Quarrle and Fight #1 James 4

James 4:1a
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

This is an universally appropriate question.  However what we need to have in mind is that this question is being asked of believers, of the church.

We are all aware of the "big" quarrels and fights that divide and destroy churched and we are all appropriately distressed by them.  Whether the issue is critical or seemingly trivial it will destroy the church when it is allowed to.  Sometimes a local group must pass through such a time of pruning and distress but that should be the exception not the rule.  Just as there are blessed additions to the Body so too there are sanctified subtractions.

However we will not be addressing this passage (James 4:1-10) from some corporate viewpoint.  If the "you in verse 1a is plural than we can extrapolate it's application to each and everyone of the "you(s)." it touches.  The seed of quarrels and fights is the sin abiding in each one of us.  We are the cause.

But just knowing the cause and not addressing it is a distressing sign of the ambivalence that may lurk in our hearts.  I meet with many believers who harbour ambivalence and apathy in their hearts concerning the holiness God calls us to and works toward in us.  It is as though they have found some comfortable and manageable place of compromise where their hearts are more at peace than not and they are willing to bear the incongruity of their position and the difficulty it brings.

God's call on our lives is not to "radical living," or even "radical faith>"  His call is to holiness - plain and simple.  Certainly our lives and beliefs will seem radical as we strive with His Spirit toward holiness but the point isn't to Wow the world but to grow in holiness after the image of Christ.

We've sadly forgotten and in some ways forsaken the quest for holiness and godliness and exchanged it for a display of radical distinction on the outside - in public and come to think that what we do will change what we believe.  It won't.  Only a deep and humble commitment to godliness/holiness and an utter humiliation before God in seeking it will produce in us His desired objective.

Again, though this applies to the big quarrels and public fights we see in the church, they are simply symptomatic of the little quarrles and fights we have against the will and providence of God.  I hope and pray you are open to and seeing your guilt in this and how insidious our sinful hearts are even as we are being conformed into the likeness of Christ.

I close with this quote from John Flavel from his work, Keeping the Heart:

To repress the outward acts of sin and compose the external part of thy life in a laudable manner, is no great matter; even carnal persons, by the force of common principles, can do this:  but to kill the root of corruption within, to set and keep up an holy  government over thy thoughts, to have all things lie straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.  John Flavel