Being a Christian in the Western Hemisphere is very different from being a Christian in the New Testament. challenges. While many early Christians faced persecution, believers today can face a different temptation: allowing comfort, recognition, and worldly success to compete with their devotion to Christ.
Scrolling on social media, one would think that being an author, speaker, or Christian pastor was for celebrity status. Beautiful homes, clothes, makeup, and travel glitter some of these individuals’ lives. There is nothing wrong with having blessings; however, when blessings are constantly pictured, they can become the focus rather than the ONE whom these individuals desire to promote. The deception of social media and the fallacy is to convey that if you are a faithful, good Christian, you too should have all of these things.
Whether it is the desire for an impressive platform, material possessions, social acceptance, or personal pleasure, the underlying struggle is often the same: wanting the things of the world while claiming wholehearted devotion to Christ. The lure of riches and comfort can easily draw a believer to compromise. My husband Joe and I have been a part of ministries for the majority of our 20 years of marriage. We have seen people passionately profess their faith in public while making choices in private that contradict what they proclaim. It is a sobering reminder that our faith should shape every day of our lives, not just Sunday mornings.
James, the brother of Jesus, saw the same type of compromise happening in the first-century church. In James chapter 4, he encourages believers to mature past fickle living and to remain constant with the Lord in faith and conduct:
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James reminds believers that divided loyalties are incompatible with wholehearted devotion to God. When we continually pursue worldly desires, we can become calloused to the Holy Spirit’s conviction in our lives. However, when we turn from sin, humble ourselves, and draw near to God, He will draw near to us.
As believers, we choose to follow Jesus and acknowledge His death and resurrection on the cross, which allows us to walk in forgiveness and be reconciled to God. Then God’s Spirit comes and lives inside of us. It is what Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about in John 3:1-21: being born again. Then in the book of Acts, chapters 1 and 2, during the Day of Pentecost, believers in the upper room were empowered by the Holy Spirit for the ministry God had for them. James, who writes this letter to the dispersed believers across the region, would have been a part of this encounter with God.
He is telling these believers that God’s Spirit is jealous for relationship with Him. God’s Spirit is not going to compete for our attention. We are given free will, and when we push His Spirit away because of our desire for worldly lures, we essentially silence His voice of conviction.
Therefore, James prescribes how to move forward from this type of covetousness. First, he says you must resist the devil. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke share that Jesus, too, was tempted by the Enemy. Jesus had just been baptized by His cousin John the Baptist. Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit. He then goes into the Judean desert and fasts for 40 days and nights. Scripture tells us the devil came and tempted Jesus with three different temptations. The devil tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread for His famished body; to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and be rescued by angels; and finally to worship the devil and receive the kingdoms of this world as His own. Jesus rebuts each and resists the devil. Jesus does not compromise His obedience and reminds us that resisting temptation begins with knowing God, His Word, and placing God’s will above our own worldly desires.
Jesus’ resistance and the ministry of the angels demonstrate to believers what James is talking about in this passage. When we choose to submit ourselves to God’s rule and reign and resist the pull of worldly desires, God will draw near to us because we have been given free will.
Finally, James urges the believers to cleanse themselves of their double-mindedness. In Greek, this word connotes someone with divided interests or divided loyalty. Wow! We can see this all over social media, with individuals who profess one thing but later we find they have been living a duplicitous life. This is meant to help us examine our own hearts and lives. It is meant as a caution to us all! We are to wash our hands of this kind of thinking and humbly confess our offenses. If we are guilty of this kind of living and humbly confess and repent, then God will lift us up.
The caution to us all is to live authentically for Jesus 24/7. We should not alter our faith from Friday night to Sunday morning. Why would anyone place themselves in a position of compromise and think that God would honor it? We are meant to be salt and light in this world, but not to lust after its things.
So check yourself: the next time you feel a tinge of jealousy toward another person, ask the Lord what in me is this stirring up and why? Have I bought into a lie? Am I chasing the things of this world, or is my life fully submitted to God and ready to resist anything the devil brings my way?
James reminds us that we have a choice. We can continue to pursue divided desires, or we can humble ourselves, resist the devil, and draw near to God.