If the word “adulteresses” is here taken literally, as is probable, James makes a bold appeal to women of pleasure to cease from sin and to let God rule in their lives. It is surely worthwhile to make such an appeal even to those who seem to be hopelessly abandoned to the evil world. But it is pre-eminently worthwhile to seek to warn, and to prevent from ruin, the young men and women of our day. “Know ye not,” says James with heat, “that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” Pastors sometimes find men and women living in adultery and complacently keeping up their church connections. James means to show the utter inconsistency of such a course of conduct.
But if “adulteresses” is taken in the figurative sense, there is still the friendship of the world that is enmity with God. The friendship of the world is preferred to that of God. “World”[87] here is not the earth with all its beauty and charm (God’s world made by him; cf. Psalm 19), nor mankind, for whom Christ died (John 3:16), but that world of selfish pleasure and sin out of which Christ called his disciples and which in turn hated them as it hated Christ (John 15:18 ff.). This world will only love as a familiar friend those who cater to its ideals and standards, who condone its slackness of morals and neglect of God.
This cleavage between the wayward, wicked world and the kingdom of God is a fact of the utmost significance (John 17:15 ff.). The Christian has to learn the secret of living in such a worldly atmosphere without being contaminated by it. One does not wish to be considered a religious crank and queer. He desires to have influence with his friends and business acquaintances. But one cannot be a “hail fellow well met” in sin and every form of worldly indulgence and retain his influence for God. The time comes when a choice must be made between friends, for that sort of life in the world becomes incompatible with friendship with God. One must make his choice. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). One cannot run with the hare and the hounds. The devil makes no objection to such a double life of hypocrisy, but God does. God is gracious and forgiving to sinners who repent but has no mercy for presumptuous sinners who defy his kindness and keep in touch with the devil and his circles of evil.
The word “enmity” is the term for personal hostility. Preference for sin constitutes a personal offense toward God, who can have no rival, any more than a true wife can suffer a rival in the affections of her husband. “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). One must make his choice. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Plummer argues clearly that James does not condemn the scientist’s love of nature or the sociologist’s enthusiasm, which is not always shared in by preachers as much as is desirable.
Preaching often is so given to denunciation of sin that it fails to exalt the possibilities of the right sort of manhood. It thus repels the very men that it wishes to attract. So far from that, love for man is one of the main proofs of love for God (1 John 4:20). The passion for the souls of men is the true mark of the redeemed. Paul (Titus 2:12) urges that “denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live ... godly in this present world” (or “age” more exactly). “Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God,” “whoever, then, chooses to be the world’s friend turns enemy to God” (Moffatt).
A person makes his choice as he is able to do by the exercise of his own will and purpose. But once and finally made, he renders himself ipso facto an enemy to God. There is no help for it so long as God is really the God of purity and righteousness. Josephus calls Poppea, the infamous wife of Nero and proselyte to Judaism, a worshiper of God (Ant. xx. 8. 11), but surely such “worship” was not acceptable to God. James (2:23) has termed Abraham “the friend of God,” but he entered into that relation to God on terms of obedience to God as Lord. On no other terms is friendship with God possible. It is not a question of one’s feelings but of the actual state of affairs. “To be on terms of friendship with the world involves living on terms of enmity with God” (Hort).
The word “friendship” does not itself occur elsewhere in the New Testament, though it is found several times in Proverbs; but the words “friend” and to “love as a friend” are common enough. Gildersleeve (Justin Martyr, p. 135) notes that Xenophon uses the two verbs for love as synonymous. But in the New Testament there is a distinction drawn in John 21:15-17. The one is the “deeper” and richer word, while the other is the “more human.”[88] Certainly one has no right to claim intimate family relationship with God as his friend while at the same time living in adulterous relations with the sinful world that hates God. The “seductions of the world” (Plummer) are very real and very many, but surrender to them is not constant with the fellowship of God. The law of spiritual life is not always understood. Some men wonder why they are not spiritually happy, why they do not enjoy religion. They are living in sin with the world and yet marvel at their lack of communion with God.
The Yearning of the Spirit for Us (4:5 f.)
“Or think ye?” says James, as the alternative. Either the friendship of the world is enmity with God or you think “that the scripture speaketh in vain.” “What, do you consider this an idle word of Scripture?” (Moffatt). This rhetorical question expects an indignant denial. Therefore, the argument holds that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. But what is the Scripture? Is it only the passage in verse 6 that is referred to? The punctuation of the Revised Version allows that. We have two questions before the one quotation. But it may be that the general sense of Scripture is meant by the first question. Usually “the Scripture” occurs before a direct quotation, as in Romans 4:3.
Some would take the rest of verse 5 after the first question as a quotation, although no such quotation occurs in the Old Testament. The general sense appears in various parts of the Old Testament, as in Exodus 20:5: “I am the Lord thy God, a jealous God.” Compare Isaiah 63:8-16; Zechariah 8:2. Oesterley even sees a direct allusion to Galatians 5:17, 21; Romans 8:6, 8; 1 Corinthians 3:16, and an argument for the late date of the Epistle of James. But this is forcing the matter rather stiffly. The New Testament writers seem to have used chains of quotations (catenae) as, for instance, in Romans 3:10-18. Paul probably makes a free paraphrase of Isaiah 64:4 in 1 Corinthians 2:9, and of Isaiah 60:1-2 in Ephesians 5:14. Either this is what is done here, or James is already referring to verse 6, a quotation from Proverbs 3:34.