06 May James 08: Managing conflict

James 4:1-12

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. 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”? ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

⁷ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. ¹¹ Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹² There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Let me start with a question. How many of you love to win in conflict? Be honest. You are the kind of person who must win in conflict. Conflict is how you flex your muscles and show your superiority. All of us should raise our hands. Let me prove it to you. Road-rage. Has anyone been there? Why do you honk at the other car for 30 seconds? Why do you feel the urge to overtake that car and give your hand gesture? Do you know why? Because you want to win in conflict. All of us love to win in conflict. I’m a conflict-avoider by nature. Whenever I see a conflict coming, my natural tendency is to hide and play safe. I like peace. But if I can’t avoid it, I don’t want to lose; I want to win in conflict. Let me be honest. If someone cuts me on the road without warning, sometimes I forget that I am a pastor and I want that person to know exactly how I feel. Some of you are thinking, “Is this guy qualified to be pastor?” In my defence, I know lots of other pastors who have far worse road rage than me. When I saw them on the road, I was not even sure if they were saved.

Here is the thing about conflict. It does not matter how much we try to avoid it, we can’t. Conflict is part of everyday life, and it comes in all sorts of contexts. We might have conflicts at home, at work, with friends, with strangers, and also with people at church. If you are new at church, you might think that people at church are nice, and they are always loving and kind in conflicts. You have no idea. Conflict in church can be as brutal, or even more brutal than conflict in the world. If people in the world have conflict, they might resort to fists. They might talk badly about each other using curse words. But do you know what we do when we have conflict in church? We don’t use fists; we use verses. We quote Bible verses out of context to support our positions and win in conflict. And that is far more destructive than using fists or curse words. So, how do we manage conflict?

Tonight, we are on our eighth sermon on the book of James. As we have seen, James is a very in-your-face kind of pastor. He doesn’t just want us to have the right theology; he wants us to live out our theology. He cares about the everyday details of Christian life. And one thing every Christian has in common is that we all experience conflict. It does not matter who we are, it does not matter how much we love each other, it does not matter how long we have become Christians, we all experience conflict in relationships. When I prepared for this sermon, I listened to one preacher who said something that I thought was really funny, but it made sense. Think about this. James was Jesus’ half-brother. He probably grew up sharing a room with Jesus. You might think it would be awesome if your brother was the Son of God. But it meant that in any conflict, you were wrong. Every single time there was screaming coming from the bedroom, Joseph just walked in, ignored Jesus, and went right at James because there was no way it could be Jesus’ fault, right? So, James is like, “Listen, I learned that whenever I had a conflict with my big brother, it was always my fault. But I learned a lot through that. And I want to tell you what I learned so that you can manage conflict better.”

If you remember the sermon from last week, James is contrasting two kinds of wisdom: heavenly wisdom and demonic wisdom. Those who have heavenly wisdom show it by their beautiful life, but those with demonic wisdom experience disorder and chaos. James is making the point that the gospel should change everything about our lives. Listen. Failure to live out the Christian life is a failure to remember who we are in Christ, a failure to remember the gospel. And when we forget the gospel, it will have a destructive effect on our relationship with one another. Tonight’s passage is an illustration of what happens when we live according to demonic wisdom instead of heavenly wisdom.

Let’s look at it together. Three things that we can see from the text on how to manage conflict: the cause of conflict; the remedy to conflict; the not-to-do in conflict.

The cause of conflict

James 4:1 – What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

James begins with this one-million-dollar question. “What is the source of your conflict?” We say, “That’s easy. Let me tell you the source of my conflict. It’s my dumb husband. If only he listened to me more. It’s my demanding wife. If only she stops nagging at me. It’s my ungrateful teenager. He is in 9^th grade, and he thinks he knows everything. It’s my controlling parents. They won’t let me do anything. It’s my in-laws. They keep telling me what to do with my family. It’s my selfish sibling. It’s my uncaring friend. It’s my annoying boss. Etc.” This question is easy for us because no matter the conflict, the problem is they are, not us. If only they weren’t so unreasonable. If only they weren’t so demanding. If only they were more considerate and kinder, there would be no problem. Whenever we are in conflict, we say to the person we are against, “The reason I experience conflict is because of you. You are the problem.” That feels natural, doesn’t it? We blame others for our conflicts. But James won’t let us have it. James says, “The reason you are in conflict, the reason you quarrel with others, the main problem is not they are, but you are. You are the problem.” To which we say, “Hold up James. Not so quick. You haven’t met my husband. You haven’t met my wife. You haven’t met my boss. If you have, you won’t say that. They just continue to touch my button. I am a patient person, but you have no idea who I am married to. You have no idea who I work for.” But James says, “That’s not what happens. Let me tell you what happens. Let me tell you the problem.” And pay attention to this because James is about to teach us a life-changing principle, a principle that if we apply it in all relationships, it changes everything.

