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James 4

James confronts pride in conflict, prayer, and planning, calling believers to humble themselves before the God who gives grace.

Quarrels among the believers lead James to confront the desires behind their fighting and their prayers. He calls their friendship with the world hostility toward God, then declares that God gives grace to the humble. His call to repentance includes submission to God and grief over sin. James also forbids speaking against fellow believers and challenges traders who plan for profit as though they control tomorrow. Their lives and plans depend on the Lord’s will.

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1Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
2You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
3You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
12Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?
13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.”
14Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
15For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.”
16But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
17To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
James 4:8The promise of God’s nearness accompanies a call to turn from sinful actions and divided hearts.
James 4:4James names friendship with the world as betrayal of God, exposing the stakes beneath the community’s quarrels.
James 4:6God’s greater grace grounds the call to repentance, while his resistance to pride explains the need for humility.
Where this chapter reaches

James shares with Proverbs and 1 Peter the saying that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. His warning about confident plans for profit also shares with Luke the theme of human life’s uncertainty before God.

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Notice

After reading the whole chapter

What connection do you notice between the desires James names and the conflicts he describes?

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How might acknowledging the Lord’s will shape a plan you are making?

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Questions people ask about James 4

What does friendship with the world mean in James 4?

James places this phrase amid warnings about coveting, fighting, and prayers aimed at pleasure. Friendship with the world means allegiance to desires and values that oppose God. His language of adultery describes unfaithfulness to God. The passage does not forbid friendship with people outside the Christian community.

What does James 4:8 mean by drawing near to God?

Drawing near to God belongs to James’s call to repentance. The surrounding verses speak of submitting to God, resisting the devil, cleansing sinful conduct, and purifying divided hearts. The promise that God will draw near stands alongside these commands and the declaration that he gives grace to the humble.

Does James 4 say it is wrong to make plans?

James condemns the boastful confidence of traders who speak as though tomorrow and its profits belong to them. He says that even their continued life depends on the Lord’s will. Planning itself is not condemned; the warning concerns pride that ignores human limits and God’s authority over the future.

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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).