I’ve had this letter in my possession for over twenty years. I read it often – more now than when I first received it. It’s tattered pages are marked with pen, pencil, and highlighting. I never tire of reading it, but I’ll be honest – certain parts still hurt and disturb every time I read them.
This letter is from a man named James. He’s what you’d call a straight-shooter. No mincing words, no beating around the bush. He writes with unapologetic curtness and brutal honesty. With a tone of urgency he calls a spade a spade and says what needs to be said. Perhaps he learned to communicate this way from his Half-Brother… Jesus.
James sheds light on a lot of subject matter in his short 5-chapter letter in the Bible. What I want to focus on in this post are two heart problems that James identifies as being the causal effect of so many other problems we experience.
“But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.”
James 3:14-16
James doesn’t wade through the mucky miry details of relational conflict to lay out a set of possible dysfunctions. No, he boils it all down to two issues. James is less like a sensitive therapist and more like a skilled doctor with a probe, peering beneath the surface to diagnose a heart problem.
There are two heart conditions James chooses to identify with disorder and evil: jealousy and selfish ambition.
JEALOUSY: An emotion. This word typically refers to the thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, concern, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of status or something of great personal value, particularly in reference to a human connection. (Wikipedia)
Jealousy is aroused when something we have or want is threatened. We easily observe jealousy in toddlers, young children, and teenagers. But James isn’t writing primarily to young people. We also don’t have to look hard to see jealousy exhibited in the world – it exists in the work place, in neighborhoods, at the gym, perhaps in our own family. But James isn’t writing to the world at large either. James is specifically writing to the twelve tribes of Jewish believers that were dispersed to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s writing to The Church. What? Jealousy in the church? Gasp. How can this be? Aren’t believers supposed to be full of love and grace, not envy and bitterness? It’s a sad reality of our depravity that born-again believers are still susceptible to jealousy. We can be jealous of others’ God-given gifts and abilities. We can be jealous of a person’s ministry position or title, their esteem or influence. We can feel threatened if we perceive someone is after what we want or have.
James confronted the struggle with jealousy that existed even in the early church of 2000 years ago:
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. James 4:1-3
Ouch. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) This guy is brutal.
SELFISH AMBITION: The Greek word for selfish ambition is ERITHEIA and is defined as: acting for one’s own gain, regardless of the discord (strife) it causes; places self-interest ahead of what the Lord declares right, or what is good for others. (Strong’s Concordance: 2052)
We understand selfish ambition in its most notorious forms of greed, lust, and fame. What we don’t always recognize is the pervasive nature of selfish ambition in our own piety and good works.
It’s almost impossible for selfish ambition not to creep into our lives – even in our most noble activities. My husband and I can speak of our own struggle with doing ‘good things’ for wrong reasons. Only a few years ago we were fully-funded missionaries ready to move our family to Kenya to build an orphanage – an endeavor most people would consider honorable and selfless. But when the Lord showed us the true motives of our heart (selfish ambition being one of them) we knew better than to proceed.
It’s sometimes hard to distinguish a good work from a good heart. Selfish ambition can motivate people to do remarkable things. But James sees through the pretense and self-righteousness in all that. He knows that when selfishness rules our thoughts and desires then it will also rule our behavior and activities, ultimately causing relational conflict – or “disorder and evil of every kind”, as James puts it.
Again, I wish I could say that true believers are exempt from selfish ambition. I’d like to believe that when we commit our lives to Christ there’s instant sanctification that turns our “it’s-not-about-me” expressions into true professions of the heart! But who are we kidding? That’s just not the way it is. This thing of dying to ourselves is a process, not an event.
Jealousy and selfishness are sneaky – like weeds in the garden of our heart. Sometimes we stand back, observing our beautiful garden filled with the fruits of the Spirit, and feel pretty good about ourselves. But we mustn’t go too long without examining our garden a little closer to check for underlying weeds that may be sprouting up.
Rarely do we sense the feelings and emotions of jealousy or selfishness in their early stages. When jealousy and selfish ambition go undetected they’re allowed to grow, like weeds that breed more weeds and eventually choke out the spiritual fruit in our garden. That’s not what we want! We want gardens that produce great harvests, right? Well then, we have to do the hard work of weeding.
We also have to keep planting… Because gardens don’t sustain themselves.
Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. James 3:18
In the next post we’ll read more of James’s letter to understand how to plant seeds of peace that grow into beautiful fruit!
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Niki Schemanski is a wife of seventeen years and homeschooling mother of three children. A love of singing led her into an early career of performing and public speaking throughout Alaska and in various parts of the nation beginning at eight years old. After college, she spent more than a decade on staff as a worship pastor. Niki’s desire is to personally “taste and see that the Lord is good”. Her passion to help others do the same is what fuels her writing, worship leading, teaching, mentoring, and doula ministries. She and her family reside in Durango, Colorado.