Quarrels and Fights – James 4:1-12

Did the early church live in perfect harmony?  Of course not.  The examples of disunity abound.  And disunity is looked at as a severe sin.  James here explains why.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:1-12, ESV)

The wisdom from above does not quarrel and fight because it is sowing peace and harvesting righteousness. When, however, you and I are yielding to the passions of covetousness (we want what someone else has) and get angry about that, it leads to fights. We want what the other person has but we don’t ask God for it, since He is the disposer of what we possess, and even if we do ask we don’t do so from a pure motive of wanting what He wants for us. With our quarreling we murder others, whether physically or with slander and destruction of another’s reputation. When we have such an approach to life we have adopted the sinful world’s approach and cannot expect to be anything but God’s enemies.

If we humble ourselves and submit to God we will fight the devil instead of each other. He is the one seeking destructiveness in our relationships and he will flee when we draw near to God and God draws near to us. When we cleanse our hands and hearts and walk in singleness of purpose and trust in God alone, when we weep over our sinfulness and confess it before God, He will exalt us to the place He wants us to be.

So we must stop speaking evil against one another. This is a violation of God’s law and therefore of God’s character. If we insist on continuing to slander our brothers and sisters we are acting as if we are the judge instead of God. We’re acting as if we determine the law and not Him. But there is no other judge and we set ourselves up for destruction if we don’t realize that. Don’t judge your neighbor, love him or her as yourself.