The 4th chapter of James focuses on worldliness. What is worldliness? According to the dictionary it is:
- 1. Of, relating to, or devoted to the temporal world.
- 2. Experienced in human affairs; sophisticated or worldly-wise: "an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere"
Ok, now we have a better understanding of that word but what kind of worldliness do we need to be concerned with? Listen to what James, the brother of Jesus says:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions[a] are at war within you?[b] 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![c] 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”?
Friendship of the world has to do with trying to walk that line...you know the one, the line that lets us put one foot in the world and the other in the Lord/church. Well, it will not work. We cannot be a friend of the world and be acceptable to God.
James says we have to "humble ourselves before the Lord and He will lift us up."
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