Here is what he says. James 4:2a – You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. The word desire is from the Greek word ‘hedone’ from which we get our word hedonism. What it means is there is something we want to please ourselves; it is a selfish desire. And when we don’t have it, we murder. James is not talking about literal murder. He is writing this letter to Christians, not to people in prison. James is talking about murder the way Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount, where we are angry at someone and desire to hurt that person. And if that desire is left unchecked, it could lead to murder. And the word covet means there is something we want so badly that we think we cannot be happy without it. We believe this thing is extremely essential to our happiness, and this person is keeping us from it. That’s why we fight and quarrel with whoever keeping us from having the thing we desire and covet. In other words, this is what James is saying. “The reason you fight, the reason you quarrel, is because you have something that you want, but you are not getting it. You desire it, but it is not in your hands. You are not happy because of it. And you do whatever it takes to get what you want. That’s why you have conflicts.” Let me make it extremely clear. The source of every conflict we experience is we want something so badly and we don’t get it.

Isn’t that true? Think about the last conflict you had. For some of you, you don’t have to think far. You had a conflict on your way to church. Why did you get into that conflict? Because you are not getting what you want. You have something you feel entitled to, some way you wanted your day to go, and that person is keeping you from it. And James is very clear. He says, “There are passions at war within you.” He is saying, “The problem is not from the outside to the in; it’s from the inside to the out. The problem is not your circumstance. The problem is not other people. The problem is the desire of your heart. The problem of all problems is a self-centred heart. There is an unmet selfish desire.” Think about it. Do you know what is the common denominator in all my relational conflicts? Me. Do you know what is the common denominator in all your relational conflicts? You. We have something we desire but those desires are unmet. We can’t have what we want. We can’t have our way, and we force people around us to follow our way because we believe our way is the right way. We think we know what’s best. And when we think we know what’s best, we are miserable because we want everybody to agree with us and serve us. Newsflash, they don’t. That’s why we are frustrated. Conflict comes because our selfish desires are not being met.

Get this. Public problems (quarrels) have private causes (self-pleasing heart). So, next time you get into a conflict with someone, here is what I want you to do. Marriage couples, if you get into a conflict on the way home from church tonight, try doing this. I guarantee you it will change everything. When you are in an argument, say this to the other person, “Do you know what part of the problem is? I’m not getting what I want.” Try saying that in the middle of a conflict. There is no comeback from that. The other person will not know what to do with it. The issue with every conflict is you each want to get your way. Owning that makes a huge difference. Instead of blaming the other person, own your part of the problem. It will immediately change the temperature in the room. And if both of you listen to this message, one of you must go first. So, who should go first? Here is my answer. Are you ready? The more mature person, the more humble person, the more Christlike person in the relationship will go first. Let’s continue.

James 4:2b-3 – 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. This is ground-breaking. James gives us two reasons why we do not have what we desire. James says the first reason we do not have what we want is because we do not ask. James is not talking about asking the other person for what we want. He is talking about asking God for what we want. Our problem is we have made the wrong person responsible to give us what we want. We are looking to someone else to give us something only God can give us. Instead of asking God, we demand it from others. What we do is we are trying to squeeze it out of someone who does not have it. And they are also trying to squeeze theirs out of us. Eventually, everybody suffocates, and we walk away convinced that the problem is the other person. But James says, “Why don’t you ask God? Why don’t you bring your desire to the only one who can give it to you? You do not have, because you do not ask.” I love this. There is an invitation from God for us to ask him for what we want. Instead of demanding the people around us with desires they weren’t designed to fulfil in the first place, James tells us to bring them to God. Maybe we do not have, because we do not ask God.

The second reason we do not have what we want is we ask wrongly. In other words, rather than submitting to God’s will, we want God to submit to our will and give us whatever we want. Rather than submitting to God’s agenda, we want God to give his stamp of approval on our agenda. We ask God for things to satisfy our own selfish desires, instead of God’s good desires for us. We turn God into a divine waiter. His job is to bring to us what we want. So, we put our order to him via prayer on Sunday, we put a nice tip on the offering box, and we expect God to give us what we want. And we get angry with God if he doesn’t deliver. And James says, “You do not get what you ask because you ask wrongly. You only want to satisfy your selfish desire.” Do you see? Why would God give you something harmful for you? Why would God answer a prayer of his children who want to live like his enemy? God is too kind to give you what is not good for you. Listen. There is no such thing as unanswered prayer. James does not say that God does not hear but we do not receive. God always hears our prayers. But sometimes the answer is no. Why? Because God loves us too much to give us everything we ask. God is not going to finance our self-destructive desires. Listen to what James says next.

