impacted by worldly thinking. This is what he brings to the Christian fellowship. This is how an entire Christian congregation can, and not uncommonly, does become dominated by worldly thinking.
How else can it happen that a church can be ripped apart by "wars and fights" within it? (vs. 1,2) There can be no unity where worldly thinking predominates. Look at the world itself! Is there unity there? Do we see peace in the sphere of the flesh and the devil? Of course not. Thus we can be certain that when Christians are dominated by impulsive passions ("pleasures", vs. 3), of whatever type, rather than sober consideration grounded in a thorough submission to God and His Scriptures, then Satan not only has a foothold, he may be in their master.
That is why James calls on his flock to "draw near to God."(vs. 8) They must "resist the devil" (vs. 7) because he is certainly present. They must choose: either to be friends with God through Jesus Christ, or friends with Satan and enemies of Christ. There is no middle ground and James cuts them no slack at all. (vs. 4) No sane person would consciously choose Satan as a friend over God. But that's the whole point. It is seldom "conscious" and it is always insane. We must be awakened to our deadly peril. "Double-mindedness" is so common as to be just part of the air we breathe. Like the proverbial frog in a pot that doesn't sense the rising temperature of the water in which he is immersed, we are imminently at risk of spiritual death.
Therefore we must heed James' admonition. We must awaken to the tokens of worldly thinking in our individual and corporate lives. We must resist the temptation to "judge" in the sense of negative assessments of other Christians' worth. We must actively pray for humility even while trembling at how God might answer the prayer. But most of all, we must take Christian thinking and Christian teachings into our secular precincts. It may cost us a few "friends" but we can bet that those were the very ones who had been leading us astray. Christ deserves our entire person and His church deserves our utmost concern for her purity and peace. Let us put away "double-think" in all its forms and serve our Christ in single-minded devotion.
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