Many of us are familiar with the so-called “boiling frog metaphor.” It is a graphic metaphor used to illustrate 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 will 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 are able to cook the frog successfully because the frog has acclimated to his environs, totally oblivious to the fact that he is slowly being 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 it is introduced gradually, incrementally, or subtly over time.
It reminds me of the way a friend described the moral failure of a Christian. We often speak of a person’s “fall into sin” and my friend said, “No one really falls into sin. He slides into it.” 1
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 today’s text. 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.” Here’s the whole passage in James 4:1-6:
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.”
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 described earlier as earthly, sensual, and demonic.
There is a real warning here in this text that applies to every one of us. 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 sin today and ruin my life. 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, then another, and so on. And gradually, subtly giving in to smaller incremental changes over time, we allow ourselves to embrace the world and its ways and before we realize it, we 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 may even realize.
There are at least three main characteristics of wordiness in this passage. Let us consider each one carefully.
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 “parts 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.
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, an unhealthy craving for that which merely satisfies self. And what James says is that when we have these unhealthy cravings or evil desires, when these passions lurk within us, they have the potential to work outside of us in such a way that we find ourselves at odds with other people, making 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 people to “make 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. And, to be sure, sexual lust is one of the unhealthy cravings within that leads to conflict without. You have an unhealthy desire to satisfy yourself and that unhealthy desire makes you 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.
A bitter, resentful inward focus, for example can turn one into a hater of mankind. Bitter people are often given to narcissism, an unhealthy focus on the pride of self 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.
The first warning sign of worldliness are unhealthy cravings, inward desires marked by self-centeredness. The second warning sign of worldliness is ungodly conduct which is marked by divisiveness.
Ungodly Conduct (Divisiveness)
Self-centeredness leads to divisiveness. James puts it this way: “You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war.”
We have noted earlier that the original New Testament contains no punctuation. That’s a helpful reminder here because these short statements in verse 2 can be a bit confusing no matter which English translation we are using. I think verse 2 may be better translated this way:
“You lust and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and war.” 2
James is showing us how unhealthy cravings within lead to ungodly conduct without. You lust and do not have (within), so you murder (without). You covet and cannot obtain (craving on the inside), so you fight and war (conduct on the outside). Unhealthy cravings within lead to ungodly conduct without.
William Barclay explains helpfully:
3The craving for pleasure drives men to shameful deeds. It drives them to envy and to enmity; and even to murder. Before a man can arrive at a deed there must be a certain driving emotion in his heart. He may restrain himself from the things that the desire for pleasure incites him to do; but so long as that desire is in his heart he is not safe. It may at any time explode into ruinous action.
A few years ago the New York Times published an article about the discovery of a bomb in Germany that led to the evacuation of 20,000 people in Berlin. The people were evacuated so that the bomb could be disarmed. The bomb was discovered along the Rhine River during excavations for a pipeline. It was a bomb that had been dropped seven decades earlier by the allies during World War II. The article explains that there are many of these bombs lurking beneath the surface of places all over Germany. In the previous year, in one of the most populace places of Germany, bomb squads defused nearly one thousand bombs alone.
4The Christian has been liberated from the power of sin, but not the presence of sin. While sin no longer reigns, it remains. To grow in Christlikeness, to grow in holiness, Christians must correctly deal with sin every day of their lives. If we don’t regularly confess our sin and turn from our sin we may “go off” like a bomb that was previously lying dormant and suddenly found ignition.
The key to keeping these bombs from going off is to defuse them regularly by finding satisfaction in healthy ways rather than unhealthy ways, by finding ultimate satisfaction in Jesus Christ and His perfect will for our lives.
A person who is divisive is a person who is not well on the inside. This is a person who has unresolved issues on the inside, issues of self-centeredness perhaps or an overblown sense of self-importance. This is a person who craves the fulfillment of self-recognition and ego and, because he does not get satisfaction for his unhealthy cravings, he acts out in divisive ways. Unhealthy cravings within lead to ungodly conduct without.
Next, James says, “Yet you do not have because you do not ask.”
Here is a reminder that Christians should ask God for the things they seek rather than allowing their unhealthy cravings to lead them into sin. Of course, James is not teaching that God grants our selfish desires. That is clear based upon what he says in the very next verse: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.”
This is like, as someone has noted, “using God as a means to your own end rather than seeking God as the end itself.”