James 4:4-5 – 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”? James is not pulling any punches. The reason why God does not give us what we desire is because we are praying like an adulterer. What does it mean to pray like an adulterer? Adultery is when one spouse looks to someone else for the sexual delight they should find in their spouse. It’s not that the desire for sexual delight is wrong, but that desire with that particular person is wrong because they have already covenanted with someone else. Adultery is when one says to their spouse, “You are not enough for me romantically and sexually. I want someone else.” Praying like an adulterer is when we ask God for something that we should only find in God. It means we are praying to God, “God, you are not enough for me. Unless you give me what I ask, I am not going to be happy. I am not going to be content.” We want God to give us what we want when we are supposed to find the thing we want in God. And when we do that, we are cheating on God. We are sleeping with the world.

Here is what we must understand about being Christians. Becoming a Christian is not entering into a business partnership where we can get out of it when the relationship no longer profits us. Becoming a Christian is to fall in love. When we become Christians, God puts the Holy Spirit in us to let us know that we are his. We belong to him. God relates to us a husband to a wife. In the book of Hosea, Hosea marries a woman named Gomer. Hosea loves Gomer but Gomer doesn’t love him. She is utterly unfaithful, she is involved sexually with other men, and she leaves Hosea. God then comes to Hosea and says, “Hosea, have you ever loved somebody, and that person didn’t love you back? Now you know. Now you know what my life is like because I love a woman, who doesn’t love me back.” And that’s what we do to God. We are Gomer. God is our spouse and yet we seek satisfaction and contentment in the world. Listen. We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that we can live in intimate fellowship with God when our hearts are set toward the world. Friendship with the world makes us an enemy of God. Friendship with the world puts us at enmity with God. It’s like a husband who finds his wife sleeping with the criminal she was dating before he showed up in her life and rescued her from that wretched relationship. That husband has every right to be upset. And in the same way, being unfaithful to God provokes his enmity.

So here is a question for us: What is it that we really want? Is the desire of our heart Godly or worldly? Do we chase after the things of God, or do we chase after the things the world offers to us? Because James says that God is a jealous God. God loves us the way a husband loves his wife. As a husband is jealous for his wife’s affection, so God is jealous for our affection. And whatever gets in the way between God and his love for us will be met with divine force. But God’s jealousy is not fickle like ours. God’s jealousy is not driven by insecurity but rather he wants us to experience the fullness of satisfaction that can only be found in him. John Piper says it beautifully. “God’s jealousy is not the reflex of weakness or fear. Instead God is jealous like a powerful and merciful king who takes a peasant girl from a life of shame, forgives her, marries her, and gives her not the chores of a slave, but the privileges of a wife—a queen. His jealousy does not rise from fear or weakness but from holy indignation at having his honor and power and mercy scorned by the faithlessness of a fickle spouse.” God is jealous for us because he knows he is the best there is and there is nothing better in this world that can satisfy us than him. There is nothing wrong with desiring something and asking God to give us what we desire. There is nothing wrong with desiring a promotion. There is nothing wrong with desiring a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a spouse, a child, etc. But if we desire them more than God, if we can’t be happy and content in God without them, we have committed spiritual adultery. And it puts us in enmity with God. So, what’s the remedy?

The remedy to conflict

James 4:6-7 – ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

This is shocking. What is God’s response to our adultery? He gives more grace. Rather than disown us, God pursues us. He is not done with us. Think back to the story of Hosea and Gomer. Do you know what God tells Hosea to do after Gomer left him for another man? God says, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress.” God tells Hosea to find Gomer and love her again. This makes no sense. Gomer had cheated on Hosea countless times and God tells him to get Gomer back. God says, “Hosea, I know you want to get this over and done with. I know you have 10,000 reasons to walk away. But I want you to get her anyway. And not only get her, but I also want you to love her again.” Absurd command! But that is what God does to us in our spiritual adultery. He responds to our spiritual adultery by giving us more grace. God finds us sleeping with the world and he still wants us back. That is the good news of grace. I don’t know what kind of skeleton you are hiding in your closet. But what I can tell you is that God knows you are having an affair with the world. There is nothing you can hide from him. He knows all your dirty secrets. But the good news of grace is that those things do not change God’s affection for you. God does not respond to your affair by disowning you but by pouring out grace so abundantly that your affair is no longer seen. And all you must do to receive grace is to humble yourself.

