James 4:4 – You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Many of us have experienced the ridiculousness of religious people trying to define for us exactly what “friendship with world” means. It’s pretty easy to find people who are willing to condemn almost anything someone else is doing. Unfortunately, these people stopped reading about 7 verses too short.

But there’s also been a push the other way. A hi-jacking of the grace of God to release us from his conviction for anything we do. Both of these extremes are wrong. Too be honest, verse 4 scares me a little. I know, I shouldn’t be scared of God. But, the Scriptures teach that I should have a healthy dose of fear in an “awesome reverence” sort of way. My point is that verse 4 raises an issue that I think that those of us who are Jesus followers don’t think about this issue enough.

It’s not clear cut. That’s part of what makes us uncomfortable. Friendship is bigger than rules. It wasn’t intended to give some hard and fast rules like “don’t smoke, drink, or chew or go out with girls who do.” I think it was intended to drive us quickly back to the place of relationship with the God who loves us and created us. It was intended to give us pause, to cause us to reflect on our lives and the relationship we have with Jesus.

We should be wrestling with this. With the type of person we’re becoming. Asking ourselves if our love for God is growing hotter or waxing cold. The antidote to “friendship with the world” isn’t rules that we follow that help us abstain from certain types of activities and behaviors. The antidote is friendship with Jesus.

Draw close to him….as James says in verse 8, when you do, he will close the distance and surround you.