02.04. Chapter 4 - Verse 04

James 4:1. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is an enemy of God.

Because they were so overcome with worldly lusts that their very prayers and devotionary acts looked that way, he cometh to show the danger and heinousness of these lusts. The arguments of this verse are two—(1.) They will make you commit adultery; (2.) They will make you enemies to God.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses.—This must be understood spiritually, as appeareth by the following words and the drift of the context, which is to inveigh against those lusts and pleasures which inveigle the soul and withdraw it from God. Now these are spiritual adulterers whom the love of the world alienateth and estrangeth from the Lord. The metaphor is elsewhere used, Matthew 12:39, and Matthew 16:4, ‘This evil and adulterous generation.’

Know ye not—He appealeth to their consciences; it is a rousing question. Worldly men do not sin out of ignorance so much as incogitancy; they do not consider. That the friendship of the world.—By ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου he understandeth an emancipation of our affections to the pleasures, profits, and lusts of the world. Men study to please their friends, and they are friends of the world therefore that seek to gratify worldly men or worldly lusts, and court outward vanities rather than renounce them; a practice unsuitable to religion. You may use the world, but not seek the friendship of it. Those that would be dandled upon the world’s knees, lose a friend of Christ. As to instance, in pleasing the men of the world, Galatians 1:10, ‘If I yet please men, I were not the servant of Christ.’ So for gratifying of worldly lusts; we may use the comforts of the world, but may not serve the lusts and pleasures of it: that is a description of the carnal state, Titus 3:3. Is enmity with God.—When you begin to please the world you wage war against heaven, and bid open defiance to the Lord of hosts; the love of God and care of obedience is abated just so much as the world prevaileth in you. There is a like expression Romans 8:7, ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God;’ averse and adverse. So doth the world not only withdraw the heart from God, but oppose him. A man can hardly serve two masters, though of the same judgment; but God and the world are opposite masters, they command contrary things: 1 John 2:15, ‘If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;’ Matthew 6:24, ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ They that match covetousness with profession seek to reconcile two of the most unsuitable things in the world.

Whosoever therefore.—General truths must be enforced by applicative inferences, and so they fall directly upon the soul: Job 5:27, ‘So it is, hear it, and know it for thy good.’ Will be the friend of the world.—Βουληθῆ noteth the aim and serious purpose. All do not find the world to favour them; do what they can, ‘the world is crucified to them;’ but they are not as Paul was, ‘crucified to the world,’ Galatians 6:14. Therefore the scripture taketh notice not of what is in the event, but the aim. Besides, the serious purpose and choice discovereth the state of the soul; he is also absolutely a worldly man that will be a friend of the world. So 1 Timothy 6:9, οἵ βουλόμενοι πλουτεῖν, ‘they that will be rich.’ In heavenly matters the deliberate choice and full purpose discovereth grace: Acts 11:23, ‘That with purpose of heart they would cleave to the Lord.’ Therefore Christians should look to their purpose and aim. What is it? What do you give your minds to? When a man setteth himself to grow rich, to lay up treasures upon earth, he is a worldly man; as when he giveth his heart and mind and whole man to do what God requireth, whatever cometh of it, he is a true servant of the Lord. To this purpose are those speeches of Solomon: Proverbs 23:4, ‘Labour not to be rich;’ that is, do not give up thy heart and endeavours to find out and follow all ways to increase thy wealth and estate: so Proverbs 28:20, ‘He that maketh haste to be rich,’ &c., hath set up that for his purpose. Now this purpose of the soul may be known, partly by a resolute carrying on the end without weighing the means and consequences; partly by the diligence and earnestness of the spirit. When the end is fixed, we are patient of all labour, but impatient of check and disappointment. Is the enemy of God.—Actively and passively; it maketh a man hate God, and to be hated by God. Duty will either make us weary of the world, or the world will make us weary of duty. The children of God have experience of the one, and hypocrites of the other. The points, besides those observed in the exposition, are these:—

Obs. 1. That worldliness in Christians is spiritual adultery. It dissolveth the spiritual marriage between God and the soul; of all sins it is most unsuitable to the marriage-covenant, the covenant of grace, wherein God propoundeth himself to be ‘all-sufficient,’ Genesis 17:1. We have enough in God, but we desire to make up our happiness in the creatures; this is plain whoring: Psalms 73:27, ‘Thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee;’ that is, those which sought that in the world which is only to be found in God. There are degrees in this whoredom. You know there may be adultery in affection when the body is not defiled; unclean glances are a degree of lust. The children of God may have some outrunning and straggling thoughts: when the devil is at their elbows, the world may be greatened in their esteem and imagination: ‘Happy is the people that is in such a case,’ Psalms 144:15; but they presently correct themselves, and return to the bosom of God; yea, rather, ‘happy is the people whose God is the Lord.’ In others there is a higher degree; they settle those affections upon the world which are only due and proper to God, as their care, delight, desire, fear, hope, which should be kept chaste and loyal to Jesus Christ; yet there is still some profession. As a woman that is not contented with one husband, and yet still retaineth the colour and pretence of the first marriage: this is in hypocrites, who divide their hearts between God and the world. There are others who plainly leave the Creator for the creature, and prefer the world before God, the profits and pleasures of it before communion with him in holy duties. To let the world share with God is an evil, but to prefer the world before God is an impiety. As a whorish wife preferreth every one before her own husband, so do the profane, who live as professed prostitutes: their love is wholly with drawn from God as a husband, and their obedience from him as a lord: they ‘love pleasures more than God,’ 2 Timothy 3:4. Well, then, check worldly inclinations; when your hearts are too passionately drawn forth to present comforts and contentments, or when your thoughts are raised into too great admiration of them, or when worldly ease and pleasure hindereth and withdraweth you from duty, or are apt to prefer carnal satisfaction before communion with God, remember at such time this is adultery. You are not your own, but given up to God: 1 Corinthians 6:15, ‘Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ? And shall I take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.’ This love is Christ’s; these admiring thoughts, these pains, time, care, earnestness, they are all Christ’s; and shall I give that which is Christ’s to the world? God hath fenced us against outward adultery by fear and shame: some countries punish it with whipping, others with death. There is baseness and danger also in spiritual adultery. There is baseness; affections are impure, so far as they are let out upon other things rather than God: shall I be an adulterer or an adulteress to God? How will this expose me to the scorn of men and angels? At the last day they will come pointing, as in Psalms 52:7, ‘This is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches!’ This is a Gadarene, that loved his swine more than Christ, that preferred a game at cards before communion with God, a cup, a drunken meeting, before the house of God, &c. Spiritual harlots will not be able to look good men and angels in the face. There is danger in it too; God is a jealous God. Whoring under the law was punished with death: ‘Every one that goeth a-whoring from thee wilt thou destroy.’ There is nothing provoketh the Lord so much as this, that base things should be preferred before him.