That’s why James says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” To receive grace, we must be humble. But what does it mean to be humble? When we think of a humble person, we often think of a shy person who is not outspoken and does not express self-confidence. But that’s not what James is talking about. James says that a humble person submits himself to God and resists the devil. A humble person is actually a person who oozes confidence. A humble person is bold and courageous. The Bible’s definition of a humble person is different from what most of us have in mind. Here’s how the Bible defines a humble person. A humble person is not someone who is thinking less of himself. “Oh, I’m nothing. I’m nobody. I am just a grasshopper among giants.” That’s not a humble person. A humble person is someone who is thinking of himself less. It’s looking at yourself less. Humility is not a lack of confidence. It’s not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. It’s focusing on yourself less. Let me put it this way. Humility is not looking at yourself all the time because on the inside you are supremely confident of your worth to God and that God is taking care of the circumstances of your life.

What is pride? Pride is looking at yourself and thinking about yourself all the time. What is humility? It’s forgetting about yourself. It’s not even looking, not caring, saying, “I don’t care. I know God is taking care of this.” Humility is not a lack of confidence but incredible confidence in God. In other words, a humble person is someone who does not look at themselves but looks to God. That’s the kind of person who receives grace from God. A humble person says, “I know I don’t deserve God’s grace. I know I am unworthy. I know I am an adulterer. But I am not going to look at myself. I am going to look to God and what he says about me. I am going to put my worth in not what I think about me but what God thinks about me. I know God is taking care of me and I can trust him.” That’s a humble person. That’s why a humble person submits himself to God and resists the devil. A humble person knows the same God who gives grace is the same God who gives commands to obey. Receiving God’s grace will lead to submission to God. It is not one or the other.

Listen. Christian life is not a conflict-free life. But we must know who we are in conflict with. We are not in conflict with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are in conflict with the devil. James says we must resist the devil. We must do all we can to not believe his lies. The devil is lying to us saying that we must have the very thing we desire to be happy. If we do not have it, we will not be happy. So, we strive against each other to fulfil our selfish desires. That’s the root of every conflict. But submission to God is to say, “I know God knows what’s best for me and he will not withhold anything good from me. So, I am going to ask him and trust him. If it’s good for me, he will give it to me. And whatever is not good for me, he will not give to me.” Do you see? The highest form of resistance to the devil is to submit to God’s will. When we submit to God, we resist the devil. And here is God’s promise. When we resist the devil, he will flee from us. In other words, James is saying to us, “Instead of fighting each other, fight the devil. Fight his lies that you must have what you desire. Trust in God’s grace to give you what you want. Submit to God’s will, and the devil will flee from you.”

James 4:8-9 – ⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. What a wonderful promise. When we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. But don’t be mistaken. God’s love is not preconditioned upon us taking the initiative to draw near to him. In the Bible, God is always the one to initiate a relationship. Always. But what happens is we are the ones who betrayed God. We are the ones who committed adultery and walked away from God. God never moves. We are the ones who did, and it is God’s grace who woo us back to him. It’s like the father in the story of the prodigal son. The father is waiting, longing for his son to come home. And when he sees his son from far off, he lifts his robe and runs toward his son. That’s the picture James is giving us. When we draw near to God, we will find God is already running to us, ready to embrace us. God is yearning for us to come back to him. In fact, God even uses conflicts in our lives to do that. Through conflict, God is saying to us, “The security you’re looking for, the significance you crave, the assurance you want so badly, you cannot find it in that person. You can only find it in me. I am the comfort you are looking for. I am the security. I am the significance. I am the God who can satisfy you. So, draw near to me and I will satisfy you with my love.” That’s what God is doing in us during conflict.

However, that in no way diminishes the fact that we have committed spiritual adultery. Turning to God involves turning from sin. James tells us to cleanse our hands, purify our hearts, mourn and weep, and change our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom. These are strong words. We are to lament and truly repent of our sins. We are not just to regret our sin, but to grieve over it. Sin is not cheap. It costs God everything to give us grace and rescue us from sin. When was the last time we grieved over our sins? Do we realize the gravity of our sins? Do we see the seriousness of sins? Because if we do, we won’t take sin lightly. We would be heartbroken by our sins. But pay attention to the strange logic of these verses. James tells us to draw near to God first before we cleanse our hands. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Human logic tells us that we must clean ourselves first before we draw near to God. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel is we draw near to God because we can’t clean ourselves. It is only when we draw near to God that we can clean our hands and purify our hearts. It is only when we draw near to God that we can own our part of the problems.

