“ENMITY WITH GOD!”

James 4:1-4                     (ESV)

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

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.

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.”

One of the most difficult precepts that JESUS ever taught was to LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.   “This world” lives and teaches that we are to our do anything we can to be friends with anyone we come in contact with.  However , GOD says in Scripture that “friendship with the world is “ENMITY WITH GOD”?  

But how can we LOVE our enemies and not be friends with them?   I’m sure most of you know there are different kinds of LOVE.   I LOVE my wife differently than I LOVE my children and grandchildren.  I LOVE ice cream differently than I do people.  I LOVE JESUS more and differently than ILOVE anything and anybody else.  

Since CHRIST lives in us as Believers (at least to some degree), it would behoove us “to have others in our midst who have CHRIST in them so that we are strengthened by HIS presence in their lives.  JESUS states that we should LOVE our neighbors (Mark 12:31), and HE said in Matthew 5:44 that we should LOVE our enemies.  We MUST realize, AND admit, that living for JESUS does NOT indicate that we will please everyone we come in contact with.  After all, JESUS was crucified even though HE was not guilty of any sin.  One might say HE was crucified BECAUSE HE had no sin?!?  HE LOVED “this world” while HE rebuked those living in sin. 

In 1 Timothy 1:15, the Apostle Paul writes “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that CHRIST JESUS came into the world to save sinners, of whom I AM THE FOREMOST.”  We can LOVE the sinner without approving of their choices.  To be FRIENDS with “the world” is to be at “ENMITY WITH GOD”, and that is something I prefer not to do.