Obs. 2. From that and adulteresses. The Syriac translation hath not this word; the vulgar hath only adulteri, yet the Greek copies have it. It is not usual in scriptures to speak to women; the speeches of the apostles in their epistles are usually directed to men, therefore it is the more notable. The note is, that women have special need to take heed of worldly pleasures and lusts: ‘You adulterers and adulteresses.’ Whore is a name of reproach; you cannot endure it. Ah! be not whores spiritually, doting too much upon outward pleasure and pomp. You are loyal to your earthly husbands; ah! be so to Jesus Christ. Men’s hearts are more usually distracted with worldly cares, but yours are apt to be besotted with worldly pleasures; we usually call it softness and effeminacy. The apostle speaks of some women that ‘wax wanton against Christ,’ 1 Timothy 5:11; that is, when they begin to renounce the inward mortification of fleshly lusts. Remember you have a heavenly husband; let not soft delicacy so corrupt your minds as to make you forget your duty to him: you have a great many snares your tenderness, others’ examples, &c.

Obs. 3. That to seek the friendship of the world is the ready way to be God’s enemy. God and the world are contrary; he is all good, and the world lieth in wickedness; and they command contrary things. The world saith, Slack no opportunity of gain and pleasure; if you will be so peevish as to stand nicely upon conscience, you will do nothing but draw trouble upon yourselves. Now, God saith, Deny yourselves, take up your cross, renounce the world, &c. The world saith, ‘Wilt thou take thy bread, and thy water, and thy flesh, and give it unto men whom thou knowest not whence they be?’ 1 Samuel 25:11. But God saith, ‘Sell that ye have, and give alms, provide bags that waste not,’ &c. It were easy to instance in several such contrarieties. We find by experience that so far as we mingle with the world, so far are our hearts deadened and estranged from God; and by the encroachment of worldly delights and vanities upon the spirit, the love of God decayeth. It is a vain conceit to think we can serve God and our lusts too. The world and grace are incompatible; they may be together sometimes, as a rusty dial may be right by chance. But you will be put to trial; and when God and the world come in competition, you may see whose friendship you do desire. When a worldly man must do the one or the other, you shall see where his heart is; he will rather offend God than lose riches, pleasures, or preferment: he is loath to be bound up by the curt allowance of conscience and religion; and though he would gild all with a pretence of respect to God, yet carnal reasons oversway, and he taketh the world’s part against God. Well, now, you see the enmity between God and the world. (1.) Think of it seriously, when you are about to mingle with earthly comforts and delights, and can neglect God for a little carnal conveniency and satisfaction; this is to be an enemy to God; and can I make good my part against him? He is almighty, and can crush you. What are our feeble hands to the grasp of omnipotency? See Ezekiel 22:14. And he is a terrible enemy ‘when he whetteth his glittering sword,’ Deuteronomy 32:41. Nay, if none of all this were to be feared, the very estrangement from God is punishment enough to itself. Shall I renounce the love and favour of God, and all commerce and communion between him and me, for a little temporal delight and pleasure? God forbid. (2.) Learn how odious worldliness is; it is direct enmity to God, because it is carried on under sly pretences; of all sins this seemeth most plausible. Usually we stroke it with a gentle censure, and say, He is a good man, but a little covetous and worldly, &c. That is enough to entitle him God’s enemy. The world reckoneth sins, not by the inward contrariety to God, but by the outward excesses and acts of filthiness; and therefore, because covetous persons do not break out into acts foul and shameful, they have much of the honour and respect of the world: Psalms 49:13, ‘Their way is folly, yet their posterity approve their sayings;’ that is, praise and esteem such a kind of life. Sensual persons are like beasts, and therefore the object of common scorn; but worldliness suiteth more with carnal reason, and is a sin more human and rational: Psalms 10:3, ‘They bless the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth.’ The Lord abhorreth them, but men bless them; for they do not measure sins so much by the inward enmity, as by the outward excess. God’s hatred ariseth from his own purity, but man’s from the external inconveniences of disgrace and loss.