James: A Handbook on Holiness

The Requirements for Victory: Self-Knowledge

James 4:1-5

General outline:

1. The Way to Holiness: The Divine Perspective 1:2-27

   1. The Trial-Temptation Complex (1:2-18) & The Word of God (1:19-27)

2. The Principles of Holiness: The Biblical Framework 2:1-26

   1. The Law is the Structure (2:1-13) & Faith is the Dynamics (2:14-26) of Holiness

3. The Implementation of Holiness: The Christian Experience 3:1-4:10

   1. The Obstacle to Victory: Human Impotence 3:1-9

   2. The Nature of Victory 3:10-18

   3. The Requirements for Victory 4:1-10

      1. Self-knowledge 4:1-5

         1. The Nature of One's Condition 4:1

         2. The Reason for One's Condition 4:2-3

         3. The Evaluation of One's Condition 4:4-5

James 4:1-5

The Nature of One's Condition

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

The Reason for One's Condition

2 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.

3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

The Evaluation of One's Condition

4 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.

5 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"?

Discussion Questions:

1. V. 1 – What is the nature of our condition? __________________________________________

2. V. 2 – How do passions cause fights and quarrels? ____________________________________
   Why do they do this? __________________________________________________________

3. Vv. 2-3 – What is wrong with the prayers James describes?

4. V. 4 – What are some ways we have "friendship with the world?" _______________________
   _____________________________________________________________________________

5. V. 5 – Two translations – either holy yearnings or unholy yearnings. Either way, what is the point? _______________________________________________________________________