Friendship w/world = Enmity w/God

Click here to listen to this sermon.

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 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. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 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. 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”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 3:16-4:6).

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. That’s what our text declares today, and it’s some Law worth examining. More to the point, it’s good law by which we should examine ourselves.

Let’s begin where the text begins: “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” Envy and self-seeking go hand in hand, resulting in disorder and evil deeds. Selfish ambition says, “I want better for me”—better things, better friends, better stations in life, whatever. Jealousy says, “I deserve those better things that my neighbor has.” You can see how well those two sins work together to produce every sort of evil thing: “Because I want the better things my neighbor has—and because I feel I deserve those things; I’m going to go ahead and take them from my neighbor.”

If you want to see examples of this behavior, visit your local park. One toddler is sitting on the excavator. Another one wants to sit on the excavator, and in his mind, it only makes perfect sense to walk on over and push the other little guy off the excavator. We say Kids will be kids, but it’s a relatively harmless illustration of how one might envy another position on the excavator and thus seek it for oneself, indulging in the confusion and evil of pushing someone else away. I mention this because we dare not forget that jealousy and selfish ambition are part of original sin. We don’t have to learn it, but it is simply how we are conceived and born into this world. We’re born as enemies of God and friends of the world. We need to be raised up as new creatures in Christ.

It’s not just kids, either. Look at the disciples in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus tells them that He’s going to die on the cross and rise again—it should be startling news to them, for He is telling them about the Sacrifice for their sins. But what do the disciples discuss after hearing this news? They’re arguing about which of them is greater. Each seeks an important place in the kingdom of Jesus and is enviously disputing the others’ arguments. Note the terrible confusion and evil act that results, for it is worse than it first appears. It is not just the argument and hard feelings that result from their pride; instead, it is that their selfishness has prevented them from listening to Jesus tell of His death and resurrection. In other words, their envious self-seeking has kept them from hearing the Gospel.

So it goes. James begins with jealousy and selfish ambition in our epistle and lists some evil deeds. He speaks of wars and fights, strife to get your way. He speaks of lust and covetousness, sinful desires to get what doesn’t belong to you. He even speaks of adultery and murder, terrible acts that culminate in those sinful desires. Bear in mind that James isn’t writing to a prison population or the audience of some raucous daytime talk show. He’s writing to the Church, to Christians scattered throughout the nations. Even among believers, these sins destroy families, lives, and faith.

Regarding quarrels and fights, consider a church where a group wishes to change the doctrine and practice away from God’s Word for their own self-seeking purposes, perhaps the desire to be more friendly with the world. The strife will follow, distracting energies away from the proclamation of the Gospel for a fight that must be fought.

As far as adultery and murder, imagine a man who simply wants to indulge his own curious lust with a bit of cable TV, which leads to a little more and a little more after that. That friendly world encourages and markets whatever catches his fancy. The desire eventually leads to an illicit affair, and a believer has now become an adulterer. Imagine the woman conceives in the affair, and it seems best for all involved to terminate the pregnancy rather than the shame and fear that will ensue. Adulterers have become murderers, and it just started with a glance at the wrong picture. The same pride and fear of shame prevent them from repentance and confession, and their souls are lost.

Can’t happen among believers? Read 2 Samuel 11, where David starts as a righteous king walking on the palace rooftop and ends up a murderous adulterer 27 verses later. Such things will happen—they can happen to anyone. James warns Christians because we are susceptible to these temptations, too, and it will only grow worse as many so-called Christian churches condone immorality and death.

So don’t be friends with the world. After all, consider that the world already keeps bad company, hanging around with the devil and your own sinful flesh. That’s something to think about for a couple of reasons. For one, the world hangs out with some bad company. For another, your own sinful flesh is part of that bad company, which makes those sins all the more tempting. As our text points out, it’s far better to occupy yourself with the wisdom that is from above, which is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and hypocrisy.

So don’t be friends with the world—but what does this mean? For one thing, avoid temptation. Flee from it. As more than one pastor has said before, draw the line where the temptation begins, and then take many paces away from it. Few people start the day intending to jeopardize their souls in such catastrophic sins, but it still happens. Avoiding temptation and not putting yourself in its path in the first place is always advisable. Given that you’re made of sinful flesh, to begin with, it’s just foolish to see how good you are at resisting temptation.

But here’s the next tricky part, just in case you think you’re free and clear: where exactly does the line get drawn? When do sinless thoughts exactly become sinful? When does appreciation of God-given beauty turn into lustful desire? When does admiring the neighbor’s new car become coveting and dissatisfaction with what God has given you? When does taking care of your things become idolatry? When does your zeal to contend for truth turn into unrighteous anger against those seeking to depart from it? When does taking care of yourself so as not to become a burden become self-seeking sinfulness? And to make it even more difficult, we’ll ask this: if you draw the line and step way back behind it, when does your stepping back become pride in your ability to resist temptation?

In other words, at what point do you become a friend of the world and an enemy of God?

See, the devil never takes a day off and doesn’t play fair. He’s happy if you ruin your life by falling into terrible sin and resisting repentance, but he’s also quite delighted if you grow proud that you haven’t sinned terribly and, therefore, don’t need forgiveness.

There are many pitfalls: just last week in Bible study, we discussed the sin of vanity—a close companion of envy and self-seeking. Small sin, right? Maybe not. There are two ways to sin when it comes to vanity: one is to be unhappy with how you look and thus fault God for His handiwork, and the other is to become vain and use your appearance for selfish reasons. Once we examined both of those, we found that vanity can quickly lead to breaking all Ten Commandments!

What’s the point? This text clearly warns of sins to avoid, and you do well to heed this law and not disobey it. Indulge in these sins, and you stand a good chance of great heartbreak in this life if not eternity. But even if you heed this law, don’t be deceived: you can never be sure which of your daily actions are really in keeping with God’s command. In fact, according to God’s Word, you can be sure that you still sin daily and much, that sin clings to everything you do. What a mess.

So, while you’re hearing and heeding all this Law, rejoice all the more to listen to this news: God gives more grace. He doesn’t tell you that salvation is yours as long as you avoid enough envy and selfishness and the chaos that ensues. He doesn’t declare that He’ll reward you with purity and peace as long as you shun enough lust and strife already on your own. This sets Christianity apart from every other religion on the face of the earth: God makes the first move. He gives grace freely to you—not because of your works or good living, but because Christ has won it for you by His death and resurrection.

Put another way, God doesn’t say, “If you keep My commandments, you can be My friend.” He says, “Because Jesus kept My Law and died for your sin, I call you friend. Because My Son redeemed you, I call you My beloved child, and I will never leave or forsake you.”

The Lord proclaimed His grace to you in your Baptism. He didn’t forgive you because of who you are or what you’d done. He forgave you because He’s the Son of God who died on the cross to save you. Because you are His, He promises you forgiveness, faith, and life. In Christ, you have the wisdom from above, because the pure Son of God gives you His purity. The holy Son of God declares you are at peace with Him. He is willing to yield, to place your need above Himself—that is why He has gone to the cross. He is gentle and full of mercy for you; there is no favoritism or hypocrisy in Him, so you can be sure that His promises are for you. And when you sin, He promises forgiveness again. Therefore, rejoice to repent and be forgiven, for you need never doubt that the Lord has grace for you. No matter how great and devastating your sins are, the Lord’s grace is greater. The Lord gives more.

So rejoice: God has made you His friend—even His beloved child. Flee that sin which would make you a friend of the world and an enemy of God, but always rejoice that your salvation depends not on your works but on His—that salvation is yours because you are forgiven for all your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.