An Affair in the Fellowship

James 4.4
“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”

James is not talking to adulterers here. He is not talking to those who cheat on their spouse. No, he’s talking to those within the church who cause “fights and quarrels” among each other because of their own selfish motives (verses 1-3). He is saying that when we disrupt a fellowship in order to get what we want, to get things done our way, then we are simply following the pattern of the world. To do things the way the world does them is to befriend the world, and to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. In a sense, you are cheating on God. You are taking the affections that by covenant belong only to him and sharing them with a self-centered, egotistical world. You are an adulterer.

What started out as a harmless (in our opinion) attempt to get “our will done” instead of “thy will done” turns out to be a love affair between you and the world’s way of getting things done. You may not consider your manipulations to be “quarreling and fighting” as mentioned in verse 2, but that’s what it looks like to God. Whatever temporary reward might be yours as a result of the dispute, you end up “spending” on your own selfish desires (verse 3).

Like all kinds of affairs, it’s never about the other person. It’s always about yourself.

Keep reading the chapter. The action required to combat such an affair is humility and submission. The anecdote comes from God himself: Grace.