Summary
Friendship with the World: No Jellyfish
James opens the fourth chapter of his letter with a jolt: "Adulterers!" He is not addressing sexual sin but spiritual unfaithfulness. Throughout Scripture, God frames His covenant with His people as a marriage. Isaiah 54:5 declares, "Your Maker is your husband." Jeremiah 3:8 speaks of Israel's "adulteries," and Jesus rebukes "an adulterous generation" in Matthew 12:39. Spiritual adultery, then, is failing to live as one bound to God in covenant love.
The cause James names is friendship with the world. "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" James 4:4. The Greek word behind "friendship" carried more weight in the ancient world than our casual usage suggests. It meant strong attachment, deep commitment—not mere acquaintance. The "world" in Scripture is the godless system that organizes life around self rather than God. To be committed to that system, attached to its values and reflexes, is to break covenant with the Lord.
How does such friendship happen? Rarely by deliberate choice. More often it happens the way a jellyfish travels. A jellyfish, which is 99% water and not actually a fish, simply drifts wherever the current carries it. It has no power to resist the tide. So with us: we make friends with the world by going with the flow. James points to the symptoms—devaluing the poor as somehow less human because they lack means James 2, speech that sounds no different from the world's vitriol so that unbelievers see no distinction between the Christian's words and their neighbor's James 3, envy, selfish ambition, conflict, and coveting James 4. The current feels normal because it is populated; what is popular feels safe.
God's response is jealousy, not indifference. "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us" James 4:5. Exodus 34:14 names Him: "the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." He will not share His bride with idols. By nature our spirit yearns toward sin, but God yearns for that same spirit to be His. His answer to our unfaithfulness is the cross. Christ bears our sin and the just wrath of God against it; atonement and reconciliation are accomplished through His blood. Through Word and Sacrament the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us and turns our hearts to love Jesus.
Even so, this side of heaven the struggle remains. Paul confesses in Romans 7:21 that when he wants to do good, evil lies close at hand. The old Adam clings until the Lord takes us home. The Law exposes this struggle and humbles us, driving us to depend wholly on God's grace. And exactly there—in the humility the Law works—we discover the gospel: "He gives more grace. Therefore it says, 'God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble'" James 4:6.
Real fish, unlike jellyfish, swim against the current. It seems harder, but it is actually how they breathe—water forced through their gills oxygenates them—and how they keep from being swept somewhere they should not go. God did not create His redeemed to drift. He created us to swim, and He empowers the swim. Every day brings opportunities to move against the current of a self-centered age. No jellyfish, Church. Swim.
Video citations
- Culture: "No Jellyfish" 10-6-24 — Zuma Beach, California. As a boy, during the summer we would take frequent trips to Zuma Beach. We lived in the San Fernando Valley, and so the drive wasn't too terribly far. We would go through the…