James 4:4

4 You unfaithful people! Don't you know that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?

James 4:4 Meaning and Commentary

James 4:4

Ye adulterers and adulteresses
Not who were literally such, but in a figurative and metaphorical sense: as he is an adulterer that removes his affections from his own wife, and sets them upon another woman; and she is an adulteress that loves not her husband, but places her love upon another man; so such men and women are adulterers and adulteresses, who, instead of loving God, whom they ought to love with all their hearts and souls, set their affections upon the world, and the things of it: the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions, leave out the word "adulteresses": these the apostle addresses in the following manner;

know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
that an immoderate love for the good things of the world, and a prevailing desire after the evil things of it, and a delight in the company and conversation of the men of the world, and a conformity to, and compliance with, the sinful manners and customs of the world, are so many declarations of war with God, and acts of hostility upon him; and show the enmity of the mind against him, and must be highly displeasing to him, and resented by him:

whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of
God;
whoever is in league with the one must be an enemy to the other; God and mammon cannot be loved and served by the same persons, at the same time; the one will be loved, and the other hated; the one will be attended to, and the other neglected: this may be known both from reason and from Scripture, particularly from ( Matthew 6:24 ) .

James 4:4 In-Context

2 You long for something you don't have, so you commit murder. You are jealous for something you can't get, so you struggle and fight. You don't have because you don't ask.

3 You ask and don't have because you ask with evil intentions, to waste it on your own cravings.

4 You unfaithful people! Don't you know that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?

5 Or do you suppose that scripture is meaningless? Doesn't God long for our faithfulness in the life he has given to us?

6 But he gives us more grace. This is why it says, God stands against the proud, but favors the humble.