Instead of seeking God to satisfy our unhealthy cravings, we should approach Him in humility, asking for things consistent with His will, asking for things that bring glory to Him, asking for things that He believes are best for us and others. We must ask in accordance to God’s perfect will for our lives. This is the kind of prayer that God honors. This is the kind of prayer God delights to answer.
It is important to note that James is not teaching that all pleasures are wrong. He is not teaching this. Only pleasures inconsistent with His will are wrong. Only pleasures that do not glorify God are wrong.
The very last verse of the opening chapter of the Bible says: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good (Genesis 1:31).” Everything God created “was very good.”
For example, sex is not inherently wrong. Sex is a pleasure given by God to be enjoyed within the sole context of biblical marriage, the union of one man to one woman. The pleasure of sex is wrong only when used in any other context other than that of biblical marriage.
So again, we are to come to God asking for things that are consistent with His will. When we come to God in this way the very act of prayer itself has a sort of purifying effect upon us. It calls into question the health of our desires. Are these healthy cravings or unhealthy cravings?
Before we look at the final warning of worldliness. Let’s recall the first two: Worldliness is marked by unhealthy cravings (self-centeredness) and ungodly conduct (divisiveness).
Unholy Compromise (Unfaithfulness)
James teaches that worldliness is, in essence, spiritual adultery. Like a trial attorney drawing a conclusion, he proclaims: “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.”
This teaching is couched the Old Testament concept of God as the husband of Israel and Israel as God’s bride. To be unfaithful to God is to commit spiritual adultery.
It’s the same truth Jesus taught in Matthew’s Gospel: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other…(Matthew 6:24)” You can’t be faithful to both God and the world. Put another way: you can’t have two spouses.
If you are married imagine your spouse taking a few hours of each day to go over to another person’s home, a person of the opposite sex, and spending a few hours alone in intimacy with that person. He or she comes back to you each day and says, “Oh, we’re just friends.” You protest: “But you are with that person and you expect me to just be okay with it?!” Nearly every one of us understands just how wrong that would be. This sort of “friendship” with others is nothing less than infidelity and unfaithfulness.
This is precisely the point James makes with his rightful accusation: “Adulterers and adulteresses!” God regards our friendship with the world as infidelity to Him.
This truth is developed in the next verse: “Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
The idea here is that God places within us an inner spirit that is properly satisfied only when we are reconciled to God and only when we find complete satisfaction in God Himself. The NLT has: “God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to Him.”
5James appears to be summarizing the teachings of the Bible on this matter when he refers to “the Scripture.” It’s as though he is asking, “Do you believe the teaching of the Bible to be wrong here—the idea that God has created us for relationship with Him and that we should be faithful?”
When we compromise our convictions and we allow ourselves to be pulled away from God by the tug of the world, then we are committing spiritual adultery. We are allowing the spirit within us to find satisfaction in other “spouses,” things other than God Himself.
Verse 6 points us to the cure for worldliness, a cure, or correction to be developed more fully in the verses to follow. James says, “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’”
God is always ready to give grace to those who come to Him in humility. In context, when we come before God with a desire to be faithful to Him and to grow in Him, and to find satisfaction in Him, He gives us the ability to live in a way that pleases Him and to live in a way that is helpful to us.
When we ask God to disentangle us from the ways of the world, He gives us the grace to be disentangled. We have to be honest, however, whether we really want to be disentangled from ways of the world.
Do you really desire Him more than anyone or anything? Or do you want it both ways—a little of God and a little of the world? Do you really want a vibrant and committed relationship with God or do you want to “sleep around a bit.” You’re glad to drink from the living water, but you’d also like to drink occasionally from the broken cisterns of muddy water. Know the ease of becoming God’s enemy and beware. Don’t settle for cheap substitutes for the One True and living God.
May the prayer of this short hymn be our own:
Cleanse me from my sin, Lord,
Put Thy power within, Lord,
Take me as I am, Lord,
And make me all Thine own.
Keep me day by day, Lord,
Underneath Thy sway, Lord,
Make my heart Thy palace,
And Thy royal throne.
What About You?
- 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.
- “A person who is divisive is a person who is not well on the inside.” Do you agree with that statement? Are there ever occasions where divisiveness is necessary? Explain.
- Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
- cf ESV and NIV.
- Daily Study Bible, Chapter 4, accessed March 13, 2020
- “A Wartime Bomb, Unearthed in Germany, Recalls Darker Days,” accessed March 13, 2020
- I believe this to be the proper translation rather than the capital “S” of the NKJV. At the same time, the text could refer to the Holy Spirit in the following rendering: “The Spirit who dwells in us opposes our jealousy.”
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