And here is the promise. James 4:10 – Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. I love it. When we humble ourselves before God, when we own our sins and repent, we do not have to lift ourselves up, God himself will do it for us. God will exalt us. We don’t have to worry about proving ourselves right. God will take care of it. All we have to do is admit where we are wrong and trust God. We humble ourselves before God that God knows best, and God will exalt the humble. So, listen. If we want God on our side in a conflict, we must humble ourselves. If we want God as our enemy, exalt ourselves and fight to get what we want. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. This does not mean that the conflict we are in will be resolved and we are guaranteed to get what we want. It is very possible for the conflict to never be resolved but we can respond rightly because we get God and he will take care of us.

The not-to-do in conflict

James 4:11-12 – ¹¹ Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. ¹² There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

After telling us what to do in conflict, James is telling us what not to do in conflict. When we conflict with someone, it is very easy for us to speak evil of that person. The phrase speak evil literally means to belittle, to talk down to somebody, to treat someone as small. To speak evil against one another is to make a person small. What we say might be true, but the reason we are saying it is to make the other person look small in their eyes or the eyes of others. We are saying it to make them lose respect. What we are doing is we are paying them back with our words. We are punishing them with our words. And let’s be honest. This feels natural to us, isn’t it? To punish someone with our words is something we do without even realizing we are doing it. It feels so right. But do you know what that is? That’s not humility; that’s pride. We feel like we need to show them who is in charge. And when we do that, James says we speak evil against the law and judge the law.

How so? Because we are playing God. Instead of humbling ourselves before God and letting God take care of it, we take things into our own hands, and we play judge. Instead of loving others as ourselves, we assume the worst about others, and we destroy them with our words. We take God’s prerogative, and we seek justice for ourselves. We think we know exactly what the other person deserves, and it is up to us to deliver judgment. But here is the problem. We do not have the wisdom to judge other people. We have no idea what they deserve. We can’t see the full picture. Only God can and therefore only God has enough wisdom to be the judge. To say, “I know exactly what’s happening and I know exactly what they deserved, and it is up to me to make things right” is extremely arrogant. We are forgetting the simple truth: we are not God, and we should not act like God. There is only one judge and lawgiver and that is not us. What we must do is not play God but humble ourselves.

But how? How can we stop ourselves from playing judge and humble ourselves? There is only one way. We have to see how the judge of the universe saves us. Do you know how a judge can save us? A judge cannot save us by stopping judging. If a judge says, “I know you are guilty, but I am feeling kind today. So, I’m going to let you off the hook and give you a clean slate,” that judge will be kicked out. The judge of the universe cannot stop judging. So, do you know what he did? Here is what’s most amazing about Jesus. Jesus is the judge of the universe. But he is the judge who came to us and is judged for us. The only way for Jesus to save us from judgment is for him to be judged on our behalf. There is no other way. And that is the purpose of the cross. The cross tells us that the judge of the universe has declared us guilty of spiritual adultery. We deserved eternal abandonment. But instead of making us pay the price, the judge himself stepped off the bench and took the judgment we deserved. Jesus did not save us by stopping judgment; he saved us through judgment. Jesus never stopped judging. He never stopped being just. But he saved us by letting himself be judged. Therefore, Jesus is the lawgiver and the judge who is able to save and destroy. He is the only one who has the right to judge. Not us.

When we sinned against Jesus, Jesus absorbed our judgment and didn’t pay back. Instead, he gave grace to us. He welcomed us back into his arms. He loved us with his infinite love. The judge of the universe loves us so much that he gave himself to be judged for us so that he could have our affection forever. Rather than disowning us for our betrayal, he gives us more grace. If that’s true, who are we to judge our neighbour? Who are we to demand payback when someone sinned against us? Who are we to do something even Jesus didn’t do? Do you see? If we know how the judge of the universe saves us, we can stop playing judge. We can own our part of the problem without seeking vindication from the other person. We humble ourselves before God and God will exalt us. Let’s pray.

Discussion questions:

1. What struck you the most from the sermon?
2. How does knowing the cause of conflict change the way you face conflict?
3. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” What does this verse teach us about the remedy to conflict?
4. What does it mean to speak evil against the law and judge the law and why we should not do it?
5. How does the gospel enable us to manage conflict?
6. Spend time in prayer humbling yourself before God bringing your conflict to him.