Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?

James 4 (NASB) from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? ² You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. ⁴ You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? ⁶ But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

¹¹ Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or 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 of it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

^“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” This is one of the great paradoxes in scripture and of the Christian faith. John 3:16 says:  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  Yet friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Of course there are two very different meanings for the word world in these verses. The world which God loves, the world that Christ died for is God’s earthly creation and mankind, both having suffered from the fall of Adam and Eve, recorded in Genesis. The rest of scripture and the rest of human history is about God’s plan for the redemption and the restoration of all things to the way He intended, culminating in the fulfillment of the prophecy in Revelation, of the new heaven and earth. God’s love for the world is displayed throughout scripture and is displayed in our daily lives, through the redemption and restoration of Christ.

The paradox for Christians is to try to do what only Jesus was truly able to do, to so love the world that He went to the cross to redeem and restore it, while abstaining from sin and calling the world He loves to repentance. Our natural tendency is to view both sin and sinners the same. We tend either to be too far to the side of judgment, seeing the evil things people do and condemning them for it.  James says: “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?”  Jesus Himself says: "Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2"For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1-2) Unbelievers love to quote the first part of that scripture to Christians when they speak against sin in the world. It is critical though to always look at the whole of God’s word, both the context of the individual verse and how it aligns with the rest of God’s word. That verse says:  "For in the way you judge, you will be judged” As believers in Christ we are judged not for our own righteousness but rather through Christ’s righteous work on the cross. So our judgment should be the same. We should measure to others the same grace that God through Christ measured to us.

There is however judgment for sin. Jesus also says:  And He (the Holy Spirit), when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰ and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; ¹¹ and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the triune God are, will and do judge sin. From the beginning of His earthly ministry Jesus spoke against sin. Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."(Matthew 4:17) He was never tolerant of sin. While He associated with and interacted with sinners, His message was repentance, as He said the woman caught in adultery: "I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more."(John 8:11)   

Romans 6:23 says:  For the wages of sin is death. That is an eternal truth, a spiritual law that cannot be changed.  Sin caused the death of Christ on the cross. That is the price He paid. If you have ever seen a depiction of the suffering of Christ on the cross, I think you will understand and agree that Jesus hates sin. As Christians if we tolerate, minimize or wink at sin in the world we minimize or nullify the price Christ paid on the cross. “friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”  Jesus says: You are My friends if you do what I command you.(John 15:14) Jesus does tell us to love others. He does tell us we will be judged by the way we judge others. Jesus last words to us though, what He commanded us to do is: ”Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”   

Go be a friend, a lover of sinners and a hater of Sin.

Only by Your grace, only through Your indwelling presence in my life. Grant it Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ and precious Holy Spirit. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, in and through my life.  Amen.