In James 4, the half-brother of Jesus warns against bad motivations in a couple of big ways.

1. Friendship with the world

He says (NIV): “don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

To be clear, he’s not talking about friendship with non-Christians. He’s not saying we should become recluses. That’s because the meaning of that quotation comes from the previous sentence, when James flags the problem of “wrong motives”.

In fact, he’s carrying on his focus on envy and unholy ambition mentioned in chapter 3 and now talks of “desires that battle within you”.

So to be a “friend of the world” is not to be a friend of people or the planet, but to have impure motivations. In fact, elsewhere in the New Testament, in 1 John, we are given a definition of “everything in the world”. It is defined as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”.

2. Boasting about tomorrow

Christians sometimes read the end of chapter four and get the wrong idea. Here, James 4 says:

Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’

What James is absolutely not saying – although it might seem like to the case – is that you have to add “if it is the Lord’s will” to every statement of the future.

I once visited an old-fashioned Gospel Hall where they said something like “God willing, we shall have a service next Sunday morning”. But I think doing that comes from a taking a small part of the passage out of context.

What James 4 is talking about is boasting of worldly ambitions, and – behind that – of our motivations. Notice that James’s example is about making money.

And have a look at how the apostle Paul refers to his travel plans (Romans 15, NIV):

But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord’s people there.

Paul is not literally saying: “If it is the Lord’s will, I will go to Spain”. But wanting to understand and follow God’s will is in his attitude.

So what I think James’s passage is really about, much more than how you say things, is about whether the decisions about your future are taken prayerfully with God or taken because of vanity, ego and prestige.