4:4 The real issue is whom will I love, God or the world?
"In the simplest sense of the word, the world is each man's natural environment, that into which he enters at birth, and from which he departs in death. It is the immediate present, the seen and temporal, of which our senses bear witness, in contrast to the unseen and eternal . . ."161
The world urges us to love ourselves, to put our pleasures before God's pleasures. If we agree with that idea, we are unfaithful as the Lord's spiritual brides. We have deliberately chosen to follow the world's philosophy rather than God's will. We cannot be on friendly terms with God if we follow the world's philosophy (Matt. 6:24). The world wants us to exclude God from all aspects of life. God wants us to include Him in all of life because He is in all of life, and without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5).
". . . no man who makes worldly success his aim can be also a friend of God"162
4:5 In this verse James gave scriptural support for what he just asserted (v. 4). However, he did not quote a particular verse but evidently summarized the scriptural teaching on God's jealousy (cf. Exod. 20:5; 34:14; Ps. 42:1; 84:2; Zech. 8:2) in a new statement.163
It is very difficult to translate this statement, but the best rendering seems to be something such as the following. "God jealously longs for the spirit that He made to live in us."Another translations is, "the Spirit which he made to dwell in us jealously yearns for the entire devotion of the heart"(cf. Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 3:16; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 4:30; John 7:39; 16:7).164Both translations fit the preceding context well. God's people who love the world have committed spiritual adultery against Him (v. 4), but God (or His Spirit) jealously longs for their love (v. 5). Furthermore these translations accurately represents the Greek text. The phrase pros phthononliterally means "to envy,"but it is also an adverbial idiom meaning "jealously."165The verb epipotheimeans "to long for"or "to yearn for"rather than "to tend toward."
"Thus, in v. 4 James has accused his readers of spiritual unfaithfulness. If they are not willing to accept this indictment, he asks in v. 5 what they think about the OT passages dealing with God's jealous longing for his people. This is the significance of the introductory conjunction or.' Do they think Scripture speaks without reason' or emptily? Of course they don't think this. Consequently, it is necessary to believe that friendship with the world is enmity toward God, and thus it is spiritual unfaithfulness."166
