Dangerous Desires

Many of us are familiar with the so-called “boiling frog metaphor.” It is a graphic metaphor that illustrates how change can occur over time. The idea is that if you wish to cook a frog, you cannot simply throw a live frog abruptly into a pot of boiling water. If you were to try to do so, the frog would feel the drastic heat of the water and immediately jump out of the pot. On the other hand, if you place the frog in a pot of warm or tepid water, he’ll stay in the pot while you slowly and gradually turn up the heat. Over time, you can cook the frog successfully because the frog has acclimated to his environment, totally oblivious to the fact that he is being slowly cooked to death.

Whether this actually happens to frogs is a matter of debate. I have never tried it and don’t intend to! Contemporary biologists have challenged the accuracy of the anecdote, but most agree that the metaphor itself is helpful, if not powerful. Change to a person’s environment is easier to accept when introduced gradually, incrementally, or subtly over time.

It reminds me of how a friend described a Christian’s moral failure. We often speak of a person’s “fall into sin,” and my friend said, “No one really falls into sin. He slides into it.” It is gradual; it is subtle. It happens incrementally, over time. One compromise leads to another compromise and then to another still. Before long, like a frog in a pot of increasingly warmer water, we find ourselves immersed in a situation that may well end in death.

This is a helpful metaphor as we study our passage:

1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 
2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 
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. 
5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:1-6) 

James warns of the ease of becoming God’s enemy. He declares: “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” Friendship with the world puts one in opposition to God. James adds, “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

We often use the term “worldliness” to describe the kind of person James has in mind, a person who is more inclined to follow the ways of this fallen world rather than the ways of the Lord.  Worldliness is a lifestyle James describes in the previous chapter as earthly, sensual, and demonic.  

There is a real warning here in this text that applies to everyone. Few of us would willingly jump into sin like a frog thrown into a pot of hot water. No one wants to ruin his life. I doubt any true Christian wakes up each day and thinks, “Gee, I think I’ll get arrested today. I think I’ll commit adultery today and bring shame upon the Lord and His church, ruin my Christian testimony, and lose my family.” Such thinking is ludicrous. 

On the other hand, we may give in to one “small” temptation that leads to another. Then, a second temptation leads to a third, another, and so on. Gradually, subtly giving in to smaller incremental changes over time, we allow ourselves to embrace the world and, before long, have “cooked ourselves.” This is the ease of embracing worldliness and becoming God’s enemy.

Some of us may be in a pot of water right now, and we don’t even know it. We don’t realize it. So, in an effort to help us recognize worldliness and help us “jump out of the pot” if you like, let’s study the above verses, looking for warning signs of worldliness, indicators that we may be far more comfortable with a world opposed to the things of Christ than we realize. 

There are no fewer than three characteristics of wordiness in this passage. We’ll consider just the first characteristic in today’s post.

Unhealthy Cravings (Self-Centeredness)

Deep within each and every one of us are desires. And these desires can be either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. James is concerned about unhealthy cravings. He asks, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?”

We recall from the previous chapter that James concluded his discourse on heavenly wisdom by describing it as, among other things, “peaceable (James 3:17-18).” Now James describes the opposite of peace with reference to “wars and fights” among the Christian community.

The word “members” is best understood as “parts of your body” or, more generally, “that which is within you.”

The New Living Translation is helpful here: “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?” Here is the source of worldly divisiveness among Christians: evil desires, unhealthy cravings within. 

Specifically, James describes these unhealthy cravings as “desires for pleasure.” The word “pleasure” here is the word from which we get hedonism, a self-centered focus, or an unhealthy craving for that which merely satisfies the self. James teaches that these passions lurking within us have the potential to work outside us such that we find ourselves at odds with other people. We “make war” with other people in the church—so the cravings within lead to conflict without.

We have noted previously that the way we act on the outside is driven by the way we think on the inside—unhealthy cravings within lead to conflict without. Self-centeredness leads to divisiveness. Self-centeredness leads to “making war” with one another in the church.

The King James Version translates verse 1 this way: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”  

When we read the word “lusts” we often think only of sexual lust. To be sure, sexual lust is one of the unhealthy cravings within that leads to conflict without. If you have an unhealthy desire to satisfy yourself, that unhealthy desire tempts you to look at others in an unhealthy way. In the sexual realm, an extreme obsession with selfish and self-centered gratification can lead to an extreme case of physical “warring and fighting,” such as rape or other abuse. It begins with unhealthy cravings. Cravings within lead to conflict without.

But James has more in mind than mere sexual lusts. There are other lusts, other cravings within; lusts for power, or position, or wealth, or evil desire for status and recognition.  

A bitter and resentful inward focus, for example, can turn one into a hater of mankind. Bitter people are often given to narcissism, an unhealthy focus on self, pride, and an expectation that others should regard them as superior. When others do not, we may expect “wars and fights” of shunning, finger-pointing, whispering, and so on.

All of this, says James, is driven by “desires for pleasure that war in your members,” desires for the pleasure of self-satisfaction, self-amusement, self-importance, self-gratification, and more—unhealthy cravings within lead to conflict without.

We’ll consider two more warning signs when we return to our study of James. For now, consider:

• Can you think of ways that the “boiling frog metaphor” applies historically to the people of God?
• Do you have unhealthy desires for which you need to repent right now? If so, confess, repent, and ask God to give you desires for Him.

**Excerpt from You’re Either Walking The Walk Or Just Running Your Mouth (Preaching Truth: 2020), pages 124-128, available in all formats here.